Moldavia, with its shtetlach deserted and hundreds of synagogues long closed or destroyed, can be considered a remarkable museum to eastern European Judaism.
First, in Bukovina, several splendid eighteenth and late nineteenth-century synagogues can still be found in towns such as Rădăuți, Vratra Dornei, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, and Botosani.
Further southward in Piatra-Neamt, a rare wooden synagogue dates back to the sixteenth century.
In Bacău, near the synagogue, you can find a small Museum of Jewish History.
The most moving testimony to the Jewish presence in Moldavia undoubtedly remains the sixty some cemeteries located between the wooded hills of the northwest and the plains in the southwest.
Among them, the cemetery in the town of Siret (formerly a prince’s residence during the nineteenth century, located between the Ukrainian cities of Chernivtsi and Sucavea in Romania) easily rivals the most beautiful ones found in Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia, and even Prague. And also the cemetery of Radauti, the cemetery of Vatra Dornei, the cemetery of Piatra Neamt and the cemetery of Bacau.