The Bessarabia Germans were a German ethnic group who lived in Bessarabia between 1814 and 1940.
Couple with infant
Main settlement areas of the 150 German colonies in Bessarabia
Klöstitz or Vesela Dolyna, Odesa Oblast as it is currently known, an example of a former typical rural Bessarabian German settlement.
A group of Bessarabian Germans, circa 1935
Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans. The country spans a total of 33,483 km2 (12,928 sq mi) and has a population of approximately 2.5 million as of January 2023. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country's eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Dragoș, a Vlach voivode and founder of the Principality of Moldavia, 19th-century depiction
Built during the reign of Stephen the Great, several authors believed the Soroca Fort was constructed on the site of a former Genoese fortress named Olhionia.
Monument to the villagers who died in World War II, the village Cojușna, Strășeni District.
Bessarabia Germans evacuating after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia in 1940.
