Hîncești

Manuc Bei's Mansion in Hîncești

Hîncești was established in 1500 AD as Dobreni.[3] [4] Within the Russian Empire it was known under the Russified name Gincheshty (Гинчешты), but in Romanian Hîncești. In 1940 the name was changed to Kotovskoe after Grigore Kotovski, who was born there. But from 1941 to 1944 it was again known as Hîncești. Before WWII, the Jewish community was rather large, in 1930, there were 1.523 Jews living there. In July 1941, Romanian gendarmes murdered more than 100 Jews in a mass execution perpetrated in a trench outside the town.[5]

From 1945 to 1965 it was called Kotovskoe, which in 1965 was changed to Kotovsk. Since 1990 it is again called Hîncești.

In 1890 Hîncești had 3,098 people. By 1970 the population was 14.3 thousand, and by 1991, 19.3 thousand. At the 2006 census it had 19.5 thousand residents.

There are four Lyceum (junior colleges) in Hîncești:

• Mihai Viteazul Lyceum
• M. Lomonosov Lyceum
• Mihai Sadoveanu Lyceum
• M. Eminescu Lyceum
• Timotei Batrinu Scoala de Arte

• Leonid Abramovich Anulov (1897–1974), a Soviet intelligence officer, organizer of clandestine intelligence networks (the so-called "Red Orchestra") in Switzerland.
• Grigory Ivanovich Kotowski (1881–1925), Soviet military leader and Communist activist.
• Yankl Yankelevich (1905–1938), Jewish poet who wrote in Yiddish