Place:Vaslui, Vaslui, Romania

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Vaslui, a city in eastern Romania, is the seat of Vaslui County, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. The city administers five villages: Bahnari, Brodoc, Moara Grecilor, Rediu, and Viișoara.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Archaeological surveys indicate that the territory of Vaslui was inhabited since the Neolithic. From the 14th century onwards, it developed as the provincial town of Vaslui, with a population that fluctuated considerably in the following centuries. The name of Vaslui appears first in a Polish document from 1375, referring to Koriat's son Yuri Koriatovich. The name Vaslui was also mentioned in 1435, in connection with the accession of Prince Iliaș to the Moldavian throne. The town was burned to the ground in 1439 and 1440 when Tatars invaded Moldavia.

The peak of Vaslui's importance was in the 15th century, when it was a second-rank capital of Moldavia, during the reign of Stephen the Great (r. 1457-1504) and its population approached that of the neighbouring Iași. In 1475, Prince Stephen won his greatest battle against the Ottoman Empire in the Vaslui area. Once the Moldavian capital was moved from Suceava to Iași and the southern town of Bârlad became an administrative center of southern Moldavia, Vaslui declined for the next three centuries to eventually become a local borough (târg).

There once was a fairly large Jewish community in the city of Vaslui. Its arrival from Galicia during the second half of the 19th century gave a new impetus to local economic development. In 1899, Jews formed 37% of the population, and Vaslui was home to the Vasloi Hasidic dynasty. However, waves of pogroms, associated with the Holocaust (see Romania during World War II and Holocaust in Romania) as well as emigration to Israel during Romania's communist period decimated this population.

During World War II, the Stephen the Great Monument was relocated from Chișinău to Vaslui. On 22 August 1944, Vaslui was captured by Soviet troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front in the course of the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive.

The population of Vaslui grew steadily again after 1968, when the town was proclaimed as the administrative center of Vaslui County, with immigration from the neighbouring countryside, attracted by the industries set up by the Communist regime.

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