The Heroes’ Cemetery Memorial Complex, known in different eras as the Heroes’ Cemetery, the Cemetery of Honour or the Romanian Military Cemetery, is a historical monument located on bd. Decebal 17 in Chisinau. Here were buried soldiers of different ethnicities participating in the two world wars.

The cemetery appeared in 1918, at the end of the First World War. It was the burial place for soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield, and in later years also for war veterans. The buried soldiers were of different nationalities: Romanians, Russians, Czechs, Poles, French, Austrians, Hungarians, etc. In the interwar period, a chapel in memory of the Czech Legion was built on the cemetery grounds. The cemetery was called “Heroes’ Cemetery” until Bessarabia joined the USSR, when it was renamed Krasnodonskii. In 1927-1938, the cemetery was laid out by the “Queen Mary” National Settlement for the Cult of Heroes. The fallen soldiers of the Second World War were also buried here in the summer of 1941. Sources also mention that an unidentified number of prisoners of war from Germany, Austria, Italy and other countries were buried in the same cemetery.

At that time, the cemetery had an area of 2.4 ha. Access to the cemetery was via a monumental entrance, consisting of a six-metre-wide staircase with 50 steps and an architectural portal at the base consisting of two 10-metre-high reinforced concrete pillars, each bearing an eagle with spread wings. The columns dominated a vast semicircular square surrounded by walls and ornaments. Shaped like an irregular polygon, the cemetery had an old Byzantine-style chapel at its centre, around which six grave plots were laid out. The steps were connected to the chapel by an alley.

After 1944, the chapel was destroyed and the cemetery ground was levelled by bulldozer. During this process, several graves were unintentionally disinterred, bringing out bones and various personal objects (wristwatches, cigarette boxes, daggers, etc.) In 1959, what remained of the cemetery was demolished, except for the columns at the entrance, and in 1961 the Chiril Draganiuc Institute of Pulmonology and Physiology was built. The foundation of the chapel was preserved and a terrace was set up there for the patients to rest. In the early 1990s, when the hospital was no longer functioning, a wooden cross with the inscription “Glory to the Heroes of the Romanian Army” was installed on the foundation of the former chapel, an initiative of the politician Gheorghe Ghimpu. The hospital was demolished at the end of 2007. shortly after it became private property.

In the Cemetery of Honour in Chisinau were buried 1645 soldiers, including 431 Romanians (66 in graves, 365 in the crypt), 234 Russians (27 in graves, 207 in the crypt), 29 Austrians, 39 Czechs, 35 French and 6 Poles fallen in World War I, as well as 96 Romanian soldiers fallen in World War II. Around the chapel there were six plots with 136 graves in which 202 heroes were buried and two crypts with 572 unidentified Romanian and Russian heroes.

In 2013, the Republican Association of War Participants (ARPR) said it was able to identify about 200 of the more than 3,000 graves that existed in the late 1940s in the memorial complex. These include 89 intact Romanian graves from the Second World War, the grave of Italian soldier Alciro Deviani (who died in October 1941) and 36 graves of Soviet soldiers who died in the infirmaries in Chisinau. Among those buried in the cemetery are two charity sisters. Another five graves identified belong to Czechoslovak soldiers out of 29 who lost their lives in Chisinau after the withdrawal of Czechoslovak legions from Bolshevik Russia. Thirty graves have also been attributed to French officers who died in southern Bessarabia during the Second World War. According to the ARPR, German and Hungarian prisoners who were part of NKVD construction detachments during the post-war reconstruction of the capital are buried at the “Heroes’ Cemetery”. Nowadays, there are regular clean-ups and memorial services for the buried.

It is currently being rehabilitated.