Find Your Family’s Moldova – Ancestral Journey

Your grandmother’s village may have another name today. Its church may be gone, its families scattered between Canada, Germany, Israel and the United States. Something usually remains: an entry in a register, a bell tower, a street that still follows the old plan.

This journey is built around one family. Before you arrive, we research your family’s village, gather the records that survive and find the places connected to your relatives. Then we plan the days around what can actually be established, not around guesses.

It is for anyone with family roots in Moldova or historic Bessarabia: descendants of German, Jewish, Moldovan, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Russian families, and families travelling across several generations.

How it works

Every journey is different. This is a typical five-day outline.

A recent journey: Eichendorf, today Doina

Cahul district, southern Moldova

In September 2026, Darin came from Canada to see the village where his grandmother was born.

Eichendorf was founded in 1908 by German Lutheran settlers in southern Bessarabia, in today’s Cahul district. In autumn 1940 its families left with the resettlement of the Bessarabian Germans. Today the village is called Doina.

Much of Eichendorf is gone. The bell tower still stands, with a plaque in Romanian, Russian and German naming its builder and donor, Robert Hottmann.

One question stayed open: the plaque dates the tower to 1914, while a history of the Eichendorf community dates the iron bell tower to 1921. Details like this go into the booklet as open questions, not as facts.

Darin left with photographs of the places his grandmother knew and shared the story with his relatives back home.