Big Italian businessmen, as directors of famous firms and companies, arrived in Chisinau the other day. It was not just a passive interest that led them here: they came to test the waters in order to make investments, to begin to lay stones in the foundation of trade relations.

A young man with a white-toothed smile, wearing the David’s star, stood out against a background of the preoccupied swarthy inhabitants of the Apennines. There was no problem at all in coming up to him and starting a conversation.

Let me introduce Serggio Lucciano, our man in Italy, who has been living in Soroca for three years. Now he represents the firm Progresus terra, Ltd. His mother left this frail world five years ago, and then Serggio brought his father, Mario, closer to Moldova, to Bulgaria, where Serggio had started to work many years ago. It was namely in Bulgaria where he had first heard about Moldova, and the company management sent him here as a pioneer to research this land.

His answer to the question about the number of the Jews in Italy and Bulgaria was the following: 60 thousand and 12 thousand respectively. Our hero, Mr. Lucciano, deals with the production of walnut and sweet cherries. Ten people are employed in his firm full-time, and during the harvesting seasons, 50 to 60 workers cultivate 200 ha of the land.

Serggio observes the Jewish traditions as far as possible, and knows Hebrew. Since he can’t buy kosher food anywhere, he prefers to eat mainly fruits and vegetables.

He jokes that he has become a swinger in Moldova, because as he says, to survive here you must be a die-hard optimist.

He wishes to revive the former 70 synagogues in Moldova, and it trying to help the local citizens to move beyond the memories of the Soviet past. He wants them to accept that past reality as it is, and to adapt to and move beyond it with the least losses.  

Yistoki - No. 8 2007 page 5