Anibal Dobjanski. Those years the quantity of the city population was not increasing, and in June 1941 Chişinău had 110,000 people. World War II In the chaos of the Second World War Chişinău was almost completely destroyed. This began with the Soviet occupation by the Red Army on 28 June 1940. As the city began to recover from the takeover, a devastating earthquake occurred on 10 November 1940. The epicenter of the quake, which measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, was in eastern Romania and subsequently led to substantial destruction in the city. After scarcely one year, the assault on the newly created Moldovan SSR by the German and Romanian armies began. Beginning with July 1941 the city suffered from large-scale shooting and heavy bombardments by Nazi air raids. On 16 July 1941 the Romanian flag was hoisted over the dome of the 'Catedrala Naşterea Domnului'. The Red Army resistance in Chişinău fell on 17 July 1941. Michael of Romania and Ion Antonescu visited Chişinău on 18 August 1941. Following the occupation, the city suffered from the characteristic mass murder of its predominantly Jewish inhabitants. As had been seen elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Jews were transported on trucks to the outskirts of the city and then summarily shot in partially dug pits. The number of Jews murdered during the initial occupation of the city is estimated at 10,000 people. As the war drew to a conclusion, the city was once more pulled into heavy fighting as German and Romanian troops retreated. On 24 August 1944 the Soviet warriors entered the city as a result of the Jassy-Kishinev Operation. In the Soviet Union After the war, Bessarabia was fully integrated into the Soviet Union. Most of Bessarabia became the Moldavian SSR with Chişinău as its capital; smaller parts of Bessarabia became parts of the Ukrainian SSR. Soon after the Soviet occupation of 1940, the political and social elite was deportated by the Soviet authorities. Formers mayors of Chişinău like Teodor Cojocaru and Pantelimon V. Sinadino died under custody in Soviet prisons. After the Soviet occupation, the Capitoline Wolf and the Monument to Simion Murafa, Alexei Mateevici and Andrei Hodorogea were destroyed in 1940 by the Soviet authorities.Portrete notorii Anti-Soviet organizations such as Democratic Agrarian Party, Freedom Party, Vocea Basarabiei were severely reprimanded. In the years 1947 to 1949 the architect Alexey Shchusev developed a plan with the aid of a