The Bessarabians were deported by the Soviet power because they were Romanians and to erase any connection with Romanian traditions and culture, stated, on Monday, the ambassador of the Republic of Moldova in Bucharest, Victor Chirilă, at the Senate, at the opening of the photo-documentary exhibition “Childhood in the Gulag “, according to Agerpres.
There were three waves of deportations of Romanians from Bessarabia. PHOTO archive Daciana Stoica
The life of Bessarabian children deported in 1941, 1949 and 1951 and condemned to starvation, Russification, indoctrination and forced separation from their own families, as a result of the repressive policies of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic is presented in archive images and documents within the exhibition.
“Let's not forget these tragedies that Romanians from Bessarabia went through. There were three waves of deportations of Romanians from Bessarabia, primarily just because they were Romanian, because they were part of the Romanian cultural, economic and political elite, because they had prosperous households. They were the target of these deportations, as well as their children. More than a third of those deported were children, forced into forced labor in the Siberian taiga, in agriculture in Kazakhstan, and in Soviet factories and plants. They were subjected to Russification in Soviet schools to erase any memory connection with the people from which they were torn. In the end they didn't succeed, because their parents kept alive the memory of the land they came from and passed on our Romanian values to them, reading them from the Bible in Romanian“, said Victor Chirilă.
The Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova in Bucharest pointed out that these facts can be repeated because in the last two years, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 20,000 children were deported (only 400 recovered) to the Far East and other cities in the Russian Federation for “to erase any trace of their Ukrainian identity”, similar to the children deported from Bessarabia in 1941, 1949 and 1951.
“The number of those deported was much higher”
In the three waves, 60,000 people were deported, of which more than a third were children, according to the ambassador of the Republic of Moldova, citing official sources.
According to unofficial data, their number is higher because the NKVD lists mentioned families with two or three children, but in those days families were more numerous, with four-five-six and even seven children, says the ambassador..
“We believe that the number of DEPORTED it was much bigger. We must not forget, because what happened in these deportations was an attempt by the Soviet power to erase any memory of these people about their true identity, which was and is Romanian. Moreover, Russia, the rightful heir of the Soviet Union, has never condemned these atrocities, and the lack of this condemnation creates new precedents, and we see this in Ukraine. We must do everything possible to get Russia, post-Putin Russia, to condemn, recognize and take responsibility for these atrocities, including by providing compensation to these families, as other states that have been guilty of atrocities have done during World War II”added Chirila.
exhibition gathers around 180 photo-documentary images, accompanied by memories and archival documents from the collections of the National History Museum of Moldova, the Museum of Edineţ County, the Museum of History and Ethnography from Soroca, the Pro Memoria Institute and from the family archives of the victims of the totalitarian regime -communist.
The photo-documentary exhibition “Childhood in the Gulag” was made with the support of the Program “The Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme” of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.
The event was organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova in Bucharest, in collaboration with the Romanian Senate, the National History Museum of Moldova, the Museum of Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions.
