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JEWISH COMMUNITY AGAINST ORGANIZING TWO MUSEUMS IN ONE BUILDING
The Jewish community of Moldova has demanded from the Chisinau municipal authorities to explain in greater detail their decision, distributed in the mass media yesterday, concerning the unfolding of two museums – of the Holocaust and of the Soviet occupation – in one old small building.
On Wednesday, community co-chairman Alexander Belinkis organized a news conference in Infotag and read out the Statement the organization is going to send to the municipality leadership.
The document authors expressed a resolute disagreement to the intention to deploy both museums under one roof, in the building belonging to the Center for rehabilitation of former deportation victims and political prisoners. The Jewish community is maintaining that two diametrically different historic events are thus going to be mixed.
“We believe it is impossible to draw a parallel between fascists, with their misanthropic regime, and the political system, to which some people are trying to ascribe an equal-size fault for repressions against its own peoples”, said the Statement.
Bilinkis believes as something quite disputable the very notion of a “Soviet occupation”.
He explained, “Laws restricting the Jewish people’s rights were adopted in Romania yet in 1938. And Moldova’s inclusion into the Soviet Union [on June 28, 1940] provided hundreds of thousands of Jews to evacuate from that danger and thus to survive”, adding that from 1940 and till the first post-war years, over 4 thousand Jews were deported from Moldova forcibly, i.e. approximately 10% of all deported residents of the republic.
The other Co-Chairman of the Jewish community, Alexander Pinchevsky, stated that this question is being used in political interests – as an element of an election campaign.
“But we don’t want to be an instrument, a card in somebody’s hands”, Pinchevsky stated, and requested to not relate this Statement with any other statements or comments on the issue.
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