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PARTICIPANTS OF MEMORY EXPEDITION BELIEVE THAT MOLDOVA DID LITTLE TO PERPETUATE DEPORTEES’ MEMORY

12 octomber, 2016
PARTICIPANTS OF MEMORY EXPEDITION BELIEVE THAT MOLDOVA DID LITTLE TO PERPETUATE DEPORTEES’ MEMORY Moldova did very little to perpetuate deportee’s memory. This opinion was expressed by the participants of the third “Memory Expedition”, organized by the Association of Youth Historians of Moldova.

 

Historian Octavian Ticu reported at the press conference that the expedition took place in Irkutsk Oblast of the Russian Federation in September.

 

“We choose namely this direction, because we knew that about 6 thousand our fellow citizens – Bessarabian Romanians were deported during the second wave of deportation in July 5-6, 1949. I had a personal desire to go there, because my grandmother was one of those deportees”, said Ticu.

 

In his words, with the help of the Bureau for Diaspora Relations and the Bessarabian Romanians Association, which exists in Irkutsk, the participants managed to find people who were deported nearly years ago. They were young children at the time of deportation; some of them were born there, as their mothers were pregnant at the time of deportation.

 

“There are about 100 people now, who survived. Their parents were abandoned in taiga; first they lived in tents and then in barracks. As time goes by, they settle there, built house and villages. They were the first to cultivate potatoes and vegetables, they built the first well. Houses, built by them have elements of the Moldovan ornament, curtains are made in a traditional style”, noted the historian.

 

He also said that almost all of them remember the Romanian language, but speak it so-so, too shy.

 

“They were gracious to us, entertained us with Moldovan hospitability. They became very nostalgic. Many of them would like to return home, but they are too old. Their descendants have integrated into society and feel Russian. Although, they realize that it was not normal to live in taiga and give birth to children, they have no resentment. I can say that they took their ancestors’ deportation a something inevitable, as their destiny”, he said.

 

Historian Viorica Olaru-Cemirtan noted that after the proclamation of Moldova’s independence, some deportees or their children returned to Moldova.

 

“Unfortunately, not all of them were able to find themselves in their historical homeland, to receive compensation or other mean; many of them have no an identity of deportee’s rehabilitation even. That is why many returned to Siberia, which has become their home”, said the historian.

 

Ticu stressed that there were two more waves of deportation after the deportation of 1949. At that time, many Moldovans voluntarily moved to Siberia. In the early 70-ies of the last century, about 5 thousand citizens went to the construction of the Baikal-Amur mainline and Bratsk hydroelectric power station.

 

OWV-studio Director Virgiliu Margineanu said that “little more needs to be done in order to perpetuate the deportees’ memory and events of 70 year ago”. The expedition will publish a book and other materials, and the OWH-studio will make a documentary film.

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