“It’s hard to remember what torments our people went through, but still the people didn’t allow to be trampled on by anyone. The Moldovans do not want and never wanted war and those who knew the terror of those times barely hold back their tears when they talk about what they went through. Their memory must be honored, their name must be honored, we must remember them as they were – full of humanity, with fear of God, rooted in the nation and with great love of life.” The statements were made at the rally held at the “Train of Pain” Monument on the Railway Station Alley, which was staged on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the second wave of deportations from Bessarabia, IPN reports.

Valentina Sturza, honorary president of the Association of Former Deportees and Political Victims of the Communist Regime, said that today the country is in mourning because many people who were taken to foreign territories didn’t return home. About 35,000 people were deported – children, parents, grandparents. No one was spared, either pregnant women, or people with disabilities, or the elderly. Of those who were deported in 1941, only 6 people remained in the Republic of Moldova today.

“For us, those who suffered unjustly, it is a black day. Being small children, we were woken up in the middle of the night with shouts “faster” to get out of the beds where we slept. In the yards of the houses, there were vehicles by which we were taken to stations. We were put into freight wagons in which domestic cattle had been transported a few days before. In those conditions we travelled for almost two weeks. Part of the people arrived in Ice Cold Siberia, while others in the sands of Kazakhstan and we still survived despite the intentions of those who led us to our demise,” said Valentina Sturza.

Attending the event, President Maia Sandu said that peace and the freedom to live our lives in our homes in peace is the most precious objective, but also the duty that must bind us all. The head of state says that we choose peace for all the children of Moldova.

“We did not choose to be deported, no one asked us. We did not choose to be starved, killed, sent to war. Our nation bled while others decided our fate. And even if we cannot change the past, we have a duty to know it. We should never forget its horrors and make sure that our country will never again go through such terror. We have the duty to protect our country, to remember the sacrifices of our ancestors who always remained dignified and just, to cherish the freedom we gained, remembering the pain our people experienced, to defend the freedom to choose for ourselves, the freedom to live in a country where the children, mothers, fathers, the elderly will never be picked up at night with a rifle to their heads,” stated President Sandu.

President of the Civic Academy Foundation Ana Blandiana said that a memorial is not a road to the past, but is a road to the present and the future, a road to understanding the present and opening up the future. “Remembering and commemorating the deportations after the Soviet occupation, we are forced to realize that, in fact, communism is not over. In today’s Russia, there are still some of the worst characteristicss that we thought we had overcome... This commemoration is a mirror that shows that the road ahead is only the road to Europe,” noted the writer.

There were three waves of mass deportations in Moldova: in June 1941, July 1949 and April 1951.