The president of the Civic Academy Foundation Ana Blandiana said that the memories related to the deportations of 75 years ago, but also the war on the border must make the citizens of the Republic of Moldova to choose the right perspective, the road to the European Union. It is not possible for the citizens here to choose anything else. History must not be allowed to reverse, the writer stated at the international conference “75 years since the second wave of deportations from Bessarabia”, held today in Mereni village of Anenii Noi district, IPN reports.

Ana Blandiana said that she grew up in Oradea, Romania, the city that was located furthest from the Soviet border. A city where her father was a priest, and every Sunday the church was filled with Bessarabian refugees, especially women. The Bessarabian women were distinguished by their beauty, but also by the fact that during the entire service they knelt and cried. “I asked my father why they were crying and my father said they were crying for their relatives who were deported to Siberia. I think I was 4-5 years old and it was the first time I heard and learned the word ‘deportation’ and the word ‘Siberia’,” recalled the writer.

Many years later she traveled with a delegation of Romanian writers to Tashkent and, walking down the street and speaking in Romanian, they were approached by two men dressed in Uzbek costumes. “They came to us and said: brothers, you are Romanians. It was a shock for us, because it was an extraordinarily exotic place, in the heart of Asia. We didn’t even expect to meet Romanians there. They told us that there were Bessarabian teachers who had been deported. We talked to them and they told us that those who had more than the Baccalaureate were deported so that they could later reorganize the schools on the grounds that there were no Romanian language teachers,” related the president of the Civic Academy Foundation.

Another memory of her is related to the work at the Sighet Memorial. “It goes to the way in which your deportations were intertwined with our deportations, in one of the moments of communist repression in Romania, the night of Pentecost in 1951, when the people of Banat were deported. Hundreds of thousands of people were deported in a single night. Among those people from Banat were many Bessarabians, who had moved as far away as they could from the Soviet border and had reached Oradea, Timisoara,” said the writer.

Later she published a book with interviews with Bessarabians who had gone through those displacements. “That book of interviews is for me the most extraordinary proof of our connection through suffering, beyond the blood connection. With the past, but also with the war next to us, these prove to us that history can always reverse, it can go backwards. It seems absolutely obvious to me that we must not forget at least for a moment what happened. It seems obvious to me that we must know, tell the children about what their grandparents went through. This is the only way we can defend ourselves. The right perspective of the road must be chosen. The path to the EU starts from here, from the memories of what happened 75 years ago, and then again and again,” noted Ana Blandiana.

“I don’t have enough power to imagine that the Moldovans will oppose this path through the election that follows this year. I cannot imagine the curse that would fall not only on you, but also on us and on our entire history. It is also a moment when all kinds of good and bad events have gathered to put you back on the map of the world, not just of Europe.”

The international conference “75 years since the second wave of deportations from Bessarabia” was organized by the Association of Former Deportees and Political Prisoners of the Republic of Moldova, the public association “Genesis”, with the support of the Mereni mayor’s office and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. Activities were also planned for Saturday. At the “Train of Pain” Monument of the Chisinau Railway Station, a religious service will be held to commemorate the victims of the second wave of deportations. Also, officials and members of the Association of Former Deportees and Political Prisoners will give commemoration speeches in front of the “Train of Pain” Monument.