Several tens of persons took part in an even to commemorate the victims of Stalinist repressions in the Park “Valea Morilor”. The event is not political, but is Christian in character and is held to remember those who were tortured and shot dead and also those who shot as the latter became victims of this machinery and were ultimately liquidated, Svetlana Chiriac, a member of the Orthodox Brotherhood in honor of Saint Paisy Velichkovski of Chisinau, which organized the event, has told IPN.

The commemoration prayer for the sixth consecutive year was held near the Memorial Stone that was placed in 1995 within the precincts of the local NKVD, where hundreds of people were interrogated, tortured and shot dead for political reasons. Relevant information can be found in a research by Mihai Tașcu. In the event, the names of those who were executed and those who suffered as a result of the repression are being read.

Svetlana Chiriac said the repression lasted from the summer of 1940 until 1941. The victims were people of different ethnicities, social sections of Bessarabian society: Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Gagauz people who were destroyed as “anti-Soviet elements”. In 1941, after the Soviet troops left Chisinau, over 100 bodies were exhumed from the identified mass graves.

According to Svetlana Chiriac, the commemoration event is held to secure public respect for the victims of repression and to warn the authorities that the Memorial Stone set up in a historic place was moved by individuals in 2018 and a summer terrace of a complex of restaurants started to be erected in that place.

“We would like these monuments to be protected by the state, such events to be thoroughly examined and the names of victims of Stalinist repression to be made public. We want to know who those people were, what they dealt with. We also want such tragic events to never repeat,” said the representative of the Orthodox Brotherhood in honor of Saint Paisy Velichkovski of Chisinau.

She also said that similar places where people were shot dead for political reasons are also on Grenoble St in Chisinau, but the bodies of the victims of Stalinist repression there haven’t been exhumed and no relevant research has been conducted.

The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism has been celebrated annually in Moldova on July 6 since 1990.