A group of historians and students during 12 days had visited two regions of Siberia, Novosibirsk and Tomsk, to collect facts about the lives of Bessarabians deported in 1941, 1949 and 1951 as part of the fifth edition of the project “Memory expeditions”. The results were presented in a news conference at IPN on October 1.
Historian Octavian Ţâcu said the two regions were the center of the deportations of 1941 and 1949, where almost 12,000 Bessarabians were taken by force by the Soviet regime. Novosibirsk grew spectacularly as a result of deportations and the migration that was mainly forced after the fall of the Soviet Union. Even if many people returned, a lot remained there because it was a remote place where they weren’t regarded the people’s enemies after they were deported because of this reason.
During 12 days, the expedition members interviewed about 30 persons. Gheorghe Bejenari, 93, was 16 when he was deported. He didn’t forget the Romanian language even if he didn’t have who to speak to in Romanian during these years. He has 17 children, 136 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and has a real estate in Bogotari locality of Novosibirsk Oblast.
Maria Zinovii, who studies for her doctor’s degree at the State University of Moldova (USM), said that in a locality in Tomsk they found a funeral stone with the words “Deportees lived, worked and were educated here. Kneel before them, passerby”. The stone was placed by a businessman in memory of his Bessarabian grandparents who were deported to the region.
Andrei Tincu, who studies for a master’s degree at the USM, said that he knew a family from Larga village of Briceni district that was deported 100 kilometers from Tomsk Oblast. After building a house there, the family members had to move to another locality where the children could learn and they could work. They kept the language and traditions. One of the children became a doctor.
Denis Motrenco, who studies in Iași, spoke about a Bessarabian man called Marin Alexeevich who was deported together with his mother to Novosibirsk. The other members of the family were also deported, but to other regions and they knew nothing about them. After the URSS dismembered, the mother returned to Chisinau, but he remained and studied there and started a family, becoming a university professor.
The project “Memory expeditions” was initiated in 2013. Two memory expeditions to Kazakhstan, one expedition to Irkutsk and another one to Krasnoyarsk have been organized so far.
