About 40,000 persons were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan on July 6, 1949

For the first time in Moldova's history, the senior authorities commemorated July 6 – the day when dozens of thousands of Bessarabians were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The presence of high-ranking officials at this event is a turning point as the state recognized the crimes committed by the totalitarian Communist regime, Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca said at the opening of the meeting in the Railway Terminal's square, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to Chirtoaca, the deportations cannot be taken out of the context of the Soviet occupation of June 28, 1940, which was based on an agreement between the Communists and Fascists. He said the Communist crimes should be condemned and the Fascism and Communism should be equaled. Head of Parliament and Acting President Mihai Ghimpu said the Communist atrocities on the Moldovan land started on the left bank of the Nistru, where there were shot thousands of people regardless of their nationality. In 1937-1938 alone, 2,931 people had been shot in the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On June 28, 1940 the Soviet soldiers crossed the Nistru and the terror started. Hundreds of thousands of people were shot, deported or died of starvation during the organized famine. All these crimes were stamped with the hammer and sickle that brought death into a peaceful land, Mihai Ghimpu said. For his part, Premier Vlad Filat said it is for the first time that the commemoration event takes place in the absence of the barbed wire placed along the Prut, that the first deportation wave was commemorated in the Great National Assembly Square, that the museum of the victims of Communist was inaugurated. He promised the museum's building located on Banulescu-Bodoni St will be reconstructed as soon as possible so that all the Moldovan population can visit it. “God is with Moldova. I bow before those who could forgive the state that did not take care of them,” Vlad Filat said. The Democrat leader Marian Lupu said such lessons as the deportations and other atrocities of the Communist regime should not be forgotten as they form part of the nation's sad past. First Deputy Head of Parliament Serafim Urecheanu, the chairman of the Moldova Noastra Alliance Party, called upon those attending to be united so as to remove the danger hanging over Moldova and prevent the revival of the criminal Communist regime. As many as 35,796 persons, including 9,864 men, 14,033 women and 11,889 children, were deported on July 6, 1949.