The visitors of the National Museum of History of Moldova can see an exhibition entitled “Under Foreign Sky. Inhabitants of Lithuania in Camps and Exile Places in USSR. Years 1940-1958”, which was mounted with the support of the Embassy of Lithuania in Moldova on October 17. The 20 stands arranged according to the thematic principle cover different aspects of the daily life of deportees and political detainees: food, clothing, faith, etc., IPN reports.
The exhibited documents and photos tell about the organization of deportations, political arrests, the life of deportees and political detainees, their working and living conditions. The dramatist of the pictures, letters and documents about the living conditions is emphasized by the barbed wire that repeats on stands obsessively. The photos also contain secret scenes of the initiation of deportations, gathering of victims and their closing in the Catholic church of a former bishopric of Juknaičiai village.
In the inauguration event, the Museum’s director Eugen Sava said the exhibition is a phenomenon because, even if tens of years passed since then, the memory should be vital, especially for the young generations, which should know what happened then.
Attending the event, Deputy Minister of Education, Culture and Research Gheorghe Postica said this unique exhibition centers on tragic pages of the history of former Soviet peoples, namely the Lithuanian people. There were periods when the subject of deportations was a taboo, but the current political classes condemned those tragic events.
Minister-counselor of the Embassy of Lithuania in Moldova Andrej Didenko said that both Moldova and Lithuania in the middle of the last century experienced several deportation waves that affected hundreds of thousands of people. In June 1940, after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, deportations and repressions started all over Lithuania and these affected all the social strata. As a result of the occupation, Lithuania lost 800,000 people, 300,000 of whom went through jails and camps.
The exhibit was first mounted during an evening at the European Parliament on June 21, 2011. This was entitled “Present and Past Face to Face” and was mounted in connection with the 70th anniversary of the start of deportations in Lithuania. Later, the exhibition was presented in Poland, France, the UK and in a number of cities and institutions in Lithuania.
The exhibition at the National Museum of History of Moldova can be visited until October 31.
