Memories of night of first deportation wave in Bessarabia

On the night of June 13 it will be 69 years of the first deportation wave of 1941 that took place in Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina. The victims of deportation and repression remember with sadness that night, when they were separated from their families and taken abroad because they were considered 'the people's enemies', served in the Romanian army or opposed the Soviet regime. The victims and historians came together for a roundtable meeting at the public library “Onisifor Ghibu” on June 11, Info-Prim Neo reports. Lidia Ermurache said she was deported to the Russiam region Irkutsk with her mother and one brother. The other members of the family managed to find refuge in Romania. “When we got off the train and crossed a river, we found ourselves in a wood where there was no sun. There were some dangerous flies there that attacked people. We had a very hard life there,” Lidia Ermurache said. A 70-year-old woman related that they were told they will never go home and they must forget about their home. “We were punished if we tried to run away. Thus, I waited until I could return home. It happened in 1956,” said Nina Ermurache. “We must talk about deportations even if some say that this leads to dissensions in the society. The reconciliation is based not on amnesia, but on knowledge,” said historian Igor Casu, vice chairman of the commission for studying and assessing the totalitarian Communist regime in Moldova. He said the deportations represent a crime against humanity. “They destroyed the middle class, which was an important part of our society. The Communism was a regime that destroyed the property, but there was not freedom without property,” Igor Casu said. Alexandru Postica, lawyer with the association Promo-Lex, said the mechanism for paying compensations for the nationalized property used in Moldova is very defective. “The law does not clearly say who pays the compensations – the district councils or the Ministry of Finance. The district councils delay examining the applications, while the courts delay trying the cases,” the lawyer said. According to the historians, about 5,000 Bessarabian families were deported on June 13, 1941.