Documentary materials, personal objects, photographs testifying to Stalinist deportations were exhibited at the National Museum of History of Moldova to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the second wave of mass deportations in the Moldavian SSR. The Museum’s employee Ludmila Cojocaru said that the exhibition is like a gesture of symbolic justice for all those who suffered because of the communist totalitarian regime. “It is a lesson that we must learn from the local memory communities, to learn it when we develop memory policies, when we practice and implement educational activities,” stated Ludmila Cojocaru, being quoted by IPN.
Ludmila Cojocaru noted that the memory of those who died as a result of the deportations is honored first of all on the religious dimension and by erecting a monument on which there are both the names of those who perished in Siberia and the names of those who are alive, but suffered. Through such exhibitions, we learn not to be afraid to know the history, including the less convenient pages, because then we have more chances to intelligently assume the past, especially when it comes to a traumatic past.
“In the message of the exhibition, we insist on talking about the start of deportations, but also about the moment when the ice began to break after 1953, after Stalin’s death, and the deported Bessarabians started to ask and write with much hope that they will come home in the upper bodies. We are proud that we managed to include in the national heritage, to recover for the national heritage of the Republic of Moldova some vestiges that are unique, such as a family’s tickets for the train trip from the place of deportation to the locality. We have a series of objects that were near these people for better or for worse, that became over time as members of the family,” said Ludmila Cojocaru. She noted that among them are Bessarabian carpets that were kept and brought back home, icons, towels.
The victims of the deportations who were present at the event said that together with their families, they were separated from their homes at a young age and deported. They experienced hunger and sufferings in which they tried to survive and preserve their dignity. The people addressed a message to the young generation, calling on them to learn what happened during the years of deportations, to value what they have now and to love their homeland.
President of the Association of Former Deportees and Political Prisoners of Moldova, Alexandru Postica, said that without proper education, without better knowledge of the crimes that were committed by the communist totalitarian regime, the legislators will not influence the population to make particular changes. “Just as we currently have a partially dysfunctional law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, we will continue to have such an approach because this is, perhaps, the price of ignorance or neglect of the truth,” he stated.
The exhibition entitled “The Memory of Deportations” can be visited until August 3.
