Society must take practical measures to eternize memory of famine victims, historians say

The society must not only condemn the crimes of communism, but also take concrete measures to eternize the memory of the victims of famine, university lecturer Dr. Ion Buga said at a scientific conference organized to commemorate the famine victims of 1946-1947 on October 3. As witness to the famine of 1946-1947, Ion Buga said that the practical actions must include scientific investigations at the archive and on the spot, creation of a research institute, formulation of a law that would define the communist crime from political and juridical viewpoints, building of a museum-memorial to communism victims and a national monument in Chisinau as well as by a cross in memoriam in village cemeteries. At the conference opening, chairman of the European Action Movement Anatol Petrencu said that according to official accounts, over 220,000 innocent people from the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, most of who children, died of starvation as a result of the communist regime’s criminal policy. Regretfully, the Moldova Parliament did not have the courage to condemn the communist crimes in compliance with the PACE resolution of 2006, which condemned the mass violations of human rights by the totalitarian regimes and paid homage to their victims, Anatol Petrencu said. Stressing that starvation was an instrument of terror, writer Larisa Turea said that the experience of hunger made the people fearful, distrustful and submissive. The witnesses suffered a serious trauma and do not want to remember those events, as if they were a shameful illness, and this is one of the reasons why the famine does not often find reflection in literature and arts, Larisa Turea said. A group of priests of the Bessarabian Metropolitan Church headed by Priest Ioan Ciuntu performed a Te-Deum to remember those that died of starvation. The requiem mass and the scientific conference were organized by the European Action Movement, the Democratic Forum of Romanians in Moldova and the Association of Historians of Moldova.