75 years after the Stalinist deportations of July 6-9, an exhibition entitled “The Train of Pain” was mounted in the Great National Assembly Square. This is the second exhibition of this kind. This year, the exhibition is presented in a new format, with digital and graphic elements, multimedia content, objects, photos and stories from the lives of deported families. The two exhibited wagons house a library with books about those sad events. In the Book of Memory, the visitors can find the names of the deported relatives. The inauguration of the exhibition involved the country’s leadership, IPN reports.
“Today we commemorate 75 years of the largest mass deportation operation. And we insist as historians and archivists on this term. Not wave, because wave is something natural – the wave comes and goes, but operation. It was a military one. It was conducted in secret. The people were picked up and taken to the nearest railway stations, at night so that the neighbors could not see because there was also a fear of rebellions or disorders in connection with what was happening,” said the director of the National Archives Agency Igor Cașu.
According to him, it was the largest mass deportation operation because it targeted 36,000 people or over 11 thousand families from all localities of the current Republic of Moldova. “Compared to the deportation of 1941, which covered only the Bessarabian part of the USSR, it also included the current Transnistrian territory. So, it is a national tragedy. Every locality was affected in one way or another by this mass deportation that aimed to instill fear in people because it was a selective one. The goal was to induce fear, which entered not only the blood, but also the bones,” stated Igor Cașu.
The people who will visit the exhibition in the center of the capital city will be accompanied by historians and guides. Thanks to the virtual reality elements, the exhibition can be seen from any corner of the Republic of Moldova and also from outside the country, by scanning a QR-code.
The exhibition “The Train of Pain” will be open until July 31, every day from 09.00 to 21.00.
In total, there were three mass deportation operations in Moldova: in June 1941, July 1949 and April 1951. The 1949 deportation is the largest on the current territory of the Republic of Moldova. The houses, land and belongings of the deportees were transferred to the kolkhozes and some were stolen and sold. A number of 3,071 trucks and 1,736 wagons were mobilized for the operation.
