The requiem in memory of the victims of Communist deportations will be held near the Monument to Deportation Victims in Chisinau on July 6, starting at 8am. This will include the commemoration ceremony, speeches by survivors of deportations and by officials and laying of flowers, IPN reports, quoting the Ministry of Culture that organizes the event.

A service in memory of the victims of deportations will be given at Saint Teodora de la Sihla Church in Chisinau, starting at 9am. This will be officiated by archpriest Ioan Ciuntu.

This year the authorities facilitated public access to the Memory Book. Respectively, the nominal lists with the names of persons deported from the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic to Siberia as part of the South Operation of July 6-9, 1949 are public. The lists that are now made public for the first time contain almost 99% of the information about the victims of deportations and can be accessed by scanning the QR Memory Code imprinted on the informative board near the Monument to Deportation Victims.

The list includes over 35,000 names. According to a report by the Soviet political police that dates from June 1952, the deportees totaled over 35,000. Out of these, over 14,000 were women, about 12,000 were children and almost 9,000 were men.

The event is held under the auspices of Moldova’s Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița.

The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism has been celebrated in Moldova yearly on July 6 since 1990.