June 13, 1941 was the blackest day for the Bessarabian people, for those who were separated from their families and deported, ex-deportee Valentina Sturza, head of the Association of Former Deportees and Detainees, was quoted by IPN as saying in the talk show “Emphasis on today” on TVR Moldova channel.

“When we were children, they woke us up and made us get onto carts without allowing us to take some products except 10 kg per person,” related Valentina Sturza. When she returned to Moldova, during ten years she went to the institution responsible for security to get the deportation file of her family, but all in vain. In 2013, when the archives were declassified, she could see that file. “There were indicated two persons who said nothing bad about my father. It was written there: He had by ten persons working for him each day and two persons who worked permanently for the family,” stated Valentina Sturza.

Publicist Vlad Pohila said wealthy people called kulaks were deported during the first deportation wave. Officially, there were deported those who would have had a hostile attitude to the Soviet occupation, including members of parties, mayors, gendarmes, police officers, intellectuals and any well-off person who had persons working for them.

As to the fact that the senior state officials didn’t lay flowers at the deportees’ monument on June 13, Vlad Pohila said the current administration has nothing to do with the people and their history. “They have nothing in common with us and cannot have. It is strange that one of the heavyweights of the Party of Socialists, Zinaida Grecheanyi, was deported and she now strings along with the occupants. This is embarrassing,” stated the publicist.

More than 22,000 persons were deported on the night of June 13, 1941. There were three mass deportation waves: in June 1941, July 1949 and April 1951. The deportees numbered about 58,000.