Remembering Stalin's Deportations From Moldova
In the summer of 1949, Soviet forces deported dozens of families from Andrei Vulpe's village in present-day Moldova. Vulpe, then a young man who sat on the village council due to his good grades, was forced to take part in the deportation. More than 60 years later, he still grapples with his guilt.
Originally published at -
008 Droicha TV A new open air museum aims to connect generations
An open air memorial museum is built in Mereni village of Moldova to commemorate the victims of Stalin’s deportations and to connect generations.
Author:
Produced on: 16/09/2016 Chisinau, Moldova
Language: Romanian
Script:
Stalin's deportations memorial museum
00:03-00:33
Veronica Postica, victim of Stalin's deportations
Around 2 o’clock after mid-night two soldiers knocked to our door. They told to my mom to get ready for departure.
In Revaca train station they embarked us in wagons for animals. We traveled 21 days. In Siberia they gave us only tents, axes and told us to build the barracks.
00:33-00:53
In July 1949, 85 families from Mereni village(Anenii Noi district)
have been deported to Siberia. Some of them never came back home. In memory of victims of political deportations in the village
has been build an open air museum.
00:53-01:16
Ludmila Seretean,director of Arts school We would like this
museum to have a moral, ethical and esthetical value for young generation. Now we are building the second module of museum
–Siberian GULAG. The construction is financed by CHIOS
program.
01:16-01:35
This museum of victims of political deportations, built with support of the European Union, is unique in Moldova. The inhabitants of Mereni village decided to build it to maintain alive the history of deported families. Some of them remember with sorrow that tragic moments.
01:36-01:55
Veronica Postica, victim of Stalin's deportations
Let people see our life in Siberia. We donated 1000 Moldovan lei to museum. Some people say that we earned money in Siberia. But we suffered a lot...
01:55-02:15
Moldova has witnessed three waves of deportations
–
in 1941, 1949 and 1951. Historians are saying that Stalin’s deportations is a painful page of our history.
02:15-02:40 Anatol Petrencu, university professor
The deportations are a form of political repression.
These people didn’t go in vacation in Siberia, they were persecuted.
13875 persons were deported in 1941, 35796–in 1949 and
2641–in 1951.
02:40-02:51
The young people from Mereni are involved in construction of the museum. They say that the young generation should l earn the history of Moldova, including deportations.
00:51-03:01
Cristina Lungu
The young people participated in construction of the museum. We painted the walls, cleaned the territory etc.
03:01-03:14 Razvan Chirita
This project is very important for young people from Mereni, because we rediscover the recent history of our village and nation.
03:14-03:50
The deportations memorial museumis composed of five modules:
peasant household, the road to Siberia, barracks, underground passage and expo area. The construction works at the second module plan to be finalized by end-September 2016. The inhabitants of the village hope to attract additional
financial recourses to finalize the museum complex, which will present a clear picture of the deportation
victims’ life.Veronica CEBOTARIIon FALCA
Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina | Wikipedia audio article
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Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
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SUMMARY
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The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was the military occupation, by the Soviet Red Army, during June 28 – July 4, 1940, of the Romanian regions of Northern Bukovina and Hertza, and of Bessarabia, a region under Romanian administration since Russian Civil War times. These regions, with a total area of 50,762 km2 (19,599 sq mi) and a population of 3,776,309 inhabitants, were subsequently incorporated into the USSR.The Soviet Union had planned to accomplish the annexation with a full-scale invasion, but the Romanian government, responding to a Soviet ultimatum delivered on June 26, agreed to withdraw from the territories in order to avoid a military conflict. Germany, which had acknowledged the Soviet interest in Bessarabia in a secret protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, had been made aware prior to the planned ultimatum on June 24, but had not informed the Romanian authorities, nor were they willing to provide support. The Fall of France, a guarantor of Romania's borders, on 22 June, is considered an important factor in the Soviet decision to issue the ultimatum.On August 2, 1940, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, encompassing most of Bessarabia, as well as a portion of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR located on the left bank of the Dniester (now the breakaway Transnistrian state). The Hertza region, and the regions inhabited by Slavic majorities (Northern Bukovina, Northern and Southern Bessarabia) were included in the Ukrainian SSR. A period of political persecution, including executions, deportations to labour camps and arrests, occurred during the Soviet administration.
In July 1941, Romanian and German troops recaptured Bessarabia during the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. A military administration was established and the region's Jewish population was either executed on the spot or deported to Transnistria, where further numbers were killed. In August 1944, during the Soviet Jassy–Kishinev Offensive, the Axis war effort on the Eastern Front collapsed. A coup d'état in Romania on 23 August 1944 caused the Romanian army to cease resisting the Soviet advance and join the fight against Germany. Soviet forces advanced from Bessarabia into Romania, capturing much of its standing army as POWs and occupying the country. On September 12, 1944, Romania signed the Moscow Armistice with the Allies. The Armistice, as well as the subsequent peace treaty of 1947, confirmed the Soviet-Romanian border as it was on January 1, 1941.Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertza remained part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991, when they became part of the newly independent states of Moldova and Ukraine. In its declaration of independence of August 27, 1991, the government of Moldova condemned the creation of the Moldavian SSR, declaring that it had no legal basis.
History of the Jews in Romania | Wikipedia audio article
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History of the Jews in Romania
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language only began at around 3200 BC, but spoken language has existed long ago.
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- learn while on the move
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audio (audio article). You could even learn subconsciously by playing the audio
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This video uses Google TTS en-US-Standard-D voice.
SUMMARY
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The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after around 1850, and more especially after the establishment of Greater Romania in the aftermath of World War I. A diverse community, albeit an overwhelmingly urban one, Jews were a target of religious persecution and racism in Romanian society – from the late-19th century debate over the Jewish Question and the Jewish residents' right to citizenship, to the genocide carried out in the lands of Romania as part of the Holocaust. The latter, coupled with successive waves of aliyah, has accounted for a dramatic decrease in the overall size of Romania's present-day Jewish community.
Today, the majority of Romanian Jews live in Israel, while modern-day Romania continues to host a modest Jewish population. In the 2011 census, 3,271 declared to be Jewish.
Jewish communities existed in Romanian territory in the 2nd century AD. During the reign of Peter the Lame (1574–1579) the Jews of Moldavia, mainly traders from Poland who were competing with locals, were taxed and ultimately expelled. The authorities decided in 1650 and 1741 required Jews to wear clothing evidencing their status and ethnicity. The first blood accusation in Moldavia (and, as such, in Romania) was made in 1710, when the Jews of Târgu Neamț were charged with having killed a Christian child for ritual purposes. An anti-Jewish riot occurred in Bucharest in the 1760s.
During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 the Jews in the Danubian Principalities had to endure great hardships. Massacres and pillages were perpetrated in almost every town and village in the country. During the Greek War of Independence, which signalled the Wallachian uprising of 1821, Jews were victims of pogroms and persecutions. In the 1860s, there was another riot motivated by blood libel accusations.Antisemitism was officially enforced under the premierships of Ion Brătianu. During his first years in office (1875) Brătianu reinforced and applied old discrimination laws, insisting that Jews were not allowed to settle in the countryside (and relocating those that had done so), while declaring many Jewish urban inhabitants to be vagrants and expelling them from the country. The emigration of Romanian Jews on a larger scale commenced soon after 1878. By 1900 there were 250,000 Romanian Jews: 3.3% of the population, 14.6% of the city dwellers, 32% of the Moldavian urban population and 42% of Iași.Between the establishment of the National Legionary State and 1942, 80 anti-Jewish regulations were passed. Starting at the end of October, 1940, the Iron Guard began a massive antisemitic campaign, torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops (see Dorohoi Pogrom), culminating in the failed coup and a pogrom in Bucharest, in which 125 Jews were killed. Antonescu eventually stopped the violence and chaos created by the Iron Guard by brutally suppressing the rebellion, but continued the policy of oppression and massacre of Jews, and, to a lesser extent, of Roma. After Romania entered the war at the start of Operation Barbarossa atrocities against the Jews became common, starting with the Iași pogrom. According to the Wiesel Commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Romania murdered, in various forms, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bessarabia, Bukovina and in the Transnistria Governorate.