Our duty not to forget horrors of deportations - Moldovan president says

Chisinau, 6 July /MOLDPRES/-  President Maia Sandu conveyed a message on Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism, marked in Moldova on 6 July, when the second wave of deportations took place, in 1949, the presidential press service has reported.

"Today we mark the 72nd anniversary of the largest wave of deportations from Soviet Moldova and today in our country the victims of Stalinism are commemorated. On 6 July 1949, more than 11,000 families were taken out of their homes and taken to another part of the world. Over 35,000 people, whose lives were divided into "before" and "after" or who did not even go into exile, dying on the road of cold, hunger and disease, in cattle cars, "the message reads.

The message also sees that the 35,000 people are part of the tens of millions of victims caused over the years by the authoritarian Stalinist regime. "For us, they are someone's grandparents or parents who have never returned home. They are children born far from home, priests, teachers and housewives of our villages, who have been deprived of everything. Many of them, even to this day, have not managed to do justice and return their goods ", Maia Sandu said.

According to the head of state, the second wave of deportations showed the real face of the totalitarian regime: people's rights were violated, regardless of ethnicity and language they spoke, and fear and total control over society were established.

photo: Presidency