Tyragetia (Dec 2014)
Memoirs – important resource of reconstructing the ordeal of deportations
Abstract
The special literature from Republic of Moldova has approached constantly in the last two decades the thematic of political repressions from the period of the totalitarian communist regime by valorizing numerous documentary evidences discovered in secret collections of the former regime and in personal archives of survivors of the Soviet Gulag. An important resource in reconstructing the totalitarian past are memoirs of former deported persons and political prisoners. Unfortunately, the biggest part of memorial materials signed by survivors of concentrated camps and direct witnessers of events are dispersed through news-papers and journals. Very few of them have been gathered in volumes and collections of memories. Few are also those who did not try to forget the ordeal they went through and had the courage to relive it one more time when putting it on paper. These facts leads to the need of encouraging witnessers to write their memories for researcher to collect them into a unique database, to valorize and offer the society a specialized analysis of these valuable historic evidences. The author is proposing a series of memorial materials for analysis from the collections of the National Museum of History of Moldova. Here are names of several authors of terrible pages about the ordeal of Stalinist deportations from Bessarabia: Alexandru Pripa, native of v. Pelenia, jud. Bălţi, Dumitru Berezovski, native from Drochia, Vladimir Buşilo from Comrat, Apolinarie Vataman from v. Ghica Vodă, Drochia and Emilia Vataman-Racoveţ from v. Cuconeşti, Brătuşeni, deported in 1941; Nadejda Pascal from Durleşti, Fiodor Cociu, native from Hânceşti and Simion Buiuc from Chiperceni, Orhei, deported in 1949. On base of these valuable details can be reconstructed the gloomy picture of the Bessarabian who new the deportations drama, the picture of an entire generation who had to confront face to face the soviet machine of repressions. An epoch can be rediscovered from these details.
