Former deportees still haunted by memories, sufferings and fear

Sixty years after the deportations of 1949, the memories, sufferings and fear still trouble many of the former deportees. {“I became stuck when Russian military men entered our house to take us away. We all though then that they were taking us to death. At that moment, my mother started to kiss the walls of the house and things that were in the yard in tears, bidding thus farewell to everything they owned. And we started a road of suffering,”} former deportee Teodosia Cozmin said with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes. The Cozmin family from Bobulesti village of Floresti district together with many other families suffered years of hunger, poverty, pain and hard work as a result of the second wave of deportations of July 6, 1949. [Stuck in fear] Teodosia Cozmin said that she had seven years in 1945, when her father was arrested and deported to Krasnoyarsk region as he was a good householder and considered himself Romanian. “We remained five children with our mother and grandmother and the suffering started then. The Soviet men confiscated everything from the people, up to the last grain, so that nothing remained in the household. Tough years followed afterward - years of organized hunger and different infectious diseases. All the family got sick with typhus and was confined to bed with fever. The disease killed my brother, younger sister and grandmother. As I was the only child who felt better, I had to take care of all them,” the former deportee said. Teodosia Cozmin related that before the tragic evening, she played with fellows and laughed all the day, not paying much attention to the unusually large number of cars that traveled between Floresti town and Gura Camencii village. “Before that night, on July 5, my mother had hoed with several persons that helped her. I was ten years old and was amusing myself together with other children. In our funny games, we were laughing with tears. At two or three o’clock in the morning, we heard knocks at the door and the voice of the secretary of the village Council. A group of Russian military men entered our house and told us to collect the things we needed in 20-30 minutes and get into a car. At that moment, I became stuck, while my mother started to kiss the walls of the house, bidding farewell to every thing. Only our neighbors lent a hand and threw several things that they took at random in the car,” she explained. [The road to death] Teodosia Cozmin said that none of those deported knew where they were being taken to, but all of them though that they were being taken to death. “Towards morning, we arrived in Floresti, where a train that was transporting cattle was waiting for us. I, one of my sisters and my mother got into a car. They closed it with locks and we started our road to the death. My elder sister ran away and was not deported. There was a lot of sorrow on the platform. The relatives were crying, running together with the train and asking us to write them. We were deported to Amur region, at the border with China. “{We had been slaves for about nine years}. During the first three years, we worked at cattle farms in the steppe. Then, we were moved to Blagoveshchensk town, where we participated in the construction of wooden houses. We lived in huts and freight cars full of insects, bedbugs. In the winter, it was sol cold that the soles of the shoes froze solid. We were paid little money for our work. We could afford only bread, salt and sometimes soup,” she said. [I wanted very much to learn] The former deportee related that the children like them could not go to school as they had to work and earn their living. “We were slaves and did not have the right to study. I wanted very much to learn and made even an attempt. But it was difficult as I did not know Russian. I started to go to school three years after we arrived in Amur. I was 13 then. But, forced by humiliation, poverty and difficulties, I had to abandon school. However, I read many books, even till midnight. I lived every moment described in those books,” the woman said proudly. [First love in exile] Our protagonist told that she met her first love also in exile. “Though many Russian admirers proposed to me, I told them I will marry only a Moldovan. And I fell in love with a Moldovan boy.” [Thoughts of motherland kept us alive] Though it was hard, Teodosia Cozmin confessed she lived moments of happiness, explaining that she felt relieved when the Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin died. “In March 1953, when Stalin died, I breathed easily and shouted: Hurray, the tyrant has died! We had lived many years there, but worked hard and survived. Only the thoughts of the motherland kept us alive. In the autumn of 1957, we returned to Moldova. At home, we lived moments of joy and of pain. I had strong emotions when I first heard the Moldovan language after nine years in exile. At that moment I cried as I could not believe that we were at home,” Teodosia said. However, Teodosia Cozmin was very disappointed when they reached the native village. They could not live in their parent’s house as there was set up a kindergarten. She had to live in her elder sister’s house. She got their house back only in 1961 after making many efforts. “Nobody wanted to hire us. They looked at us as if we were enemies. We asked the villagers to give us work in the field so that we could earn our living. We are still considered enemies,” the woman said with tears in her eyes. According to the woman, the Republic of Moldova would collapse if the Communist Party kept the power. “In my prayers, I ask God to reveal the traitors so that we could live better,” Teodosia said. Teodosia Cozmin married in 1959 and has two boys. On July 6, it is 60 years of the depurations of 1949. That was the second wave of deportations conspiringly called “IUG” (South). It was carried out under the decision of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union “on the deportation of Moldovan kulaks, former landowners, great merchants and other groups of people and their families”. As many as 11,280 families (40,850 persons) were to be deported from the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic for life in accordance with the given decision.