More than 620 photographs, documents, letters from Siberia, anti-Soviet slogans and loose leaves, and personal belongings of former deportees and political prisoners were brought together at an exhibition themed “Soviet Moldova: between myths and gulag”. The exhibit was opened at the National Museum of Archeology and History on June 13, on the occasion of 71 years of the mass deportations of June 13, 1941. The Museum’s vice director Elena Postica said that it was the first exhibition of the kind staged at the Museum of History in Chisinau. It is not an exhibit, but rather a memorial to the victims of the red terror. It reminds about the totalitarian past that everyone should know, but that should remain only history. “The exhibition presents the totalitarian phenomenon in general historical context. This enables us to understand the contradictory character of the Soviet epoch. We tried to reproduce the two parallel worlds on which Soviet society was built – the world of those who believed in the ideals of the USSR and the world of those who were convicted by the gulag. Many of the materials were gathered during two decades or were provided by the Archive of the Security and Information Service. The deportees or their relatives brought materials themselves,” Elena Postica has told Info-Prim Neo. Attending the event, Prime Minister Vlad Filat said that this exhibition is only the beginning. Under a Government Decision of 2010, a museum of the victims of political repression will be opened soon. “57,698 persons were deported in 1941 and 1949 alone. More persons were deported in 1937 – 1938 and on April 1, 1951. Today we took an important step. Those who do not know the past cannot have a future,” he stated. According to historian Ion Varta, the exhibition will help restore the historical memory. A group of historians will make a number of revelations in the near future, in accordance with a Government Decision, based on archive documents of the former KGB and the Ministry of the Interior. The second wave of deportations is marked on July 6.