#Exhibit of the Month

The work In Memoriam. In Memory of the Heroes Who Fell at the Nistru (1992) was developed within the Center for Culture and Military History and published under the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Moldova, the Bureau for Reintegration, and the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Moldova. Authors: Gheorghe Bălan, Vitalie Ciobanu, Gheorghe Cojocaru.

This work provides a retrospective of the events that led to the outbreak of the war on the Nistru, accompanied by photographs of the heroes who lost their lives in the battles to defend the independence and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova.

On March 2, 1992, the political conflict in the Nistru region escalated into a true fratricidal war. Under the fabricated pretext of "defending Russia's southern borders," political adventurers from the former Soviet metropolis encouraged Transnistrian separatism by arming secessionist paramilitary groups. At the same time, thousands of mercenary Cossacks and prisoners released early from jails, along with tanks and missiles, were sent against Independent Moldova, in a desperate attempt to revive the fallen empire.

Russia's undeclared war against the Republic of Moldova left behind hundreds of dead and wounded, shattered families, and villages in ruins. More than 50,000 peaceful residents from the conflict zone were forced to flee their homes, seeking refuge from the horrors of war.

For the sake of freedom and the future, Moldova's defenders faced death, enduring the hardships and humiliations of war.

During the Nistru war, 198 soldiers of the National Army and 89 personnel from the Ministry of Internal Affairs lost their lives, while 40 combatants went missing without a trace, and nearly 300 were left disabled.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“Childhood in the Gulag”

National Museum of the Union Alba Iulia

May 23 – June 30, 2023

On May 23, 2023, at the National Museum of the Union in Alba Iulia, Romania, the inauguration ceremony of the photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" (curator Ludmila D. Cojocaru) took place. The exhibition presents images about the life of Bessarabian children condemned by the totalitarian-communist regime of the Moldavian SSR to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination, forced excision from their own families, during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953.

At the opening of the event, the vice-president of the Alba Iulia County Council, Mr. Dumitru Fulea, greeted the guests and thanked the National Museum of History of Moldova and the National Museum of the Union in Alba Iulia for the joint effort in presenting the traumatic pages of the past toward a large audience. The concept of the exhibition was presented by Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru and Dr. Virgiliu Bîrlădeanu, relating on the actuality of the recovering, documentation and historical investigation of the testimonies of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in Bessarabia. The director of the National Museum of the Union Alba Iulia, Mr. Gabriel Rustoiu, referred to the prospects of bilateral cooperation regarding the dissemination of historical knowledge through museographical activities, especially among the young generation on both banks of the Prut River.

The exhibition brings together about 180 photo-documentary images, accompanied by memories and archival documents from the collections of the National History Museum of Moldova, the Edineț County Museum, the Museum of History and Ethnography in Soroca, the INIS ProMemoria Archive of the MSU, as well as from the archives of the communities memory and of the survivors of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The exhibition presented in Alba Iulia is a homage to the children who went through the atrocities of the totalitarian-communist regime in the USSR, as well as an action condemning the war launched by the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

The photo-documentary exhibition „Childhood in the Gulag" can be visited between May 23 - June 30, 2023, at the headquarters of the National Museum of the Union in Alba Iulia (str. Mihai Viteazul 12-14, mun. Alba Iulia, Romania).

The Opening of the photo-documentary exhibition „Childhood in the Gulag" was organized within the project „Edification of a European culture of memory by promoting intergenerational communication and cross-border cooperation. Exchange and implementation of the best practices between Lithuania and Moldova", with the support of the „The Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme" of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.