#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”

The Senate of the Romanian Parliament

20-31 May 2024

At 20 May, 2024, the National Museum of History of Moldova, in partnership with the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova in Romania and the Senate of the Romanian Parliament, organized a new opening of the traveling exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" (curator Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru). The event takes place in the context of the 75th anniversary commemorated in 2024 of the second and largest wave of Stalinist deportations from Bessarabia, which took place on July 5-6, 1949.

The exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" presents photo-documentary images that reflect the life of Bessarabian children condemned to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination and forced separation from their own families based on the repressive policies of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR, in the period 1940-1941 and 1944-1953.

The exhibition brings together around 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 Pro Memory Institute, from the archives of the memory communities, as well as family archives of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The exhibition is a homage to the children who went through the atrocities of the totalitarian-communist regime in the USSR, a sign of memory to the innocent victims, a gesture of symbolic justice towards the Bessarabian children who went through the Gulag.

The event was attended by members of the diplomatic corps accredited in Bucharest, representatives of state institutions in Romania, but also historians and those interested in the history of the Republic of Moldova.

The exhibition is opened in the foyer of the Plenary Hall of the Senate of the Romanian Parliament (Bucharest, Palatul Parlamentului, str. Izvor, no. 2-4) until May 31, 2024.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" was elaborated with the support of "The Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme" of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.