Handing over Bessarabia to the Russians

27th June 1940.

A beautiful, serene, peaceful, joyful day came to an end.

5 o’clock in the evening. I was staying with my 13-year-old son with my relatives, my husband’s brother, a priest, in a village 25 km from the town where we lived and where we were spending our holidays. We turned on the radio as usual to listen to the news, but we were terrified. We heard the trembling voice of King Charles: “Dear Bessarabians, a great calamity has struck our country. The Russians are demanding the surrender of Bessarabia. We have no power to resist them. I have sent a delegation to Germany. We’ll see what we can do. Tomorrow at 5 o’clock, I’ll give you the final result.”

We stood there frozen, in despair, especially me, who was here with the child, while my husband was at home. I wanted to go home immediately, but nobody in the whole village wanted to go out in the evening under such circumstances. I didn’t sleep all night, waiting for 5 o’clock in the morning, which came with very sad news. The same voice of King Charles said: “Dear Bessarabians, there is no other salvation than to leave Bessarabia, taking what is necessary. Come all of you to Romania, only the poor stay behind. I have ordered the army to retreat on foot and all vehicles to be put at the disposal of the population. I have agreed with the Russians that they will not enter Bessarabia for three days, so that you can all take refuge. Don’t be afraid, if you don’t fit into Romania, Germany will take you in”.

At 6 o’clock in the morning I set off on foot with the boy, more running than walking. At 12 o’clock we reached the outskirts of our town, but we were horrified by what we saw. Dozens of Russian tanks, with cheerful soldiers, shouting, singing, with the attitude of great victors. The Jews, who considered the arrival of the Russians to be a great joy and who had all stayed in Bessarabia, welcomed them with bread and salt, with flowers and red ribbons on their chests.

When we got home, my husband told us in despair: ‘If you were at home, we would be in Romania now. At 7 o’clock in the evening, on 27 June, Captain Mihăilescu came with a big wagon and two soldiers and said to me: “Take what you can and go! How could I leave without you?”

On 28 June 1940 the border was closed, for half a day, not three days as the Russians had promised.

For two weeks, Bessarabia was left without an administration, with only soldiers to keep order. On 15 July, the administrative authorities began to arrive. The next day they started arresting those who had been involved in Romanian politics: liberals, Haurascans, guards and even peasants. In the villages there were still some “chiaburi” who, unwilling to part with their wealth, were arrested and their property confiscated. Much of their wealth ended up in the hands of those who had arrested them.

We were not affected at first. We sat in anxious expectation. At the beginning of August the teachers began to arrive.

One day my husband was called to the People’s Council, where he was offered the post he had before – agricultural engineer, head of the network. My husband refused on the grounds that he was the son of a priest – which was considered unhealthy in their home – and they did not trust him. He asked to be given a lesser job in his speciality. Then one of the individuals said to him, “See how many cars go to Tighina prison every day. If you don’t come to work tomorrow, you’ll be there!”

Out of fear he went to the suggested service. They also used this method to force me to resume my teaching position at the 7th grade high school.

I was given my former class 4, whose students had been successful in high school, but they sent them back to repeat the class to do the objects in Russian. The children didn’t know any Russian and it was very hard work. Three times a week, in the evenings, we had to do Russian with all the young people.

My boy, who had passed the 3rd grade at the “Alecu Russo” Gymnasium in Chișinău, stayed on to study in the 7th grade. His luck was that we spoke Russian at home and I taught him to read and write Russian from the age of 5. He was the best in his class.

The days passed with difficulty. A Ukrainian school inspector came to us and asked us to take him in temporarily until he found a place to live. We knew they were vindictive, so we took him in on one condition: only for a month. He stayed for 3 months, saying he couldn’t find a suitable host for his situation.

I saw that he didn’t care about our school at all, he was always away. I once asked him why he didn’t come to see me, since I was the only Romanian among the Russians, since I had learned a different pedagogy and didn’t know how to teach according to Russian methods. He told me very sincerely that he was busy arresting the “chiaburi” and that he had sent 30 Bessarabian carpets to Vinnitsa. On another occasion, when I reproached him for not doing his schoolwork, he was even more sincere and said: “I am a blacksmith by profession, what school knowledge can I have?” I was surprised and said: “But how can you be a school inspector?” Then he took out his party card and said to me, laughing: “This little red book works wonders”. Soon, when his superiors found out about his affairs, they arrested him and that’s how we got rid of him.

In November, when I came to school one day, I went to the school office to sign the attendance register and found the local newspaper on the table with my name on it. My colleagues had put it there on purpose. I read: “Due to the imprudence of the administrative and security authorities, a dangerous man, the son of a priest, has been appointed head of the district – in the agricultural section – and must be removed from his post immediately”. It was my husband who was removed from his post two days later without any reason.

It was a great blow, more moral than material. Every year he was highly appreciated by the Romanians, he was thanked, decorated, mentioned… and now he’s thrown out like a rag! Materially we were well off. With the Romanians, he had a salary of 9000 lei and a monthly allowance of 3000 lei, I, as a teacher, 6000 lei; a new, modern house, finished in 1939, which cost us 250,000 lei, 10 hectares of land, 2 hectares of vineyards, a courtyard full of birds, a cow; we always had two servants; that’s how the Russians found us. So without his services we would not have starved.

My husband, who was free, often went to Tighina, to a cousin of mine who was also married to an agronomist and had the misfortune to be in Bessarabia. They were taken in by the head of the county security, to whom they promised that if he helped them to get to Romania, they would give him papers stating that they had sold him their house, which had just been finished and built in the latest style.

One day my husband came back from Tighina very happy and told me: “The head of Security Service told my cousin, in the form of a big secret, that the Russians had asked the Romanians for the communists who were in prison, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Petru Groza, Ana Pauker and all those who were with them. King Charles II accepted this request, but in the form of a population exchange, i.e. the Russians would give Romania all the remaining officials in Bessarabia. Lists were sent to each ministry with the names of the officials, including us. Then the boss also said: ‘Know that they will call the Security Service, they will shout at you, they will force you to sign that you refuse to go to Romania, but you must not give in, because this is legal and you won’t have any other opportunity to leave’.

This news was like a bolt of lightning that illuminated our dark lives.

On 6 December, St Nicholas’ Day, a militiaman came to the school and called me to safety. What joy! Very brave and calm I went. He took me into the office of the head of Security Service, invited me to sit down and suddenly said to me in a stern tone: “We have information that your family wants to escape to Romania!”

I was not at all intimidated and said to him very calmly: “We are not stupid enough to face death or prison by having a child. But if it’s legal, we want to go to Romania, because that’s our home. Romania raised us, taught us, we have to serve them”.

He said to me, very angrily: “How do you know it’s legal? Who told you that?”

I replied: “I know it’s legal to exchange people, but I’m not going to tell you who told me”.

Then he changed his tone and gently told me that we should stay here because we were born in Bessarabia and would be very well off. I replied, “Please let us end this here, because you took me out of the class and left the children alone.

He handed me a list with many names on it and I signed and wrote: “I want to go to Romania”.

He was very angry and said to me: “Get out of here!”

When I got out, the same militiaman came after me and told me that he had been sent for my husband. I told him to tell my husband that I had signed to leave. In the evening, when I came home from school, because I had classes, and after lunch, my husband told me that he had held him for two hours, hitting him on the table, shouting at him, threatening him that he wouldn’t come out. The husband argued that he was taking him out of work. Then the boss said: ‘They’re stupid here too, but I guarantee you you’ll be called back to work tomorrow.”

Then the husband asked, “What about my wife, how did she sign?”

He got angry and said: “Even if she signed that she was leaving, you are the head of the family and you can change everything”. And he gives her the same list and the husband signs: “I want to go to Romania”.

Angrily, the boss says: “Go away, but you’ll remember me!”

When my husband finished the story, I said: “I don’t know what it will be: Romania or Siberia”.

(Blondina Gobjila – The Sufferings of Mother Blondina, a Martyr of Siberia, 3rd edition, Ed. Sihăstria Monastery, 2010)