Mourning Day is declared today.  69 years have passed since the second wave of deportations in Bessarabia. Historians estimate that the largest wave of deportations took place in July 1949 and the operation was called the conspiratorial "IUG", which means "South". Raisa Erutchi, a victim of the deportations told her story. 

"I want to tell you that yesterday, 120 deportees from Edinet, met and remembered this hard time. "We are all brothers and sisters who had a very hard destiny, as we went through treachery, suffering, and hardship, and we have been persecuted from our countryside and deprived of our warm cottages.

I want to thank the Government: Thank you for taking us out of anonymity, we were really afraid, we were ashamed that we were deported as robbers.

We also had a beautiful family, my mother was 17 years old, my dad was 21 years old. When the strangers entered the house, Dad managed to flee and said to his mother, "Do you have something to eat and asked her to take the most precious things. What could be more precious for a mother if she had a three months old child. I have become an enemy of the people with good deeds, sent to life in the Habarosk region. They took us to the train station, the relatives who found out we were there, and my mother asked them to give some clothes for me. Then the bun has pulled the shirt off, broke it and gave me pelts. My mother told me that she had no more pain than when the wind broke its thread and threw its clothes. Many families suffered. The good who did nothing has been tried for eight years. When they saw that he had no more days to live, they brought him and left him under a fence at the club. A man who was the head of the village, who educated and raised eight children, stood under a fence. Dad did not know him, he closed his eyes, took him in his arms and brought him home. My grandfather died in one month.

I was happy that my sister Veronica was born there, whom I love very much, who is always close to me. Our mother grew us up with love and trust in God. 

I do not want anything, I wish to our Government power, you did a great thing and we will support you", said Raisa Eruţchi, the president of the association of former deportees and political prisoners from Edinet.