Monument to deportees by Iurie Platon's design

The contest commission for selecting the design for a monument in memory of the victims of the Stalinist regime designated the winner of the contest. The monument to the Bessarabian families deported to Siberia will be made by artist Iurie Platon's design and will be placed in the Square of the Railway Terminal in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting the Chisinau City Hall's Public Relations Division.

The sculpture represents an allegorical train of suffering, pain and death. The end of a car embodies several people who ultimately become components of the train – mechanisms, pieces of metal, wheels, doors, windows, etc.

Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca said the sculpture represents destruction and mutilation as many people who led a normal life later had a miserable existence.

“Such phenomena as deportations, the Holocaust and genocide are terrible,” said academician Mihai Cimpoi, who formed part of the jury of the contest. He stressed that in order to give a dimension to this tragedy, the names and surnames of the families deported in 1941 – 1949 should be written on walls.

Deputy Prime Minister, historian Ion Negrei suggested installing electronic panels with the lists of the deportees, which have been made in such a format already. He said the selected work gives the impression that the train enters a chasm and the idea of choosing a train, a railroad, a long road is justified. “This road did not have an end, but ended tragically as it destroyed hundreds of thousands of people,” Negrei said.

Deputy mayor of Chisinau Nistor Grozavu said the walls of the sculpture contain niches in which one can place candles and light them in memory of the deportees.

For his part, historian Gheorghe Palade, the former president of the Association of Historians of Moldova, proposed writing a phrase on the pedestal, like the revelation of a family for example, which would express the horribleness of that tragedy.

Thirteen works took part in the contest overall. Only four of them went through to the final.