Déportation d’une famille paysanne roumaine en Sibérie (1941-1945)

Déportation en Sibérie d’une famille paysanne roumaine‑1941-45 evokes the beginning of the stay in Gulag of Anița Nandriș‑Cudla. This Romanian peasant has been deported to Siberia for twenty years with her 11, 14 and 17 years old sons during the Soviet occupation (1941) of Mahala, her Romanian village close to Cernowitz (now in Ukrainia). Thirteen thousand people of the region shared the same fate. Between 1941 and 1945, the Kushinowka, Nadym, Suga camps were passed like tests of natural selection. Cleverness, eagerness and hygiene in impossible conditions are presented as factors of survival before the political rehabilitation in 1959. Bearing witness to the traditional “eternal” Romanian peasantry facing misfortune, in particular the Russians, the account is framed by a heavy paratext provided by the family. Written on the instigation of one of Anița’s brothers, the manuscript was hidden between 1982 and 1989 before being passed to the West as samizdat. The volume aims at denouncing genocidal communism, the martyrdom of a “Mother Courage” recalling the mythical image of the antique Geto-Daces. The book was awarded the “Lucian Blaga” prize of the Romanian Academy in 1992