REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

20
Remembrance in Time
the entire building [13]. For more than 10 years, the church had not been repaired, being
left to its fate; therefore it was decided to demolish the building and to use the
construction materials for building other local social-cultural objectives.
Although numerous buildings were destroyed, some archival-file information show that
cult-edifice demolishing was allowed only after noticing their seriously damaged state,
with obvious dangers for the surrounding buildings. In such a situation, the church from
Calfa village, despite the special liquidation commission, having signed a first notice on
its seriously damaged state, the building was not demolished. The church from Calfa was
built in stone and brick, in cruciform plan, the flattened bulb-shaped dome is crowned
with a metallic cross. The building belongs to the steeple-attached churches, with top
arched windows, with octagonal roof, with missing cross on the steeple [14]. The length
of the church is 25 m., the width 8 m.
Completely another fate, having reached their dismantling, was shared by the churches
in other villages. This way, the church from Furceni village, Orhei, according to the
appended photograph, does not show obvious signs of damage; however, its closure was
called for. Starting from the decisions of the commission for the damage state of the
buildings and the impossibility of their use by the community as cult objectives, the
reconstruction of the buildings was insisted upon (through dismantling the towers and
erecting a new roof in slate sheet, usually in 2-4 nuances; removing the crosses,
devastating the interior of the churches etc.), thereafter, the use of the buildings as barns
for keeping grains [15]. Similarly, the church from Pohărniceni village, Orhei, the
widowed picture of the devastated iconostasis being appended in the archival file [16].
The illustrative material appended to the file allows, also in this case, determining the
architectural-constructive particularities of the church: the walls erected in rough, not
polished, stone, the roof virtually missing at the moment, with grass in some places etc.
The report of the commission of expert constructors highlighted that in the church from
Pohărniceni village, the roof was missing; the floors were utterly destroyed; the windows
and doors were broken, destroyed; similarly, the walls present obvious wear traces, are on
the way to collapse; the building plaster suffered as a result of the military operations
from 1944. The verdict was the toughest: no opportunity for restoration and repair,
therefore the option was chosen for demolition.
The technical evaluation of the church from Selişte village, Orhei, determined the
following parameters of the building: total surface of 161,6 m.p., the stone foundation is
carved on a clayey soil; it has a depth of 1,8 m. the stone walls have a depth of 75 cm.,
are practically deformed, they possess numerous cracks and enormous holes [17]. The
Northern and Eastern walls are leant on the vertical, being on way of sliding; the church
windows and door are collapsed. The steeple suffered in a percentage of 80 %, the roof is
missing, the supportive walls are torn down etc. Consequently, the commission’s report is
as following: the fundamental walls of the church are not subject to restoration; the
immediate demolition, especially of the steeple building, is necessarily called for.
In 1954, massive demolition also took place in case of the monastic churches.
Therewith, the letter of the commissioner in the Orthodox Church’s issues, P. Romenski,
submits the demolition of the church of Hâncu monastic complex, where a rest house is
placed, because “it hinders the formation of a park in the centre of the house” and the
stones will be used to build a new housing [18]. A special part, as one can see in
promoting the new lifestyle, was played by this very council in the Orthodox Church’s
issues, which decided the demolition, closure and liquidation of the churches,