REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

ASPECTS AS REGARDS THE
TRANSYLVANIAN SAXONS’ DEPORTATION
FROM łARA FĂGĂRAŞULUI TO USSR
Florentin OLTEANU 1
A “Memory of the Deported Persons’ Families Addressed to Petru Groza” Government,
from the summer of the year 1945, outlined the general frame of the recent history’s
dramatic chapter:
“In the 11 th of January 1945, as well as after this date, Romanian citizens, allegedly of
German ethnic origin, as well as of other origins, were arrested in rash, for war labour in
USSR. There were seized, without identity paper check, without medical control, 17 yearold
minors, lasses, women, who had never left their parental home, men up to 45 years
old and even elder, officers and soldiers under the flag. Many were pupils, students,
intellectuals, not accustomed with gross physical work. Sick persons and convalescents
were picked up. Cruelly beating us, taking our brothers, sisters or children with no fault
of their own, and taking our only consolation to be together, those having survived the
bombing or having not fallen in the fights as sacrifice for the country. Most of them were
absolutely peaceful men, who made no politics, who were not inscribed in the ethnic
group, therefore, who were not legionnaires, Nazis of fascists. On the contrary, they much
as ourselves, we completely distanced from these foreign ideologies and this because we
were completely assimilated and framed within the Romanian life.
The arrests were done by surprise, without notice, from bed, from work – as for
ordinary criminals – to be started with no preparation, luggage or food, in a long journey
to a foreign country, in frost and storm, in freight wagons. We cannot venture to describe
the horrors having occurred after these abuses and heartbreaking suffering.
The Government’s communication from 12 I 1945 and the subsequent ones asserted
that that those citizens had been only provisionally taken and only as long as the war
lasted. The promise was made that, having reached their destination, they would be
allowed to write to their families. Nowadays, after half a year, most of them received no
notice, no mail, and no one is acquainted with their fate, if the arrested ones are or not
healthy, whether they live, where they work and if some of them died meanwhile.
We have clear conscience, we know no fault in ourselves, much as those sent to work in
USSR and we can only explain this as undeserved persecution against us. Isolated cases
were exaggerated and generalized. We cannot however be made responsible for mistakes
made by others and it is cruel and unfair for all to equally suffer because a small number of
persons fell into guilt. It is right only for the guilty ones to be judged and sanctioned, and not
all allegedly German-origin citizens to be blamed. We understand for someone to suffer from
and because of his deeds, to be judged and sanctioned if he is guilty, but not to be
persecuted because we are born in a locality of the globe, because of our name and origin.
1 Negru Vodă Cultural Foundation, Făgăraş, Romania.