To The Human Rights Organizations October 1997
During World War II, King Michael of Romania broke his alliance with Germany on August 23, 1944 and ordered the Romanian army to join the Allied Forces in their hostilities against Germany. It is appreciated that this turning resulted in a shortening of the war with at least six months.
The Romanian army engaged on the western front in the war against the German forces numbered 538,536 soldiers; the casualties were 21,031 dead, 90,344 wounded, and 58,443 missing, that is total losses of 169,822 people. On August 23, 1944, however, when alliances changed, the Romanian troops on the eastern front, having been ordered by King Michael to offer no resistance, were disarmed by the new ally of Romania, the USSR, and taken prisoners.
At Balti, a town in Bessarabia (the Moldova Republic), the Soviet Red Army captured in this manner 50,000 soldiers, among whom 40,000 were Romanians, 5,000 Germans, 2,000 Hungarians and 3,000 Czechs and Poles. A small number of those prisoners managed to escape and survived to make known these facts after the dissolution of the USSR, in 1989. At that time, in 1989, The Northern Courier, the local Balti weekly, published the facts about those 50,000 prisoners. From it readers learned that those approximately 50,000 prisoners of war (actually allied soldiers) were murdered by the Soviet KGB troops. They were shot and their bodies were thrown in the marshes along the river Raut near Balti.
After the demise of the URSS, in 1991 and 1992, the townspeople began to dig up the countless skeletons and human remains from the marshes. The skeletons and human bones were piled up in a mound and a large cross was erected on top of the mound. The cross was consecrated on May 7, 1992 by the Romanian Bishop Petru of Balti, with the participation of thousands of people. Deacon Nicodim Nchiopu suggested that a church or a monastery be built on the spot, and that it be named "The Church of the Bones". Bishop Petru invested Father Valerian Cernei in the parish of the Church of the Bones.
Suddenly things took a bad turn. Bishop Petru of Balti was attacked and beaten by unknown people just inside the Bishop's residence. Similar attacks took place also at two monasteries in Balti County. As a result, and also because of lack of funds and of support from official circles, currently the Church of the Bones is just an architectural project, and its construction can not proceed.
This information was obtained from Balti (Republic of Moldova) through the Romanian monks of Athos (Greece) and it was published in the Romanian newspaper Curierul Romanesc of Bucharest in its August 1996 issue.
The holocaust of the Romanian soldiers, killed as shown above, along with the German, Hungarian, Czech and Polish soldiers taken prisoner together with them, must not be relegated to oblivion. Some of the victims' bodies could be identified from their regimental insignia and other indications, after ascertaining which regiments were on that front at that time. Even after 50 years, their families and their descendants have the right to learn about the real fate of their loved ones.
The mass murder described here is a flagrant human rights violation and a violation of the Geneva Convention of 1864 regarding prisoners of war. As in the case of the mass murder of Katyn forest, the truth must be brought to light.
To note that in the 50 years after the conclusion of World War II, various countries apologized for having violated human rights during that war and agreed to pay compensations.
In view of that fact, we submit this case to the Human Rights Organizations urging them to take appropriate steps and initiate investigations in order to determine the truth about these mass graves, and in order to find out why the government of Moldova did not perform the necessary investigations.
Apart from that, The United Nations and their agencies are bound by a moral and humanitarian obligation to help the Bishop of Balti to build the Church of the Bones as a memorial to those 50,000 victims.
Sincerely, yours
George Duma, Ph.D. Traian Golea
President President
Romanian American National Congress Romanian Association of South Florida
Representative for California to the and
World Association Pro Bessarabia and Bucovina Research and Documents, R.A.N.C.
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