#Exhibit of the Month

It is a sports trophy obtained at an inter-school oina (a bat-and-ball game) competition in interwar Bessarabia. We don't know which schools participated in this competition, nor the venue, we only know that one of the winners received the second prize and that the event was held on May 13, 1934. In this way we learn about the existence of different sports competitions organized by schools, including the oina game. Oina is a beautiful and complex sports game that promotes the development of body and spirit, courage and the desire for self-improvement. Oina is a treasure of the Romanian people, which must be sacredly kept and passed on to future generations.

The oină or hoina game is considered a Romanian national sports game having a history of at least six centuries. The oina game is practiced continuously, according to the chronicles and deeds of the time at least from the 14th century, being mentioned for the first time in 1364, during the reign of Vlaicu Vodă. The game requires complex sports qualities (good running speed, fast reflexes in self-defense movements against the balls, accuracy in throwing and hitting the ball with a bat or stick). Oina is a sport that identifies us to the same extent as trânta, our national wrestling. The game becomes attractive among young people in the villages, enters the school curriculum through physical education lessons. Through the Education Reform of 1898, as well as through other ministerial decisions, Education Minister Spiru Haret introduces the compulsory oina lessons in all schools, as well as the annual oina competitions.

On May 9, 1899, in Bucharest, the first national oina championship was organized, the teams being made up of high school students. The winner was the team of Nicolae Bălcescu High School from Brăila.

In 1912, the Federation of the Romanian Sports Society (Bucharest) was created, which consisted of 13 sports commissions including the oina commission.

After the Union of 1918, the Federation of the Romanian Sports Society was reorganized in 1923, including the other oina sports commissions of Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia.

In 1932, the Romanian Oina Federation was founded.

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National Museum of History of Moldova

Exhibitions

„Soviet Moldova: Between Myths and the Gulag”

Exhibition of the Museum of the Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions

This is the first exhibition of the Museum of the Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions, which is a branch of the National Museum of History of Moldova.

Exhibition „Soviet Moldova: Between Myths and the Gulag”

The exhibition presents phenomenon of totalitarianism in the general historical context of the Soviet era. By using specific museum means authors of the exhibition have tried to present to the public two components of Soviet society: the illusory world of the adherents of the "Soviet Dream", who naively believed in the ideals of freedom and justice, the "bright future" depicted by Soviet propaganda, and the world of those who had to know the hell of communist camps and prisons.

The exhibition brings together about 700 museum pieces: photographs, documents, letters from Siberia, posters of those years, personal belongings of former deportees and political prisoners, lists of confiscated property, memoirs of witnesses and survivors of the Soviet Gulag. There are exhibited for the first time some materials and documents from former KGB archives referring to the persons subjected to repressions for their political and religious beliefs.

According to incomplete data, from 1920 to 1951 in MASSR and MSSR 31,677 people were convicted for "political crimes", of whom more than five thousand were sentenced to death. Other three thousand people have died in prison.

About 60,000 people were deported during the three deportations nationwide: June 1941, July 1949, and 1 April 1951.

Objects presented in the museum exhibition "Soviet Moldova: Between Myths and the Gulag" tell us about the tragedy of these people with incredible destinies.

It is not an ordinary exhibition, but a small memorial of pain and humiliation of the victims of the Great Terror, an exhibition that reminds contemporaries about totalitarian communist past, the past that we should know, which must remain in history and never repeat.