#Exhibit of the Month

The hoard was found in 1957 during the agricultural works near the village. At first, the hoard was in the collection of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History and later was transferred to the National Museum of History (Accession: FB: 12 576 - 12650; N: 12 658 - 12 732). It consists of 75 silver coins from the thaler category issued by the Kingdom of Poland, the United Provinces and the Holy Roman Empire in 1612-1648.

THE KINGDOM OF POLAND
Sigismund II Vasa (1586-1632)
Crown, thaler: 1628 (1).
Gdańsk, orts: 1612 (1), 1613 (1*), 1614 (1), 1615 (7), 1616 (8), 1617 (16), 1618 (4), 1619 (2), 161 (1), 1620 (2), 1621 (8).

THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE NETHERLANDS
Lion thalers (leeuwendaalder)
Gelderland: 1641 (1), 1647 (2), 1649 (1).
West Frisia: 1648 (1).
Utrecht: 1643 (1), 1646 (1), 1647 (2), 1648 (1).

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Kampen: halve leeuwendaalder 1646 (1), 1647 (1); leeuwendaalder 1647 (3), 1649 (1).
Zwolle: leeuwendaalder 1633 (1), 1637 (3), 1644 (1), 1646 (2), 1648 (1).

This hoard by its composition confirms the presence of silver coins from the thaler category in the Principality of Moldavia monetary circulation.

Thalers were first minted in 1486 in Sankt-Joachimsthal, today the Czech Republic, "thaler" being an abbreviation of "Joachimsthaler", meaning coin issued in Sankt-Joachimsthal. In the 16th and 17th centuries, thalers were issued in very large quantities, especially by state entities that were part of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Empire. Thus, thalers can be considered a quintessentially popular coin; there are thalers of several types, such as Austrian thalers, Polish thalers, Russian thalers, Turkish thalers, Venetian thalers, also called scuzi, "reichsthalers", also called imperials, löwenthalers or lion thalers, and Spanish thalers, also called piastre. In the Romanian principalities, thalers spread widely towards the end of the 16th century, and in the following centuries their circulation became very abundant, the thaler being in circulation until the second half of the 19th century. This money was a huge success, so it is also called: daalder / daler in the Netherlands, talar in Poland, dahlar in Scandinavia, tallaro / tallero in Italy, talari in Ethiopia, dollar in America. A special category is the Dutch thaler, leeuwendaalder, löwenthaler, which means "lion thaler", also called "lion" due to the coat of arms on the reverse, which is a shield with a crown, with a lion inside; it is a silver coin minted in Netherlands, where in 1575 it was decided to mint a new coin based on the scuzi. In the Romanian principalities the lion thaler appears in the last quarter of the 16th century. These lion thaler gave the name to the currency of Romania, the Republic of Moldova (leu), and Bulgaria (leva).

Orts are also silver coins from the thaler category, equal to 1/4 thaler. A quarter thaler was originally called "ortstaler", a name that was later reduced to the form "ort" (in Old German "ort" means "a quarter"). The coin circulated in Europe in the Middle Ages, including the Romanian principalities, being met in the 18th century as Polish, Turkish and German orts. The term "ort" is preserved in the Romanian expression "to give an ort to a priest" (which means "to die"), which dates back to the ancient pagan custom of placing a coin on the little finger of the deceased's right hand so that he could pay for the passage to the afterlife; With the same coin, the priest was paid for the funeral service: the family of the deceased "gave an ort to the priest" to observe church traditions.

National Museum of History of Moldova

Exhibitions

„UNDER THE ALIEN SKIES: Lithuanian people in Soviet hard labor camps and exile in 1940-1958”

October 17-31, 2017

On Tuesday, September 17th, 2017, at 15:00 hours, at the National Museum of History of Moldova was opened the exhibition „UNDER THE ALIEN SKIES: Lithuanian people in Soviet hard labor camps and exile in 1940-1958". The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Genocide Victims from the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.

The event was organized by the National Museum of History of Moldova in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of Moldova through the State Program "Recovery and Historical Valorization of the Memory of Victims of the Totalitarian-Communist Regime in the Moldavian SSR in 1940-1953".

At the opening ceremony, moderated by the general director of the National Museum of History of Moldova, Eugen Sava, took the floor: Gheorghe Postică, Deputy Minister of Education, Culture and Research of the Republic of Moldova; Andrei Didenko, Adviser at the Lithuanian Embassy in Chisinau; Eugenijus Peikštenis, director of the Museum of Genocide Victims; Prof. univ. dr. hab. Anatol Petrencu, director of the State Program "Recovery and historical valorization of the memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in MSSR during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953"; Dr. Ludmila Cojocaru, project director of the State Program.

The aim of the exhibition is to tell the citizens of Europe, especially the young generation, about the crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarian regime on the territory of Lithuania. The exhibition was made with documents and materials from the Museums of Genocide Victims, the Special Archive and the Central State Archives of Lithuania from Vilnius, the Lithuanian National Museum, the Museum of Deportations, Exile and Resistance in Kaunas, the Alka Museum from Žemaitia Region and the Regional Museum of Tauragė.

The exhibits tell us about the organization of deportations, arrests with political substrates, the unbearable life of deportees and prisoners in the camps, working and living conditions. The 20 stands, arranged according to the thematic principle, reflect the most diverse aspects of the daily life of deportees and political prisoners: food, clothing, faith, etc. They reveal the differences in living conditions of exiled people compared to political prisoners in the camps. The emotion transmitted by images, letters, and documents related to the conditions of the political prisoners is increased by the motifs of barbed wire, which is obsessively repeated on the stands.

The exhibition was presented for the first time on June 21, 2011, at a meeting in the Parliament of Europe, with the title "Present and Past, Face to Face". That event was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the beginning of deportations in Lithuania. Subsequently, the exhibition was presented in Poland, France and the United Kingdom, also in several cities and institutions in Lithuania.