Departed Moldovan writer, teacher would have turned 95

Chisinau, 9 March /MOLDPRES/ - A writer, teacher, dissident, political prisoner, Romanian anticommunist activist born in Bessarabia, one of the founders of the anti-Soviet group, The Sword of Justice, from Balti, Knight of the Order of the Republic Ion Moraru would have turned 95 years today.  

According to the National Calendar, Ion Moraru was a fighter for freedom and dignity from Bessarabia, eye witness of the atrocities of the World War II and survivor of the Stalinist camps from Siberia.  

Ion Moraru was born in the Mandac village, former Balti county, presently Drochia district, on 9 March 1929. While being in the seventh form, Moraru along with a colleague founded the Sword of Justice, an anti-Soviet resistance organization from the resistance movement, The Bowmen of Stefan, with headquarters at the Balti-based Pedagogical Lyceum (former Ion Creanga Lyceum). In 1947, the organization’s work was disclosed and its members were arrested. In 1950, Ion Moraru was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment and was sent to Stalinist camps, from where he was released in 1956. During one year, he was imprisoned at the Ekibastuz camp.     

Following his release from the Soviet camp, Moraru worked as teacher of geography in his native settlement. He described the suffering through which he had gone in the autobiographical trilogy Pustiirea (The Desolation), Treptele infernului (The Stages of the Hell) and Fata cu miros de Busuioc (The Girl with Smell of Basil), printed at the Putna Monastery in 2018 and reedited in 2019.    2019.

The play titled, The Siberia Files, staged at the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre from Chisinau, is based exclusively on his memoirs. In 2019, when Ion Moraru turned 90, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church Daniel awarded him the Sanctus Stephanus Magnus Order for lay people. Moraru was awarded the Order of the Republic in 2010.  

The writer died in Balti on 9 October.