Letters from Bessarabia

When your grandparents come from a faraway place, a place with an exotic name that throughout History belonged to different empires, it naturally arouses your curiosity. Moreover, if no one in your family has ever been there, since your ancestors left, leaving behind sad memories, the traumas of poverty and antisemitism, but also landscapes, tastes, smells, sounds, songs – documents, postcards and letters being the only concrete remnants of the past, which became distant time-wise and geographically as well. Once I am a journalist, working as a TV reporter, and having put together stories in different parts of Brazil, Europe and Africa, it was more than natural to have this idea: I have to go there and I have to film it.

This desire only grew when I found out that I could apply for Romanian citizenship. Romanian? My father’s parents never felt “Romanian”. They were Jews. Russian Jews. Who, having not much choice, ended up in Brazil. So how can I relate to this place I can somehow be connected with? What does it mean to “be part” of this country, a country (Romania) the region my family comes from (Bessarabia), once belonged to? And how do the many nationalities who live in that poor and apparently forgotten part of the world see themselves, regarding their land, their traditions and their perspectives?

One more issue: do today’s “Bessarabians” (actually Moldovans, citizens of the Republic of Moldova) see themselves as “Romanians”? Some do. Some don’t. And regardless of their feelings, some would do almost anything to have a Romanian passport and emigrate to just any country of the European Union seeking a better life – not much differently from what my grandparents did. Seeking to survive. Seeking, like thousands of immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East, the European dream.

What I found, besides unbelievably beautiful places and unforgettable experiences, was: people in love. In love with Romania and even Moldova, the poorest country in Europe – a place whose 1/3 of the economically active population works abroad. In love with their Saxon, Hungarian or Armenian heritages. In love with their Jewish roots and their Roma traditions. I found pride. And prejudice – like the prejudice that made my grandmother’s house to be looted and made her have to escape, with her teenage sons, my uncles, months before the nightmare of WW II. Ultimately, I found thriving human beings, who despite so many political and economic obstacles (of the past and present times), and despite living in the periphery of the Western civilization – not unlike Brazil, I should say – are managing to dream and go ahead. And, yes, at the end of the day, I do feel related to it and I can, in a very singular way, love that corner of our small planet.