Swiss writer of Romanian origin Marta Caraion has called for a more honest examination of the Holocaust in Romania and the importance of preserving family memories of war, deportation and political persecution, saying that many of these stories have yet to become part of collective historical memory.
In an interview with Realitatea, Caraion spoke about her book Transnistria: The History of a Family Between East and West, 1941–1981, published in Romanian by Polirom. The book reconstructs her family’s experience during World War II, including the deportation of her mother and grandmother to Transnistria and the murder of her grandfather by Romanian gendarmes.
Caraion, a university professor of French literature in Lausanne, Switzerland, is visiting the Republic of Moldova at the invitation of the French and Swiss embassies. During her visit, she has met with students and readers to discuss the Holocaust, historical memory and the responsibility of younger generations to understand the past.
The writer said the initial motivation for the book was to tell her three daughters a family story that she herself had never fully understood. What began as an attempt to reconstruct her family’s past gradually developed into extensive historical research, placing individual experiences within the broader context of Romania during World War II.
Her family suffered a devastating fate under the regime of Ion Antonescu. Her mother and grandmother survived deportation to Transnistria, while her grandfather was shot by Romanian gendarmes near Mostovoi.
“I wanted to understand what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and to establish the context of this family story,” Caraion explained, describing her approach as an effort to connect family history with the history of the places where the events took place and, ultimately, with the wider history of the war.
A History That Has Yet to Become Part of Collective Memory
One of Caraion’s central findings was the scale of Romania’s responsibility for the Holocaust. She said that under Antonescu’s regime, Romania became one of the main perpetrators of genocide during World War II.
According to her, between 250,000 and 400,000 Jews were killed, although the exact figure remains disputed. She stressed that the persecution and extermination of Jews and Roma were organised and carried out by Romanian military forces.
Although historians have made significant progress in documenting these crimes, Caraion believes the findings have not been sufficiently absorbed into public consciousness, either in Romania or in Western Europe.
“Romania’s responsibility is often diminished or even absent when the Holocaust is discussed,” she said, pointing to decades of historical distortion and denial during the communist period.
She also highlighted the lack of a strong culture of personal testimony in Romania, Moldova and the former Soviet Union, arguing that survivors’ accounts were rarely shared within families or incorporated into school education.
According to the writer, this silence was not only the result of trauma but also of political pressure and state-imposed restrictions.
Preserving Testimonies Before They Disappear
Caraion began writing the book when her mother was losing her memory. After her death, the urgency of preserving her testimony became one of the main driving forces behind the project.
Her mother’s account had first been recorded in the late 1980s, more than four decades after the events, when she was around 60 years old. It described her experiences as a teenager deported to Transnistria between the ages of 13 and 17.
For Caraion, the combination of personal testimony, archival documents, historical research and press records was essential to reconstructing the events as accurately as possible.
She warned against using history as a political instrument and called for a fact-based approach that takes into account different testimonies and historical sources.
“The simplest way to avoid transferring guilt to future generations is simply to inform ourselves,” she said. “A testimony is a document, but there are also facts, archives, other testimonies and competing narratives. It is important to know them, compare them and try to build as complete a picture as possible.”
Two Generations, Two Escapes from Dictatorship
One of the most striking parallels in Caraion’s family history is that her mother was 14 when she was deported during World War II, while Caraion herself was the same age when she left communist Romania for Switzerland in 1981.
She emphasised that the two experiences cannot be compared in terms of their suffering: her mother’s deportation was a journey through a death-bound column, while her own family eventually found safety and a comfortable life in Switzerland.
Nevertheless, both departures were driven by the same desire to escape dictatorship.
In 1940, her mother’s family fled Bucharest to Chișinău to escape fascism. After the outbreak of war in 1941, they moved to Odesa, from where they were deported to Transnistria.
Four decades later, Caraion’s family left Romania to escape another authoritarian regime.
She recalled that her parents did not tell her they intended to remain in the West. At 14, she believed she was simply going on holiday. Only after arriving in Paris and subsequently travelling to Switzerland did she realise that they would not return to Romania.
“It was a complete break between two worlds, two ways of thinking and two ways of living,” she recalled.
The Legacy of Her Father, Poet Ion Caraion
The interview also touched on her father, Romanian poet Ion Caraion, who spent 11 years in prison under the communist regime.
Caraion described him as a deeply troubled man, marked by the psychological consequences of political persecution. Her mother also spent six years in prison for typing her husband’s poems.
The writer said she is now examining her parents’ political files in Romania’s archives in an attempt to better understand their experiences and the impact of repression on her family.
Asked what home means to her after a lifetime shaped by displacement and exile, Caraion said Switzerland is now clearly her home. She has built her professional and personal life there and identifies French as her intellectual language.
However, she also described her identity as multiple, embracing both her Romanian origins and her Swiss life.
“It took me years to understand that belonging to several places is a richness,” she said.
A Message to Moldova’s Younger Generation
During her meetings with students in Chișinău and Orhei, Caraion said she was particularly impressed by their preparation, attention and thoughtful questions.
One discussion that stayed with her concerned how trauma is transmitted from one generation to another. Another focused on objects that can become instruments of survival during tragic historical events, a subject explored in her book.
Her message to younger generations was straightforward: ask questions, search for family documents and speak to older relatives while there is still time.
“Search, ask questions, make use of the people in your family who experienced these events, if they are still alive. Look through attics and cellars for documents and try to find out what they mean,” she urged.
Caraion believes that preserving these personal accounts is particularly important in a region where collective tragedies and decades of dictatorship have left deep marks on society.
For her, remembering the past is not about assigning guilt to people living today, but about understanding history honestly, resisting denial and ensuring that the experiences of those who lived through war and persecution are not lost.