Archive Image from Moldova
Ion's parents, unlike some deportees were able to return to their home town of Mereni after their deportation to the Irkustk region of Siberia. Many deportees, upon their return, were forbidden from returning to their home village for a variety of reasons, thus many found themselves not only having to fully rebuild their lives in an unfamiliar village. In addition to these challenges, Romanian was scorned and Russian prioritized in Soviet Moldovan society, deportees often could not move to Chisinau for greater opportunities due to soviet regulations, and they were deterred from gaining a good education or moving upward in their careers due to their "Enemy of the State" status. All of these restrictions made the recovery of deportees in their homeland so much harder. Once Moldova gained independence the government launched a "recovery program" of sorts, affirming that the former "Enemies of the State" had been rehabilitated, a move that signaled to deportees that they were welcomed back into Moldovan society.
