The bust of Vasile Ţanţu will be installed in Horodişte, on the places where he grew up

140 years after the birth of Vasile Țanțu, in Horodiște, a bust will be installed in the memory of the teacher, the prefect of Chisinau county, the deputy in the parliaments of Chisinau and Bucharest. 

Horodiște village from Călărași district is Vasile Țanțu's hometown. The initiative to install a bust in his memory 140 years after the birth of the former deputy in the Country Council (March 1, 2022) belongs to Oleg Chicu, a well-known activist from Horodiște, actively involved in the unionist movement.

Oleg Chicu told us how since 2009-2010 he started looking for and asking if there were people from Horodiște or the surrounding area who got involved and voted for UNIRE in 1918. ”This is how I came to I carefully check the list of deputies of the Country Council and the name of Vasile Tanțu caught my attention. And that's because in our village we have the name Țanța. I didn't find much information on the internet then, but the important thing is that I found what I was looking for - the place of his birth ".

Oleg Chicu says that the novelty motivated him to search for more information in the archives and to write some articles about the personality of his native village. The search did not stop there. Oleg Chicu discovered the tomb of Vasile Țanțu at the Central Cemetery in Chisinau, which had been recently rebuilt by a patriotic association. "In my many visits to the villages of Moldova, I met busts of Bessarabian personalities - writers, heroic painters or prominent members of the Country Council. So I set out to do everything in my power to install a bust in memory of Vasile Țanțu ", added the Horodistean.

Meanwhile, the Horodiște Local Council decided that the Museum of History and Ethnography in the village should be named after Vasile Țanțu. That is why the bust is to be installed in front of the institution, especially since not far from this place is the house where he grew up.

The project is in full swing, and to cover the necessary expenses (not less than 5,000 euros), a fundraising campaign has been launched. Thus, the Horodists from all over the world, but also the unionists from all over the world are urged to get involved to complete this desideratum.

NOTE:

Vasile Țanțu was an important politician from interwar Bessarabia - professor, deputy in the Country Council, deputy in the first Full Parliament of Romania, prefect of Hotin county, then, twice, prefect of Chisinau county. He was a translator on the Romanian front during the First World War, secretary of the "Moldovan Military Committee", chairman of the organization of the "Country Council", and later co-chairman of the "Moldovan Bloc" party.

From the position of president of the “Făclia” Association, at the beginning of 1918, with the help of Mihail Sadoveanu, he brought artists from Iași to play on the stages in Chisinau. Thus, he also became the organizer of the first Romanian national theater in Bessarabia. He published the book "The Free Peasant", entitled "The Political Alphabet for Peasants".

On January 30, 1937, being seriously ill, Vasile Țanțu died at the hospital in Iași. The Romanian authorities then organized the national funeral.

Vasile Țanțu was married and had four children. With the occupation of Bessarabia on June 28, 1940, the NKDV sought out all those who voted for the union to seek revenge. Vasile Țanțu, gone to the world of the righteous, was never found. Instead, they found two of his sons in Chisinau, who were shot and thrown into a lime pit along with other martyrs. The third son, Mihai Ţanţu, was arrested by the communists and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The tomb of Vasile Țanţu, located in the northwestern part of the Central Cemetery in Chisinau, also suffered after the arrival of the Bolsheviks. The inscription on the tombstone, which reminded that a member of the Country Council is buried in this place, embarrassed the dignitaries and was erased with a chisel. The parental home in Horodiște was also demolished with bulldozers, in order to erase any memory of this martyr.

The village of Vasile Țanțu, founded in 1919, between two large hills, on the road leading from Nisporeni, directly through the field, to the village of Odaia in the commune of Șîșcani, has also mysteriously disappeared from history. The only evidence left are some photos from the "baptism" of the village, in which the inhabitants of Nisporeni and Boldurești appear around Vasile Țanțu.

The article was written by Doina Harea for the district newspaper Expresul.