Pantelimon Halippa (1883 – 1979)

Posted on Posted in Personalities Basarabia

Bessarabian politician, graduate of the Theological Seminary in Chisinau (1898-1904); he attended the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University in Dorpat (Iuriev), then the Faculty of Letters of the University in Iasi; he edited the Bessarabia newspaper, then, from 1913, the Cuvântul Moldovenesc newspaper; member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, delegate of the Bessarabian peasantry at the Congress of the Peasants’ Union from the whole Russia; founder of the Moldavian National Party (March 1917), member of the Country Council (21 November 1917-18 February 1919), Vice-President of the Country Council; after the Union he was appointed Minister of State for Bessarabia (1919-1927), Minister of Public Works, Minister of Labor, Health and Social Welfare; he was deputy and senator in the Parliament of Romania; arrested in 1950 and sentenced to 2 years in prison, he was imprisoned at Sighet. In 1952 he was handed over to the Soviets who held him in a KGB prison where he was asked to prove that the Union of Bessarabia with Romania was not legitimate. Convicted to 25 years of hard labor by the Ukrainian Military Tribunal in Chisinau, he was taken to Siberia. He was released in 1955 and brought to Romania where he was held in the Aiud and Gherla prisons, without any conviction, until 1957. Although permanently investigated by the Department of State Security, he organized in his home clandestine meetings of the Bessarabians. In 1968 he asked for approval for the organization of the 50th anniversary of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania; he sent memoirs to Charles de Gaulle and Richard Nixon showing the Soviet abuses, being tacitly supported in his documentary work by the Communist authorities.