Un complex comemorativ interbelic dispărut
The vanished interwar memorial complex

Summary/Abstract: This memorial complex, designed by Bucharest architects Octav Doicescu and Dimitrie Ghiulamila and inaugurated on November 1, 1942, on the Chisinau-Ungheni highway, near the village of Ghidighici, is known as the memorial tower, monument tower, Tower of Gratitude, and Tower of Liberation of Bessarabia. No memorial complex ever built in Bessarabia can compare with the Tower of Liberation of Bessarabia, unique in its kind both in Romania and in the entire Balkan region. The complex included a high square stone tower, a monumental propylaea entrance with a stone colonnade, and a stone block with a commemorative inscription. The tower facades were decorated on the outside with marble slabs depicting the coats of arms of Romania, Moldova, Bessarabia, and some Romanian counties and cities. The entrance was enclosed in a wide stone frame, modernist in nature. Above the oak gates was a stone bas-relief re- producing a fragment of Trajan’s Column, depicting Emperor Trajan on horseback, accompanied by three Roman generals. The following inscription could also be read here: “Like Trajan’s Column, we are where we were, and we remain where we are”. An isolated medieval defensive tower served as a model for the complex’s monumental tower. The colonnade of the propylaea had two rows of 12 stone columns, which supported a stone entablature. Each one was engraved from the outside with the abbreviations and numbers of the military units that fought for Chisinau: artillerymen, hunters, grenadiers, motorcyclists, etc. The classical propylaea of the memorial complex were made in the spirit of modernism. In front of the tower there was a massive stone block, about 8 m high, with an inscription mentioning King Mihai I, Marshal Ion Antonescu, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Mihai Antonescu and the Governor of Bessarabia, General C.G. Voiculescu. The Tower of Liberation of Bessarabia lasted less than two years and was razed to the ground in 1944 by Soviet troops.

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