to forced conscription for labour across the Soviet Union. Among the cca. 30,000 deportees, there were representatives from all ethnic groups: Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Gagauz. Moldovans and Romanians comprised 50% of these, a proportion similar with their weight in the general population, leading Cașu to conclude that the prewar and postwar repressions were not directed at any specific ethnic or national group. 1942 On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany, together with several other countries, including Romania (which had the primary objective of reintegrating Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina into the Romanian state), attacked the Soviet Union (see Operation Barbarossa). After the start of the war, further deportations occurred in the USSR. In April 1942, Romanian deportees and some other nationalities were deported again from Crimea and the North Caucasus. In June 1942, Romanians and others were also deported from Krasnodar Krai and the Rostov Oblast. 1949 On April 6, 1949, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee issued decision number 1290-467cc, which called for 11,280 families from Moldavian SSR to be deported as kulaks or collaborators with Nazi Germany during World War II. Ultimately, 11,239 families, comprising 35,050 people were detained and deported on July 6, 1949, with the rest either escaping or being exempt due to their contribution to the Soviet war effort or their support for collectivisation. In an interpellation in the Parliament of Romania in 2009, international judge and politician Tudor Panțîru put the number of deportees from July 6–7 at 40,000. 1951 On February 19, 1951, Viktor Abakumov delivered to Stalin a secret notice which listed the planned numbers of deported "Jehovists" from Ukraine, Belorussia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova, with 1,675 people (670 families) listed for the latter. On March 3, the USSR Council of Ministers issued the corresponding decree, followed by an order of the Ministry of State Security of February 6. On March 24, the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR issued the decree on the confiscation and selling of the property of the deportees. Operation North started at 4:00 am on April 1, 1951, and the round-ups continued until April 2. The deportees were classified as "special settlers". In total, from the Moldavian SSR, there were 723 families (2,617 people) deported on the night of March 31 to April 1, 1951, all members of neoprotestant sects, mostly Jehovah's Witnesses, and qualified as religious elements considered a potential danger for the