Requisitions of goods and ecclesiastic patrimony under evacuation in the orthodox deanery of alba Iulia in WWII

The study deals with the ecclesiastic cultural heritage of some Christian Orthodox parishes in Transylvania during World War II, illustrating unedited aspects, reconstituted according to certain unpublished archive documents. The first part refers to the plans for protecting the artistic and cultural patrimony against aerial attacks, more precisely, for evacuating archives and valuable objects. The patrimony lists and options of some parishes near Alba Iulia are interesting in respect to the emergency storage places: basement, church, school, private house, sheds or secret places in the woods. Some parishes even drew topographic sketches. Some valuable objects are: an incenser from the Alba Iulia Central Parish dating from 1762, the wooden and glass icons in Ighiel, dating from 1781, one antimens from Meteş dating from 1752, a bell from Ampoiţa dating before 1848, and 12 icons of the great feasts from Blandiana dating from 1825. The second part of my study analyses the requisition of goods operated by the Russian soldiers engaged in plundering expeditions. In the Deanery of Alba Iulia there were six such cases, rather important damage having taken place in Alba Iulia Partoş, where several document files were confiscated, and in Meteş, where they confiscated registry books and destroyed books from the library. The most dramatic scenes occurred in Sǎrǎcsǎu, where three Russian officers and a few soldiers behaved brutally, shooting two people (one was mortally wounded) and beating others severely. Another case was that of the 'Saint John the Baptist' monastery in Alba Iulia, which was devastated in September 1944 by a division of Russian soldiers who confiscated all the liturgical and household objects.