Background
Victor Zâmbrea was born in 1924 in Reni, Ismail county, Bessarabia, Romania.
Victor Zâmbrea was born in 1924 in Reni, Ismail county, Bessarabia, Romania.
In 1936, he finished the Gymnasium (Junior High School) in native Reni, and graduated from the Evening Lyceum (High School) in Bucharest in 1940. In 1963, he graduated from the University of Popular Art in Moscow.
In 1941, he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts, Bucharest. In 1942, he voluntarily enrolled in the Romanian Royal Navy"s School of Scuba diving in Constanţa. In November 1944, he was arrested by the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and sent to an People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs filtration point in ChişinăUniversity
Released in June 1945, he went to Izmail, where he joined the anti-Soviet resistance group "Vocea Basarabiei" (English: The Voice of Bessarabia).
In May 1948, he was arrested for Romanian propaganda activity. He succeeded to escape from his prison, and changed his name to Dumbrovschi.
Victor Zâmbrea then established himself in Chişinău, and made contacts with an anti-Soviet resistance group in the city. In the evening of July 6, 1949, he was arrested within the course of Operation Yug of mass deportation of ca.
40,000 civilians of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic to Siberia and northern Kazakhstan.
Soon afterwards, interrogation and investigation of his identity started. He was accused in virtue of Article 58 of the Russian SFSR (on the grounds that the investigation was being carried in Russia, not in Moldova) of "anti-Soviet propaganda, and traitor of the Soviet people". The March 1953 amnesty decree after the death of Joseph Stalin saved him from capital punishment by execution squad.
A year later he obtained a transfer to the city of Tyumen to work under guard as painter in the Railroad Club.
Following his release in 1958, he settled in Chişinău, where he worked as a painter in the University Central Store. Until his retirement in 1984, he also worked as a painter for the Fund of Plastic Arts in ChişinăUniversity
In 1994, he opened a personal exposition "Bessarabian Romanians deported to Siberia" in ChişinăUniversity
He was a member of the Union of Plastic Artists of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic.