The micro-exhibition "Certificate of Release from Slavery in the Name of Oprea Matei," the exhibit of the month of November at the National Museum of Romania's History (MNIR), will be accessible to the public starting Thursday, the museum announced.

The exhibit takes visitors back to the time of the 1848 Revolution in Wallachia, inviting them to rediscover this otherwise familiar period from the perspective of the Roma community, shedding light on the efforts to modernise the Principalities, the museum informed on Wednesday.

The extremely rare document was issued by the Commission for the Liberation of Slaves, an institution through which revolutionaries in Wallachia sought to address the greatest social injustice of the time - the personal dependency status of the Roma inhabitants of the principality.

"Although we know nothing else about Oprea Matei, the ten-year-old child who, during the summer of 1848, was among the free inhabitants of the country, his testimony gives a human dimension to the long process that spanned several decades - of which 1848 is only an episode - that ultimately led to the abolition of Roma slavery, the most important social reform in the Romanian Principalities in the mid-19th century," the MNIR points out.

The exhibition can be visited until December 8, from Wednesday to Sunday, from 9:00 to 17:00. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Popescu, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - editor: Adina Panaitescu)

Photo source: mnir.ro