On Saturday, 18 July, the Municipal Stadium in Ungheni hosts a national open crossfit tournament, in memory of Anatol Popovici. The announcement reached the people of Ungheni on Wednesday, 15 July, through the poster published on Facebook by Ungheni City Hall, and it is addressed to everyone: “We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible!”.
Anatol Popovici was a judge at the Ciocana district court in Chișinău. He was born at Boghenii Vechi, in the Ungheni district, left for the front in May 1992 and died at Bender on 20 June, at 30. Back home he left a wife and two boys.
He died in the War of the Dniester — fought in 1992 between the Republic of Moldova and Russian-backed separatists in Transnistria, on the left bank of the river. Bender is called Tighina in Romanian.
He was, according to the Superior Council of Magistracy, “the only judge who joined, from the very first days, the defence of the country in the War of the Dniester”. A newspaper from Tiraspol wrote about him at the time, his mother recounts, “that Moldova has come to sending its judges into battle as well”.
The start is announced by the organisers for 9.00; the City Hall poster gives 10.00.
Who Anatol Popovici was
He was a village boy: eight grades at Boghenii Vechi, then the polytechnic college in Bălți and two years in the Soviet army. He went on to study law at the State University and graduated with distinction in 1987. He worked first in the prison system, then as a lawyer for enterprises in Chișinău, and from 1990 he was a judge at the Ciocana district court. On 16 March 1992 he had turned 30. On 28 May he left for the war.
In the nominal list of those who fell in 1991–1992, kept by the Agency for Science and Military Memory of the Ministry of Defence, he is at position 250: POPOVICI Anatolie Grigore, born on 16 March 1962, locality of Boghenii Vechi, Ungheni district, died on 20 June 1992 at Tighina.
What his mother recounted
What followed was recounted by his mother, in a report published by Ziarul de Gardă in 2018.
She had been his teacher in the primary grades.
I myself was his teacher in the primary grades and I told him all the time, and other children too, that we have two mothers: one is the homeland and one is your mother, and just as you love your mother, so must you love your homeland. The judge’s mother, in Ziarul de Gardă, 2018 (translated)
Two weeks after he left, she knew nothing about him. She found out from acquaintances, she called the court where he worked, she went to the Ministry of Defence. A captain told her, in Russian, that her son had been killed.
Later I found out that he fell at the front on 20 June, at Bender, where the tanks were coming from Tiraspol, and there were 26 more boys with him. The judge’s mother, in Ziarul de Gardă, 2018 (translated)
The official death notice, kept in the archive of the school in Boghenii Noi and written in Russian, says the same thing in administrative language: wounded, died of his wounds, 20 June 1992, the city of Bender.
According to her account, his body was left in the field for four days — precisely because the Tiraspol newspaper had written about him. They took from his pocket the judge’s identity card he had received shortly before, and about which he used to tell his comrades: “I have finally received a document written in the holy language of the country and I shall carry it with the greatest fondness over my heart”. He was brought home after five weeks and buried on 25 July 1992, at the Central Cemetery in Chișinău.
He was decorated posthumously with the Order of Ștefan cel Mare, and his memorial plaque reads that “there is no greater deed than to give your life for the Country, for the Nation”.
His mother does not see it that way. 26 years on, she said:
If I could speak to him just once more, I would tell him that he was wrong to go to war, even though he went to defend his homeland. Their death was in vain. They sacrificed themselves, but nothing changed in the country because of it. The judge’s mother, in Ziarul de Gardă, 2018 (translated)
What his name has left in the district
Boghenii Vechi, the village where he was born, belongs to the Boghenii Noi commune. And the gymnasium in Boghenii Noi bears his name: “Anatol Popovici” Educational Complex Gymnasium-Kindergarten — the name appears in 14 acts of the town hall, between 2021 and 2026. According to the collection compiled from the school’s archive, the name was conferred in 2008; the act itself does not appear in the State Register of Local Acts, which does not cover that year. It is the same school in which the Ministry of Education is investing 500,000 lei this summer.
From the same source: also from 2008, the priest Vladimir Childescu from Boghenii Vechi organised at Bogheni, every year, a commemorative tournament of football, chess and draughts in his honour. The last photographic evidence of that tournament is from 2015. There is no public information about any link between it and Saturday’s competition in Ungheni.
He is one of the nine men born in the Ungheni district who appear in the state list of those who fell in 1991–1992 — out of an official national total of 299. The monument in town carries four names.
Saturday, at the stadium
The tournament is billed as “open” — the organisers await “all those wishing to test their sporting abilities” — and the City Hall announces it as a national one. It is held in two stages, described by the organisers as “two spectacular stages with various exercises of strength, speed and endurance, held in different weight categories starting from 50kg - +90kg”.
The exercises are those of functional fitness, drawn around the portrait on the organisers’ poster: barbell deadlifts, kettlebell, gymnastic rings, box jumps, sled push, medicine ball, back squats and battle ropes. Their promotional clip shows young people training with the barbell and the sled on a stadium pitch. The invitation is addressed to those who do “performance sport”.
“All champions will be awarded medals, diplomas and cash prizes,” the organisers announce. Athletes from Ungheni will be among the competitors: “Sports fans, we look forward to you coming to support the athletes from Ungheni”.
The poster says “2026 Edition”, but there is no public information about earlier editions, and the tournament does not appear in the Ministry of Education’s sports calendars for 2025 and 2026. The event is promoted by the Pankration Ungheni page.
Note. The sport appears under two names: the organisers call it “CrossFit” — on their poster, in the written announcement and in the promotional clip — while the poster published by the City Hall says “Crossfight”. The same goes for the start time: the organisers write 9.00, the City Hall poster gives 10.00.