The Romanian writer and anti-communist militant Paul Goma has died, aged
84, in a Paris hospital, where he had been admitted after becoming infected
with the new coronavirus. After the death of King Michael in 2017 and that of the
dissident teacher Doina Cornea in 2018, Romanians have not lost yet another
symbol of anti-communist resistance.
Paul Goma was born in 1935 in Bessarabia into a family of teachers, who,
five years later, took refuge in a reduced Romania following the annexation of
its eastern territories by the Soviet Union. Goma was arrested in 1956 for harbouring
hostile opinions towards the communist regime in Bucharest, a satellite of
Moscow, and sentenced to two years in prison, followed by a period of house
arrest until 1963. In 1977, the Securitate, the regime’s political police, again
arrested, interrogated and tortured him for his criticism of Nicolae Ceausescu’s
dictatorial regime.
He was, in effect, expelled to France, and was stripped of his Romanian
citizenship. In Paris, he was the target of an attempted assassination by parcel
bomb masterminded by the Securitate. Paul Goma is the author of more than 30
books, including fiction, memoirs and history, many of which were incendiary on
account of their great courage.
A man of sharp wit, he also turned his irony on himself, as can be seen
from this excerpt from a rare interview he gave to Radio Romania:
I was merely carried by the waves of history. I was no rebel, but merely
someone who endured it all, as a Bessarabian, as a refugee and as an ordinary
person; someone who, when he heard something he didn’t like or thought it was not
true simply said ‘that can’t be’. More like the clown of the class who can’t
keep his mouth shut.
Paul Goma will always be a name who inspired hope and strengthened our
resistance, said prime minister Ludovic Orban in a statement. The Romanian royal
family also regret the passing of Paul Goma, describing him as one of the most
emblematic figures of the intellectual resistance against dictatorship. (Tr.: CM)