Radio România Internațional

Tag: WWI

  • August 4, 2017 UPDATE

    August 4, 2017 UPDATE

    HEAT A quarter of Romanias territory has been placed under code red alert for extreme heat until Saturday night; in 12 counties in western Romania temperatures are expected to soar to 42 degrees Celsius. The rest of the country remains under a code orange alert with temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius. The thermal discomfort index went over 80 and could reach 82-84 units. Weather experts say that the heat wave will last until mid-next week, but only in the south, while atmospheric instability will increase. First-aid tents have been set up in all major cities to provide fresh cold water to people. Mobile ambulance and medical services have been placed on high alert and speed restrictions have been imposed on the national railway network as well as on the countrys main roads with a view to avoiding accidents. The drought Romania is currently facing has wreaked havoc on the corn and sunflower crops. Numerous countries in Europe like Italy, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, France and the Republic of Moldova have also been affected by this heat wave.




    HEROES Romania is commemorating its WWI heroes through a series of ceremonies held all over the country these days. At the Soveja Mausoleum, in the east of the country, which hosts an ossuary of over 2,000 Romanian and Russian soldiers, a religious service was held on Friday. The peak of these events will be on Sunday, when the country marks 100 years since the Battle of Marasesti, a watershed moment for Romania in the Great War. In the summer of 1917 the Romanian soldiers stood their ground against a technically superior and better-trained German army, losing 480 officers and over 21,000 troops.




    TALKS Romanias government Friday passed an emergency order under which pensions will no longer be adjusted to salary increases, but only to the inflation rate, to the effect that the net pension benefits can no longer be higher than the net salaries an individual has received prior to retirement. The age and length in service required for an employee to be able to retire remain unchanged. The bill only concerns the pensions of Interior and Defence Ministry personnel, of intelligence service employees, of civil aviation pilots, diplomats, of court staff, MPs and other Parliament employees. Another bill concerns the increase of police staff salaries by 10% and of Interior Ministry civilian staff by 15%. Also on Friday, the Government approved a ceiling on child allowances of roughly 1,850 euros per month as of September.




    MEASLES Over the past week more than 100 new measles cases have been confirmed, taking the total number up to 8,455, according to the data centralised by Friday by the National Centre for Infectious Disease Monitoring and Control. Thirty-two people, most of them babies and small children, have died since the onset of the measles epidemic in September 2016. Health Minister Florian Bodog said on Friday that the measles vaccination rate grew nearly 4 times in the last 2 weeks.




    FOOTBALL Romanias vice champions FCSB formerly known as Steaua Bucharest will be playing in the qualifying play-offs for the Champions League Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon. The first game will be played in Portugal on August 15th and the return match in Bucharest a week later. Also on Friday the champions Viitorul found out their opponent in the Europa League play-off: the Austrian champions FC Red Bull Salzburg. Viitorul will play the first leg at home on August 17 and the return match in Salzburg on August 24. Romania has only these two sides in the European competitions. Another three Romanian sides, Dinamo Bucharest, Astra Giurgiu and CSU Craiova were eliminated from the Europa League, after the defeats they conceded on Thursday, away from home. Contender teams for the Romanians were Athletic Bilbao from Spain, the famous Italian squad AC Milan and Ukraines Oleksandria.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • August 4, 2017

    August 4, 2017

    HEAT A quarter of Romania’s territory has been placed under code red alert for extreme heat until tomorrow night; in 12 counties in western Romania temperatures are expected to soar to 42 degrees Celsius. The rest of the territory remains under a code orange alert with temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius. It was 35 degrees in Bucharest at noon and the humidity-temperature index went over 80 and could reach 82-84 units. First-aid tents have been set up in all major cities to provide fresh cold water to the citizens. Mobile ambulance and medical services have been place on high alert and speed restrictions have been imposed on the national railway company as well as on the country’s main roads with a view to avoiding accidents. The drought Romania is currently facing has wreaked havoc on the corn and sunflower crops. According to meteorologists, Romania will stay under the present heat wave well into the next week. Numerous countries in Europe like Italy, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, France and the Republic of Moldova have been affected by this heat wave.



    TALKS Romania’s government has today convened in Bucharest for talks on a draft law concerning pensions of retired servicemen. The draft is high on the agenda of the PSD-ALDE cabinet led by Mihai Tudose along other issues such as those concerning the child-rearing benefits and vaccination. The final law on vaccination provides for the parents’ right to get access to high quality vaccines and medical assistance in case their children are suffering from post-vaccination illnesses. Parents can refuse vaccination but have the obligation to visit the family physicians to be informed on the benefits of vaccination, otherwise they can become subject to fines.



    HEROES Romania is commemorating its WWI heroes through a series of ceremonies held all over the country these days. Major events are underway in Soveja, western Romania, which hosts a cemetery of over 2,000 Romanian and Russian soldiers. The peak of these events will be on Sunday, when the country marks 100 years since the Battle of Marasesti, a watershed moment for Romania in the Great War. In the summer of 1917 the Romanian soldiers stood their ground against a technically superior and better-trained German army, losing 480 officers and over 21 thousand troops.



    FOOTBALL Romania’s vice champions FCSB formerly known as Steaua Bucharest will be playing in the qualifying play-offs for the Champions League Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon. The first game will be played in Portugal on August 15th and the return match in Bucharest in a week’s time. Also today the champions Viitorul will find out their opponent in the Europa League play-off. Romania has only these two sides in the European competitions. Another three Romanian sides, Dinamo Bucharest, Astra Giurgiu and CSU Craiova have been eliminated from the Europa League, after the defeats they conceded on Thursday in fixtures they played away from home. Contender teams for the Romanians were Athletic Bilbao from Spain, the famous Italian squad AC Milan and Ukraine’s Oleksandria.



    TENNIS WTA 59th player Romanian Monica Niculescu has won in two sets the game against her compatriot Patricia Tig and has thus qualified for the quarterfinals of the tennis tournament in Washington with more than 226 thousand dollars in prize money. Niculescu, the tournament’s sixth favourite, will be facing the world’s number 40 player Julia Goerges of Germany. Monica has also qualified for the doubles’ next stage together with Sania Mirza of India. In the singles, Romania’s best tennis player Simona Halep has also qualified for the quarters after a three-sets win against Columbia’s Mariana Duque-Marino. Halep will be playing WTA 58th player Russian Ekaterina Makarova for a place in the semis.


  • The 100th anniversary of Romania’s entry into WWI

    The 100th anniversary of Romania’s entry into WWI

    Romania joined the war following pressure from its traditional ally, France, and as a result of the situation on the front, the battle of Verdun and the offensive of the Russian army. Romania agreed to enter the war after obtaining the promise that when the peace would be established, the territories inhabited by ethnic Romanians in Austria-Hungary would become united with the Kingdom of Romania. Romania’s delayed entrance into the war had two reasons.



    Firstly, it was the wish of King Carol I that Romania should fight alongside Germany, something the political class was opposed to. The second reason was the distrust of the Romanian army in an alliance with Russia after the unfortunate experience of the 1877-1878 war. In two years’ fighting in WWI, Romania lost 535,700 soldiers, including the dead, the wounded and those reported missing, which accounted for 71% of the number of troops it had when it first entered the war. It thus ranked fourth in this regard, after Austria-Hungary, who lost 90% of its troops, Russia, who lost 76% of the troops, and France, who lost 73% of the troops. Romania also had 300,000 civilian casualties, including 250 doctors and 1,000 orderlies who died from typhoid fever. At the end of the war, however, Romania received more territories, with Greater Romania being created at an immense human cost.



    The official narrative of WWI changed over time and so did public perception. In the aftermath of the war, the focus was on the victims and their families, the invalid and the survivors. Historical accounts were not triumphalist, with the scars left by the loss of human lives still fresh. As time passed, history became more militant, and political ideology gradually overshadowed the human element to the detriment of patriotism and national interest. The tragedies of WWI started to be seen not as tragedies of humanity but as sacrifices in the interest of the nation. Romania was no exception, its official history going through the stage of militant history and culminating with the communist regime that gravely distorted the significance of the events 100 years ago.



    In the opinion of historian Razvan Paraianu from the Petru Maior University in Targu Mures, Romania’s entry into the Great War must be viewed as a restitution of the original meanings and feelings of the people who lived at the time: “We cannot glance innocently at the past. Semantics, the meanings and significance of the simplest of words are different. Many people will say this is relativism. It’s not relativism, it’s comprehending the fact that we understand the idea of nation and people differently from our parents and grandparents. The French sociologist Bernard Paqueteau, who came to Romania in the 1990s, wrote an article about the freezer of false ideas. It was the time when Robert Kaplan had written about the ghosts of the Balkans. Paqueteau’s article was a reaction to the idea that the communist regime had put the phantoms of the past into a freezer, and after 1989 something plugged off the freezer, setting the phantoms free to haunt societies. Paqueteau says it very clearly that the phantoms are not the same and that there was no freezer. The communist regime radically altered not only the meanings of words but also society itself, the one that understands significances.”



    They say words attract reality, which means that their significance is so strong that it becomes decisive in forming opinions.



    Razvan Paraianu believes that historians must formulate credible interpretations of WWI, without letting themselves being influenced by ideologies: “There is no way we could look innocently at WWI. Between 1916 and 2016 there is a huge gap that alters the meaning of words and facts. Reinhard Koselleck’s conceptual history shows that semantics is in close relations with the changes occurring in society, with the changes brought up by political events. It’s not an immediate change. Meanings have their own delays and we must pay attention to changes. The Dutch historian Frank Ankersmit says that the narrative language is not an object-language. What Ankersmit means is that an archaeologist finds ancient objects, unearths them, but the object remains an object. We do not work only with objects, we work with meanings, with the role that these objects played in their time. If we imagine that in the 3rd millennium an archaeologist dug and found a bottle, he would think we used to drink wine from that bottle. But maybe that bottle was a lamp. Or maybe that bottle was used as a Molotov cocktail. How awkward would it be for a lamp to be mistaken for a Molotov cocktail just because the form is the same, but their roles are completely different?”



    Reading the press, journals, letters and personal notes from WWI reveals a spirit that accompanied the departure of hundreds of thousands of Romanians along a different route, different from the one that we are used to. To many of them, the road was one without return. At the end of the war, the Greater Romania was the reward for their sacrifice, one that may have seemed too big for their loved ones.

  • The Romanians outside Romania during the Great War

    The Romanians outside Romania during the Great War

    Romania joined WWI in 1916, after two years of neutrality, but in spite of that, the loss of human lives and material damage weren’t less significant though. Although it fought only for two years, Romania registered 6% of the total number of the servicemen killed in action, on the side of the Entente, as compared to the USA, which reported only 1%, after only one year of fighting. In figures, Romania lost roughly 500 thousand troops and other several hundred thousands civilians to an epidemics of typhus. Add to this the national treasure sent to Russia for safekeeping in 1916, and never returned, and you’ll get a complete picture of Romania’s loss in the WWI.



    However, the Romanians living outside the country fought four years in the Great War. Citizens of Austria-Hungary, Russia or the Balkan countries, Romanians had been drafted in the armed forces of the combating countries in the very first days of the conflict and many of them made the supreme sacrifice on the battlefield. The Romanians in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, territories making up Austria-Hungary, were present on the battlefield from the very beginning, taking part in the biggest military conflict ever seen until that moment, hundreds of thousands loosing their lives on the battlefield or falling prisoner. The Romanians in Bessarabia, which was part of Russia at that time, were serving in the Czarist army against the Central Powers. Many Romanians living in Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia also died on the battlefield, between 1914 and 1918.



    But it wasn’t only the Romanians who had to fight on various front-lines and sometimes against their own convictions. Nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire chose to be loyal to their countries and their emperor and if at the end of the war things went in a different way than it had originally been planned, it was because opinions were changing and former values decayed.



    According to historian Ion Bulei, the Romanians were not the only ones fighting for the two belligerent sides in the war; the Poles also found themselves fighting for both the Entente and the Central Powers. Bulei says that the Romanians were actually in a better position than others.



    Ion Bulei: “We, the Romanians, had a country of our own at that time, something the Slovaks, the Czech and the Poles were only dreaming of. We and the Serbians had a nucleus, around which a bigger state could be formed. That was the advantage we had at that time. We were between empires and at their disposal, but the other nationalities were part of those empires, be it Austria-Hungary, Russia or Germany. The Romanians weren’t the only ones in a special situation at that time, things were even more complicated for other nationalities. Nationalism, which was prevailing in the 19th century and turned virulent in the early 20th century, manifested itself with all its momentum during the First World War. This phenomenon manifested itself among a mixture of peoples, each trying to find its own way in the world. The Romanians were also in the same turmoil struggling to build a bigger state than the one they had back then.”



    Nationalism was the phenomenon that fuelled the fierce clashes of the First World War and it was the same nationalism sparking off feelings of fraternity among the speakers of the same language fighting for opposing sides. It was the source of a conflict between a soldier’s duty and his personal beliefs, a conflict that would further raise people’s awareness over this issue. Romanian writer Liviu Rebreanu tackled this problematics very well in a novel entitled “The Forest of the Hanged”, whose protagonist, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, Apostol Bologa, is torn between his duty for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his personal convictions. When the war ended everything looked different, though. The former enemies, Romanian soldiers fighting for one side or another in the war, had to rub shoulders in the same country after unification.



    It’s worth mentioning that the National Guards in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina were made out of discharged troops. They were in charge of defending the cities and were the ones that made possible the National Assembly in Alba Iulia, which proclaimed Transylvania’s union with the Kingdom of Romania. According to historian Liviu Maior, author of a volume entitled “Two Years Earlier. Citizens of Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia at War, 1914-1918”, apart from winners and losers, a war changes perceptions and leaves unmendable things behind.



    Liviu Maior: ”The early days of the Great War prove how fast and unpredictable a war can be, with a dramatic aftermath for humankind. It was a harrowing war. 77,000 of the Romanians outside the country’s borders died on the battlefield, others suffered from all sorts of diseases and plagues a war usually brings about. I researched village life, the simple man’s life during the war, as well as their reactions. It all started from prison camps. It was there that former GIs and officers turned radical, and not only the Romanians. In Transylvania, there were prison camps for Italian and Serbian soldiers, in Arad, for instance, almost 4,000 Serbians died in horrendous circumstances. Italian prisoners were used for road construction works.”



    After 1918, the new European order, following nationalities’ principles, tried to straighten whatever had been viewed as being crooked. Nations formed their own states, while people became citizens once again. As for Romanians, no matter what side of the barricade they had fought on between 1914 and 1918, got united in what was termed Greater Romania, a project they believed in and where they wanted to once again find peace and happiness.

  • August 28, 2016 UPDATE

    August 28, 2016 UPDATE

    WWI A ceremony was held on Sunday at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Carol 1st Park in Bucharest to mark 100 years from Romania’s entry into the First World War. In the opening remarks, Romanian president Klaus Iohannis paid homage to the heroes who died for the country, calling for the construction of a dignified and strong Romania. The Romanian president paid respects to the 800 thousand war victims, civilians and military, adding that now, more than ever, it is the right time for Romania to commit itself to strengthening the European edifice through a modern and consistent country project. A century ago, Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary crossing the Carpathians into Transylvania. A round table talk, a military exercise and a concert by a brass band have been scheduled for Monday.




    ASSISTANCE Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has summoned a special government meeting on Monday for talks on measures aimed at offering assistance to the Romanians affected by the earthquake in Italy and to their families. The Ministry of Labour and the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest are to come with support measures the Ciolos government can apply to certain categories of Romanian citizens. The head of the executive is in permanent connection with the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Romania’s diplomatic mission in Rome, which are keeping him informed about the situation in Italy. At the same time, upon his request, the minister of the Romanians the World Over, Maria Ligor on Sunday arrived in Italy to assess the situation. 11 Romanians have lost their lives many others being wounded or reported missing following the earthquake in central Italy whose death toll now stands at 291. The bodies of five Romanians are to be repatriated on Monday. The government wants to hire expert teams to provide psychological support for the victims’ families.




    LOAN After his recent visit to Chisinau, the capital of the ex-soviet Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos says that all the political forces, including the pro-Russia ones, are willing to continue the country’s pro-European and democratic process. Ciolos said in an interview to Radio Romania that Bucharest wants to continue offering assistance to the authorities in Chisinau to open an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and apply for funding from the European Commission. We recall that on Thursday Ciolos paid an official visit to Chisinau, which marked the disbursing of a first 60 million euros installment of a preferential loan Bucharest offered to the Republic of Moldova.




    DIPLOMACY The Annual Meeting of Romanian Diplomacy, an event dedicated to the Romanian diplomatic staff, is due to begin in Bucharest on Monday. The event, held annually around September 1st, which is the day of the Romanian diplomacy, is staged by the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Bucharest. This meeting will have high on agenda the latest developments in the field of security, the dynamics of the EU’s domestic processes and preparations for Romania’s taking over for the first time of the Presidency of the European Union’s Council in the first half of 2019. Also high on the agenda are ways of strengthening the capabilities of granting professional consular assistance in order to defend the interests and rights of the Romanians abroad.




    VISIT The Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has announced that in the following days he will be paying a visit with an economic profile to three German states — Bavaria, Baden Wurttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The Romanian official will be seeing representatives of German companies that have already invested in Romania and others which have planned investment in this country. Ciolos says that Romania’s relation with Germany continues in a dynamic way, not only at the political level but also at the economic one. The Romanian Prime Minister has added that in the following period, president Klaus Iohannis will be having a meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel.




    BRIGADE Preparations are underway for hosting the multinational NATO brigade on the Romanian territory, the country’s Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has announced in Gura Humorului, northeastern Romania. After talks with his Polish counterpart Beata Szydlo, the Romanian official said the authorities in Warsaw had decided to participate in this brigade as well. Furthermore, the Foreign and Defence Ministries in the two countries have set a schedule so that this objective may be met by the end of the year. In turn, the head of the Polish Executive has underlined the need for talks over the future of the European Union, adding that Brussels’ migration policy must be changed so that humanitarian aid outside its borders be stepped up.



  • August 27, 2016

    August 27, 2016

    ITALY QUAKE – A day of national mourning has begun in Italy for those over 290 people who died when a powerful earthquake hit the country’s mountainous central regions. Country officlas will attend state funerals in the regional capital, Ascoli Piceno, for 50 of the victims from the town of Arquata. No survivors have been found since Thursday. Italian authorities say they will continue to search until they are certain everyone is accounted for. Over 1,000 aftershocks have been reported and many of the buildings still standing risk collapsing, which makes rescue operations even more difficult. Most victims were Italian, but several foreigners were among those killed, including 10 Romanians. Also, 16 Romanians are reported missing. A consular team from Bucharest travels today to the affected areas to support the Romanian diplomatic missions in Rome and Bologna, the Romanian Foreign Ministry announced.




    GOVERNMENT – Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has met today in Suceava, north-eastern Romania, with his Polish counterpart, Beata Szydlo. After the meeting, PM Ciolos has said that the relations between Romania and Poland are very intense and that there are excellent premises for them to be strengthened. The two officials tackled bilateral ties in the context of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries, and also topics on the European agenda, such as Brexit’s impact on the EU, the EU budget and the revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework. Also approached was cooperation in the field of defense and the developments at the EU’s eastern border. The two officials will also have a meeting with representatives of the Polish community in Romania.




    MOLDOVA – Romania reaffirms its full support for Moldova’s bid for the European Union and the process of democratic reforms and modernisation of the state, in keeping with the expectations of the neighbouring country, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said in a release on Saturday. Chisinau marks today 25 years since gaining its independence. Ceremonies devoted to this event will be more modest than in previous years, due to the economic crisis the country is going through. On August 27, 1991 the Republic of Moldova proclaimed its independence from the USSR. Romania was the first country to recognise Moldova’s independence.




    CELEBRATION – Romania marks today one hundred years since the country entered WWI. At the end of this war, on December 1st, 1918, the process of setting up the Romanian unitary nation state was finalized, following the union of all Romanian provinces with a majority Romanian-speaking population previously included in the neighbouring multinational empires. On August 27, 1916, Romania declared war on Austro-Hungary and the army crossed the Carpathians to Transylvania, which at the time was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Over 330 thousand soldiers died in this war and as many as 76 thousand were crippled. Ceremonies devoted to this day are held in Fundata, in central Romania, where the first Romanian officer was killed, but also in Curtea de Arges, at the tomb of King Ferdinand. On this occasion, the Romanian Royal House conveyed a message that reiterates the role that King Ferdinand played in Romania’s participation in WWI and the setting up the Romanian unitary nation state.




    TENNIS – The Romanian-Indian team made up of Monica Niculescu and Sania Mirza, WTA’s seed no. 2 in women’s doubles, defeated on Friday night the Slovenian team Andreja Klepac and Katarina Srebotnik in the semi-finals of the tennis tournament in New Haven, the US, with 695,900 dollars in prize money. In the final, Niculescu and Mirza will be up against Katerina Bondarenko of Ukraine and Chia-Jung Chuang of Taiwan. The US Open, the last grand slam of the year, kicks off on Monday. Niculescu, seed no. 57, will play against the Czech Barbora Strycova, seed no. 19. In the first round of the competition, Romanian Simona Halep, no. 5 in the world, will play against Belgian Kirsten Flipkens WTA’s 68th seed, while another Romanian, Irina Begu , seeded 22nd, will be up against Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko, seed no. 80. In the same competition, Romanian Patricia Maria Tig, seed no. 129 will be up against Laura Siegemund of Germany, while Ana Bogdan, seed no. 117, will play in the first round against another Romanian, Sorana Cirstea, WTA’s 88th seed.



    (Translated by Elena Enache)



  • The Cult of National Heroes

    The Cult of National Heroes

    In 2014, Europe celebrated the centennial of the start of WWI, an event that deeply scarred the 20th century. It was a century that put into practice ideas from the 19th century, ideas that themselves formed in late 18th century, around the French Revolution. Socialism and nationalism, generous ideas that aimed to emancipate individuals and society, had moved away from their original aim and had gone radical. Through the world war of 1914-1918, humanity had spent bloodily the raging energies of radicalism, but much of that energy was not spent, and would erupt in the Second World War.



    Modern heroes are the product of wars that raged across Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Men and women of various social categories went to war with enthusiasm for their ideas. Romanians were no exception, and proof of that are the hundreds of thousands who died. In 1918, when the peace treaties were signed, the descendants of the 10 million dead left by the 4 years of conflict wanted to honor their sacrifice. This was the beginning of the cult of heroes in its grandiose, monumental form.



    Historian Daniel Gheorghe: “After WWI, the Versailles peace treaty established the cult of heroes as a measure of reconciliation and rapprochement between the nations that had fought in the war that left tens of millions dead, politically, socially and morally. Romania was one of the first European countries that had taken on the responsibility of paying homage both to its heroes and to those of other nations that had fallen on Romanian soil fighting against Romanians. Hero day was created by decree by King Ferdinand I on May 4, 1920, one month before the treaty of Trianon, which endorsed the Union of 1918, after 3 years of fighting on the frontline, and two years of diplomatic struggle. In Paris, Queen Marie played a crucial role in the recognition of the union.”



    All communities feel a need to celebrate their heroes. This cult in its modern state form was the result of the traumas inflicted by WWI. Here is Daniel Gheorghe:


    “The cult of heroes also worked during the reign of Carol I, when the heroes of the 1877-1878 War of Independence were honored, as well as the heroes of the Battle of Dealul Spirii of 13 September 1848. In WWI, Romania lost around 960,000 citizens, mostly as a result of disease, epidemics and hardship. At least 350,000 Romanians died weapon in hand, 30,000 in the Battle of Marasesti alone, in July-August 1917, when, on the hottest day, 6,000 Romanians died. The sacrifice was immense, and the cult of heroes was the way of paying homage to them.”



    In the years that followed the war, the cult of heroes manifested in various forms. The most important constructions, in addition to countless cemeteries, crypts, monuments and roadside crosses are the Mausoleum in Marasesti, the monument of the nameless hero in Bucharest, and the ensemble called Heroes’ Path built by sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Tg. Jiu.



    Here is Daniel Gheorghe: “The cult was under the patronage of the Royal House and the Orthodox Church. There was a Society of Heroes’ Tombs, presided over by Metropolitan Miron Cristea. Romania had hundreds of tombs of Romanian heroes, but also those of other nationals, German, Russian, English, American, French, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Poles who died in the first and second world wars. The Society of Fallen Heroes, under Queen Marie’s high patronage, took care of the tombs. Queen Marie had been the head of the Romanian Red Cross, and the member of the Royal House most sensitive to the suffering of Romanian heroes on fields of battle.”



    Heroes’ Day is today a day for all Romanian heroes who fell in battle against the enemies of democracy and freedom. December is a special month, full of symbolism, as it is the month when Romanians freed themselves from communism:



    “Heroes’ Day was set on the day of the Lord’s Ascension, a day dedicated to all those who have given their lives for country and freedom, the heroes fallen in the two world wards, the martyrs in communist prisons, the heroes in the anti-communist armed resistance, and the heroes of December 1989. The significance was that of the sacrifice that redeems, that liberates, the sacrifice that uplifts. Patriotism was the fundamental value. There was even a generation of the national ideal of 1918, politicians like the Bratianu brothers, Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, Nicolae Iorga, and others.”



    The cult of heroes is the last homage by which descendants value the sacrifice of people who left for the frontline not to die, but for ideas in interesting and exceptional times. But, as Chinese leader and reformer Deng Xiao Ping said, living in interesting times can be a curse.