Category: The History Show

The dismantling of the colonial empires after 1945 and the opening, to the whole world, of the new African, Asian and South American states, was the natural effect of the ideas that promoted the equality of nations and states. Romania had also oriented its foreign policy towards the countries of the Third World or the Global South. Through humanitarian aid, economic assistance and educational programs, the northern countries were trying to contribute to the removal of human tragedies from societies in conflict.

However, this new global openness also meant an increased movement of individuals, and consequently associated health risks. As a result, Romania also sought to develop new fields of medical research, such as that of tropical diseases. But the political adversity between socialist countries, former democratic countries that had been occupied by the Soviet Union after 1945 and transformed into repressive regimes, and the free Western countries, also impacted scientific research.

Historian Bogdan-Cristian Iacob wrote about the development of the field of tropical diseases in Romania before 1989. He spoke about one of the differences noted during the 1960s between socialist countries, Romania included, and the West. This can also be found in the writings of Dr. Ludovic Păun, one of the most important Romanian specialists in tropical diseases.

Bogdan-Cristian Iacob: The role of Western experts in tropical medicine was minimized. Although the 1974 resolution of the World Health Assembly, a kind of parliament of the World Health Organization, regarding the creation of a special program for the study of tropical diseases was a socialist initiative and one of the African countries, it was in fact the West who came up with the idea of global coordination of the field. This influence of the West in the study of tropical diseases was noticed two years later by Ludovic Păun, who participated in the first session of this special program of the World Health Organization. He noted that no socialist country had been nominated as a participant in the research. There was no concern for training doctors to support a long-term medical program. Paun noticed the active presence of some financial organizations and pharmaceutical companies at the meeting. He suggested that a research program be launched to secure future markets for the medicines that would go into production.

In fact, tropical medicine had begun in the West during the colonial period. But the adversity between capitalism and socialism produced strong differences as the communist regimes considered the tropical medicine of the West too focused on technological interventions. Socialist countries proposed the analysis of socio-economic forms and emphasized healthcare education and putting the focus of the patient. Bogdan-Cristian Iacob says that the very creation of a common vocabulary was difficult.

Bogdan-Cristian Iacob: “In the case of Romania, tropical medicine was not of interest in the 1960s. On the one hand, the word tropical itself was taboo, the term used was countries with a difficult climate . Another term was that of infectious diseases, much more neutral, and which allowed Romania’s role in the malaria eradication program to be highlighted. Another reason why the field was marginalised is the fact that the Bucharest regime avoids getting involved in Sub-Saharan Africa. This changes only starting 1970, when Nicolae Ceaușescu sees the Global South as an economic and political alternative both in relations with the West and socialist countries, and in the perspective of access to raw materials.

There are two sources that were the basis for the development of tropical medicine in Romania, one Asian and the other African. The first was the collaboration with India, Romanian doctors like Ludovic Păun benefiting from training courses there. Tăhe second was the medical assistance that Romania granted to African countries such as Congo-Kinshasa, the current D.R. Congo, Guinea, Angola, Mozambique, by doctors sent there to study the diseases. The cholera epidemic of 1961 reaches the Balkans and the western USSR and convinces the Romanian authorities to pay great attention to the field.

Imported pathologies brought by asymptomatic students from Asia and Africa and Romanians who worked in countries of the Global South stimulate serology and research. In 1974, the tropical diseases department was established within the Dr. Victor Babeș hospital in Bucharest. “

The following decade, the 1970s, also means a change in the orientation of Romanian tropical medicine. The country is trying to build its own research model, inspired neither by the West nor by the socialist camp. The 1980s are dominated by the emergence of AIDS and new challenges that open other topics of medical, moral and political-economic debate. (EE)

Every year, the month of December, the last month of the year, usually a month of joy and giving, also has a sensitive public component for Romanians. Because it is the month when, in 1989, the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu was collapsing and freedom and democracy were returning to Romania after almost half a century. Even though 34 years have passed since then, even though extremely diverse opinions about the events of that time and about the communist era have made their way into the public arena, the last two weeks of December 1989 remain a very powerful landmark. For 10 days, between December 16 and 25, 1989, between the outbreak of the protests in Timișoara and the execution of the Ceaușescus, the negative energies of a people forced to live in deprivations of all kinds were unleashed with violence and strong emotion. This is how the history of the last moments of an illegitimate and criminal regime and the history of the first seconds of the return to normality were written.

On December 16, demonstrators from Timișoara, gathered in front of the house of the reformed pastor Laszlo Tokes, opposed the Militia that intended to deport him. In the following days, the protests gained momentum and the repression forces formed by army, militia and security forces, on orders by Ceaușescu personally, opened fire killing several hundred civilians. On December 18, workers from the local enterprises went on an all-out strike. In the center of the city, the revolutionaries cut the communist coat of arms from the tricolor and started singing “Wake up, Romanians!”, an old banned revolutionary song, dating from 1848, the current national anthem of Romania. Also on December 18, after the liquidation of the demonstrations in Timișoara, Ceaușescu, confident in his people and in the obedience of the repression apparatus, left for a visit to Iran. Returning two days later, on December 20, Ceaușescu appeared on television giving a speech in which he condemned the actions of the Timisoara revolutionaries. Together with his clique from the Executive Political Committee, he decided to organize in Bucharest, the next day, a rally in support of himself, and also meant to condemn the people of Timisoara.

Paul Niculescu-Mizil was a communist dignitary and held several very important political positions as well as that of Minister of Internal Trade. He was in Ceaușescus entourage and in the Political Executive Committee in December 1989. After the fall of Ceaușescu, he was tried and sentenced to three years in prison together with other communist dignitaries. Interviewed in 1997 by Radio Romanias Oral History Center, Niculescu-Mizil was asked about the organization of the famous rally on December 21, and who advised Ceaușescu to gather so many people together in moments of maximum tension.

“In 89, no one from the Political Executive Committee could suggest anything to Ceausescu! Who could? The Securitate, the army and maybe one or two of his goons. Otherwise, he did not consult with anyone. I told Ceausescu that the most negative part of him was that he did not consult with the people who called things by their name. I told him: “Comrade Ceauşescu, you surround yourself with people who enter the office, open the door, and although you dont say anything, they say you are right. You should surround yourself with people who come and tell you that you are wrong because those who tell you that you are right will stab you in the back. I told him this many times”.

To the astonishment of Ceaușescu and his wife, the rally on December 21 turned into an open manifestation of the participants hostility towards them. The people booed the dictator and in the evening of the same day the repression of the demonstrators in Bucharest began. The next day, on December 22, the Minister of Defense, General Vasile Milea, committed suicide in his office, a fact that also sealed Ceaușescus fate. Paul Niculescu-Mizil:

“He believed that the Romanian people wanted him, you saw him at the trial as well. And in the morning, at around 7 oclock, the first person who woke up Ceauşescu and reported to him was Milea. General Milea told him that there were dead people at the Intercontinental hotel. And Ceausescu asked him: “Why, Milea? Who gave you the order that they be dead?” I know precisely that, leaving Ceausescus office, Milea went to an adjacent office and called the Ministry of the Armed Forces, his men, and told them that it was bad, Ceausescu was angry because of the dead reported. I am able to say that the theory that Milea shot himself because he was upset about those people being dead is not real. On the contrary. Milea shot himself not because he had killed the demonstrators in front of the Intercontinental hotel, but because Ceausescu blamed him for that.”

The days that followed sealed Ceaușescus downfall. On December 22, 1989, large masses of people from the Bucharest labor platforms marched to the center of the city, to the headquarters of the Communist Party. Ceaușescu escaped by helicopter, but was captured, tried and executed on December 25. The end of the life of a hated ruler also marked the end of an era. (MI)

Historical sources give us little information about the population of Dacians and Getae or Daco-Getae. Kosons, or Dacian gold coins, are one of the many enigmas floating around the civilization of those who lived on the territory of present-day Romania more than 2500 years ago. To the north and east of the Danube, towards Eastern Europe and Asia, lived, according to Greek and Roman written sources, barbarians, populations outside the area of the ancient Mediterranean civilization. The Romans called this space Barbaricum, where there was a veritable conglomerate of Germans, Thracians, and Iranians. In the first centuries of the Christian era, Asian and Slavic migrants also appeared in the region. In that conglomerate also lived the Daco-Getae, north of the Danube and in the intra-Carpathian space.

In the Greco-Roman world, the economy was monetized, money being the equivalent of all values. Barbarian populations imitated Greek and Roman coins to facilitate exchange. The first coins imitated by the Daco-Getae were the tetradrachms of Macedonian king Philip II in the 4th century BC. Other types of Greek coins were also imitated, such as those from the time of Alexander the Great and Philip III, of the same century. With the passage of time, until the arrival of the Romans in the Balkans in the second century before the Christian era, the Daco-Getae came to imitate imitations of Greco-Macedonian coins, their quality decreasing considerably in the representations on them, and in their quality. With the consolidation of the Roman state along the Danube in the west and south, the Daco-Getae imitated the Roman denarii. Thus koson coins appeared.

Historian and numismatist Mihai Dima researched Dacian coins of the Koson type, and is the author of some texts about them. He gave us a short introduction to the long history of the Kosons, whose name comes from a leader of the Dacians, who participated in the conspiracy against King Burebista in 44 BC, whom he succeeded.

What is actually meant by Koson? On the one hand, a proper name that was attributed to a dynasty from Dacia, Thrace, or Scythia or, on the other hand, a gold coin. Later, silver coins with the inscription Koson also appeared. This is what is meant by Koson: a gold coin weighing about 8.5 grams, diameter between 18 and 22 millimeters. It depicts, on one side, an eagle sitting on a scepter to the left, holding a wreath in its right claw. On the other side are three figures, a consul between two lictors. A monogram usually appears on the front, and on the reverse the inscription Koson, in Greek.

Objects from antiquity that have reached us often also followed a medieval trajectory. This is also the case of the Dacian koson, which we learn about from a text by a great representative of the European Renaissance. Here is Mihai Dima.

Koson type coins were first mentioned in the 16th century by Erasmus of Rotterdam in a letter addressed to the bishop of Breslau. Since the letter dates from 1520, the piece described by Erasmus could not come from the famous hoard discovered in the bed of the river Strei, found in 1543. Also before 1543, a liturgical vessel was mentioned for the first time, with some ancient gold coins encrusted on it, among which a koson was also found. It was kept in Alba Iulia until 1557, after which it arrived in Slovakia, in Nitra. It has been suggested that the coin on the Nitra chalice may have come from a hoard discovered in 1491. It is possible that this is the oldest Koson-type coin that has survived to this day.

The kosons came to light following the discovery oftreasures, most of them accidental discoveries. Many koson finds are uncertain, in the sense that they are mentioned in sources, but have not physically reached the present day. But the experts have some certainty about some of them, as Mihai Dima also said:

The first hoard that we know for sure was made of Koson type gold coins was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century, in 1803, on Mount Godeanu, in the area of the Șureanu Mountains and the Orăștiei Mountains. Some residents of the village of Vâlcelele Bune discovered 400 coins that were identified as being of 3 types, with monograms, but of different sizes, the last type not having a monogram. Shortly before this discovery, in 1802, another hoard of gold coins of the Lysimachus type appeared in the same area, which led many residents of the area to try their luck. It seems that many got lucky, as the trade in gold coins attracted the attention of the Austrian authorities who began to inquire into their origin.

Since then, the koson finds have been stored in museums in Romania, but they also exist on the world antiquities market. Dacian kosons are evidence of the mimicry of a peripheral society, such as the Dacians, towards a dominant cultural model, such as the Greco-Latin one. But it is also a testimony of the relationship that has always existed between the center and the periphery.

The study of history has evolved from ancient times to the present time, from the simple series of Egyptian pharaohs to “total history”, as the great French historian Lucien Febvre had called the ambition to write everything about the man of the past. “Everything” meant any investigation related to the human being, from the highest taboos to the most hidden parts of everyday life. So, it’s not surprising that historians and archaeologists have come to also study places that we regard with repulsion, such as toilets, pits, collecting canals generically called “haznale”- cesspits in the 19th century Romanian language.

Bucharest’s cesspits are being researched by the historians and archaeologists from the Bucharest Municipality Museum on the occasion of excavations in the central area, aimed at the rehabilitation of some heritage buildings. From the archeological research in the Bucharest cesspits, from the stories of each object found there, one can notice how the Romanian society of the 19th century was transforming from an oriental to a western society.

Theodor Ignat, an archaeologist at the Bucharest Municipality Museum, worked on the construction sites and was our guide through the repulsive underground cesspits of Bucharest. We asked him to explain the new meaning that the Turkish word “hazna” has received in Romanian: “Hazna comes from Turkish and means treasure, treasury. We dont know exactly how it turned into a pejorative word today. It is supposed that the places sheltering valuable objects ​​ were hidden in the ground, and since these pits are dug into the ground I think this could be the connection. Probably, in the past, cesspits were also used to hide things because no one would have thought to look in the garbage.”

We asked Theodor Ignat what the purpose of the cesspit was: a toilet, a collecting canal or a pit: “I think all three, not necessarily at the same time. The objects that we find there are generally whole pieces, which means that there was an environment in which there was water or a liquid of some kind. But it’s possible for the cesspits to have also been used as toilets. Human waste decomposes, we havent found anything like that. Instead, we found organic matter, but it can mean anything. People didnt just throw excrement in the cesspits. They also threw away leftovers that, if thrown elsewhere, would have spoiled and smelled. So, it was more practical to throw them into a hole in the ground. The practice of throwing smelly food scraps into the ground has been recorded since the Neolithic. The cesspit could also be a landfill, it has multiple roles. A colleague came up with a new explanation that we need to check, namely that these places were used as ice houses.”

The objects recovered from the Bucharest dumps were displayed in the Museum of Urban Anthropology within the Bucharest City Museum in an original exhibition. Objects were collected from a number of Bucharest cesspits, such as the one in the yard of Sfântu Dumitru church in the old center, the one of the Mavrogheni church near the current Romanian government offices, the cesspit of a drug store in the former Jewish quarter and the sewer network under the building of the former Marmorosch –Blank Bank, also in the old city centre. On display are beautifully painted porcelain vessels, most of them imported, flower pots, pharmaceutical and, cosmetic containers, a very expensive perfume bottle with the monogram of the Roger & Gallet perfumery in Paris but also tubes of toothpaste.

Theodor Ignat tell sus what people used to throw in the cesspits: “All sorts of objects. Many of them could not be found because they were made of perishable materials such as wood, vegetable fibers or leather. And then, we find objects that passed the test of time under the ground. In general, we find a lot of pottery of all categories and types. There is no specific category of pottery thrown into the cesspits. Imported vessels that, once broken, were no longer needed, were thrown away. On the other hand, we also find whole pots and we ask ourselves why would anyone throw away a whole pot? “

The cesspits were built at a distance of 10 to15 meters from the church or theinhabited area. Although they were not at a long distance, they were built so as not to smell or be a source of infection. Theodor Ignat says that a cesspit was a complex work: “It was an elaborate work, at least the brick part, and they were built specifically for this purpose, they were not reused rooms. They were covered somehow, the walls are very well sealed, and a sand and lime mortar was poured on the bottom of them which prevents the forming of mud. They were made in such a way that I think they were emptied periodically.”

From the cesspits of Bucharest, archaeologists brought to the surface objects of the material civilization of the past, that people no longer needed. But today they are a fascinating story, part of a life that is also ours. (LS/EE)

After 1945, following the end of colonisation, new independent states emerged out of the former imperial colonies, bringing about a change in international relations. From Africa, Asia and Oceania, which together with Latin America formed what we today call the Global South, new state entities developed that represented the will of the new nations. They adopted both new development models as well as old practices which they had inherited. The new states were assisted in their development by both western states and Europes socialist countries, including Romania.

Located in a part of Europe that was occupied by Soviet troops after 1945, Romania had a political regime dominated exclusively by the communist party. The foreign relations of socialist Romania followed for more than ten years the guidelines of the Soviet Unions foreign policy. In the early 1960s, however, Romania began to pursue a more independent foreign policy, and one of its focuses was the Global South or the Third World, as it was known at the time. Apart from investments, these countries badly needed expertise, which could only be acquired in school. So the scholarships granted by the Romanian state were a form of both humanitarian assistance and aid for development. In a report drawn up by the foreign ministry in Bucharest in 1961, scholarships for foreign students were considered an efficient means of forging closer ties with their countries of origin. What the Romanian Communist Party had in mind was a form of cultural and education diplomacy to create a basis for future political relations.

The historian Ștefan Bosomitu studied the archives and discovered that such scholarships had been awarded from as early as the end of the 1940s:

“The scholarship scheme existed throughout the communist regime. The party also granted scholarships in the 1950s, but not a lot. The recipients were mainly party activists from liberation movements or members of so-called fraternal parties, many of whom were also refugees. There were many waves of refugees: from Greece as a result of the war there, and then those coming in as a result of the war in Korea, a trend that continued.”

After 1970s, socialist Romanias scholarship scheme also began to target Africa. Around 250 scholarships were available, based on requests submitted beforehand by the diplomatic offices of the developing countries in the Romanian capital. Ștefan Bosomitu says that not only university scholarships were important, although they accounted for the largest share:

“Apart from scholarships for university and post-university studies, Romania also granted scholarships for vocational training as part of high school education. Although the biggest share, 80-90% was made up by university scholarships, there were also these high school grants about which unfortunately very little is known. We have oral testimonies about the training received by young people from developing countries as part of 3-year vocational courses. In Moinești, for example, in an oil-rich region, the local industrial high school used to train young people from African countries to work on oil fields.”

The scholarships were a success and Romania earned some reputation in this regard. At the beginning of the scheme, the scholarships covered everything, the studies, the accommodation and some daily expenses. Later, the scholarships no longer covered the cost of the studies, which had to be paid by students. Even so, many foreign young people wanted to study here because of lower fees. In 1963, for example, there were around 1,000 foreign students in Romania, almost all of them on scholarships, but their number went up in the 1970s. The highest number was recorded in 1981, namely 20,000. They would pay for their studies in hard currency, mostly in dollars, and Romanias communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu was a big supporter of the scheme in the context of the economic crisis of the 1980s and Romanias efforts to pay back its foreign debt.

But historians also noted the emergence of problems between Romanian and foreign students during the 1980s. Foreigners had better accommodation, had the right to hold foreign currency, had access to closed circuit shops or stores where to spend that currency, could travel, and were more successful with women. The crises even degenerated into fights between Romanians and foreigners. Ștefan Bosomitu also researched the testimonies of foreign students regarding their Romanian experience, and discovered that their perceptions were different from what the regime believed.

“Reading several testimonies, there is a tendency to somewhat idealize the past, everything is on a serene note. There are some testimonies, including some from African students, who say that people made fun of them for being black, especially when they went to the countryside, where people would cross themselves when they saw them. Beyond the official discourse and the openness that the regime sought to display, one of solidarity, Romanian society was very little prepared for everything that meant foreign.”

But overall the experiences of students from countries of the Global South in Romania before 1989 were positive. Every foreigner who studied for a few years in Romania has their own life story, and it must be perceived as it is told.

Broadcast communication brought people closer together in the 20th century and made the world seem smaller. Suddenly, what was happening in more distant societies became more familiar, and perceptions changed according to similarities and differences. The Romanian-language broadcasts of foreign radio stations made other societies more familiar to Romanians, especially European societies. One of the connections built on airwaves was that between the Czechoslovak and Romanian societies through the Romanian-language broadcasts of Radio Prague.

Romanians and Czechoslovakians have known each other for a long time. Romanians from Banat, Transylvania, Maramureș and Bucovina were part, together with Czechs and Slovaks, of the same state, the Habsburg monarchy. Romanians and Slovaks fought together for national rights in Austria-Hungary before 1918. At the end of the First World War and the formation of Czechoslovakia and Greater Romania, the two countries built regional alliances to stem German and Hungarian revisionism, such as the Little Entente of the years 1920-1921.

During the Second World War, all countries sent their messages to the outside world through radio broadcasting, another real war also taking place over the airwaves. After the Second World War, both Romania and Czechoslovakia were occupied by Soviet troops, and the two were trying to restore their links by radio. Thus, within the Czechoslovak Broadcastings foreign service, the Romanian service went on air on October 1, 1946. For half an hour, live, from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., from the capital of Czechoslovakia on Vinohradska Street number 12, its voice could be heard in Romanian.

In 2000, the Oral History Center of Romanian Broadcasting recorded an interview with Gerhard Bart, head of the Romanian service at Radio Prague. He was asked about the daily line-up of the show in Romanian.

“Every day we had a quarter of an hour of news, and then always some commentary. Of course, after the war there were many delegations: Czechs who went to Romania, or Romanian delegations, whether commercial, cultural, and political. And we always sought to record interviews with personalities and broadcast them. because we wanted to show precisely, especially after this second world war, the intense friendship between the two countries.”

The Romanian editorial staff was a small one, more precisely composed of two journalists who were also translators. Gerhard Bart also remembered his colleague, a lady older than him, with strong ties to Romania.

“At the Romanian section I was with another lady of Czech nationality, Elena Ofciacikova, who was born in Romania. Her father was a Czech delegate in Romania, and only at the end of the war did she return with her family to Czechoslovakia. She spoke very good Romanian, and together with her we did this for half an hour. Of course, we were not only editors, we were also translators, because all the news we received had to be translated into Romanian. Because we could also get sick, or we were somewhere recording an interview, there were a lot of Romanian students studying there, and we used external announcers to read the comments or the news.”

Inevitably, politicization was also present in the broadcasts of Czechoslovak broadcasting. But between the years 1946 and1948, it had not been something that influenced the quality of the journalistic act. But everything would change from 1948 onwards.

“From a political point of view, until the coup in Czechoslovakia on February 25, 1948, everything was apolitical, so to speak. Everything was based on friendship, on these completely apolitical bases. Only after February 25, 1948 did a little politics begin to seep in, because we wanted to show what the situation looked like in our country, how we know how to build socialism and so on. After February 25, 1948, Czechoslovakia became a popular-democratic country, as was Romania after the abdication of King Mihai. Of course, all the commentary after that, or almost all, not to exaggerate, the commentary had a political core, or political ideas.”

In 1949, the duration of the show in Romanian was reduced to a quarter of an hour and, shortly after, it was stopped for political reasons. Gerhard Bart detailed the reasons for the abolition of the Romanian service.

“This conclusion was planned, because Romania had become a popular, democratic country. We, Czechoslovakia, were a democratic country. So there was no need to convince Romania to start walking on the same road we were starting to walk on. So, it was announced, back in June 49 that, little by little, these broadcasts, not only the broadcast in Romanian, but also those in Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, would be closed in exchange for increasing the broadcasts for France, England and, more importantly, for America.”

The Romanian service of the Czechoslovak Broadcasting was short-lived and, unfortunately, influenced by the politics of the Soviet totalitarian model. But the Romanian service was established on the basis of a good relationship, reconfirmed in 1968, and then after 1989, between Czechoslovakia and Romania.

The tragedies that the Jews went through during World War II deeply moved contemporaries. Despite its apparent omnipotence, the Nazi evil was opposed by good people who did as much as they could to make people persecuted on irrational racial grounds no longer suffer. Some of those people were Romanians, who did not abdicate from the condition of humans, and helped the Jews, regardless of the consequences. One of them was Emil Tomescu, a reserve colonel and a veteran of the Second World War, having the rank of captain in 1942. Interviewed by the Oral History Center of the Romanian Broadcasting in 1997, Tomescu recounted what he had found beyond Odessa, in the palace of a French owner who had fled.

I found the doors nailed up and the windows nailed up. Asking what the reason was, the soldiers told me that there were Jews inside, and that every week a praetor came and took away one of them, who then disappeared. I later found out that he was shooting them in the back of the head and throwing them into an abandoned well. I opened the boards, what I found inside was something indescribable! They were living skeletons, human skeletons! They were famished, dirty, it was something terrible! They had made a toilet out of one room. I immediately ordered the water to be heated in the boilers, took them outside, made them wash, gave them food and took some of the women who were more resistant to help in their own kitchen. But I couldn’t stay long, I was ordered to go back to the front. Probably the praetor or someone there reported what I was doing there and then they took me and sent me to the frontline.

Aristina Săileanu was from Târgu Lăpuș, a locality in Northern Transylvania, annexed by Hungary after the Arbitration of Vienna on August 30, 1940. She remembered in 1997 how her father saved a family of Jews whom he hid in a hut in forest.

We had a farm in Râoaia, 14 kilometers from the commune of Lăpusul Românesc. And my father had a household there. We had everything we needed. Being such an isolated place, of course my father thought of doing a good deed, because my father did it out of love for his neighbor. My father then sent me out on the night of April 15 to 16, with a former servant. I took the children out of the house and went to Râoaia to our household, where father was waiting for us. He took them, took them to the forest, made them a hut, set them up there. It was very dangerous, because if the Germans caught us they would simply execute us.

Gheorghe Moldovan from Blaj said that in 1997 he had taken food, together with other young people of his age, to the Jews in the camp on the Perşani-Lădeni-Braşov road. What did the association in which he was active propose regarding the Jews?

First of all, it was saving them from deportation. In other parts of the country they were rounded up and taken behind the frontline. From here, from Blaj, they were sent to labor camps, not extermination camps. But for all the Jews of Northern Transylvania, there was already the question of saving them from going to the extermination camps at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Clandestine border crossings were being arranged, I met that citizen who was here many times ,and who thanked me personally. I’m proud that, from the descriptions I read, it looked like he was Raoul Wallenberg himself. He was a tall man, an extraordinary man and very brave.

Sonia Palty, in 2001, remembered the agronomist Vasilescu, a man who paid with his life after he was reported to have helped the Jews.

This Vasilescu was, I can say, the only man. Only those who went out to work were supposed to receive food, and in those winter days very few went out to work, because most of them were sick: flu, diarrhea, rheumatism. Then, Vasilescu, being the month of December, meaning we were approaching Christmas, decided to give food to everyone in the camp, that is, to the children, and to the women and the old people who had not gone out to work. The next day we were all gathered and we were told that in an hour we should all be ready with our luggage, they were taking us to the train station, and from there we were leaving to the Bug river, to Bogdanovka. Lieutenant Capeleanu came and started hitting us with his horse crop left and right. When he raised the crop for us to move on, the farm manager Vasilescu grabbed his hand and said: ‘You’ve beaten them enough, leave them the hell alone, you won’t have to deal with them anymore!’ Capeleanu wrote an informative note in which he said that Vasilescu had been in favor of the group of Jews, that he had helped them, and that he had given them food, and the agronomist Vasilescu was sent to Don’s Bend, and he never returned.

Some Romanians did acts of real humanism in extreme times for the Jews, such as the Second World War. And the title of Righteous Among the Nations for some of them represents an act of gratitude on the part of the Jewish people.

Totalitarian regimes and their people, leaders and ordinary members of the communist and fascist parties, hysterically shouted to the whole world the suffering and persecutions they were allegedly subjected to by the democratic regime. But when they came to hold power in the state, the totalitarian parties used their mythological past to really instill terror in society. The grand master of terror and lies was undoubtedly the communist party regime. It built mythological fortresses around the suffering of its own leaders and members, the public representation being open museums in the penitentiaries where they had been incarcerated for the crime of terrorism.

In Romania, Doftana prison was the place used to show the public how hard it had been for the Communists. Located in the sub-Carpathian area approximately 120 kilometers north of Bucharest, the prison was opened in 1895. Although it is known as the communist prison or the Romanian Bastille, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Horia Sima, the two heads of the Iron Guard, were also imprisoned there. Famous names of the communist party passed through Doftana, from the first generation including Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej or the Stalin of Romania, Chivu Stoica, Alexandru Moghioroș, Gheorghe Apostol, but also from the second generation such as Nicolae Ceaușescu and Grigore Preoteasa.

The adventure of the Doftana penitentiary as a museum began in 1949. After the installation of the pro-Soviet government led by Petru Groza on March 6, 1945, through the fist of the Soviet emissary Andrei Vâsinski shown in the office of King Mihai I, the executive proceeded to change Romania. For the reconstruction of the prison-museum Doftana, very large sums of money were allocated for that time of great shortages after the war. The Association of Former Anti-Fascist Political Prisoners from Romania, a branch of the International Federation of Former Political Prisoners Victims of Fascism, and the Romanian Association for Relations with the Soviet Union were directly involved in the project. Cristian Vasile is a historian at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy and studies the way in which the communist regime propagandistically turned the history of Romania after 1945 into a museum exhibit.

Track: There comes November 10th, 1940, and the Doftana penitentiary is felled to the ground. Walls are falling down and remain there until 1948. The communists rebuilt that museum almost from scratch, as they wanted it to be, not as it really looked like before. They invested millions there, there are accounting books showing how much money was invested there.

Doftana was the living history of Romanian communism and was proposing Romanian society a chaning past, to match the future. Cristian Vasile:

“Until 1965, they would talk a lot about the cell of comrade Gheorghe-Gheorghiu Dej. After 1965, they started talking about the cell of comrade Ceausescu. Was Doftana the real national history museum? The comparison with the French Revolution became more visible starting with March 1948, when the announcement was made that Doftana was to become a national museum, as the former prison was dubbed the Bastille of Romanian reaction. It was not about establishing a national history museum, but turning into a national museum a museum that spoke of the repression that the communists had been subject to. Moreover, at least at subliminal level, the message was conveyed that in fact the future Doftana museum or the future party museum, with Doftana as one of if branches, was the real national history museum. In time, the idea was put on the back burner, then abandoned.

Doftana had become a place of secular pilgrimage for the communist regime. Students and young people would be taken there, and the ceremonies for the newly registered pioneers were also organized at the former penitentiary. The cult of Doftana had also reached musical art, the choral works “Im watching from Doftana and the symphonic poem The Fall of Doftana by Alfred Mendelsohn from 1950 being emblematic in this regard. The most popular figure from Doftana was Ilie Pintilie, dead in the earthquake of 1940, turned into a museum figure because he was ethnically Romanian and because he had been a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Moreover, the name of Ilie Pintilie was also given to a boulevard. Cristian Vasile says that the rivalries, political battles and settlement of accounts within the PCR weighed enormously in the museum’s representation of the communists imprisoned there. For example, the figures of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Vasile Luca, Ana Pauker, opponents of the leader Dej, were exhibited at Doftana, then removed.

“They didnt even consider Stefan Foris. Patrascanu is not just considered for the first exhibition, he is a member of the Central Committee of that Anti-fascist Federation, the fourth after Dej, Teoharie Georgescu, Luca and Patrascanu. In 1948, though, Patrascanu is expelled from the communist community and any legend about him removed. Ana Pauker too is excluded in 1952, followed by Luca and then Teohari Georgescu.

The museum-prison of Doftana disappeared in 1990. Besides the scarcity of money for such a project, he lie couldnt live forever.

The presence of Jews in Romanian space is a very old one, they are attested sporadically as far back as the Roman conquest of Dacia. They become visible from the 14th century onward, when the oldest chancellery documents of the Romanian Principalities date to. In the 19th century, when nationalism appeared and developed everywhere in the world, Zionism was also born with an important presence in Romania where, according to the 1930 census, about 730,000 Jews lived, about 4% of the total population. But the appearance of Fascism and anti-Semitism in Romania, a local manifestation of a European trend, made many Jews choose to go to Palestine, which was under a British mandate since the end of the First World War.

Each of those who left had a unique destiny, each destiny is a story. In 1995, the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation Oral History Center interviewed Samuel Stein, and thus we learned his story while staying in the territory of Palestine, the choice for many Jewish people, and his return to Romania. Like any energetic young man, Stein adhered to radical life concepts and political views. He joined the communist youth out of conviction, and was arrested for communist activity in 1935 and imprisoned in the Doftana penitentiary until 1936. At the time of the interview, in 1995, he remembered characters we read about in history books today, such as the jurist and politician Wilhelm Filderman, the leader of the Jewish community in Romania, and Iuliu Maniu, the president of the National Peasant Party.

I didn’t have a very good opinion of Filderman, because he was with the Liberals, and the Jewish party of Transylvania, which also included Jews from Bucovina, Bessarabia, some from the Old Kingdom, who were more connected to the National Peasant Party. Most of the Jews, especially from Transylvania and the allied provinces, were on the side of the National Peasant Party, they were with the Jewish party, which was a Zionist party. I was not a Zionist, I was a communist. What turned us against Maniu and the National Peasant Party was his pact with the Legionnaires, which greatly elevated the Legionnaires. Until then, they were vagabonds, scoundrels, that’s how everyone knew them, and I’m not speaking as a Jew, I’m speaking as the Romanians saw them.

Samuel Stein was a Jew fully integrated into Romanian society, as were the overwhelming majority of Jews who became Romanian citizens after 1918.

I had many Romanian friends, as I behaved in the army as well, through my way of acting, in order to get somewhere in the army, and I was friends with everyone. Even a Legionnaire came to me, after a while, to hide his homemade cakes, because he was afraid that the others, his own comrades, would steal them. So he came to the jidan Stein to help him. And I helped him. Many times we talked with him about his Legionary convictions, but he said he had no way out, that if he did, they would kill him.

In 1939, Stein made the decision to go to Palestine. Embarked in the port of Constanța, together with 780 other Jews, on a cattle transport ship , he was looking for a new homeland. In the Dodecanese archipelago, not far from the island of Rhodes, the 780 Jewish passengers were evacuated due to a fire on board. Embarking on another ship sent by a Zionist organization, they finally arrived in Palestine. This is where Stein’s second life begins. He joined the Communist Party, but his refusal to join the army causes the party to exclude him. He chose to work for a year in Kibbutz Ramat Rahel near Jerusalem.

I think the kibbutz was 100 dunams (about 10 hectares), I don’t remember how many people were there. Some worked in the city in Jerusalem, some were farmers there in the kibbutz, others went to the Dead Sea. I mean, this integration was done gradually: you stayed there for about two weeks, at the Dead Sea, first you worked unloading and loading vessels from the Dead Sea and loading some trucks that took the loads to Jerusalem. Other times you also worked as a kind of porter at the train station in Jerusalem. We were carrying 100-kilogram bags on our backs.

Asked about Jewish relations with Arabs, Samuel Stein has no personal memories of tension or violence.

One day I left Ramat Rachel for Jerusalem, where I had two relatives. I went to my relatives and then I walked home. When they found out that I went home on foot to Ramat Rahel, they said to me: ‘You dolt, what have you done? The Arabs could have killed you on the way.’ I, myself, had no real problem. I even remember, at one point, I was on duty somewhere and an Arab came to me and said that he too would like to become a Jew. To which I replied that I was not qualified for such things, and sent him on his way.

The Second World War, however, made him enlist in the Jewish brigade in the British army, and participated in the battles in North Africa, southern Italy, France, and Belgium. After the war, in 1947, Samuel Stein made a choice of life again: he would return to Romania.