At the time, the pegged
exchange rate was 12 lei to a dollar, making the proletariat’s wage of $58 per
month go up to $67. What could we buy with this money? Sixty-seven dollars per
month bought us subsidized teacup-sized concrete block apartments, occasional
heat, some electricity, daily scheduled hot or cold water, subsidized weekly
bus fares, one pair of shoes per year, one outfit, and enough food to keep us
from starving to death. Most of us were underweight and malnourished, in dire
need of vitamins which were impossible to find on the empty pharmacy shelves.
“To each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs,” said Karl Marx’s popular slogan, “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach
seinen Bedürfnissen. “
Ceausescu
and his wife and the communist party elites had been the deciders of our needs
since March 22, 1965 until December 25, 1989.
The year 1989 was a
painful, bittersweet period in my life and in the history of my people. It was
a year filled with death, life, grief, anguish, freedom, physical pain, and the
struggle for power.
My father passed away on
May 12 in excruciating pain, denied drugs, IV nourishment, and any kind of medical
treatment, a 60-pound shadow of his former self. My Dad was a sturdy and
healthy 200 pound man full of life and joie de vivre.
An outspoken critic of the
president, Dad was always detained at his place of employment for his views,
his lack of membership in the communist party, and his not-so-secret desire to
have another president replace Ceausescu in his lifetime.
Dad had just turned 61
when he was beaten one last time and languished three weeks before his death in
a hospital ward, tended by his loving sister who kept him alive with teaspoons
of water and broth. My Dad was one of thousands of victims, killed by
communists in their quest for power and control. His honesty, his integrity,
his freedom of speech, and his desire to be free sentenced him to an early
demise.
Dad passed away one day
before my doctoral graduation. He was so proud that his only child could
accomplish something he had dreamed of – the opportunity to excel in a free
country. I dedicated my degree to my Dad, to his unwavering support for my
education. My mortarboard read “4 Dad” but it was little consolation for the
visceral pain and inconsolable loss I felt.
President George Bush Sr.
handed me my diploma, shook my hand, and later wrote a very touching letter
about my father. It was a bittersweet accomplishment. While I knew my Dad was
in Heaven, smiling upon my shoulders with every ray of sunshine, I was angry
that an innocent, sweet man was taken from this Earth before his time by the
evil forces of communism.
Daddy had died holding a crumpled
photograph of me and his two granddaughters in our finest Easter dresses. It was
the only possession he was allowed to keep.
Dad’s nemesis did not live
much longer. Ceausescu and his Harpy wife Elena were sentenced to death and
executed on Christmas 1989, ending their 24 year reign of terror. It was the
first time during the communist regime that Christmas carolers and the mid-night
Christmas service were televised from the Patriarch’s Cathedral. The Orthodox Christians
could finally worship freely without fear of reprisals.
Caught in the town of
Tirgoviste while trying to flee by helicopter, the husband and wife team who
had terrorized an entire nation for 24 years, bringing its people to their
knees and to utter desperation, were now facing a military tribunal tasked with
judging and sentencing them.
Refusing to answer
questions based on the Constitution that he wrote, the dictator Nicolae
repeated that he would only answer to the Grand National Assembly, not to the
assembled military court. After a speedy, improvised, and bizarre trial that
lasted one hour, during which the couple refused to cooperate, did not answer most
questions, or gave canned propaganda answers, they were sentenced to death and
their wealth confiscated.
The mercenaries Ceausescu
had hired shot and killed, by some estimates, thousands of innocent Romanians
who had gathered to protest peacefully the oppressive communist regime at the
palace in Bucharest. The secret police executed many innocents in surprise
raids, including hospitals. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1665&dat=19891222&id=eEgaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1iQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4888,6167293
The Romanian Army finally had
had enough and joined civilians to fight against the communist tyranny.
“Why did you starve the people
to death?” “I will not answer that question,” the deposed President said.
How can you make two narcissists,
blinded by communist ideology, by absolute power and control, who made
themselves wealthy beyond anybody’s imagination at the expense of the misery of
the proletariat they so pretended to care about, understand the crimes they’ve
committed against the Romanian people? As the prosecution said, it was “genocide
through famine, lack of heat, lack of light, but the worst crime of all, the
crime of imprisoning the Romanian spirit.”
I wished my Dad had lived
to witness the joy the Romanian people experienced when the dictator was
finally executed. Watching a soldier tie the wrists of the humiliated couple
with plain rope and their outrage and claim that he cannot do that to “the
Mother and Father of the Country” was vindication for the many times my Dad had
suffered indignities, beatings, and arrests for his political views.
One individual commented
that the Romanian people should have been allowed to be part of the trial and of
the final punishment in the streets. But everyone was eager to get rid of the
scourge of communism and of those who forced such dehumanizing ideology on an
entire nation.
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