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Ana Bechi, The Roma children appreciate congratulations
Anca Bechi has been a teacher for 16 years at the gymnasium school in Ormeniș (Brașov County, Romania), where there is a Romanian-speaking community. Most teachers who teach Romanian complain about some discrimination. They were hardly accepted in the school community in which they work. Their motivation comes precisely from their non-acceptance in that group. The children from the school in Ormeniș won prizes at the Romanian language olympiads. They returned to the village with their prizes and were not congratulated for their merits at school. They were proud of their success, they expected to be highlighted, for these children who come from a very poor community, praise means a lot. No one praised them. Only after the teacher Anca Bechi was awarded by the President of Romania for the results of her students came the congratulations. For children, participating in the Olympics means traveling to the city, where they have never been before. This work motivates them, they work to reach the selected ones. Sometimes on trips they have to be taught to eat, they are not very used to cooked food. In very poor communities, the priority is the today-day and the todays worries. This is the result of many centuries of slavery. Some of the Roma lost their language, due to the desire of successive generations to hide the fact that they are Roma, they felt more comfortable if they were not identified in this way. |
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Doru Dima, The Roma are proud
Doru Dima is a sociologist. He enrolled himself in a state college to prove to himself that he can do that. The Roma are proud. There are a lot of prejudices that they face and that they have to expose as prejudices. For this reason, Doru Dima has been very attentive since the student to how he looks, how he dresses, how he speaks. His grandfather was a child merchant and went to primary school in Germany. There the German children laughed at him, telling him that he looked like tobacco. But the family returned with some wealth to Romania and they built two big houses in Ormeniș. They lost their wealth when the communists came to power and, because they did not have documents for the land and forest they bought, they did not receive them back after 1990. The Roma generally rely on trust in the fairs they do, but the most who sold them the land was not a Roma. Grandpa supported Doru to learn, but they had different opinions about marriage. Traditionally, Roma marry very young, Doru did not want to do that. Many of the Roma in Ormeniș are neo-Protestants, there they are seen as equals. The fact that I go to a church other than the Hungarians in the village is reassuring for everyone. There is discrimination, from education to health. There are a lot of Roma children who drop out of school. When a Roma goes to the doctor, he is reluctantly caught and kept at a distance. In interethnic marriages, the non-Roma husband is rejected by his. No weddings are held, young people leave home together to force the community to accept their connection. This is also the case with many Roma couples, there are still many teenage mothers. The school could help change all these mentalities and practices. |
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Laura Leluțiu, Greek Catholic priest Aurel Leluțiu was persecuted for his beliefs
Aurel Leluțiu was a teacher and a Greek Catholic priest with a double doctorate obtained in Rome. The Romanian Church United with Rome, a Greek Catholic church, is a religious institution established on October 7, 1698 by the union manifesto signed by the Orthodox Metropolitan Anastasie Anghel and 38 archpriests from Transylvania. In March 1936 the apostolic nuncio, the permanent representative of the Holy See in Bucharest, Valerio Valeri, asked all united bishops to convey the anti-communist message of Pope Pius XII and the result was the publication of anti-communist editorials in the church press. Naturally, the ban on the United Roman Church with Rome followed, which took place in 1948, in accordance with orders from the Kremlin. From that moment on, an ordeal began for hundreds and hundreds of priests who refused to convert to Orthodoxy and who continued to serve underground. They were arrested, tortured and many ended up in communist prisons. And those who escaped with their lives were constantly pursued by the Security. Father Aurel Leluțiu and the Greek Catholic bishops drafted memoirs and reports addressed to the country's government and the Holy See. They drafted them in the hope of a dialogue with the state authorities for the right to existence of the Greek Catholic Church. Father Aurel Leluțiu trial began on December 10-17, 1951 at the Military Tribunal in Bucharest, which was one of the most publicized trials. It was called the Vatican Spy Trial in Romania. Of course, the priest Aurel Leluțiu was also brought to this trial, who later went through the prisons from Sighet and Jilava, Râmnicu Sărat, Pitești, Gherla. But he remained steadfast in his faith. Then he settled in Blaj, where he celebrated the Holy Mass daily, with the participation of a large number of believers and of course he was also the clergyman of a large number of families of intellectuals. |
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Elena Helerea, Broken destinies. Saxon’s deportation
The document presents the drama of the Saxon population living in Romania, beginning with the 23rd of August 1944, when Romania left the Axis allies and joined those of the United Nations. This fact meant not only a change from a military point of view by supporting the Soviet offensive on Germany, but also a change in policy in line with the interest of new allies, especially the soviet ones. Among these interests of the USSR towards Romania, some regarded the ethnic group of Germans living in Romania (the Saxons) considering them as well responsible for the outbreak of war. On the 12 of September 1944 an armistice agreement with the Allied camp, especially with the Soviet Union was signed. On this occasion, the new Romanian authorities began a campaign to prepare for the mobilization of ethnic Germans in Romania for a so-called work of rebuilding the USSR. In December 1944, several orders were issued with instructions for drawing up nominal tables with ethnic Germans, specifying the age and each category of workers. Between the 10th and the 20th of January 1945, all German residents were required to mobilize for work, fit for work, regardless of their citizenship. This was to be done under the leadership of representatives of the Soviet army. Around 69 000 Saxons were mobilized for work they were deported in labor camps located mostly in the Caucasus Mountains, in the Donbas, working in mine or in construction. Their return from the USSR begun at the end of 1945, being repatriated in general those who were unfit for work, being very ill. The return continued until 1954. Testimonies on the atrocities suffered by deported people are presented in this document. |
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Ovidiu Savu, Postcards from Gulag
The testimony of Ovidiu Savu is about two Saxon brothers, Andreas and Marta Gross from Rotbav village, Brașov county, who were deported in the USSR after 1945. As for the most of deported people, their only guilt was for being born as ethnic Germans. The policy of Stalin and implicitly of the USSR towards the German ethnic groups was to blame all of them for collaborating with the Nazis, which obviously couldn’t be true. There were some ethnic Germans who were part of the SS structures and a far-right party, but this does not mean that all the Germans are to be punished. The two brothers we are talking about managed to send from the labor camps of USSR more than 30 postcards. Reading them we may only guess the drama they went through considering that they were written under the soviet censorship. Their pain, their nostalgia for freedom, their worries about the beloved ones left at home are thoughts torn from the lines of the postcards. The two Gross brothers are just two cases of the tens of thousands of destinies of people who despite their innocence suffered for years, being imprisoned in labor camps, only part of them succeeding to return back home. |
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Dan Ranf, The story of a Romanian in Soviet Bukovina
This story is about Cîhmara Ioan, born on the 5th of September 1929 in Ceahor, near Cernăuți, Bukovina. In 1940 as consequence of the Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact, signed in 1939, Romania lost Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. One important event for understanding the meant of our character’s national feeling was joining the German army after the act of the 23rd of August 1944, when Romania left the Axis allies and joined those of the United Nations. Together with the German army he reached Budapest. They arrived in Budapest on Margaret Island, where he realized how much he misses home and he complained about this to the German military. He realized that he did not want to go to Germany but to return to Romania. The German military helped him by sending him by truck to Arad and then he returned home. The question now was where his parents were. As it turned out, they took refuge from Strehaia to Șeica Mică and when the Soviets came after the 23rd of August 1944, they took refuge in the village of Petiș, a very isolated village. He found his parents just like in the Bible, walking about 15 kilometers through a deserted area. |