2009 Nobel Prize: Herta Muller

Ms. Herta Muller, from Timisoara, wins the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

Her texts reflect her own biography and the complex situations in totalitarian systems and the human decay and degeneration: "This is not a topic that I chose, but rather one that my life has chosen for me. I don't have that freedom of choice. I cannot say: 'I want to write about that thing, or about that other thing.' I am bound to write about what concerns me and about the things that won't leave me in peace."

Being an advocate for the respect of cultures, Ms. Muller says: "In Timisoara [the main city in Banat] one can hear on the street all kinds of languages: Romanian, German, Hungarian, Serbian, Romany -- that's how it used to be and that's how it should be. Nobody should hide their culture."

Personally, I admire Ms. Herta Muller for her decency, just and noble attitude to life and also for her talent as an international writer.

The Silent Force

They were betrayed. And they were caught. The mountains had covered them for long but it hadn't been enough.
"The Americans" never came, as hoped, and the communist regime enforced its unifying destruction... But the year 1989 brought about the much needed change.

The force of the resisting spirit cuts through time. They have won!

Whenever I think of the resistance groups of brave men and women, Toma Arnautoiu is among the first leading figures who speaks to my mind and heart and whenever I see his daughter, which is a miracle in itself, I cannot help feeling the silent force of the look in their eyes - the force of justice and truth...

The BBC reveals in an article titled "Romania Securitate legacy 20 years after revolution" the haunting effects of a regime that lasted for too long.

The Pain Memorial - "History Which Is Not Taught At School"

The first and the second DVD of the collection of interviews, reports and research conducted by Mrs. Lucia Hossu Longin and Mr. Dan Necsulea under the already famous title "The Pain Memorial" focuses on the state of Bucovina region, in the north of Romania, immediately after World War II and the Soviet destruction of the villages and of the people there - ready to implement the new communist regime. Heavily documented, the dvd tells the story of how the local fighters confronted the oppressors, hiding in the mountains and hoping for American aid to come to set the country free. Leaders like Dumitru Craciun, Dr. Gheorghe Vasilache, Constantin Cenusa, Vasile Motrescu - "the last fighter in Bucovina, caught due to betrayal" - are the people who kept the faith and hope of a whole country alive.
In Fagaras region, resistance against communist crimes and terror was possible thanks to "the Boys in the Mountains" - called like this because of their very young age. Ion Gavrila Ogoranu, Ion Buta, and many students and a few teachers at Radu Negru Highschool in the town of Fagaras "placed freedom above their lives in full terror" (Octavian Paler). The Soviets and the new local communists acted with a view to systematically destroy families, by turning one against the other and 'rewarding' the traitors, and through 'collectivization' they confiscated every possession and property in order to make people subject and dependent on the communist state. These young boys, with love of God and of the country, could not accept this "Soviet colonization" (Octavian Paler).
Along with students, writers and journalists had to suffer the same torture and terror. Between 1945 and 1948, 8,500 literary works on identity are forbidden from publishing. The poet Radu Gyr is sentenced to prison for his famous poem - "Stand Up George, Stand Up John" - for 20 years...

Sighet Memorial - The Form of Justice.

The former political prison in Sighet turned, after the Revolution of 1989, into The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance. The Council of Europe designated the Sighet Memorial one of the main memorial sites of the continent, alongside the Auschwitz Museum and the Peace Memorial in Normandy.
The amazing work of a handful of specially dedicated people keeps the memory of this country and continent alive - the memory of who we are, of our own identity.
Without the Sighet Memorial my life as a simple citizen inhabiting Europe and this world would lack an essential dimension...

Pitesti: the Brainwash 'Re-education'

Beyond Torture: The Gulag of Pitesti is a documentary on a terrifying truth - in 1949, Soviet activists started to take young people from universities or high-schools and send them to a 're-education' prison in the city of Pitesti to turn them into communist thinkers... Father George Calciu says: "Many of us died, many of us got mad, but in some of us the good triunphed...They tried to destroy our souls." But he and a few others survived to tell the truth and even forgive their opressors.
This DVD contains impressive paintings by the young artist Sorin Feraru.
In my opinion, a continent, a world who do not know these past events is doomed to repeat them - in one way or another...