Selected text
I myself didn’t have serious problems with the system because I was a Jew, but I had one problem with the Securitate once. It was an incident that can be considered both funny and tragic, that involved my stepson, Alexandru and me, back then in 1979. He is now married and has three daughters. When he was in high school, he had a class about the Iron Guard system that existed in Romania. I had at home the book written by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu [17], Carticica Sefului de Cuib [18]. It was put away in a drawer where I thought nobody would find it. But he did and he took it and showed it to his teacher. She announced it to the Securitate. So one day I received a phone call from a colonel, who invited me to pay a visit to them that day at their headquarters and to bring along all other Iron Guard books I might have. My wife was pregnant with our son Paul. I didn’t tell her anything, but I told Alexandru to let her know if I wasn’t back by 8 o’clock.
When I got there, the colonel took me to a cell, the last one in a row of cells, where a civilian waited for me. We shook hands and he invited me to sit down. Then he immediately lit a strong light right in my eyes. I said: ‘Comrade, I don’t know what your name is, because from your mumbling I couldn’t make it out, but if you don’t put that light out, I’m not uttering one word, and you can do what you want to me.’ He put the light out. He was a colonel who had come all the way from Bucharest to investigate whether my son, who was 17, was organizing an Iron Guard movement. I saw red. ‘How can you, idiot colonel, imagine that a Jew could ever organize an Iron Guard movement?!! Go to hell!’ That was the last thing I said, I would say no more. So we went to see the general, who laughed at the whole affair and let me go.
When I got there, the colonel took me to a cell, the last one in a row of cells, where a civilian waited for me. We shook hands and he invited me to sit down. Then he immediately lit a strong light right in my eyes. I said: ‘Comrade, I don’t know what your name is, because from your mumbling I couldn’t make it out, but if you don’t put that light out, I’m not uttering one word, and you can do what you want to me.’ He put the light out. He was a colonel who had come all the way from Bucharest to investigate whether my son, who was 17, was organizing an Iron Guard movement. I saw red. ‘How can you, idiot colonel, imagine that a Jew could ever organize an Iron Guard movement?!! Go to hell!’ That was the last thing I said, I would say no more. So we went to see the general, who laughed at the whole affair and let me go.
Period
Year
1979
Location
Brasov
Romania
Interview
Isac Tinichigiu