Tag #135097 - Interview #101451 (Eva Gora Moldovan )

I did have to participate in marches whenever Ceausescu [11] came to Brasov, and in party meetings, because I was a member and I couldn’t get out of it. We were told that we had to go at all costs, and since I was – and still am – the kind of person who did what she was told she had to do, I went marching. It was something unbelievable in the 1960s! Everybody participating had to crowd in the street where Ceausescu would go, and of course he had to see lots of people saluting him and so on. And then the organizers realized that he wouldn’t come this way, but some other, and everybody had to run to that other street, on foot, to meet him. There were no buses in the street when it was known that his car would pass. After we did this a few times, I actually felt like fainting from exhaustion, and I wasn’t old! And I was afraid to just go home; I didn’t want to get into trouble. I couldn’t have cared less when his car passed by, I was just happy it was over and that I could go home. People talked against the government, but only at home, or with friends, where they knew they were safe: of course it was forbidden, but the jokes about Ceausescu were very popular all the same! I listened to Radio Free Europe [12] all the time it broadcast, at home. It was a necessity for me and my husband.