Membership card in the Association of the Romanian Antifascists

This is my membership card, no.248 issued by the Association of the Romanian Antifascists, affiliated to the International Resistance Federation, on the name Gavril Marcuson, on 1st February 1995. My name is Gavril Marcuson [the initial name, Marcussohn, was shortened to Marcuson in 1968]. I was born in Bucharest, on 28th October 1913. I graduated from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bucharest in 1935. I was a researcher at the Communist Party History Institute. I had some books and articles published. I retired while I was working for the Scientific and Encyclopedic Publishing House, in 1973. When the Communists came to power, I was glad, because we had got rid of Hitler. Our only choices were Hitler and Stalin - there was no third option, and this is why I believe that thinking in black-and-white was not only permissible, but also unavoidable. I saw in the Soviet Union not the Good, but an evil that was lesser than Hitler's Germany. There are many things that we found out after 23rd August 1944, and some are still to be found out. How did 6 million Jews disappear? They simply evaporated? Most of the people don't know that the Jews are the only people in the world with fewer members than before the war. They haven't managed to compensate for the 6 million victims through population growth. How did the 3 million Polish Jews disappear? There are now in Poland fewer Jews than in Romania? This was the largest murder in history! Never have the peoples known at any other time in history such an industry of assassinations! In 1949 or so, I went to Poland and [East] Germany. We were four Romanians sent [Ed. note: by the Romanian State, in an official exchange with Poland and East Germany] to spend our vacations. Poles and Germans came in our place, to spend their vacations in Romania. On that occasion, I traveled across Poland, from one end to the other, and I visited a lot of towns and villages; and this is what I did in East Germany too. Warsaw was all in ruins as far as the eye could see. One couldn't tell where the streets used to be. They couldn't find a single house that was standing in order to accommodate us. Do you know where we stayed? Warsaw is crossed by the Vistula River. There was a small ship lying at anchor - it was probably destined for short cruises. Well, we slept in the cabins of that ship. They couldn't find a room in all Warsaw. And when I say ruins, I mean that there was hardly a wall standing here and there. Things looked the same in Berlin. We were accommodated in a suburban commune, 10-12 kilometers away from the city. It had a few houses intact, and we also got a car. I didn't see one single man my age in Poland and Germany - I was in my thirties. There were only women, children and elderly people. There weren't any men. Hitler made the Germans who were my age disappear more than he had done with the Jews. I lived in Poland for a month, but I never saw a man my age. I saw one in Germany, but he was legless - he had lost his legs on the front. Let me tell you about the women's attitude towards us, the men. The eyes of the Polish and German women begged for a little attention. Their behavior was decorous though. Few of them were aggressive and put their arms around our neck. Most of them were happy if we looked at them and said something to them.