Vasile Grunea

This is a very good photo, I look more handsome on it than I am in reality. The following is written on the back of the photo: 'With love to everybody from Laszlo (Ocsi), 26th November 1946'. Everybody called me Ocsi [Laddie] back then. But interestingly, it's not my handwriting on the photo, but my mother's. I was born on 25th November, so they have probably made several copies of this photo on the occasion of my birthday and I must have sent them to many acquaintances and relatives. I was 20 years old then. I graduated from secondary school in 1945, and went to the Medical Faculty in Marosvasarhely in 1946 and 1947, but I didn't like it there, so I transferred to the Faculty of History in Kolozsvar. I started journalism in 1948 and I've been doing it ever since. I was still a student when I started writing articles on the subject of youth for the local paper of Brasso, the Drum Nou [New Way]. In Kolozsvar I met a quite well-known poet, Toma Gheorghe Maiorescu, who was also Jewish. He came to Kolozsvar from Resita - now he lives in Bucharest - and wrote several books. He worked for the Lupta Ardealului [Fight of Transylvania], a communist daily, which was at first the paper of the Kolozs county branch of the Party and later became the local daily. There was no other Romanian daily at the time. Maiorescu recommended me and the editor-in-chief invited me to work for them. I started writing for them and I was invited to join the editorial staff in 1948 and worked there until 1952. I directed the cultural part of the paper, that is, the publishing of book reviews, theatrical reviews and literature. But it was a daily, the main task of which was the propagation of the political line of the Party. I was still a university student at that time. I was sent to a higher school of journalism in Bucharest at the end of 1949 and in 1950. The school lasted for about three quarters of a year; it was an express school, where we had ten hours of lectures and seminars a day. After the school I went back to the Lupta Ardealului and worked there as the editorial secretary-general. My name change coincided with journalism. At the beginning Vasile Grunea was a journalistic pseudonym, and later it became my official name as well, but I cannot say that I was forced to do so by anybody because it simply wouldn't be true. I had used the name Laszlo Gruber until then and I was even called Ocsi [Laddie] in my childhood. Those who know me from that time call me Ocsi even today. I have no idea why I chose the name Grunea and not another name.

Photos from this interviewee