An Iron Curtain Breakaway: From Romania to America Part 2

By Maurice Nachtigal

Under the Romanian Ceausescu's totalitarian regime the author has decided to leave the country. After a year of struggle with Securitate, the secret police, he received a passport to travel to visit his family in France. There he accepted an offer for a teaching position in the United States. He came to United States and started a fight with the Securitate to be reunited with his family. An eighteen months separation ordeal followed. The bonding between him and his wife based on love and trust was their defense against the Securitate conniving to separate them. After winning this fight and being reunited these Memoirs relate how each family member has succeeded in spite of the extensive differences between their previous life and the New World. The author reaches the conclusion that the most important events of his life were marrying his wife and replacing the Iron Curtain with the Statue of Liberty. His life story could be a lesson from the struggle against a totalitarian regime to adaptation to a different world and the power of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503593763

Maurice Nachtigal

The author has published three books, two autobiographical and one about love. As he has reviewed his life in these books he was impressed how major goals were set up and fulfilled. He wondered what were the events that led to the development of his life pathway and that led him to probe an authority which he defines as destiny. It is remarkable how the idea of destiny gained presence in these three books reflecting its progress in this author’s mind and led him to investigate the potential role of destiny in his life. The results of this research are the subject of this book.

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Copyright © 2015 by Maurice Nachtigal.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2015912796

ISBN:                  Hardcover                         978-1-5035-9374-9

                            Softcover                           978-1-5035-9375-6

                            eBook                                978-1-5035-9376-3

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Rev. date: 08/10/2015

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Fight

New World

Why America?

Why Memories?

Chapter 1: A Breakaway Fight

The Tormentors

When A Refugee Is Not A Refugee

How To Punish A Defector

Chapter 2: Blackmail

The Background

Censorship

Political Influence

Blackmail Through Censorship

The Final Battle

American Visa

Family Reunion

Chapter 3: Sidonia, Our Star

Back To Romania

Conniving Securitate

Our Response

Doubts And Regrets

Anguish

Queues For Food

Keep Morale Up

A New Nest

American Embassy

The First Success

Love And Breakaway

America At Last

Buni

The American Dream

United

Chapter 4: Noël, The Computer Wizard

A Bright Student

Anxiety And Regrets

A Girlfriend

Education In America

A Failed Engagement

Professional Deeds

Flying

Family

Accomplishments

Chapter 5: Alina, The Family Promoter

School And Holidays

Missing Dad

Adapting To America

New Friends And Habits

Founding A Family

Achievements

Chapter 6: Maurice, The Troublemaker

A Fateful Decision

Refugee

Start A New Life

Ştefan

On My Own

Get Ready For Landing

Moral Support

Employment

Ecfmg

Tenure

Teaching And Service

Research And Grants

Citizenship

France

For Whom? Why?

My Soul Mate

Achievements

Chapter 7: Carmen And Alex, The Scientists

A Time To Leave

A Special Ambassador

The Graduate School

Family Relationships

A Story Of Fate

A Successful Career

Achievements

Chapter 8: New World

Differences

Language And Measurements

Finance And Shopping

Food

Housing

Education And Employment

Vacation And Weather

Travel

Socializing, Religion, Drugs

Friends And Guests

Entertainment And Sport

Chapter 9: Romania After The Iron Curtain

News From Romania

Going Back

Helping Young Romanians

Appointments And Meetings

Cluj Connection

Recovering Heirlooms

Repossessing Vingard Estate

The Sidonia Ciugudean Home

A Hazardous Flight

High School Graduation Anniversary

Medical School Graduation Anniversary

My Latest Visit

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During those eighteen months of separation, I had only one thing on my mind—to see my loved ones landing in New York. To reach this goal, I was writing letters almost daily and making phone calls asking for help. I managed to get assistance from organizations, such as HIAS and the Columbian Jewish community. Their support played an essential role in the release of my family, and we remain forever grateful to them.

I got assistance from United State lawmakers, senators, and representatives and Sidonia’s and my family, friends, and colleagues. The list of these individuals included senators Ernest Hollings, Henry Jackson, Edward Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, and John Tower; representatives Ron Paul and Floyd Spence; Rabbi Edward Kandel; Ştefan Mironescu and his wife, Donna; Nicolae Ciobanu; James Caulfield; Joseph Melnick; Fred Rapp; Ovidiu and Victoria Ciugudean; Titus and Emilia (Aunt Miluţa) Ciugudean; Maria Motz; Lewis and Judy Johnson; Jack and Glenda Brown; Tim Sullivan (USA); Nardi Horodniceanu (Horaud); Radu Crainic and his wife, Karin; Luc Montagnier; Mira and Vlad Pauker; Colette and Jackie Meyer-Moog (France); Mihai Zamfirescu; Uncle Oscar; Mariana and Paul Burtoiu; Andrei Vermont; Mrs. Millo; Ms. Eugenia Lungu (Romania); Jan and Ellen Walboomers; Hank and Toose Knollenberg (Netherlands); and Beno and Lily Zaidman (Israel). Each of these people played an important role in our family reunion; they are mentioned in this story, and their names and help will always be remembered with gratitude.

A major contribution to improve the language and the content of this book was brought by Mrs. Rita Kale; my daughter, Alina Kale, and her brother, Noël; and my friends Donald Aberfeld and Mihai Grecescu.

Sidonia was, from the beginning to the end, the central pillar of our struggle to break away from the Romanian communist regime and to build a new life in our adopted motherland. When we found out that it would take a long time to have the Romanian authorities release our children, we realized that one of us had to go back; there was nobody there to care of them for so long a time. The only option we had was for Sidonia to go back and provide this care, which she did. Sidonia’s unlimited fondness for our children and our unconditional love was the glue that kept us together and was our main line of resistance against the conniving Romanian authorities. Our children and I will never be able to express our gratitude enough for Sidonia’s sacrifice.

Sidonia’s memory as a brave fighter, a loving mother, and a unique wife deserves to stay forever in our family. Without her steadfast endurance, we wouldn’t have been able to leave behind the Iron Curtain. I dedicate this book to Sidonia, my adored wife and treasured soul mate.

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Fig. 1. These are the characters of this story. From left to right: Maurice, the troublemaker; Nicole, the elder granddaughter; Carmen and Alex, the scientists; Sidonia, our star; Noël, the computer wizard; Alina, the family promoter; Sydney, the younger granddaughter; Doug, Alina’s generous companion.

INTRODUCTION

The Fight

The first part of my life was recounted in An Iron Curtain Breakaway: From Romania to America Part I. It described where I was coming from, how I got to be who I am and why, and how I decided to break away from the Romanian communist regime. That part of my life ended when I landed in New York on July 31, 1980.

On that day, as I was walking down from my Pan Am flight from Brussels, Belgium, at the Kennedy airport in New York City, I knew I was entering into a new existence. In a way, it was like a delivery but a very incomplete one. As I paced the airport hallways and went through the U.S. Immigration and Custom offices, I was alone.

By the time I landed in New York, the breakaway from the communist regime in Romania was only partially accomplished. My beloved wife, Sidonia, and our son, Noël, and daughter, Alina, were still in the communist Romania, which in those days was under the reign of Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. I was out of the dictatorship confinement, but my very dear ones were still behind the Iron Curtain.

My new life in the New World had to start with a fight. The fight would be to get my dear ones out of the communist system to be reunited on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This was going to be an unequal fight against the Securitate, a powerful and brutal secret police, which was the strong arm of the communist regime. For them, we were a damaging example.

In one of her first letters, Sidonia said, In fact if you were not known by everyone in Bucharest, with that feat of yours, everyone knows you. We were not insignificant people in Bucharest, a city of over a million people. Sidonia and I had been employed in three of the most important medical institutions and the University of Bucharest, and my father, until he was disbarred by the communist authorities, had been considered the best lawyer in town. People who knew my family were aware that we decided to leave the communist paradise not because of sundry reasons but because we were unhappy with the regime and didn’t see any improvement in the future. We had a happy family life, and we were not adventurers.

A few months later, Sidonia wrote, In our institute about 15 in my situation gathered together and we do not know whether the Committee or the Institute is frustrated or wants to do an experience and decided to postpone it unendingly and therefore they don’t summon us to the Committee. Where my file is lying somewhere for five months, it is in the company of 15 more including Gregory’s that were filed after mine.

Sidonia was referring to the critical step in the process of obtaining a passport, which consisted of a meeting with a Communist Party committee. In our institute, there were fifteen individuals who applied for a passport to leave the country within a few months after Sidonia filled out her passport application. Like Sidonia, they were all waiting for this meeting. Apparently, the committee was overwhelmed by the number of applicants and, in order to slow down this demand for passports, decided to postpone meeting with them.

The question was whether we were responsible for starting the ball rolling. Sidonia knew only a couple of these applicants, so we don’t know if they were following our example. Nonetheless, to have so many requests in just a few months was very unusual and unexpected. For the Securitate, this must have been a nightmare. Obviously, our breakaway decision had been a political statement that didn’t pass unnoticed in our community. My defection had inflicted a black eye to the communist regime. They were not going to take it kindly.

For us, it took a while to make sense of the line of attack the Securitate was following to punish us. We were dealing with a ruthless regime that, in fact, was holding my family hostage and would do its best to crush us. We learned how they controlled our communication, the extent of their censorship. It was so blatant and relentless that I tried to use it to our advantage. We became aware of their scheming to destroy our family while pretending to follow a lawful and humane policy. We understood their ploy aimed to prevent me from claiming my status as a political refugee while putting pressure on Sidonia to split up with me and thus give up her demand to leave the country.

We also got wind of the fact that Ceauşescu’s dictatorship was keen to project a humane image in the United States. The Romanian regime had been awarded the most-favored-nation clause by the U.S. Congress and was profiting financially. This would be the weak spot I was going to hit to free my family. I would try to strike back at the Securitate by getting enough American political support and using their censorship to warn the communist dictatorship that I may go on a public manifestation to make our forced separation known to the world at large and thus unveil their pretended humane policy. It was my way of replying to their blackmail, with what they understood best, blackmail.

I would have to provide moral support to my loved ones behind the Iron Curtain. They were desperately asking for proof that I was not forgetting them. As Sidonia said in one of her letters, Please write us more regularly, weekly, even a little but we need to see that there is a connection, a thread between us, otherwise everything becomes hell for us. Kiss you with much love, Ţuţu. To maintain their morale and confidence, I wrote letters to each one of them.

This fight lasted eighteen months, with Sidonia and our children on one side of the Iron Curtain and me on the other side. This was a time of doubt and anxiety, regrets and hope, expression of love and trust. This was a time when Sidonia had to be a mom and a dad for our children, who wondered if they would ever get to have a dad again. She was also in charge of her old and sick father who was, as she said, like a flickering candle. Sidonia was going to take the brunt of what a vengeful and callous regime was willing to throw at us. She had to listen to what she called all the attacks against you, describing me as an ungrateful traitor and a deserting husband, all of this while facing the ordeal of being separated for an endless period.

In spite of all these stressful conditions, our children managed to perform first-rate at school; to continue having a normal life with friends and girlfriends, ice-skating, swimming, and going to camps; to celebrate Christmas and Passover; and to write me letters, sometimes with jokes. In the end, Sidonia managed to bring the whole crew of castaways safely to the New World. This was the day of our victory.

In our fight, there were four fighters: Sidonia, Alina, Noël, and me. I did not count Sidonia’s dad, who was eighty-six years of age, too old to be a combatant. The rest of us ranged from eleven years old, which is Alina, to fifty, which is Sidonia. I wanted to record the reaction of each of us from the time we were separated to the time when each one of us managed to realize his or her life in the New World.

Each one of us participated, with our individual capability to fight to fulfill our goals, in breaking away from the communist regime, from the Iron Curtain. Each one of us has adjusted in our own way to the new existence and reached our goals. There were distinct differences between the four of us, and from each one, there is a lesson to be learned. For none of us was this life experience easy.

Sidonia, with our children and her eighty-six-year-old father, landed at the Kennedy airport in New York on October 3, 1981, a day that will stay forever in our memory. This was the day when our fight had ended; our breakaway was complete. The Iron Curtain that we left behind lasted another eighteen years, and as I write our story, its effects are still felt by hundreds of millions of people. I have no doubt its consequences will endure for generations. We were ready to start a new life in a new world. Thanks to Providence and to all those kind people who helped us.

New World

The first letter that Sidonia addressed to me after I landed in the United States said, I wish you welcome, to have stepped with the right foot on American soil and God help us and our children, our loved ones, in this huge and hard turning point of our life to which we are committed and should go forward with the head up. Pray God to be just fine for all of us! We were fully aware that it was a unique turning point in our lives, and we needed and were asking for Providence’s help. We were breaking with our past and present, and we were looking at a future that was uncertain but hopefully better.

Once the breakaway battle was won, we realized that we were in a different world. Following our reunion in the United States, each one of us—the young ones and the not so young—had to build a new life in a world that was distinctly different from what we knew. When I started jotting down the differences between what had been our previous world and life experience and where we decided to rebuild our lives, it ended up being the largest chapter of this story.

I tried to depict some of the countless differences between what we knew from our life in Romania and what we found in the New World, to which we had to adjust. It turned out that almost everything that surrounded us was different from our previous life experience; many things were just totally new. In some ways, we were castaways of a sinking ship—the communist regime—which landed in a world totally unknown to us. We had to adjust to this new world and rebuild our lives from scratch.

When all is said and done, it is fascinating to learn how this breakaway has allowed each one of us to reach his or her goals. This is indeed a story of achievements for everyone who was involved in this breakaway. The most important achievement for each one of us was the fact that we managed to become a part of this new world that we chose to be our adopted motherland.

Now that we have been in this adopted motherland for over thirty years, I can safely say that we made the right decision when we chose this destination. I think the best proof of this is offered by one question: where are you from? In over thirty years since we settled down in the United States, Sidonia and I have been asked this question thousands of times, and I am not overstating. We were asked this question everywhere, from checking out at the grocery store to meeting people on mountain-hiking trails. Sidonia and I got used to this. We were astonished only by how fast the question would come. Sometimes it was triggered just by us saying hello or hi.

The merit of this question is that it has never been asked with a confrontational undertone; it was always the obvious expression of curiosity, sometimes surprise, and many times kindness and support. The curiosity was that of a cruise passenger who meets another passenger who is coming from somewhere and is interested to know something about him or her. The surprise was that of an American who is hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Rocky Mountains and there—in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of America—meets people who, by their accent, are from another part of the world. I have to say that, whenever we talked to those people, it was always with an expression of joy and friendliness; it was like these Americans were telling us, Glad you are here. There were a few times when we were actually told so.

Sidonia and I were hiking in Colorado, and that day, it was sort of rainy, so after a while, we returned to the parking lot. As we were sorting out our wet things, another couple came. We began chatting, starting from the perennial question, Where are you from? The man was a retired professor from Boulder, Colorado, and I was telling him that I was also teaching students, and my problem was that I don’t have the South Carolinian accent. He snapped back to me, You don’t want this accent. He was cheering me up.

I recall that not long ago, when I was paying at the grocery store where I often do my shopping, the woman at the cash register asked me the ubiquitous question. When I told her where I was from, she started telling me that one of her relatives had visited Romania recently with her church group. Another time, the young man who helped me take the cart with my groceries to my car asked the same question, and after my reply, he said, Cool. He knew some young people from Romania.

I am mentioning this question to emphasize the point that we were easily recognized as not being native to this new world that we decided to have as our adopted motherland. Still, we became, as an American acquaintance defined us, Americans with a foreign accent. The kindness and friendliness that surrounded us from the time I landed in America would have been unmatched anywhere else.

As we built our new life, we did our best to adjust to this new world. The degree of adjustment was directly related to age: the younger, the better. I have considered each of the castaways separately, and I have tried to assess what they have accomplished in this new world. The question that I tried to tackle was whether our struggle to break away from the Iron Curtain was worth our sacrifices and ordeal. The answer is I believe that coming to America was the best thing that happened in my life (except marrying Sidonia). I have no doubt that I am speaking for all of my family.

Why America?

One of the most pertinent questions that I could be asked is Why did you decide to come to the USA? After all, once we decided to leave the communist paradise, I could have stayed in France. My maternal grandmother had been French, and my mother and grandmother were there, resting in peace. In France, we had a large family that would have received us, as they always did, with open arms. Actually, I had an offer for a good position in France, and French is my second language after Romanian.

Like hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews who have settled down there, we could have gone to Israel. I am not even mentioning the option of joining my wealthy uncle Willy in Guadalajara, Mexico. Moreover, when I selected to come to the United States, this implied that I had to wait several months in France for the American visa and thus extend the separation from my family. We rejected all other options and stayed with one and only one: we wanted the United States. So why did I choose, when I defected from Romania, to come to America?

My fascination with the United States goes back to my childhood and grew up with me. I still remember my childhood encounter with the friendly American prisoners of war in August 1944, when they were freed from the prison camp that was just across the street from where I lived. I am still sorry I didn’t keep the addresses they wrote down for me, an eleven-year-old kid.

I still remember the first American movies I watched after the war and, in particular, Sun Valley Serenade, which I saw in 1945 or 1946 when I was about thirteen years old. In Romania, those were gloomy years, and life was sort of bleak and sad, and here, there were two hours of dance and music and happy people—something so bright that one could take home and feel better about life, knowing that, in spite of everything, there is hope.

Speaking of movies, I remember Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth, Citizen Kane with Orson Welles, Of Mice and Men, and Gone with the Wind, movies that I watched in Romania over the years. What these movies had in common was their concern for the human being, for human feelings, something that was missing in the world in which I was growing up. For me, this was America, each one in a different way, but each one was outstanding, and in each one of them, I could feel I was a part of it.

As a teenager and young adult, I discovered and loved American music. How many times did I dance to Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade or Caravan by Duke Ellington? How many times did I listen to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Can I forget Lionel Hampton and Louis Armstrong’s concerts that I attended with Sidonia?

This was what Sidonia wrote to Alina in September 1995: Friday evening we had tickets at Koger Center at 8:00 PM. We attended the Glenn Miller Orchestra and we liked it very much. I want to buy a CD with them. We remembered a lot of their best parts which I listened with pleasure when I was a student or so and Maurice remembered to have danced on those melodies. Sidonia was now in Columbia, South Carolina, and for us, this was America, and we enjoyed recalling our first encounter with it.

These were also my young years when I was reading a lot. I read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises; and Upton Sinclair with Lanny Budd, his hero. Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith and Lloyd C. Douglas’s Disputed Passage had a major impact on my decision to go into the medical profession because they were my heroes, my models.

In my professional life as a medical student, I used American textbooks. They were the best; Best and Taylor in physiology, Wintrobe in hematology, and Harrison in internal medicine were just a few of the authors of the books that were my basis for learning and practicing medicine. I am not even trying to touch upon my research, which was totally based on American publications.

When I decided to become a recognized name in my specialty, I published my first research paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In those years, it was one of the most prestigious journals in cancer research in the world. I paid a heavy price for doing it. I was compelled to leave the Oncology Institute and my position as head of the genetics laboratory because I didn’t put the name of the director on that paper. More than that, I had to leave behind Sidonia, who was my closest associate and that was, for both of us, a major blow. The gratification to have this paper published in this particular journal had to compensate for all those losses.

America for me was also President Kennedy, the man whose charisma had crossed the Iron Curtain and who symbolized, for those of us behind it, a better world. I still remember the day; I was in my apartment, and it was evening in Bucharest. There was a seven-hour difference from the east coast time; the Romanian radio brought the news of his assassination, and we felt as if time had stopped.

What can I say about watching President Nixon parading through Bucharest surrounded by enraptured crowds, thinking that, at last, the Americans were coming? I am sure he has never ever been received like that in any other place, including the United States.

What was probably the most compelling argument was that I had spent two years doing research in outstanding medical schools in the United States, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and Hershey Medical College in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I liked Hershey, and I would love to have spent my life there. Moreover, American scientists from these places became my friends, and I knew that I could count on their support. I was proven right.

When I decided to defect, my priority was to get my dear ones out of Romania. I was aware that the communist regime of Ceauşescu cherished projecting the somewhat maverick politics of the dictator to the world and particularly to the American political leadership. By doing that, he benefitted from the financial advantages that he was awarded every year by the Congress of the United States in exchange for a more liberal migration policy.

This situation implied that by being in the Unites States, if I could gather enough political support, I might be able to force the Romanian authorities to release my family. Although I will never know if this really worked, I have reasons to believe that this estimate was correct and that the American political pressure was a major factor that helped in the release of my loved ones.

Moreover, my thinking was that, being a refugee, my place was in America. Here, my family could share our history with those who, being refugees like us, have found the country and over time populated it. From the start, America has been the land of those who, like us, broke away from persecution and deprivation and landed here to build, from scratch, a better life. After all, this was the only country that had a Statue of Liberty to welcome you as you arrive at its gate.

Why Memories?

There are some important reasons for writing this part of our life story. First, I wanted to leave, for the next generations of my family, the testimony of who some of their ancestors were, where they came from, why and how they started their life in this new world. With the fast pace of technological progress, the gap between generations seems to be growing larger from one generation to the next. I hope that my story will serve as a bridge between generations. In a way, we humans are like plants; we have roots, and we need to know something about them. The question Where are you from? is really asking Where are your roots? and this story should give our great-grandchildren the answer to this question.

The second reason is—from our interaction with Americans who are not asked Where are you from?—I understood that there is a lot of interest about the lives of people like us, about the world revealed not by media, newspapers, and movies but by ordinary people like me who would relate their experience not as a professional writer but as a regular guy who tells his story the best he can, considering that he is an American with a foreign accent.

For someone who has been born and lived his or her life in America, our life story behind the Iron Curtain—a land that was actually a large labor camp—and our fight to break away from it are, to say the least, uncommon; there is something to learn about the human condition and also about what political regimes can do to their people.

I have tried to give the account of why and how we fought the battle for breaking away from the Iron Curtain. We were not the first ones to deal with such a situation and definitely not the only or the last ones. This story of our lives, from our struggle to cross the Iron Curtain to our experience as newcomers to a new and different world, is far from unique. It is part of mankind’s recent history—a story that has been, in one way or another, repeated thousands if not millions of time. My hope is that our experience will serve others in this world of ours. It is said that history tends to repeat itself, and in one form or another, it does. I believe that, for our fellow Americans, it would be useful to learn about it.

Every part of this book is a real story to the best of my recollection. My memories have been reinforced by the mail I exchanged with my family, friends, and authorities during our breakaway and after it. During the eighteen months of separation, my wife, our children, and I have exchanged over one hundred letters. I kept copies and originals of most of these letters, and they remain a written testimony of those challenging days, which endured in our memory. I used them largely to document what happened over this time.

My family letters from the years 1980 to 1981 were translated into English from Romanian. I preferred to use these letters to keep the story as close to reality as possible. Following my son-in-law Doug’s suggestion, our family’s e-mail exchanges during the years 1993–1995 were stored and are a treasure of memories. In addition, I used the thousands of pictures taken during all these years, which Sidonia has filed and organized.

I also have a good number of copies of letters that I addressed to my relatives and friends, explaining my decision to defect and asking for their support. For instance, a month after I defected, I had written to Uncle Oscar, in Romania, a letter in which I told him and his family, I think you understand very well that I am underway to achieve what should actually have happened a long time ago. A strange destiny that has closed the gates for me for years has opened them to me and invited me to walk over a threshold into a world that actually was expecting me for a long time. Although our present situation doesn’t seem cheerful I believe that the decision taken will have favorable consequences for everyone and with each passing day this is becoming more compelling to me.

This was, in summary, the explanation for my action; and I wanted him, my father’s brother, and the rest of my family to know it. They were aware of the injustice and harassment with which Sidonia and I were treated by the communist regime. They were the only relatives I had in Romania, and their moral support for Sidonia as long as she would be forced to stay in Romania would be important.

I can firmly say that there were two events in my life that changed it significantly for the better: marrying Sidonia and breaking away from the Iron Curtain to come to the United States. I am really proud and delighted that Sidonia and I made and implemented these decisions that changed not only our lives but also those of our children and probably our descendants.

In 1995, Sidonia was in the United Kingdom with our daughter, Alina. I was in Columbia, South Carolina, and I e-mailed her, Well my dear Sidonia one week from today you’ll be flying to America. It happens that 15 years ago the same day, I was flying the same direction in a most fateful move. We’ll celebrate together these 15 years; I guess we deserve a glass of champagne. I am pleased that our children are happy about what we did, and I hope that our posterity will be too. Yes, I think we deserve a glass of champagne.

CHAPTER 1:

A Breakaway Fight

The Tormentors

Landing in New York was the easy part of my Iron Curtain breakaway. Getting to Columbia, South Carolina, was a little more difficult but still feasible. The heavy-duty job was ahead of me, and my priority was to get my beloved wife and our two children out of communist Romania. There would be fourteen months from the time I landed in New York to the moment when they would too. Those months would see the extent of our fight with the communist authorities from Romania, which would end only when I embraced Sidonia at the John F. Kennedy Airport.

In those years, 1980–1981, Romania was ruled by the Ceauşescu couple. Ceauşescu and his wife run a neo-Stalinist police state from 1967–1989 and wound the Iron Curtain tightly around Romania. They turned a moderately prosperous country into one at the brink of starvation. Nicolae Ceauşescu was an ambitious, ruthless dictator who was dreaming of becoming a major international political leader. One of his goals was to get the Nobel Peace Prize. This goal made him do two things: one, to project to the world, and particularly to the United States, the image of an independent leader who runs his own politics not dictated by the Kremlin; and second, to show the United States that he is a humane communist leader who respects international agreements, such as the so-called Helsinki Accords, and allows emigration and family reunion.

The Helsinki Accords was the first act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki, Finland, during 1975. USA, Canada, and most European states, except Albania, signed the declaration. The civil rights portion of the agreement provided the basis for the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a nongovernmental organization created to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Accords. This evolved into several regional committees, eventually forming the International Helsinki Federation and Human Rights Watch.

This image of Ceauşescu’s independence was reinforced when the Socialist Republic of Romania allowed the migration of Jews from Romania to Israel. Actually, Ceauşescu was selling the Romanian Jews to Israel and the German ethnic minority to West Germany. Some people claimed that the financial compensation for the sold individuals went straight to his personal Swiss accounts. His benevolence was well paid in cash.

The result of this foreign policy was that the United States Congress granted Romania the most-favored-nation status and thus the ability to add dollars to the impoverished budget of the country and to the Swiss account of the Ceauşescu family. The most-favored-nation status meant that Romania received from the United States trade advantages, including low tariffs or high import quotas. The fact that this status was renewed yearly after congressional review of a presidential determination that Romania was making progress toward freedom of emigration will be a key element in our battle for family reunion because it will allow American political pressure in our behalf.

For the communist system, which included Romania, the Iron Curtain was of vital importance. This was the only way to keep hundreds of millions of people to endure and put up with the desolation of a system that was good for a small group of people and provided a life of misery and repression for most of the others. The Iron Curtain was the enclosure of a giant jail or forced-labor camp. It enclosed the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, including Romania.

This reality became obvious the night when the Berlin Wall, which was a piece of the Iron Curtain, was physically dismantled. How many people moved immediately on the other side of what had been the Iron Curtain? How many millions of people followed? Why is it that when one looks now at an ethnic encyclopedia, one finds that Romanians are found as an ethnic minority in Spain and Italy?

Throughout history, Romanians were never in Italy or Spain; they are now there in search of a better life, about a million in each country, which is 10 percent of Romania’s population. The same applies to the other countries that were locked behind the Iron Curtain. These are only some of the long-term results of the Iron Curtain. The question remains as to how many people have died or spent years in jail trying to break away from the Iron Curtain.

When I am talking about a fight, I mean it. By the time I defected, from being a well-respected specialist in the most important public health institute in the country, I was considered by the Romanian authorities a traitor, a fugitive. Why? Because I decided to leave the communist paradise and to join the imperialist camp, with which they were in a state of cold war, sprinkled from time to time with some not-so-cold wars, such as those in Korea or Vietnam.

My family and I became a small part of this major confrontation that was going on in the world between two systems separated by the Iron Curtain. When I became one of those running away from the Iron Curtain, it showed the world that the claimed workers’ paradise was a fake, a jail from which to run away. For the Romanian communist regime, I was an enemy who had to be dealt with so that others—and there were many—would not follow my example.

When I landed in New York, I knew all of that. Coming from Romania, I was fully aware that that would