Romania's silent trauma

Since Romania joined the European Union in 2007 it has been talked about as "developing". Sure it has some corruption issues, but they are being dealt with. The bloody crimes of the Romanian government under Communist rule are not high on many agendas for discussion.

Marius Oprea is a former adviser to the former President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu. Nowadays he spends his weekends digging up the bodies of people murdered by the old communist regimes. Oprea says he hands over the names of perpetrators of atrocities committed under communism, along with evidence, regularly to prosecutors. They do nothing.

Activists believe the number of executions, disappearances and cases of torture in Romania under Ceausescu exceeds those in any other Eastern Bloc country.

Ramnicu Sarat, a former torture institution in the province of Transylvania, was known to guards and detainees as the Prison of Silence. Ceausescu's opponents were held here for up to 20 years in utter silence. After 7 years in captivity here one famous dissident completely lost the power of speech. Inmates came up with ingenious ways to communicate, including clicking their tongues in morse code to each other. This prison's method of torture was just one of many creative ways the regime dreamed up to break the spirit of anyone who opposed its authority.

Former prisoner Punenta Guraromorally was jailed for 20 years for political crimes against the communist regime. He is no longer bitter but believes, like many other activists here, that finding out what happened to victims and spreading their stories is the only way to deal with the past.

Some young Romanians feel that everyone needs to learn about the past for the country to get over its communist-era trauma. Students of politics and law from Bucharest University volunteer to research communist crimes and help spread knowledge among the wider population. They do this using the unlikely method of stopping people in the street and asking them if they know of the jail in their area that was used for political prisoners. Most people are surprised to learn that prisons like this existed, while others are nervous to even speak about it.

There is now a conflict between the generations, between those who remember the realities of the old regime and those who cannot. Paradoxically, it is sometimes those who are too young to remember who are the most reluctant to endulge in nostalgia for the past and are keenest to find the deeper truths that can explain the traumas many people still suffer.

It seems doubtful that this conflict can be resolved by the modest efforts of students and a handful of activists. In the current political climate in Romania it seems more likely that the ugly truths of the past will remain largely silent.