It is with alarm that I see that the danger approaching and realize that the experience of the past is not seeming to be a factor. When I first came here it was five years after the revolution. There were still piles of garbage in the streets and packs of dogs making walking fearful. Car parking on the sidewalks made it unsafe as I learned when one of them hit me. I had been walking toward a place to buy coffee near Piata Romana when I was told that at 10 am in the morning I could only buy beer.
Many friends told me of their experience during the harsh days of communism that they had experienced. One strong memory was that of how people learned to steal in order to eat. Their land had been confiscated and put into a huge government agricultural program. Therefore, they could no longer have a small garden or raise chickens or any of those things that enhanced their lives with that small plot of land they could call their own, much less a place where they could buy what they needed from a local establishment. And then there was the sending of many in their communities such as Sighetu Marmației to concentration camps in Germany. Trains full of people who were Jewish or Gypsy or handicapped. When the Russians took over, there were other trainloads that the Russians filled to send away. I know of those due the survival of the one who was left for dead after he let a whole trainload loose when he found the train unguarded by Russian soldiers. The letters of gratitude from those who escaped were sent from safer locations than in Romania.
I also recall seeing this village in which I now live and hearing of the destruction and negligence that nearly destroyed a thriving community. That community has now revived its economy and improved conditions, but it has taken many years. For some, it now seems indestructible. It is not so. Take the roads for instance, without maintenance they will crumble into the muddy tracks that they were long years after 1989. At our corner there was a muddy pool of water that we filled with more dirt to make it traversable for those who lived beyond it. The more recent pavement had not been extended for even one block beyond the main road through this village. That street was in ill-repair for a very long time. From the main highway the road was still brick and measured by the width of a horse’s wagon. Shops opened slowly so that one could buy the necessary goods without having to go into Bucharest to do so.
Observing these and other things, I recall how I came to be here. Texas is a long way from here, but one of the persecuted ones came to where I was working as he wanted to improve his English after having been left for dead in Bucharest. Those who do not recognize the danger of choices they make now are sure to repeat the injustices of the past while enjoying the fruits of labor of those who have brought this country back to a healthy place where people have opportunities to live and flourish.
Now that you know how it is so, you do not have to follow the travesties of the current administration in Washington. You know what to do to maintain your democracy and to improve it rather than set it back on its heels to that terrible period when the reining entities would try to control what would never have been possible. You see, it is in a democratic community that the ideas and efforts of many are considered, even tried, and thus healthy places to be prevail while dangerous and unsafe and unworkable possibilities fade away for lack of attention. Those that flourish create a better life for all. It is crucial now that Romanians recognize what is important in the coming elections and that they choose to maintain and improve rather than destroy what has been hard earned.
