PressOne Quarterly #1

ROXANA GARAIMAN

Maria Lucia Hohan Starting with 800 Euros for two used sewing machines, Maria is now designing dresses for Hollywood stars IULIA MARIN

The woman in the blue dress

The spirit of the Revolution lives on in Ioana-Izabela Oder BIANCA FELSEGHI

The prince charles effect Prince Charles is doing more than buying homes in Romania, he is preserving it

Photo Essay

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THE PRESSONE WAY The PressOne way is our belief that the best stories are born when public interest meets a journalist’s personal curiosity.

It occurs when an undiscovered, inflammable substance is sparked by a personal approach.

The PressOne journalist starts with an original idea or approach of a known topic … it continues with thorough documentation, which is achieved by thinking of the reader, not of somebody’s political or business interest

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… and is completed with a combined package of “text & image” meant to provide a unique satisfaction to the reader as they have been respected, not lied to.

© 2016 / PressOne / All rights reserved

Welcome In September 2015, Voicu Bojan, Mihnea Maruta and I formed PressOne, a different kind of media company. We have no political or business agenda.

Our shared vision is to celebrate the dignity and joy of being Romanian.

Over the first 12 months, our team of journalists has published over 700 stories in a style we call the “PressOne Way”: honest, well-written text that respects the reader. We are off to a good start with over 1,500,000 readers in the first year.

Now we are sharing some of the PressOne stories in an English print magazine — PressOne Quarterly — with Romania-lovers around the world.

Your subscription of $50 a year will help support PressOne and independent media in Romania.

What I love most about Romania is the resilient human spirit. Despite decades of repression, the creative energy of Romanians is applying new ideas to every aspect of life. Ordinary people are having an extraordinary impact, improving individual lives and the nation as a whole.

We have one of the safest and most beautiful countries in world. Opportunities are becoming realities. Let’s share the good news together.

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WE ARE TAKING THE HIGH ROAD

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Photo: Voicu Bojan

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Foto: Dan Bodea

VOICU BOJAN

MIHNEA MARUTA

Voicu Bojan is the publisher of PressOne and one of its three founders. He has over 10 years of experience in print publications, including Esquire, National Geographic Romania and LensWork, US.

Mihnea is the editor-in-chief of PressOne. He started working in the media in 1990, fascinated by the post-revolution political and social effervescence in Romania.

He has over 20 years of experience as translator, editor and publisher of books.

In 2007 he founded Diafragma9, a tool dedicated to photographers passionate about storytelling.

Together with a few friends, they offer seminars, street photography workshops (in Romania, Cuba, India), plus a series of books helping photographers to think more and release the shutter less.

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He is in love with words and photographs. As a journalist or travel writer, he tries to combine these two means of expression.

Voicu is also in love with his wife, two boys, one dog and an obscure hut on a mountain top somewhere in Transylvania. Plus life in general, including off-road triathlons.

Over the past 26 years, he has been part of several newsrooms in Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest, had the privilege to run two national newspapers, but still has butterflies in his stomach every time he signs a piece.

He graduated in Philosophy and is passionate about ideas and surprising connections, which he looks for in books, movies and sports.

Mihnea has three daughters and finds it hard to accept they already are teenagers. So he tries to keep his mind in the present and finds that balance that is so rare nowadays.

CONTENTS 09

09 / MARIA LUCIA HOHAN Starting with 800 Euros for two used sewing machines, Maria is now designing dresses for Hollywood stars

17 / THE PRINCE CHARLES EFFECT:

Prince Charles is doing more than buying homes in Romania, he is preserving it

23 / THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE DRESS

The spirit of the Revolution lives on in Ioana-Izabela Oder

29 / THE GENIUS

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One of the greatest computer scientists of his time, Mihai Patrascu, lived a life worth remembering

43 / SCHWEIGHOFER EXPOSED / BEHIND THE INVESTIGATION THAT MOVED ROMANIA

Monica Lazurean Gorgan takes a big step in saving the Romanian forests from the Austrian giant

51 / CLOTILDE ARMAND: I’VE GIVEN IT MY ALL FOR ROMANIA

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A charismatic Frenchwoman is leading the movement changing the way Romanians look at politics and government

59 / THE ROAD TO A STONE HOUSE

Chasing the buzz of an Indiegogo start-up, two young Romanians find inspiration in a lost mountain village

67 / MARION, BORN MARIUCA 73 / PHOTO ESSAY

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A creative look at Bucharest then and now

https://english.pressone.ro

An orphan of the Decree, Monica Le Roy Dagen, returns home to find her parents

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Maria Lucia Hohan, “we aren’t owed a thing. Our dream has to be earned every step of the way”

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ROXANA GARAIMAN

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Maria Lucia Hohan Beyoncé’s new album, Lemonade, launched in April this year, has set the fashion world abuzz with another name: Maria Lucia Hohan. While the album went gold after selling 500,000 copies in the first week, the commentary also focused on Beyoncé’s outfits.

One of these — a billowy dress named Meteora — is tagged with the Romanian MLH label and has attracted the attention of big-name publications like Billboard Magazine.

Although some of the biggest names in entertainment have worn her creations — among them Nicole Kidman, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and Rihanna — Maria Lucia Hohan is not a household name in Romania.

Maria’s journey into the world of fashion started ten years ago after graduating from L’Institut Supérieur des Arts Appliqués in Paris. She began her career as an intern at the Krizia fashion label in Milan. From Milan, she returned to Bucharest to open her own shop with a modest 800 Euro investment.

Despite her success with the upper echelons of Hollywood royalty and growing business, Maria Lucia Hohan maintains a low profile in public life.

We discovered that she reads PressOne. We were very grateful that she granted us the privilege of an interview.

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We understand that you initially wanted to focus on interior design and only later decided on fashion. How did the transition take place?

Maria Lucia Hohan: It was both a choice and an opportunity. The passion for interior design didn’t go anywhere, but it was hard for an 18 year old to pass up the opportunity to study fashion design in Paris. Fashion eventually won me over and I made a career out of it.

There are quite a few similarities between the two fields. I often find myself changing the interiors of my home, office, or even places I visit on vacation.

What is the life of Fashion Design students in Paris like?

Pretty much like that of any other student in the most beautiful city in the world. Obviously, I didn’t have access to all the great things that such an amazing city can offer, but there were the museums, the streets, and the spectacular architecture. I remember how I loved mornings, simply because of the thought that I’d get to see Paris again.

I would take the bus and my eyes would take in everything I saw on the other side of the window, I’d look at the people around me and it was easy to understand why they seemed so happy, so satisfied with life. The place you live in, or where you learn, has a great influence on your well-being.

I really loved every moment of it. I feel as though the years I spent ‘acquiring’ all of that cultural baggage have shaped me even more so than my formal education. The environment also contributed, everything was new and different, from the language to the way I did my personal banking.

In the “Freedom” music video, Beyoncé is shown wearing the Meteora dress designed

by Maria Lucia Hohan.

Nicole Kidman chose this image, in which she wears an MLH dress, as the cover of her Facebook page in 2013.

What are the stylistic influences you’ve retained from that era?

I have an appreciation for French lingerie, for their interiors, for their very natural, understated sense of style, the obsession with comfort – which is why I wanted to transform the evening gown into something more simple and comfortable, without the accessories and the restrictions they bring.

What are some of the lessons you learned during your internship with Krizia?

Krizia was a very positive experience. The most important lesson was the realization that I wanted to have my own business and I wanted to live in Romania.

And I do feel I have to expand on this point a bit.

Nobody gets discovered by just hanging out at home.

You have to go out, search, create database sheets, network, be persistent, fight for yourself, and hustle.

I try to pass on this message to the young people I meet. We aren’t owed a thing. The status, career, salary, or recognition we dream about has to be earned every step of the way.

Why did you come back home so quickly?

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I called my parents and told them I’d be coming back to Romania to start my own shop. They were surprised, but it wasn’t unexpected either. Both my parents had their own businesses and built their own dreams since right after the revolution. That’s always been the model for me.

Photo: MLH

When I first visited Krizia, I noticed they had a Mac desktop that nobody was using. I was taken in by all the possibilities that online creative software offered. So I brought to the founder’s attention how we might integrate online work with hand-sewn designs and patterns. The idea was well received

and I got the opportunity to learn a lot. It didn’t come out of the blue though. I’d sent out my portfolio to hundreds of places, but Krizia was one of the few that called me back.

Maria Lucia Hohan How did you launch the Maria Lucia Hohan brand?

Brands take years to build. I opened a shop with an 800 Euro investment and two second-hand sewing machines. My father helped me with the money.

The brand came later.

With whom did you work to develop your marketing strategy?

Our school emphasized the importance of fashion marketing. You don’t learn everything, but you get a good idea about where to start.

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I learned quite a bit on my own, trying to understand as much as possible. I based a lot of it on gut instinct and online marketing. Later, when I could afford them, I started working with agencies. Even so, I still tend to do a lot of my own marketing.

I know that Romanian managers are often accused of micro-management, but when you’re dealing with a fashion brand, details are important. It is critical to be authentic.

MLH is my name, Maria Lucia Hohan, so I feel responsible for it. It’s all very personal.

Who were the first celebrities to wear MLH (in Romania and abroad)?

Andreea Raicu in Romania and Jennifer Hudson in the USA.

Jennifer Hudson wore an MLH dress at Barack Obama’s 2011 birthday festivities and she has since selected MLH dresses for many other events.

Paris Hilton takes a selfie with an MLH dress.

Maria Lucia Hohan and Andreea Raicu at the 2015 Elle Awards. (Photo: andreearaicu.ro)

Kate Hudson posing in an MLH dress for the Vanity Fair Oscar Party Studio.

Do your sales spike when a MLH dress is worn by a celebrity or when it’s profiled in a widely circulated magazine?

It depends on who wore the dress, the accompanying accessories, and the reaction of the public and critics.

There are cases, too, like Beyoncé’s, where the star power helps sell a particular dress.

It’s a very long road that may even take years. It requires a mix of luck, perseverance, and consistent quality. It’s usually a celebrity’s fashion stylist who will recommend an outfit, but getting to them can be complicated. It’s a mix of international press, online marketing, agencies, and intermediaries.

How did you manage to make it into the world of Hollywood celebrities?

Online marketing had a lot to do with it. How else can anyone make it from a shop in Romania to the American A-Lister’s shortlist?

Photo: MLH

In general it’s important for the brand to get this kind of visibility, but buyers are interested in other factors – production, delivery, quality, relevance in the marketplace, and only later the celebrities who might be wearing the dresses.

What is the process whereby one of your creations becomes the beneficiary of celebrity promotion?

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Maria Lucia Hohan

Rihanna posing in an MLH dress for a sock collection launched this past Spring

What is something about the fashion industry that the public at large may not understand?

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It’s starting to decline, eaten up from the inside by greed. The focus is only on ROI (Return on Investment), on bigger profits, and an increasing obsession with the already excessive consumerism that doesn’t serve anybody’s interest, not even in the short-term.

We’re up to six collections in a year from two. We’re working a year ahead for every season, just to keep up with worldwide delivery schedules. The pressure is unrelenting but I think it’s important for smaller brands to exist alongside the giants of the industry.

It’s these shops that are able to provide innovation, quality, and custom-made designs at more accessible prices. They also tend to work with well-paid teams where everyone receives respect and appreciation.

Over the past ten years there’s been a dramatic decline in the quality of consumer fashion.

Fashion, after all, is more than just the hue of the season. And now it’s beginning to lose this enchanting aspect of pageantry, of its proximity to art, to personal expression, to identity and interpretation.

I’m well aware that it’s always been, and will continue to remain, a business. But I believe it’s possible to also put your soul into it, as well as common sense.

Who are some of the big names who have worn the MLH label to date?

Quite a few, including: Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson, Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Dita von Teese, Nicole Kidman, Kelly Rowland, Goldie Hawn, Paris Hilton, Eva Longoria, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Karlie Kloss, Mena Suvari, Giuliana Rancic, Christina Aguilera, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sofia Vergara, Maria Sharapova, Shakira, Katherine Heigl, Vanessa Hudgens, Rihanna, and many wonderful Romanian women who’ve made me very proud.

What is the story behind the Meteora dress?

It’s a dress made for the Resort collection, that I based on my own personal style, and I didn’t expect that it would sell all that well, even before it was worn by Beyoncé.

I wore it many times, pretty convinced that the indiscernible silhouette made out of silk and lace would only be selected by a few clients. It went on to be a lot bigger than I’d imagined.

As a designer, what has been your most moving moment?

When Jennifer Lopez wore an MLH outfit for the first time she wrote on Facebook that it was one of her favorites. Then her stylist got in touch to tell me that she wanted to buy it. It was the first time a celebrity bought an outfit directly.

How are prices set in this very high-end industry?

In the consumer market prices are different from one retailer to another. As for MLH, I take into consideration a balanced outlook between the price, quality, and availability.

What would you say about the prices of MLH fashion as compared to other high-end designers?

They’re more affordable.

How often do you travel overseas?

I try to avoid traveling too far from my family.

How do you maintain a work-life balance?

I choose to attend a limited number of events, I try to keep my private life to myself, and I focus more on family than my career.

The fashion industry can overwhelm you if you’re not careful. I also keep a close eye on our growth to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.

How much time do you spend sourcing materials?

I’ve never looked at it as a time sensitive issue; it’s part of the creative process. Actually, it is my favorite part.

Which of your clients come closest to the ideal model as you design your outfits?

My friends.

Is your daughter also passionate about fashion?

She comes to the shop with me and is fascinated by the MLH universe – which she has at home as well.

What’s your greatest satisfaction?

That I can have it all: Family, friends, and a career.

Photo: MLH

Maria Lucia Hohan wearing the Meteora dress.

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Jennifer Lopez wore her first MLH outfit on the 2011 premiere of American Idol. The reactions were so positive that she’s taken to wearing MLH at many red carpet appearances.

Jennifer Lopez in an MLH dress at the What To Expect When You’re Expecting premiere in 2012.

Dita Von Teese wearing the MLH, Madison Gown, in 2013 at the Fragrance Foundation Awards in New York City.

The Prince Charles Effect: Transylvanian Saxon Zone Becomes a Protected Area BIANCA FELSEGHI

In 2016, Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel named Transylvania as it’s number one destination. In fact, Transylvania is becoming increasingly more popular in all kinds of foreign tourist destination guides. Why is the world suddenly recognizing the beauty of Romania?

Since the Prince started periodical visits to Romania, significant funding has been directed to the Mures, Sibiu, Brasov and Covasna counties for protecting and capitalizing Saxon heritage.

One of the main Saxon attractions is the fortified church of Biertan (photo by Lucian Muntean)

Photo: Lucian Muntean

One explanation is the number of projects launched by NGOs interested in the Saxon cultural area. And the main catalyst behind this phenomenon is none other than Prince Charles of Great Britain.

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The Prince Charles Effect: Transylvanian Saxon Zone Becomes a Protected Area Proof of the special interest in the Saxon area is a ministerial order that will come into force at the end of the year protecting the Hârtibaciului Plateau – defined as an area to the south of Târnava Mare and north of the Olt River. The new status protects the natural and historic heritage of the area.

A second major effort still in the implementation phase is formerly classifying Hârtibaciului Plateau, dubbed ‘Hills of Transylvania’, as an eco-tourism destination by the Ministry of Tourism.

At present, only two areas in Romania hold this special status given by the National Authority for Tourism: Zarnesti (in Brasov county) and MaraCosau-Creasta Cocosului (Maramures county).

Both projects - protected area and eco-tourism destination - are driven through WWF Romania.

WWF is the world’s largest conservation organization.

PROTECTED AREA

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A 12.6 million Lei (2.8 million Euro) project co-financed through the European Regional Development Fund in the larger Environment Operational Program is under development for the Hârtibaciului Plateau. In addition to WWF Romania, two other NGOs close to Prince Charles are involved: Adept and Mihai Eminescu Trust.

The area for the project is spread across 267,438 hectares, involving 90,000 inhabitants amongst 44 villages.

“The integrated management plan for the protected areas on the Hârtibaciului-Târnava Mare-Olt Plateau was finalized this year, went through public consultation and debate throughout the entire area with various public audiences, and then was sent to the Environment, Waters and Forests Ministry for approval. Currently, it is still awaiting approval. In a few months a Ministerial Order will bring it into action,” says Mara Cazacu, WWF Communication officer for the project.

The area in question contains priceless cultural and ecological sites such as Sighisoara, oak and hornbeam forests from Dosul Fânatului and Dealu Purcaretul, the Secular Oaks Natural Reservation from Breite, Mihaileni Canyon and the Downy Oak Reservation from Cris village.

According to WWF Romania, Hârtibaciului Plateau could very well be “the most attractive rural, traditional and multicultural landscape in Central Europe. Here, local communities proudly protect the mosaic-like views with well-kept villages while continuing to make a living through local produce and services created through the sustainable use of natural resources and cultural values.”

You stumble over fortified churches nearly everywhere in Transylvania, with Biertan and Viscri considered to be the most beautiful. When the wind blows through the wooden blinds, painted in pastel colors, and the Roma villagers, dressed in scarlet clothing are seen in the fields, this area throws a powerful spell on its visitors.

ECO-TOURISM DESTINATION For an area to receive an eco-tourism destination status it must fulfill four conditions

Attractive appeal - that is, to include at least one protected natural area

Accessibility – can be reached via public and private transport

Provide at least minimal tourist services - room and board, tourist paths and activities based on nature and environmental conservation Provide adequate public services - health, education, waste disposal, and financial.

Concurrently, WWF is developing two other projects inside the protected area financed through the Swiss-Romanian Cooperation Program. These are “Nature 2000 and rural development in Romania”, which supports green business startups, and “Agricultural Lands with High Natural Value and Rural Development in Romania.”

The latter is focused on finding solutions to promote market access for regional agricultural production.

Ever since 2002, the heir to the British Crown has visited the Saxon area at least once a year and purchased several properties.

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“Aside from these mandatory requirements, the area considers additional criteria such as sustainable management, maximizing benefits for communities, nature and cultural heritage,” says Mara Cazacu.

For the second project, WWF is working with the Mioritics Association along with the Adept and Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundations and is financed through the Romanian-American Foundation.

© Photo: Mircea Rosca www.ActionFoo.ro

Aside from his house in Viscri (Brasov County), which has been intensely presented in the media, Prince Charles also owns the Apafi Manor of Malancrav (Sibiu County), and four residences in Valea Zalanului (Covasna County).

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His link to Transylvania is one of the reasons why Lonely Planet, a British publication, has recently recommended the region to its readers.

“Prince Charles’ support of various conservation efforts in Transylvania is notable, but we also had other reasons for placing Transylvania first place in our Top 10 of places to visit in 2016. As our guide clearly states, Transylvania is witnessing a revival,” said Rebecca Law, PR & Communications Manager for EMEA with Lonely Planet to PressOne.

The link between Buckingham Castle and Brasov is not immediately evident, but Prince Charles supports numerous conservation projects in Transylvania. The Prince even planted wild flowers at Highgrove Gardens to remind him, and England, of the simple life in Transylvania. - Lonely Planet

There are several other initiatives aimed at conserving or reviving traditions in Romania’s Saxon area. For example: The Monumentum Association set up a traditional roof tile workshop in Apos, the Adept Foundation and the local administration from Saschiz opened a pottery workshop to produce traditional ceramics once again, and the Mihai Eminescu Trust coordinates a cultural tourism project in Malancrav, where tourists can take part in actual craftsmen activities during its frequent ‘open days’.

In 2014, Prince Charles participated in the opening of the Center for processing fruits and vegetables in Saschiz, Mures County.

The other foundation involved in major projects in the area, Mihai Eminescu Trust, has been receiving support from Prince Charles since 2003.

This year, in Viscri, the heir to the British crown launched his own charitable foundation supporting conserving traditions, agriculture and sustainable development in Romania.

Prince Charles sampling local foods. Š Photo: Mircea Rosca

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The Woman in the Blue Dress

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IULIA MARIN

“Around 5 a.m. on the 14th, everything seemed to be over. Amid a sinister silence, facing the sun as it was beginning to rise, a hideous shadow crept in from Piata Victoriei accompanied by a blood-curdling rumble in a tense crescendo (which would turn into a grotesque patter of feet). The first squadrons of miners were occupying University Square.�

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The Woman in the Blue Dress

Ioana-Izabela Odor, October 2015. Photo: Lucian Muntean

Photographer Andrei Iliescu is describing a photo album he had just posted to Facebook. The day was June 14, 1990.

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A France Presse correspondent, Andrei Iliescu climbs the stairs to the first floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, and from its ring-shaped balcony, snaps shots of the horrors taking place below.

“The miners were hitting anybody they came across, men, women, children. Every once in a while they would glance up at me and threaten me with their cudgels.”

Around 7 a.m., he captures one of the most iconic images of the June 13-15 riots.

A dark-haired woman in a blue dress and sandals is grabbed and carried through the air by two young men wearing miners’ helmets and coveralls. All those around her are menacingly clutching their truncheons and cudgels. The woman wraps her tense fingers around her raffia bag. It looks as if an entire world is in danger. Nobody comes to her rescue.

25 years later, former President Ion Iliescu, who had thanked the miners for “establishing order” in University Square, is being prosecuted for “crimes against humanity” in the June 1990 riots.

Today, we wanted to find out who the woman in the blue dress was, if she was still alive, and if she was still in the country. We looked, and we found her.

“I’D RATHER BE A LOAFER...”

Her name is Ioana-Izabela Odor, she used to work as a researcher for the Metrology Institute and is 64 years old. She is retired now, and receives us in a small room full of paperwork, stamps, and receipts. The brave woman from 1990 has no intention of being idle - she is president of her tenants association.

Izabela Odor was among those who had pinned a “Loafer” badge on her lapel in protest of Ion Iliescu’s labeling of the University Square demonstrators.

For 52 days in the spring of 1990, the center of Romania’s capital was occupied by citizens unwilling to accept that the second echelon members of the former Communist Party had clung to power under the guise of the National Salvation Front, despite Iliescu’s initial promises that the Front would not morph into a political party.

Thousands of people - in fact, tens of thousands at the apex of what was a marathon demonstration - were congregating every evening to listen to speeches delivered from the University balcony, to pray and to sing. One particular chorus would become emblematic for the protest:

I’d rather be a drifter Than a traitor, I’d rather be a hooligan Than a dictator, I’d rather be a loafer Than a party cadre, I’d rather be dead Than a communist!

The University Square phenomenon began on April 22, 1990, but lost its momentum and magnetism after Iliescu’s landslide victory in the May 20 elections where he received 85% of the votes and the National Salvation Front got 66%. The Student League had withdrawn from the protest and only a handful of people were still gathering at night. The enthusiasm and hope had all but disappeared.

On the morning of June 13, the police received orders to clear out the Square and the City Hall sent equipment to pick up the tents, blankets, placards and personal belongings of those still remaining in the self-declared “neo-communism-free zone”.

Izabela Odor put on her lapel pin badge and went to sing “We’re not leaving here, we’re not going home” one more time.

BUT THAT DID NOT STOP HER. “And they started to beat me...”

“That night, the 13th to 14th of June, I listened to the BBC and understood the miners had arrived in Bucharest. Leaving my relatives’ home, I took the subway to University Square at 7 in the morning. So I reach the boulevard, where the Liberal Party now has their headquarters, across the street from Dalles. There, at the top of the building, was the supervisory unit of my institute. Across the street, the miners were beating a gray-haired man wearing a white shirt. They were covering him in blood.”

Izabela Odor says it did not occur to her to keep quiet and walk on. What’s more, she actually took the old man’s aggressors to task.

THIS IS HER TESTIMONY

“I started to make a scene: What’s this? Is this democracy? The miners surrounded me. A guy in a blue overalls and a workers’ helm, which sat all wrong on his head, appeared. He had a long rod, a ruler.

I was talking, speaking loudly. He started yelling: “Misses, get to work! To work, misses!”

“But what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah?” he replied and whistled with two fingers in his mouth.

The next moment, I’m telling you, I have no idea where from, a bunch of strong men in black coveralls appeared. They started to give me a taste of their truncheons... I don’t know what they were, they pretended to be miners, but their coveralls were new - black and new.

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The violence got out of control after several police buses were set on fire - which proved to be the provocation intended to justify the authorities’ use of force.

Izabela Odor, who was 39 at the time, rushed to her relatives to watch the televised coverage of the events unfolding in the square. “Of course they were not broadcasting anything, just some lies,” she now recalls.

They hit me twice, like this, and I slapped one of them - whack! And they started to beat me. A beating with rubber truncheons ensued. Of course it hurt, they took my hands, you can see in the picture, and from the Liberal Party headquarters, there, they crossed the boulevard with me to take me... “To the Police! To the Police!” they were shouting.

“BEAT HER! HIT HER!” I WAS SHOUTING, “DOWN WITH ILIESCU!”.

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Nobody came to her rescue. The street was not deserted, but the few women there were actively encouraging the miners.

“When they started beating me, there were a couple of women in the street. One of them, slightly older, you know, the type with large grocery bags, as we used to say, and another one that I’d had an argument with the previous evening. Well, what I couldn’t understand was... a bunch of women see another woman grabbed and dragged by huge men, and they shout encouragements: There you go! Beat her!

Hit her! I was shouting, ‘Down with Iliescu!’. So the men grabbed me from under the women’s noses and dragged me across the street. We arrived at the Batistei intersection where I tripped and fell at their feet. I told myself, “That’s the end of you, honey!

This is where you die!”

She was afraid the miners would kick her. She knows, as she did back then, that they could have murdered or mutilated her. To this day she thanks God she managed to get away.

“They picked me up and carried me towards the National Theatre... Or was it a hotel? I don’t remember.

There it was full of miners, black coveralls left and right... But in the lobby there was a guy in a white shirt who was presented all that were captured. There was another woman there, and a man, older than me, who’d also been beaten. It was my understanding they were sending them to the Coltea Hospital. I told the guy, ‘Mister, I am going to work! What have you got against me? I live in the neighborhood!’

He looks at me and says, ‘Let her be!’

They led me cross the University Square and they brought me towards the Army House, ‘Lady, go from here...’ I kept telling him this and that, that it’s not right. I didn’t feel how badly beaten I was because I was in shock. You can imagine. But I kept preaching, I was telling him, ‘History shall punish you!’

Then he said to me, ‘Lady, these people have come here directly from their shifts and we cannot control them anymore!’ He even introduced himself, I don’t remember his name, but he was an engineer.

Close to home, I came across the two women with grocery bags, “Aha! They beat you! Serves you well!”

Izabela Odor has let go of the hatred. Today, she is able to smile.

“LET THERE BE A SENTENCE, EVEN A SUSPENDED SENTENCE” All these years, Izabela Odor has had mixed feelings about Ion Iliescu. At first, she hated him. When the miners came again to Bucharest in the fall of 1991 to topple Petre Roman’s government, she thought she was witnessing the fall of Iliescu’s power too.

Although she had barely escaped the previous year, she mingled among them. The miners were shouting slogans against Roman, she was shouting, ‘Down with Iliescu!’

Later, during the 1996 elections when Emil Constantinescu won, she thought justice would be done. But in 2000 she saw Iliescu take up quarters at the Cotroceni Palace once again.

“Europe looked upon us accordingly, the whole world saw what Iliescu did. They saw his autocratic attitude and how he instigated one social group against another. He turned the miners, if there were really miners among them, against protesters for freedom.

Using bludgeons and beatings instead of a peaceful exchange of ideas.”

Did she ever have nightmares, was she ever afraid to walk down the street at night all these years?

“No. I was so convinced I had done the right thing, so convinced that one day justice would be done, that I never experienced fear.”

She no longer has the blue dress. She gave it away one rainy day to a woman with a small child. Izabela is a real treasure of a woman.

She accompanies us to the door of her apartment building, and, as we’re trotting down the stairs, she exclaims with a smile: “Goodbye, and... you know, ‘Down with Iliescu!’”

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“I would like to see a sentence, even a suspended sentence. Well, because he asked the miners to come, he thanked them! Later, for humanitarian reasons, let’s say, he doesn’t actually have to go to jail... But history has to record that he got punished for this. I’m not keen on seeing Iliescu shackled, but something like this must never happen again, that’s the idea.”

“Yes!”

Photo: Lucian Muntean

Now, after she has found out that the three-time President will be prosecuted for the miners’ riots of June 1990, she does not necessarily picture him in handcuffs.

After all these years in which the perpetrators have enjoyed protection - I ask her - was it worth getting beaten in the University Square?

The Genius ANDREI CRACIUN

Born on July 17th, 1982 in Craiova and deceased on June 5th, 2012 in New York, Mihai Patrascu was the most important Romanian computer scientist of his time.

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WITH ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM VLAD STOICESCU

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The Genius Those who understood his genius say he single handedly revitalized an entire field of research.

This article pays tribute to Mihai Pătrașcu as seen through the eyes and hearts of the most important people in his life.

PROLOGUE

Mihai Pătrașcu revolutionized theoretical computer science, though he graduated from “Carol I” National College in Craiova where his school had no computer science curriculum.

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He excelled at his field at MIT, one of world’s most prestigious Computer Science programs. During his first year in America he was named the top Computer Science student in the United States.

Mihai Pătrașcu with Olympiads students.

Mihai Pătrașcu was accustomed to being first.

He actually authored the questions for Computer Science Olympiads and held his own conferences wherever Computer Science conferences were held.

In less than three decades of life he managed to get married, divorced, remarried, cross a continent, climb Kilimanjaro, travel the world and make a name for himself among the most prestigious researchers in America.

He taught himself Mandarin in just a few weeks. He didn’t wear a suit. He never held a nine to five job. In his own words, he was a rebel. He was tough but fair to colleagues in the Computer Science community.

He was loved but feared.

Mihai Pătrașcu was always someone special.

A young Mihai with his parents.

INTRODUCTION I first heard about Mihai’s life in a Bucharest tavern.

It was one of those early summer days where the lust for life abounds. Friends were gathered around a table eating grilled squid with Greek music serenading in the background.

One friend at the table, Corina Tarniță, a young mathematics researcher, made a comment about her ex-husband that mesmerized me. I needed to learn more about this guy.

My search began with Mihai’s 30-year-old sister, Carmen. We met early on an August morning and her blindingly intelligent eyes and lucid expressions immediately impressed me. We laughed quite a lot as she told us some of Mihai’s favorite jokes.

Carmen also holds a Ph.D. in Science. She studied at the Polytechnic University in Bucharest and can tell you a lot about synthetic aperture radar or about the European Space Agency. She still teaches at the Polytechnic and does image processing work for the mobile phone industry.

Mihai Pătrașcu’s parents have been marked by this tragedy. His father wears a long, white patriarchal beard. Some nights he writes poems. His mother breathes to the rhythm of a troubling fragility.

I went up the stairs and gazed at Mihai’s book collection. An entire shelf was dedicated to Agatha Christie. Novels that didn’t put his formidable mind to work bored him.

PART 1: MIHAI AND CARMEN

Mihai was four years older than Carmen. They weren’t just brother and sister. They were best friends. Decades ago, an innocent conversation took place between the two children. “Do we have to like our relatives?”

They reached the conclusion that they didn’t have to like people just because they were relatives. They also concluded they would have liked each other even if they hadn’t been siblings.

Mihai didn’t mentor Carmen, and she didn’t try to copy his passions. She never took much interest in his computer science achievements. On the contrary, Mihai followed Carmen in her passion for guitar.

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We drove to Craiova to meet Mihai’s parents, mathematics Professor Mariana Pătrașcu and dermatologist Virgil Pătrașcu. It’s horrible to stare at people in mourning and tell them you would like to see old photos of their deceased son.

Many times, silence prevailed. We stayed in the living room, looking at their dead son’s portrait without saying a word.

The Genius

“Our folks wanted to send him to the Children’s Club, but there weren’t any open spots left for electronics. They were offered Computer Science as an alternative. Mother had finished Mathematics and Computer Science, but she had only seen two computers in her life. Both were old and card-based. We were far behind the rest of the world, but she said ‘OK’, and that’s how it started.”

She already played it well when her brother tried his first chords. Mihai liked Romanian rock. His favorite bands were Phoenix and Cargo. Once, he even composed a song about a bear and a sand storm.

Mihai inspired Carmen to be curious, to believe in herself, to follow through her work from start to finish, and to seize all of life’s moments.

KNOWLEDGE

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Carmen and Mihai came from a family of intellectuals.

Their mother’s parents were teachers. Their paternal grandfather, a math professor, founded the school in Craiova where his grandchildren began their education. Their uncle excelled in engineering and has been living in Philadelphia for decades.

“When I was very young Mihai gave me one of the first books he owned, a Computer Science book, and he wrote this dedication on it: ‘Always ask yourself what books cannot answer’ That really hit home with me,” Carmen recalls.

Mihai discovered his vocation very quickly. He started learning Computer Science in 2nd grade at a Children’s Club in Craiova.

The fad, back then, was for boys to specialize in electronics:

He participated in the Olympiad when he was very young, going against peers older than him. In third grade he won first prize, which was the beginning of many.”

Mihai excelled in all subjects, though math came easiest to him. Mihai did not endear himself to his colleagues during his first few years at school.

To them, he was a bigheaded geek. He didn’t pay much attention to them either. With every passing year, though, as Mihai was making history in the United States, he gained the respect of his former classmates.

Mihai’s thirst for knowledge was insatiable. Carmen remembers him reading pages from Wikipedia when he had a free moment. At the time, Wikipedia was foreign to most of us.

Mihai did little programming until college - when he found his niche in Theoretical Computer Science.

This is where he started to work wonders. His work received thousands of citations from internationally renowned authors. For the theoretical part of his work, he didn’t even need a computer. A paper and pencil were the only tools he required.

NOSTALGIA Carmen was proud of her brother. It wasn’t an empty or absurd pride, the kind that screams, “Wow, he’s famous, people know him...” It was different: pride in the fact he did what he liked and was very good at it.

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Mihai never spent a lot of money, but he didn’t rob himself of his passion to travel the world.

Photo: personal archive

They loved the mountains. It was a common passion and they hiked together often. For Mihai, the mountain vistas represented a world without limits. But Mihai never forgot his math problems while hiking. On the contrary, he kept processing and pioneering new frontiers.

“We had millions of plans,” recounts Carmen.

“We wanted to travel the Trans-Siberia and Peru. Mihai liked Peru the most of all the countries he visited because it reminded him of his childhood in Romania.”

The Genius

Mihai in Peru (left), and in China.

DEATH Mihai was diagnosed with Glioblastoma in January 2011 after returning from a ski trip with severe headache. Told he would not live longer than 18 months with this incurable cancer, Mihai made it to the 18th month. When cancer took away his right hand, he continued to solve problems on random pieces of scrap paper with his left hand. Cancer never stole his determination or zest for life.

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It’s hard to talk about death. A moment creeps in when Cami lowers her voice and says, “I miss him. We used to talk about anything and everything. He was my best friend. A large chunk of my life disappeared with him.”

Though Mihai is gone, his story continues and their mutual friends often bring him up in conversation.

Carmen doesn’t go to the cemetery and leaves no flowers on his grave. She doesn’t think it’s a place where she’ll meet her brother.

Carmen would not like us to write pathetically about her brother.

“Mihai was very complex, you know? He wasn’t obsessed with work. He led a very full life - had a beautiful family life, he wanted

to learn many things, you know, honestly curious about everything that happened around him. He understood current events and geopolitics just as well as the scientific article he would write the following day. He was a truly remarkable researcher, but also so much more. He wasn’t just the sum of his academic achievements.”

Carmen Pătrașcu, Mihai Pătrașcu’s sister.

“Mihai wanted to come back home, he was very patriotic in this way, but things weren’t very easy in Romania at the time. One of the things that annoyed him was if you wanted to get a research grant, you had to commit to the end result. But that’s what research is about - it may or it may not work. You could have some hypothesis about the outcome...

But you can’t submit to a rule that states that if you don’t get the expected results then your work won’t be financed. It’s stupid. Mihai didn’t like stupid things.”

PART II: CORINA AND MIHAI Corina and Mihai met in 1998 while vacationing in Greece. It was a prize for the Romanian Olympiad winners. She had won the Math Olympiad and he had won in Computer Science.

It is easy to imagine Ms. Tarniță as the most beautiful girl at the event and the young Mr. Pătrașcu charming her with his brilliant intelligence.

When they were married, recounts Corina, they were too young and too stubborn. Neither knew what it meant to build a life with someone. It wasn’t America that split them apart, it was maturity.

Divorced, they continued to respect each other, maybe even love each other. They talked about science and co-signed scientific papers, but they somehow stopped being husband and wife.

GENIUS

What’s it like living with a genius? Corina assures us it’s extraordinary and normal at the same time: “It’s extraordinary to live with someone who doesn’t accept anything as dogma, but tries to understand everything himself, starting from axioms, from basic principles. And he doesn’t just try, he succeeds.”

All the same, Mihai led a normal and balanced life; went to the movies, took long walks, worked out, had beer with friends, went to the supermarket – where novelty candy fascinated him.

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Mihai took the first step. He asked for her friendship.

They were both deeply committed to high performance in education and becoming leaders

in their field. They also made time for a normal adolescent life. Love would have to come later.

The Genius

“I went to America with Mihai mostly because of him. Before we met, I knew Harvard would be my ideal choice, but I don’t know if I would have had the courage to leave home. Mihai was the kind of person who stuck to his guns when he put his mind to something. I remain profoundly indebted to him for convincing me to follow my dream.”

Corina Tarniță, Mihai Pătrașcu’s first wife.

Corina would go on to tell us something that would take our breath away:

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“I was very impressed when Mihai wanted to tell me about his disease in person, although we had been divorced for years. He had moved to New York, but we met in Boston and chatted for a few hours. We saw each other again in New York, by chance, during his treatment.

“Then the horrifying news came - a message from Mihai in which he told me that he only had a few months to live and that he wanted to see me. I visited him at his New York apartment and we talked for hours about everything - life, death, spirituality, the meaning of it all, science, people. It was one of our most profound and direct conversations. Even at the very end, Mihai remained a fantastically lucid scientist. I told him about my research and he asked me dozens of questions, sometimes coming from angles that I hadn’t even thought of. He reminded me

of our most precious moments together, and when I left I felt a profound pain. I knew I wasn’t going to see him again.”

Clinging to hope, Corina searched online for miracle cures, revolutionary treatment and suggested world renowned doctors to Mihai. He didn’t respond to any of her messages.

Then, Corina started to send him jokes and he replied instantly. They kept in touch like that for the last six weeks of his life.

“Mihai was entirely special. At any moment - even when he was out shopping or when he brushed his teeth, he could think of an extremely complex problem. The mental workout to which he subjected himself was incredible, even though people around him had no clue. But he knew when to take breaks and how to enjoy them.”

PART III: MIHAI AND HIS PARENTS It’s autumn when we reach Craiova. Mihai’s parents live in a two-story house close to the city center.

Virgil Pătrașcu M.D. wears his white beard as a sign of mourning. Professor Mariana Pătrașcu takes a long look at us, as if wondering why we’re here.

They agree to talk about their departed son. They show us his medals and diplomas. They retell old stories. An almost physical sense of sadness hovers over everything.

They are proud of what their son has accomplished.

Not many finished their Ph.D. in record time, especially in America. Not many have stepped on the podium as many times as Mihai. Computer scientists don’t get to stand on podiums like athletes.

We talk about Mihai’s first marriage, about his first year in college in Craiova, waiting for Corina to finish high school so they could leave together. We talk about the divorce - Mihai thought it would be the biggest loss of his life. But it wasn’t, he married another high school colleague. His parents think she was more interested in the things that Mihai loved motorcycles, mountain climbing and gastronomy.

ILLUSION

They were proud their son could earn thousands of dollars a month and that he didn’t need anything.

They missed him in America, but Mihai came back home often.

Once he surprised them. During a routine Skype with his mother he told her that he heard the doorbell, and that she should go and see who it was.

Sure enough, it was Mihai.

Virgil sometimes wakes up at night and thinks he’s seeing his son through the window, but quickly realizes it was nothing. On nights like those, the doctor writes poetry.

Mihai Pătrașcu was a giving man. He didn’t try to convince anyone he was right. He respected different points of view, as intelligent people do.

His mother tells us that he had a beautiful voice that made you listen. He made everything seem easy.

What about flaws? His writing was horrible, says Professor Pătrașcu. He also stubbornly wanted to climb mountains, even when he wasn’t prepared.

Seven Medals, three silver, four gold - Medals won by Mihai Pătrașcu at International Computer Science Olympiads. The medals aren’t entirely made of gold. When Mihai graduated, his high school had won 35 medals from international events.

Mihai didn’t take his medals with him to America. He left them at home. He only took his guitar. The prizes are still in Craiova, even the prestigious Presburger, which he received posthumously.

The Presburger Award is a prize given by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science to the best young researcher in the field.

Mihai became aware that he won the award in a ceremony announcing the winners just before he died.

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The Pătrașcu’s remember their son kept asking questions that young people shouldn’t be thinking.

Why do people die? Why aren’t mature people able to discover something that will forever defeat death? He would have liked to have worked on that.

Over time in the US, Mihai developed a strong sense of patriotism. Mihai had a good friend, Alex Andoni, from Chișinău. They made plans about how they could save Romania and Bessarabia from the burden we all bear. At one international Olympiad, Mihai even wore traditional Romanian garb.

The Genius Each year his parents present the “Mihai Pătrașcu’s Excellence Award”. The prize is awarded to the highest-ranking Olympiad winner from Romania and has a value of 500 Euro. The first laureate was Vlad Gavrilă, now a student at Cambridge.

Vlad Gavrilă is one of the two Romanians who surpassed Mihai for the number of gold medals won in international Computer Science Olympiads. Vlad Gavrilă said that out of all the prizes he has won, the Mihai Pătrașcu Excellence Award is the one he holds most dear.

Mihai Pătrașcu was the leader of his national Olympiad team. His mother recounts his victories: 10th grade, Borneo, gold; 11th grade, China, gold; 12th grade, Finland, gold...

His father shows us a piece of paper scribbled with signs impossible to read. It’s the last paper his son worked on. Mihai worked for a number of large companies while in America. He was working with AT&T when he died. While working for IBM in San Francisco his mother recalled hearing the sounds of ocean waves in the background while the skyped.

DIGNITY

Mihai Pătrașcu’s death was dignified. His biggest worry was the peace of those around him. Many of his work colleagues didn’t even know he was ill.

He kept writing articles, publishing, participating in the conference circuit. The last time he went to a conference was in Japan in 2012.

We kept looking through old photos from the family’s personal archive. There’s Mihai at 10. There he is at his marriage to Corina in 2002. There he is again in 2008, at his wedding with Mira in the mountains - at a guest house in Ciunget. At the seaside, where he had long hair. At Disneyland and wearing a traditional shepherd costume bought in Sibiu (he brought it with him all the way to America!).

We take these words with us, spoken by Virgil Pătrașcu, who lost his son: “Maybe we had to pay for all the joy Mihai brought us while we were together.

There is no word in Romanian that describes such a human being.

Mariana and Virgil Pătrașcu

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Virgil Pătrașcu remembers his son walking aimlessly with his hands in his pockets. That’s how

he imagined him in New York City. No one would have guessed he’s going through the limits of an algorithm in his head.

“If I ever imagined something like this would happen to us, I’d have said that we wouldn’t be able to bear it - to be someone who loses their child. Still, we are involved in all types of activities, to make sure we are always busy. That’s how we are hanging on.” - Virgil Pătrașcu,

Mihai Pătrașcu’s father

PART IV: MIHAI AND MIKKEL Mikkel Thorup was Mihai’s research fellow in the US and a close friend. Mikkel has returned home to Denmark and teaches a course in algorithms and data structures in Copenhagen.

Aside from work, they told jokes, jogged, played squash and drank beer. Mikkel said they wouldn’t have succeeded if not for the beers and the squash.

They once worked on a problem for 18 months. The social activities made the frustration of not finding a solution more bearable.

Even in Mihai’s last months it was difficult for him to accept the fact that his friend would die. They still had fun together. Then Mihai lost function in the left side of the brain, leaving his arm and his leg paralyzed. That’s when they stopped joking.

His final memories of Mihai? The gratitude on his face for Mira and Carmen’s care and the energy and concentration that radiated from his eyes.

answering basic questions such as “What did you eat for breakfast?” or “How did you get to school?”

Mihai Pătrașcu bombed the test. It was impossible for him to concentrate and answer questions at the same time. She told him, “Dude, you have won gold at international Olympiads, you do so many things, but you can’t do this?” Mihai laughed as well.

Years later, they met on the train station platform in Bucharest on the way to Tulcea. She didn’t recognize him. He had lost weight and now sported a thick beard. “He looked more like a hippie than the geek from high school”.

He had changed for the better. He had become more sociable and adventurous. They had the same passions and the same fearless spirit. They fell in love and were soon married. Mira multi-tasked the practical matters and Mihai remained the consummate theorist.

PLANS

Mikkel refers me to one on Mihai’s papers recently published by the Berkeley Simons Institute. It’s his way of saying Mihai isn’t dead. His work continues to inspire people on all continents. His work continues to open new avenues.

After marriage, they lived in Boston, San Francisco and finally in New York, where she felt most at ease.

In New York people are from everywhere and no one feels like a stranger there. New York became their home.

PART V: MIRA AND MIHAI

Mira and Mihai had plans: they were going to work in the US for 10 years, save money, have children, and then return to Bucharest when the kids were old enough to start school. In America, performance in education starts at the university level.

“Mihai made plans to return to Romania, just as I made plans to go back to Denmark which I did. I’m sure he would have done the same.” – Mikkel Thorup, Danish researcher

Mirabela Bodic, now a psychiatrist in New York, went to high school with Mihai where they sat across from each other in English and Math class.

Mihai hardly ever went to class. She remembers thinking in 12th grade “Everybody is fascinated by this man, how he is a genius and how special he is, I would like to test him on his multi-tasking skills...”

Living so far away from Craiova brought out the patriot in Mira as well. She had a Romanian flag hanging by a nightlight in the living room. They were encouraged by events in Romania. They saw progress.

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So she asked Mihai to follow her index finger as she made a semi-circle around his head while he’s

She remembers Mihai lying on the couch, drawing something in the air. She wondered what he was doing. He said he was writing a formula, thinking of an algorithm. She suggested he use paper. He said he preferred to draw in the air because it was easier to erase things.

The Genius

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Mira and Mihai

DEATH They didn’t discuss death; they didn’t think of it.

Mira asks, rhetorically, “Who thinks about dying when they’re 27?”

Actually, the subject came up once, when they were climbing Kilimanjaro without adequate equipment.

He told her then, “If I die, at least I die doing something I like!”

January 1st, 2011 came too soon. Mira was in her second year of psychiatry residency in New York. It was a Saturday.

Mihai had a splitting headache, and the doctor asked him, “How much did you have to drink last night at the party?”

Nothing. The doctor kept joking and thought his patient couldn’t have anything more than a sinus problem, until after the CT scan...

When he showed the scan to Mira, her world collapsed. “I thought maybe I shouldn’t have been a doctor, that way I wouldn’t have known what it meant. Mihai’s father must have felt the same. There wasn’t even a chance.”

The last year of Mihai’s life was marked by his insistence that everyone live normally. He didn’t spend more than ten days in the hospital, even with all the operations and biopsies. Mihai Pătrașcu died at home.

“Would he want to read this article?” We asked Mira. She thinks so because Mihai had a big mouth and would have given us juicier details. She says we would have more clearly understood his integrity.

He was a man of strong convictions and had the backbone to stand up for them.

THE MAXIM

Everyone who knew Mihai Pătrașcu remembers he pushed the limits to the very edge, as if life itself were an algorithm - and that its limits needed to be challenged.

He wasn’t the kind of person who shone light on his own success. He didn’t care what people thought of him. Mihai Pătrașcu lived as a free man.

Everywhere he lived in the States he was surrounded by people. Mihai enjoyed inviting Romanians to live with him. That was his treasure, his generosity, says Mira. It was priceless, more than any treasure.

Mira feels lucky, although she’s a widow at 30. Mihai was a passionate man, able to feel strong emotion without digressing into the pathetic.

She doesn’t want us to write that he was perfect, because he wasn’t. She wants us to write about the simple truths of his life.

“I wouldn’t want to read about his academic achievements again. It’s not that they don’t impress, but for friends and family they were less important.

We didn’t love Mihai because of them. I’ve read articles about extraordinary people who died at young ages, in tragic circumstances, and they tend to be exaggerated and ultimately deviate from the positive.”

We won’t use that angle. We met Mihai Pătrașcu through the collective memories of his friends and family. We want to save him from oblivion. A Jewish proverb says that by saving the memory of one man, the entire world is saved.

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STEALING

THE LAST FOREST:

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AUSTRIA’S LARGEST TIMBER COMPANY, LAND RIGHTS, AND CORRUPTION IN ROMANIA

Photo credit: EIA

Schweighofer Exposed: Behind the investigation that moved Romania CODRUTA SIMINA

“All political parties destroy our forests” or “Don’t fell that tree, you’ll have to deal with me!”

These were the chants heard at the beginning of May 2015 as President Klaus Iohannis returned the draft of a new Forest Code to Parliament.

Now, a stunningly remarkable five-minute video was going viral around the world and people were in the streets across Romania.

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Her little thing was not little at all. It was compelling evidence beyond the force that has been destroying Romania’s greatest treasure – our forests. Forests and national parks that should be the economic engine of a vibrant tourism industry have been turned into lunar landscapes, destroying wildlife, fish and causing large scale flooding of homes.

Every political party leader since Communism has looked the other way, suggesting high-level political corruption in this national crime.

Photo: Vlad Stoicescu

The cries of indignation were ignited by contents of a hidden camera documenting what millions of Romanians knew, but until now, could never prove: that Austrian wood company Schweighofer knowingly purchases illegally harvested timber.

Among the street protesters was an exceptional woman who kept telling herself, ‘No matter what happens to me now, I have managed to do this little thing. I hope it keeps going’.

Schweighofer Exposed “Finally we provide the proof... and then the Romsilva executives take a sick leave”

Monica Lazurean Gorgan is a film producer. She is included in the credits of feature films like “Best Intentions” and “Domestic (2012)”, both directed

by Adrian Sitaru. That’s how the cinema world knows her.

“In 2010 I was asked to produce three short documentaries on environmental issues for the Soros Foundation. I was allowed to choose my topics. Illegal logging was my first topic because the environmental crimes were so obvious and news articles were coming out on this. I began doing some research on my own, I made a short film for Soros. Then I decided I wanted to take this topic further. To make a serious, broader film, because I realized what was going on in our forests”. This was the beginning of an investigation that would grip thousands in 26 cities across Romania.

Monica Lazurean Gorgan was lucky enough to receive help from NGOs specializing in environmental issues. She followed the story for several years, and then she made a decision.

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“I told myself - ok, if I make a documentary at the national level, let’s say it’s really well put together, well documented and so on... People in our country will see it, but it will have very little international exposure. In fact, it won’t have much of an impact because there were already several very good stories on TV by Alex Dima on Romania, I love you! and some very good reporters from Antena.

You know how public pressure works in Romania.

Here’s the proof that this wood is being felled illegally.

And then the Romsilva executives take a sick leave, they don’t show their faces for a week, until the uproar boils over, and then everything goes back to normal in that absurd Romanian way. So I told myself I absolutely must put an international spin on this”.

Monica’s international strategy led her to Vienna the home of Schweighofer Holzindustrie.

“Given the dramatic situation in Romania, as well as the fact that Austrian elements were involved... They went for it. The Vienna Film Fund executive said, ’Yes, I definitely want to support this project!’ I received

a development grant and began to work on the project together with the Austrian producer,” Monica Lazurean Gorgan recalls.

With a development grant in hand, Monica’s next mission was to find an experienced investigative partner. This led her to Alexander von Bismarck, the great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck and the Executive Director of EIA.

EIA is a Washington DC based organization described on it’s website as “the most consistently independent, fearless, dynamic and effective NGO working on global environmental issues today.

EIA pioneered the use of investigative techniques, including undercover documentary evidence, to record and expose the world’s most pressing environmental problems for the past 30 years”.

Von Bismarck specializes in illegal logging and massive deforestation across the globe. EIA has been active in Russia, but not in Romania. Not until he met Monica Lazurean Gorgan.

HOW TO SELL ILLEGALLY HARVESTED WOOD

Alexander von Bismarck - Sasha, to his friends - came to Romania, and, after a few days’ research alongside Monica, he decided to launch an investigation into illegal logging here.

“When Sasha came to Romania, I told him, ‘Look, Schweighofer incentivizes the illegal harvesting of wood all over the country. They have outrageous prices and they encourage the poor to cut down everything they can get their hands on and bring it to them. Schweighofer doesn’t cut trees. They just buy the wood and then pretend, ‘I don’t know anything, it’s none of my business who really cut it, where, or how. My paperwork is in perfect order. That’s how they cover their tracks. That’s the gist of it.”

In the United States, the EIA’s persistence and investigations led to a 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act that made it illegal for any US business to purchase or sell any products made from illegally harvested wood. It has been effective in reducing demand for illegal wood.

Karl Schmidt, aqusition director, Holzindustrie Schweighofer Romania. Photo: youtube video

In Romania, you can buy wood or timber from illegal sources and nothing will happen to you.

Alexander von Brunswick took his Romanian challenge so seriously, that he grew a beard to take on the character of an American businessman offering large quantities of timber, legal and illegal.

The team bought hidden cameras and rehearsed their roles in the sting. In the end, Sasha von Bismarck came face to face with Schweighofer’s Romanian representatives.

“They didn’t even do a background check on him. It went pretty easily. Those guys weren’t suspicious, they were very eager to buy wood quickly. We had prepared some good back-up stuff for him. But because Schweighofer has a very large market share and a huge demand - over 40% of the wood they process goes to Japan - they’re always in need of wood. During our second meeting, we got lucky, as we insisted a more senior manager come talk to us.

He turned out to be more relaxed and, basically, said everything that appears in the video”.

Alexander von Bismarck’s investigation was made public at the end of April, 2015.

On May 9, thousands of people took to the streets across Romania to protest against illegal logging and the complicity of the country’s political class in ignoring this blatant scar on the face of Romania.

Most corruption is hidden, but illegal logging is a plainly visible assault by Romanian political leaders on the lifestyle and culture cherished by Romanians.

“It was a very special moment for me. It was all happening very fast, I was both filming the protest and trying to contact Sasha on Skype to show him how many people he had spurred into action. But I told myself, ‘no matter what happens to me now, I have managed to do this little thing and I hope it keeps going’. It makes you feel good and hope things will go in the right direction and not be lost.

As far as I’m concerned, we took an important step, several thousand people were in the streets. This was a huge surprise for me; it made me very happy,” Monica Lazurean Gorgan concludes.

One of the results of this investigation has been that the new Forest Code now limits the quantity of wood that can be processed by a single company in Romania to 30% of the country’s overall capacity per year.

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Schweighofer Romania made it very clear they were interested in buying illegal wood. They even offered bonuses for additional quantities of illegal timber.

After two years of work, Monica had the video evidence exposing Schweighofer’s criminal role in destroying Europe’s largest and last natural forests.

AMENDING THE FOREST CODE

Schweighofer Exposed: Behind the investigation that moved Romania

Alexander “Sasha” von Bismarck. Photo: Raul Stef

Unofficial data showed Schweighofer was processing half of the timber harvested in Romania each year.

“There had to be some constraints put in place because they are now building a new factory and their demand will grow. These constraints were included in the Forest Code. It is such an important victory, but we have to wait and see how it’s implemented. The 30%, this is the important victory.

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Schweighofer has declared they will attack the law before the Competition Council because one cannot impose such limitations on a tax-paying company.

But constraints are necessary because logging isn’t just any industry, it’s our air. Plus, it pushes small local companies out of business as they cannot afford to buy at the price offered by Schweighofer.

They have a monopoly in the marketplace and this monopoly needs to be broken up. Romania is no longer a colony for foreigners where we sell cheap, they enjoy maximum profits, and our kids are left with nothing”.

“WE’VE BEEN FOLLOWED” Monica says such investigations aren’t as dangerous in Romania as they are in Russia, where you cannot film in the woods unless you have the forest rangers with you.

“It can be dangerous in our country too, but I’m not the fearful type. You don’t just go straight in and say, ‘hey, what are you doing there, cutting down unmarked trees?!’ You need some people in the area, informers, and then you know how to go about it. We were careful about this every time we went into the forest and wanted to see a real case. We were making sure that we knew what we were getting into. And I’m not the fearful type. We had followed trucks for miles and we had been followed ourselves... We were followed in Bucharest, in Borsa. I can’t give you very many details because we are still gathering documentary evidence and working on this,” says the producer.

The new documentary that Monica is working on will be presented internationally as it includes other countries, as well as Romania.

However, it is possible that the part about Romania will be shown in the country next year to raise greater awareness for this issue. That is Monica’s wish.

Monica Lazurean Gorgan. Photo: Personal archive

“ASSISTANCE” FROM PUBLIC AUTHORITIES Institutional transparency in Romania remains, in most cases, a myth. Public authorities apply Law no. 544/2001 regarding free access to public information in a discretionary fashion.

“It is clear that public institutions stand in the way. Nobody takes any responsibility for anything. We don’t know, submit a written request, register a complaint, and we will contact you with a solution. And the request always gets buried there. Some people, including within Romsilva, side with the large actors in the market. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Let the Competition Council decide, we know nothing.’ ‘How can that be?

You are Romsilva...’ Schweighofer buys from Romsilva at very low prices. I mean, public institutions are nowhere to be found,” concludes Monica.

Regardless of the obstacles, important steps were taken with the help of civil society. Some politicians have leaned in on this, but always with an ulterior motive.”

EPILOGUE

On October 21, at a press conference held in Vienna, the EIA and other environmental organizations have made public a report on illegal logging in Romania.

The EIA said it has records of Schweighofer offering to buy illegally harvested wood from Romania.

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Map used with permission from EIA. Report address: https://eia-global.org/subinitiatives/romania

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Clotilde Armand. Photo: Lucian Muntean

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Clotilde Armand: “I’ve given it my all for Romania” IULIA MARIN

A charismatic Frenchwoman is leading the movement changing the way Romanians look at politics and government.

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Clotilde Armand: “I’ve given it my all for Romania”

Clotilde Armand, a Frenchwoman, is running for the Bucharest Sector 1 Mayor in June’s local elections.

Her bid comes in on behalf of the Bucharest Salvation Union (USB), the party led by mathematician turned activist Nicusor Dan, who himself is running for Bucharest’s top job.

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We met Clotilde on the 29th of March, a Tuesday, on the shores of Straulesti Lake where she announced her candidacy.

Several hours later she granted us an interview where she told us, amongst other things, how she married Sergiu Moroianu, a mathematics PhD graduate and researcher at MIT, about her career on two continents, and her first vacation in Romania, in 1996, when she fell in love with the Fagaras Mountains.

ANNOUNCEMENT ON THE LAKESHORE March 29th, 10.30 am. We’re somewhere in Bucharest’s Sector 1 on the shore of Lake Straulesti.

The area is heavily littered and the smell of stagnant water hangs in the air. A few meters from a blue

table, on which a few flyers are arranged, a small girl and a dog run around the yard of a dilapidated house.

A gipsy, short in stature, with her hair in a ponytail is looking curiously at the video cameras lined up in the grass in front of the table.

Nicusor Dan is speaking with a tall, slender woman, who has a healthy laugh and an accent that’s impossible to ignore. Several reporters look on, confused.

Next to the folding chairs set-up for the press conference, two wicker baskets covered with white linen napkins offer the promise of macaroons – the well-known, multicolored French cakes.

It feels like a picnic where everyone is too somber and the unpleasant smell emanating from the lake is unlikely to help anybody’s appetite.

The tall woman is Clotilde Armand – the USB mayoral candidate Sector 1 – whom the press has christened ‘the Frenchwoman’.

She begins to speak, her hands clutching the papers on which she’s prepared her remarks.

She talks about meeting Nicusor Dan through her brother-in-law, Andrei Moroianu, whom she’d met at Mathematics competitions. Then she speaks about her four children, who attend school in Romania, and about her parents who live in the Vichy region of France. They are simple people: her father is an engineer and her mother a homemaker.

Her accent is rather discernible, especially when she pronounces ‘n’, nasally, or the guttural ‘rrr’. She stumbles over a sentence and bursts out laughing, like a schoolgirl. She nudges Nicusor Dan with her elbow. The USB president, more versed with the Romanian press, remains composed and somewhat tense. Clotilde Armand continues, unabashed.

Some of the reporters are visibly amused when the Pekingese dog from the nearby house works its way through Clotilde’s legs. The moment dispels any trace of solemnity.

Towards the end of the press conference, the gipsy intervenes. She asks Clotilde Armand for a house to raise her kids. The Candidate tells her that she’ll accompany her to city hall. Some young men on

Nicusor Dan’s team ask the woman for her telephone number.

The Frenchwoman then thanks the attendees for their presence and invites them to join her in cleaning the litter along the banks of the lake.

Reporters signal to each other it’s time to pack up and go.

CLOTILDE’S STORY

After the makeshift conference, we meet with Clotilde Armand, indoors, to speak about her background, her career, the move to Romania, and now, her move into Romanian politics.

Who is Clotilde Armand?

If I hadn’t met my husband in the U.S., I would’ve been a Frenchwoman like any other. I’m an engineer by profession. I studied at the Massachusets Institute of Technology (MIT), where I met many students from all over Europe. The Europeans were a natural community, sandwiched between the Americans and Asians; we Europeans had a sense of belonging to the same place.

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Clotilde Armand: “I’ve given it my all for Romania” I met my husband, who is Romanian, when I was 22. After he finished his studies we decided to move to Romania. He is a mathematics researcher (Sergiu Moroianu is a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy – Ed.). His salary when we moved back to Romania in 1996 was equivalent to $50 a month!

I managed to build a business career where I spent half my time in Romania and the other half abroad.

Eventually we decided to remain here for good.

Why not the United States or France?

Not in the US, I’m not someone who can migrate just like that; I feel we all have strong ties to our homeland. We have responsibilities and duties, and, whether it’s France or Romania, I could fulfill these, in the sense that we have a certain quality of life in either country.

In the US, no way, in France, yes, we have thought about it. My husband, however, is very attached to his country. I’ve also grown attached to Romania and think it’s a good country in which to educate children.

It’s also a country where the people are noble-minded. It’s something I like very much. There’s a lot to do here, you can get involved. Romania now feels like my permanent home.

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When did you get your citizenship?

I got it at the end of last year and I’ve had my national ID card since February. I used it yesterday for the first time, coming back from Bulgaria, and everyone was looking at me quite suspiciously. (she laughs) How did you meet Nicusor Dan?

My husband has known Nicusor Dan for 25 years.

I’ve known him for 20. Like my husband, he’s a mathematician. He’s from the same generation as my brother-in-law (Andrei Moroianu is a director of research at Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, and a former gold medalist at international mathematics Olympiads)

He and my husband started the Scoala Normala Superioara, inspired by the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. The goal is to offer elite-level education in mathematics, physics, computer science – several disciplines – in Romania – in Bucharest – so that students stay in the country two or three years after completing their baccalaureate.

The whole idea is to keep students here a few years before they leave the country, since they now have access to first-class education. Spending a few years here, before leaving, can change everything. They are more likely to return, even if they do leave, if they start their post-graduate studies here.

We built this school together, with Nicusor, and we’ve also worked on other projects. Very recently my husband and I talked about other ways I could be involved. So we’ve decided on this course of action together.

Do you think the citizens of Bucharest are ready to vote for a women? A foreign one at that?

I may be from another country, but I’m now a Romanian citizen. So yes, I think so. It’s about the trust they give me as a person, not as a foreigner or as a woman.

I have too much to lose, including a reputation, even in the eyes my family, to get involved in anything undignified.

Tell us about your experience at Distrigaz.

(Former state-run natural gas distributor in Southern Romania)

I started in January 2005 and the company was privatized 5 months later in May. We were a small French team who’d come in to bring Distrigaz into private ownership and reorganize the company.

I had a few months to understand what was going on because the privatization process had been delayed. During this time I studied their processes and the way people were working. The moment we had signing authority, we knew what to change to make operations more efficient. We also made sure the rules were being followed. If something wasn’t working out we’d investigate in order to understand where the problem came from.

At the beginning, we basically said: “Okay, the past is the past. Now there are rules that have to be observed. The first rule is ethics.

You need to do a reading on a gas meter and the customer has to pay. If there’s any fraudulent activity and the customer isn’t paying, we need to know about it and stop it. Also, a customer has the right to get their gas – any customer – without paying anything on top of their regular fee.“

There might be a couple of bad apples, operating on their own, but nothing systematic from top to bottom, the way it used to be.

There were a few who didn’t want to accept these new rules. It was easy to understand why – it was advantageous for them not to follow the program – so I had to fight every step of the way, even with the help of the DNA (Anti-corruption Directorate).

A DNA investigator helped us set up stings to catch the people taking bribes…and this had an effect on everyone else. But some were not able to understand that the old jig was up until they were arrested. That’s how we put an end to the way things used to be.

I have helped foreign investors get their bearing in the Romanian landscape. It’s a different legal and cultural context. These companies were looking for managers who understood the local as well as the corporate culture. I was the manager of the consulting department at KPMG, then I worked at GDF Suez, and I’ve been with Egis Romania since 2013. Egis is an engineering company with infrastructure, environmental, road, and airport projects. I’m the country manager for Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova.

I worked in consulting for KPMG in 1999. I was there for over two years helping multinational companies get set up in Romania. I was also involved with Michelin when they came to Romania to take over operations from Tofan.

Photo: Lucian Muntean 55

We made sure to take it all the way and today the ethics issues at Distrigaz are nearly all resolved.

Did you work for other companies in Romania?

Clotilde Armand: “I’ve given it my all for Romania” You are ready to give up your manager’s salary for a mayor’s stipend?

I’ve been fortunate to work on large projects, with very large budgets and thousands of people. So yes, I am ready to give up a very good salary for a smaller one.

I want to be clear about it, so I’ll spell it out. I’ve been working for 19 years and I’ve always made a good living. I’m not the kind of person who needs a luxurious lifestyle. I’ve put money away whenever I could, so today I’m quite well off. Because I’ve worked in different countries and didn’t contribute to retirement plans in any one place, my husband and I have always been conscious of the fact that we need to save for the future.

When I’m 60 there won’t be any place to which I’ve contributed for 40 years. I’ve worked in America, Romania, France, and Germany. So we have planned our savings. I can manage four or more years on a much smaller salary than I’m used to.

Why did you accept to run for the Sector 1 job at City Hall?

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I’ve been volunteering for many years, since I was very young, in France. I see it as a duty. It is also a privilege. It has shaped me into the person I am today. I try to impart this culture of volunteering to my kids.

You receive, but you have to give back. In France, there would’ve been no Nicușor Dan, so nobody would’ve asked me to get involved. Or maybe there would’ve been. I don’t know. I’ll admit that I’m answering a call here though, a worthy one. And I’m the kind of person who can do what needs to get done.

Have you gone around Sector 1 to talk to people?

Yes, I went to Chitila Triaj. It was a bit of a shock.

It’s actually somewhat pretty. Trees in bloom, cute houses, but the roads are not paved, there is no running water, and no connection to the city’s sewage. They’ve got electricity though! (she laughs).

It’s an issue.

When I got there, everyone came out of their homes to see what we were doing. They told us all the previous mayors made promises that they never fulfilled. They are now so disappointed they’re thinking of boycotting the vote. It’s a shame. They need to find a candidate whom they trust, instead of giving up.

Have you met your PSD and PNL counterparts?

No, I haven’t met them. But you know what they say? PNL, PDL, PSD – all the big parties can mobilize 150,000 people in Bucharest. They’ve all got that kind of mass appeal. They’re in every government institution, every city hall, and they make a lot of people feel needed. In fact, those people are getting duped. They have a dead-end job, no growth opportunities, nothing, and they’re getting swindled ten times as much as is given to them.

Every vote in Sector 1 is worth 3,000 euros per voter. They give back nothing in exchange for those 3,000 euros.

How did you get that number?

I divided the yearly budget by the number of voters.

You’ve picked a very interesting place to launch your candidacy...

I don’t think the citizens of Bucharest realize what kind of opportunity we have with these lakes.

They’ve been abandoned, rejected, and polluted. But they’re unique in Europe. It’s as if you’ve got a gold mine and you’re ignoring it.

If you look at Sector 1 on the map, you’ll notice that these lakes cross it from end to end. It’s amazing.

And yet, the only lake people know in Bucharest is Herastrau Lake.

Even if I don’t get the job, my goal is to raise awareness, bit by bit, so that the citizens of Bucharest start to reclaim these lakes. I bet you didn’t know about this treasure trove in the middle of town. It smells foul and it’s polluted now, it’ a shame.

All the new buildings going up are dumping their waste in these lakes. I don’t even know what else I could call it, but it seems to me it’s basically a crime

to let this go on. Bucharest has an extraordinary asset that no city in Europe has. And we’re just standing by dumping waste in it.

When did you come to Romania for the first time?

We speak French at home. Why? The kids are learning Romanian at school, their friends are all Romanians, and so they only get to speak French with me. If they didn’t speak to me they wouldn’t speak French.

I stayed in Bucharest very briefly and then, on the second day, took the overnight train to the Fagaras Mountains. It was, just…wow! I was very impressed.

It was gorgeous. We crossed the Fagaras Mountains in one week and I was left with the impression that Romania was the most beautiful country in the world.

How long did it take you to learn Romanian? Do you speak it at home?

I’ve given it my all for Romania, but I want my kids to speak my native language! (she laughs) It would be strange for them to have a French mother and not to speak French.

It was the summer of 1996, exactly twenty years ago.

I wasn’t married at the time but I was thinking that if I do marry a Romanian, I’ll have to see his country.

When did you get your first taste of culture shock?

When we decided to stay here, I realized I had to focus on learning Romanian. I already spoke a bit, but not very well. Even now it’s not quite perfect, but I can write error free. As for speaking, you’ve already noticed that you need to be patient with me. It’s not easy to learn a new language at 42! (she laughs)

This obviously happens everywhere, even when I moved from France to the US. I was volunteering in the US and I wanted to explain French culture to a group of African-American school kids. They couldn’t quite grasp what France was, what Paris is about.

On the fly and through people’s feedback. I try to change my sentence structure…it’s quite difficult.

But the people here in Romania are very authentic. You can talk to any one person and feel like you’ve made a real connection.

Did you take classes or just learn it on the fly?

When I moved to Romania in 1999, everything was disorganized. It was exhausting to accomplish anything at all.

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The Road to a Stone House CODRUTA SIMINA

We went looking for the La Origini museum that was creating a buzz on Indiegogo and found a different kind of inspiration.

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Photography: Raul Stef

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The Road to a Stone House

A white, linen handkerchief on the muddy road.

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To reach La Origini in the village of Tecsesti, located in the Apuseni Mountains of Alba County, you need to take a right at the house with carved eagles on the gate. Then a rutted forest road opens up and you can drive for as long as fate will allow. We drove for a few kilometers and then chose to walk the rest.

Actually, our car’s limited ground clearance made the decision for us.

We walked for forty minutes before encountering our first human. He told us we had another two hours of walking to Tecsesti, if we were brisk.

thinned out on the side of a cliff. Not a soul in sight.

It’s a feeling that can feed the fear of abandonment, especially for those of us accustomed to the big city and technology.

We finally saw a human-looking silhouette on a hilltop. We wiggled through a crack in the fence and climbed the hill. The wind swooshed in grave accords.

After another ninety minutes we come upon an ancient, white Dacia 1300 parked in a bend. We said to each other, “This is it, we’ve reached civilization!”

From the Dacia of Hope it was another twenty minutes until we reached the first house.

The first house was locked up. The second was deserted. The third, surrounded by a tall fence, didn’t respond to our friendly, inquisitive hollering.

We kept walking into a brutal wind as the road

Apparently they DO leave a car on the road like that.

Ion and Elisabeta Tacsa

We closed in on the summit as two giant shepherd dogs and a small pup approached. They were straight out of a children’s book with their pretzel tails. The pup barked the loudest.

in her parents’ ancestral home and make do on a pension of 130 euros a month.

“No, dear, this is Raicani. Tecsesti is farther down,” she gestured wildly towards a massive boulder, “past the rock. But what do you want to do there?

Come by our place...”

They never owned a TV and the news rarely travels this far. I asked them if they knew who was President, and Elisabeta replied with another question. “A man by the name of... Janus?”

Three hours into our countryside stroll, we crested the top of the hill and ran into an old granny and asked, “Is this Tecsesti?”

So we went with her.

Elisabeta and Ion are part of a Romania we hardly think about and rarely reach. It’s as if the people of Raicani wanted to be history-proof.

No one has ever visited from the Mayor’s office.

Their pension is delivered by their nephew, who travels from another village.

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Ion and Elisabeta Tacsa (photo) were born in the same village. They’ve known each other since childhood. After 58 years of marriage they still live

Prime Ministers aren’t even worth mentioning.

“They always change, I can’t remember ‘em.”

Photography: Raul Stef

If there’s an angel that keeps an eye over journalists in search of a scoop, we’d have to thank him for guiding us to the most beautiful of stories, as simple as it is.

Elisabeta is in her 74th year of life and Ion is ten years her senior. That’s how people married in the old days. The bride was a girl who already knew her way around the house and the groom was someone who could make ends meet.

The Road to a Stone House “We have a postman, but she’s a woman, and the poor thing can’t make it up here.”

Elisabeta is well guarded by two white shepherd dogs with little strings tied into knots for collars.

Who, as all country dogs, “won’t hurt you.” When she heard how loudly they were barking on our approach she thought we might be wolves. She came out and saved us.

Ion and Elisabeta have seven other families as neighbors, spread around the nearby hills where wild boars eat apples and plums during the summertime. During winter, a great freeze blocks any access to the city for months.

Using two walking sticks, Elisabeta shows us tracks in the muddy road.

“Look, you know what these are? Wild boars. They passed through last night, maybe even today.”

Boars don’t bother people during winter, but when summer comes around they wreak havoc.

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“They come for fruit at night, eat the ripe ones on the ground, climb the trees, and steal everything they can reach with their hooves,” the woman tells us.

Elisabeta married early. At 16 she was mother to a girl, and three years later, a boy.

In his youth, her husband worked at the train station in Cugir. The 600 lei pension, on which they manage month after month is in his name.

Money’s split between the electricity bill – the only public utility that reaches this place – flour for bread, and whatever’s needed around the house: oil, sugar, rice, semolina.

“What about medication?” we ask.

“Meds are expensive. We’re lucky that we don’t buy ‘em,” Elisabeta responds ironically.

They don’t take any medication at all. Not a single pill. I had a cough for two weeks last winter. My daughter bought me meds – I can show you, I put them in the closet, I didn’t take ‘em,” she adds.

While she tells us all of this, she fiddles inside a winter kitchen, small and warm. On the windowsill, there’s an alarm clock, prayer books and salt. There are clean sheets hung out to dry in the yard. You can hear the wind and a particularly boisterous cockerel.

Their two children produced nine grandchildren.

They’re spread out all over the world and have in turn begotten… she doesn’t recall how many greatgrandkids. They come to visit during the summer.

“They bring the young ones,” Ion says. His palms are as wide as shovels as he wipes his brow with them.

He’s funny and likable. She says it’s because he’s had an easy job - not like the young people today who leave their country.

“What kind of life is it, when you can’t find a job in your own country?”

The Tacsas also have two bulls, a few cows, and a chicken coop. The pig passed away around Christmas, in a very traditional manner.

“Ha, fun! It’s not something we look for anymore. Back when we were young, we’d go dancing in Tecsesti… scraped by all the branches in the forest on our rush to the party....” Both their eyes are smiling, gazing once again upon their youth.

“Now kids, I should really give you something to eat.

Come, I think it’s only right, I rarely have guests.” She dives into the pantry and comes out with an apron full of fresh eggs.

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Elisabeta also reveals the secret to a lasting marriage: no cursing between man and woman. Of course they can argue, like all families do, but no cursing.

“What do you do for fun?”

Photography: Raul Stef

With very little socializing to do, the couple focus on housework: laying out the hay, caring for the orchard and gardening during summer. They have potatoes, carrots, onions and lettuce patches. Wheat and corn aren’t worth it now that the people have left and boars roam free.

Winter’s calmer. Ion gets out of bed at 5 AM and feeds the animals. He comes back inside and reads the Bible or sleeps.

The Road to a Stone House Plates dress the table. They’re made of cream porcelain, the kind I’ve only seen in my grandparents’ house on the mountainside. She also brings out cutlery with bone and wood handles.

Before we eat, our host gives thanks and says the Lord’s Prayer.

If you’re into a healthy lifestyle and think the organic, free-range eggs in the city are the real thing – then come to Elisabeta’s in Raicani.

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She explains things while we gobble the eggs sunnyside-up along with home-baked bread. “Out here,

hens eat everything; worms, beetles, even the grass is good. Fat, meat, and vitamins, that’s how a good egg is made, from carnivorous hens.”

Only eight homesteads are still occupied in Raicani.

Neighbors see each other at Sunday mass, or when they need to borrow a bit of sugar, cooking oil, or whatever’s missing before the next trip down the hill.

As for death, it’s in God’s hands – who is more present in the life of the villagers than any celebrity.

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Marion, born Mariuca ROXANA GARAIMAN

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An orphan of the Decree, Monica Le Roy Dagen, returns home to find her parents

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Marion, born Mariuca

Marion’s biological mother (captured in the documentary “L’enfant du diable”)

“When my son, Pierre, was born I wondered whether I should tell my biological mother.

But I felt like I couldn’t allow her to call herself his grandmother. I didn’t want Pierre to be hers, too.”

Thus speaks Marion Le Roy Dagen, aged 40. Until the age of 6 her name was Mariuca.

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Adopted by a French couple from one of Romania’s communist-era orphanages, Marion knew nothing about her roots until she turned 24.

In 2000, she visited Romania to find the man and woman who abandoned her as an infant. In 2014, Marion produced a documentary about her life entitled, “L’enfant du diable” (The Devil’s Child).

THIS IS A STORY OF DELIVERANCE.

Mariuca-Marion is the fruit of fleeting love. She was born in Aiud, on the 17th of July in 1976, ten years after Decree 770/1966, the law that made abortion illegal in Romania.

Her mother was 17 and on her summer vacation when she brought Marion into the world. Still a student in high school, she gave up Mariuca when classes started in September.

“The principal told me I could do what I wanted with the baby, but because I was ill and a minor, they’d take her away from me anyway so I’d be better off by putting her up for adoption. I had two days to decide”, Ana, Marion’s biological mother, recalls.

She made the decision without the father’s input, a 22 year old who she’d met while visiting her grandparents.

“Nicolae played football at the time. We hit it off and met two or three time in Teius – that’s where he lived.”

Nicolae would discover that he had a child... twenty-four years later.

DECREE NR. 770, ENACTED ON OCTOBER 2ND 1966, FORBADE ABORTIONS, WITH THE FOLLOWING EXCEPTIONS: The pregnancy posed a risk to the mother’s health and could not be mitigated through other means;

One of the parents suffered a debilitating and hereditary disease, or any disease that could lead to genetic malformations;

The mother suffered from serious physical or psychological afflictions; The mother is over 45 years of age;

The mother has already given birth to four children who are still under her care; The pregnancy is the result of a sexual assault or an incestuous act.

This was how Mariuca found herself living in an orphanage for the first six years of her life.

“The beds were all crowded together and surrounded by grating. There was no privacy of any sort. I spent six years that I’ll never get back in that place. I remember kids screaming. It was unbearable.”

The Ceausescu regime was unable to cope with the growing number of institutionalized children. The effects of the 1966 decree were made apparent within the first year when more than five hundred thousand kids were born; double the number from the previous year. The number of abandoned children kept pace with the surging birthrate.

The communist regime stopped training psychologists and social workers. Most orphanage staff didn’t have the relevant training or education. Romanian society began to adopt an abandonment culture, visible even at the cinema. A very popular film at the time, Veronica (1972), painted an idyllic life at an orphanage.

“Doctors would casually recommend that mothers institutionalize their children if they had any trouble with the child at home. It was just as common for a mother to claim poverty in order to leave her child at the hospital. The motto, ‘the state wants ‘em, the state can keep ‘em’ was rooted in the public conscience,” say the authors of an extensive report on orphaned children in Romania.

The state profited off of orphans like they were a commodity. Thirty thousand children were adopted by foreigners, who paid considerable sums to take them out of the country. The adoption papers were signed by Ceausescu himself. It was very methodical.

In 1980 a French couple visited the Alba Iulia orphanage looking to adopt. Mariuca was 4 years old. When she saw the couple for the first time, she yelled out in desperation, “They’re mine!”

She thinks she was eventually chosen because she was one of the few kids who didn’t suffer from mental afflictions. The adoption process, however, was not an easy one. She finally escaped the orphanage in 1982, when she was 6.

“I felt so free the moment I landed in France.

I wanted to forget Romania so badly that I decided to fully embrace my new life. Even though these terrible memories never left me, I completely forgot the Romanian language.”

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As the tragedy unfolded, Ceausescu ordered the construction of mega-orphanages. In 1989 these had reached a total capacity of around 100,000 beds.

The orphanages were filled beyond capacity. For example, one of the largest orphanages, the Târgu Ocna orphanage in Bacau County, had a capacity of 600, but it was home to 1,100 boys.

“I lived my life in a vacuum where absolutely nothing happened. Nobody cared for us, and we couldn’t even go outside. We spent most of the day in bed, dirty and soaked in urine. The girl next to me was disturbed and repeatedly slammed her head against the wall. The staff didn’t even look at us,” Marion remembers.

Marion, born Mariuca

MARIUCA BECAME MARION From that point on, her fate and those of the other orphans with whom she’d grown up, would take vastly different directions. Most of them had never known any sort of motherly affection, and few managed to go on and live normal lives. Many have died.

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But Marion couldn’t feel whole as long as she didn’t know the truth about the circumstances surrounding her early childhood. In 2000, at the age of 24, she traveled to Romania to find her roots. She remembers arriving in Aiud and asking strangers in a local pub for help finding the woman who was her mother. She was sent to an older man who was able to tell right away she was Romanian. She explained whom she was looking for and he immediately said, “Ana!” Marion’s adoptive parents had been told that her mother had died, but the man said, “Nonsense! I saw her at the market last week.”

Mariuca, age 4. This photograph was taken by her adopted mother at the orphanage in Alba Iulia.

The man then took her to Ana’s house and asked her to wait outside. “I waited about fifteen minutes but it felt like a lifetime. I was pacing all over, biting my nails.”

Marion’s first photo with her adopted parents.

(Captured in the documentary “L’enfant du diable”)

When Ana came out of the house, Marion asked her about her daughter. Ana said she’d given her up as a baby and that she was later told she’d died. She was named Mariuca and she was born in July, 1976.

That’s when Marion knew the woman who stood in front of her was her mother. At first Ana told Marion that her father was not a good man, and then later she said he had died. Only in 2014, while filming the documentary, did Ana admit that he was alive and gave Marion his address.

The moment Marion met her birth mother (video capture).

“With my mother things had been complicated, it took fifteen years to understand her story, but with Nicolae it was very spontaneous. He takes things as they are.”

Nicolae, who has two children, only found out about Marion in 2000. He didn’t tell his family about her right away, but figured that someday his French daughter would come to seek him out. Marion says she feels a stronger attachment to her biological father even if the relationship with her mother goes further back.

Marion alongside her biological father, Nicolae (captured in the documentary “L’enfant du diable”).

In 2014, Marion felt ready to introduce her biological parents to her son, Pierre, who was a year old.

emotional scars because of it. I started an organization named ‘Romanian Orphans’ with the intention of easing the adoption process, to give them an opportunity to form their own identity.”

“I was extremely lucky to be adopted by this extraordinary French family, but my soul never left this place. I’ve met many kids over the years who were brought up in these orphanages and they retained lifelong

The documentary is dedicated to these kids.

In France, Marion is a social worker. She says she still carries a strong sense of guilt about the children left behind in the orphanage.

“For me, Ceausescu was the devil incarnate.

Even now I sometimes think of myself as the devil’s child.”

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Bucharest then and now PHOTO: LUCIAN MUNTEAN EDITING: CRISTI FARCAS

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A PressOne photographer imagines interbellum Bucharest from the streets of today.

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