PressOne Quarterly #2

VOLUME 2

215 Km TIBI UȘERIU’S 215 KILOMETER RUN AWAKENS A COMMUNITY OF FRIENDS TO CHALLENGE THE LIMITATIONS IMPOSED ON THEM.

SAVING the cinema VICTOR PURICE DEMONSTRATED THE POWER OF A SINGLE PERSON WHO REFUSES TO SAY ‘NO’.

FORGIVENESS IS THE BEST REVENGE AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR EVA KOR HAS POWERFUL WORDS FOR STUDENTS AT HER FORMER SCHOOL IN CLUJ.

CHERISHING ROMANIA

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PressOne Quarterly | Volume 2

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Thanks for supporting independent media in Romania!

© 2017 / PressOne / All rights reserved

Welcome It is my pleasure to present Volume 2 of PressOne Quarterly. I appreciate reader feedback and have incorporated your ideas. Feel free to write me anytime at don@pressone.ro.

Our photo essay is a selection of images from the pro-democracy demonstrations across Romania that attracted international media attention this winter. One German newspaper wrote “Civil Society has come of age in Romania.� In contrast the brutal images of the demonstrations in 1989-1990, the 2017 demonstrations are peaceful family affairs, filled with fun, art and creative technology.

On pages 46-47, we have summarized PressOne’s first year of operations. This magazine exists for the purpose of funding honest, independent media in Romania. On behalf of our journalists, contributors, and 1,400,000 readers in Romania, we say thank you.

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Photo: Dan Bodea

VOICU BOJAN

MIHNEA MĂRUȚĂ

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 a translator, editor and publisher of books.

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

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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 with a degree in Philosophy and is passionate about ideas and surprising connections, which he looks for in books, movies and sports.

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

CONTENTS 07 / 215 KM

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Tibi Ușeriu’s 215 kilometer run awakens a community of friends to challenge the limitations imposed on them.

21 / SAVING THE CINEMA

Victor Purice demonstrated the power of a single person who refuses to say ‘no’.

31 / PROFESSOR OF IMAGINATION

Dorel Zaica uses his artistic talent to inspire young minds with the gift of learning.

39 / FORGIVENESS IS THE BEST REVENGE

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Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor has powerful words for students at her former school in Cluj.

49 / RETURN OF IULIU MANIU

Cristian Borz’s 15 year crusade to recreate the home of a founding father to modern Romania.

57 / LORD OF THE MOUNTAINS

Volunteers in Timișoara learned that the secret to change is not fighting the old, but building something new.

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71 / TIBOR KALNOKY COMES HOME

Born in Germany, raised in Paris, Tibor feels most at home in the simplicity of Transylvania.

81 / ROOM 32

PressOne Reporter Roxana Garaiman discovers that the homeless are not bums.

89 / #REZIST

www.pressone.us

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The anti-corruption demonstrations this winter were family affairs.

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215 KM Tibi Ușeriu’s 215 kilometer run awakens a community of friends to challenge the historical limitations imposed on them VOICU BOJAN

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215 KM

THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE

WHAT IS TĂȘULEASA SOCIAL?

It’s -8 Celsius when we arrive at Tășuleasa in early April 2015 to record Tibi’s training for the great adventure scheduled for April 18, when he will run 173 kilometers from Piatra Fântânele to Cluj and then complete the 42 kilometer Cluj Marathon.

We are shivering in a blizzard like two penguins marooned on a melting ice shelf.

Tășuleasa (Tășu) is a NGO located in the mountains along the Tihuţa Pass, the road that links Transylvania with Moldova.

Named after the nearby mountain, Tășuleasa has been striving for 15 years to become an idyllic microcosm, a model community for the whole country. It is an organization that brings thousands of people together in one place. People prepared to give up their comforts and dig thanklessly on a hillside to plant saplings.

All for the sake of a number of ridiculously simple principles such as: it is better to build than to destroy, it is more interesting to give than to receive, it is a finer thing to endow your own imperfect world with meaning than repeat the cynical cliché – “nice country, pity that it’s inhabited.”

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Tanti Efti – in boots and warm clothing – is carrying out some delicate operation in the small greenhouse. She is happy to see the seedlings, investigates them and appears to have more faith in the tomatoes than I have.

“My dear, winter’s on the way out. It’s losing its grip and only playing the fool with us. Are you hungry?

I’ve made a mutton and vegetable stew. Come into the kitchen where it’s warm.”

Alin Ușeriu is Tășu’s creator and director, while Tibi Ușeriu, his younger brother, is the perfect secondin-command. Tanti Efti is their Mom. Around these three is a closely knit group of leaders that make things happen: Ana, Bum, Ștefan, Victoraș, Livia, Gabi, Miruna, Vulpe, and Andrei. Surrounding these leaders are thousands of friends, volunteers and supporters who have fought to protect and restore the forested mountains of Romania.

TRAINING

We drive out of the campus gates and turn right down a narrow mountain road. Matei and I take turns driving, taking photographs and running with Tibi while we enjoy the fragrance of pine trees in dense forests, breathtaking mountain vistas and listening to whatever is on Tibi’s mind.

“Do you see that little house at the bottom of the hill? That’s where my grandparents used to live. In fact, that’s where I spent my childhood until I was fourteen. During the summer I was a shepherd and cowman. In those days, the school holidays meant hard work. I know all the boulders, all the cliffs, all the springs, the name of every high point in this area. I know where the forests used to stand.

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After dinner, by the big warm stove in the dining room, Tibi tells us “this reforestation in Sibiu County has got me completely out of my rhythm. Tomorrow I’ll get a good run in. It’s good to eat a small, light meal in the evening and to go to bed early.”

Step after step for 215 kilometers. We’re talking about five marathons! At an average of 1,200 steps per kilometer, Tibi is going to pound his legs on the pavement over a quarter of a million times.

What happens to a human body when it is subjected to the mechanics of such an effort?

Photos: Voicu Bojan

“Well, aren’t you coming to have supper? Come on, it’s getting cold!” Auntie Efti calls to us from the kitchen. In silence, with slightly guilty expressions on our faces, Matei and I soak oven-baked bread in the sauce of a heavenly stew. Next to us, Tibi’s plate is filled with colorless gluten-free breadcrumbs, avocado salad, walnuts and green leaves. “So how does this man run 50 km a day on such a diet?” is the unspoken question.

I wake to the sight of snowflakes silently hitting the window pane. I spent much of the night in a lethargic state between dreaming and wakefulness, lost in an interminable running nightmare.

Alin joins his brother Tibi on a training run.

In my runs, I’ve come face to face with bears, wolves, foxes, and sheepdogs. When the sheepdogs chase me, I have to defend myself with pepper spray.”

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Then we move to the main road. This is where the fairytale ends. The environment is open and threatening. I felt more exposed and vulnerable than during my Communist Army medical examination when I stood naked on a scale before the board of examiners.

The cars speed past, whistling by, close to your ears.

In dry weather, the trucks shroud you in a cloud of dust. In wet weather, you get a brisk cold spray and a blast of wind that throws you off balance.

We take turns at the wheel and hang out of the car window like laundry linen. Our hazard lights beat slowly like Chinese water torture. We change the scene, take shots against different backgrounds, drop into the valley, cruise by the lake, and climb once more to Pasul Tihuţa. And repeat the cycle all day, until night falls with a cold, dark vengeance.

The thermometer shows one degree above freezing, the wind is gusting amidst giant snowflakes. Poor Tibi, runs on undisturbed, with gentle, natural strides. I get goosebumps looking at him clad in shorts.

He has an inner calm that is all his own.

That evening we meet up with a gang of volunteers back from a tree planting. Tășuleasa comes alive, as it does every evening, with a huge campfire, Van Morrison melodies, beer from a german donor and fresh food. Tonight, Livia prepares freshly caught trout from a nearby lake.

The Tășu volunteers are completing their fourth reforestation project of the spring and they’ve got two more to go. They have coordinated the energy of a couple thousand volunteers. Alin assures his brother Tibi, “We missed you, but everything turned out well. Let me get some rest and we’ll run together in morning, around 9:00 or so.” With that, Alin vanishes into the cold mountain night along the path that leads to his bedroom.

215 KM Although Tibi has only been running seriously for the last four years, he has enjoined a long list of friends into this inconvenient habit. Alin and I are two of the converts. As the circle of runners grew, Tibi fulfilled a dream of transforming an old AustroHungarian border patrol road in the Călimani Mountains into a marked trail that hosts an event that includes a bike ride, a trek, a marathon, a half-marathon and an 80 km ultra-marathon. This annual event, the Via Maria Theresia Marathon, is organized by Tășuleasa Social in partnership with Raiffeisen bank. When you ask Tibi about Via MT, his face lights up, as if he were in love.

FRIDAY NIGHT BEFORE THE RUN

A group of us are nervously gathered in the Tășu dining room, when Alin kicks off the final planning meeting by asking, “So Tibi, what do we do if you get as far as Dej and give up?” This is followed by a series of other questions, nearly all of which begin with ‘what if.’ We were all venturing far beyond our comfort zone.

Walking to our rooms, I ask Alin “What do you think? Can he keep going for such an appallingly long way?” Alin replies “Our Tibi is made of different stuff than we are. You, in fact, don’t know him, just like most people don’t. His story is more complex than what shows on the surface. I believe he has some secret resources known only to him.”

THE SOAKING WET DEPARTURE The next morning begins with the sound of raindrops landing on the roof like thousands of tiny explosions. Worse than dust, heat or frost is the dampness coming from above. No matter what you wear and how many layers of mutton fat you lard yourself with, sooner or later the moisture works its way into your skin, causing your epidermis to wear thin, slowly turning it into an agonizing open wound.

“You wanted a bit of drama, it seems we’re going to have plenty today,” are Tibi’s first words to me. It’s not even 6:00 yet and he’s already bustling around the kitchen, dressed for the run in his black T-shirt with its white logo, smiling from ear to ear like a Bride/Groom on his wedding day. Around 8:00, Tibi starts his limbering-up while doing an interview for Romanian TV. He is so jovial, you’d think he was on his way to enjoy some beer and grilled meatballs, not headed to a pig-killing.

As we leave the Tășu campus, we find a small supporters’ club of neighbors clapping and shouting out encouragements. Tanti Efti fights back tears as nerves overcome her stoic face.

Through a green tunnel of low-hanging pine tree branches, Tibi begins his first kilometer into the face of gusting sleet. His face is engraved with an inexplicable joy.

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The worried Mom - Auntie Efti

Photos: Voicu Bojan

“Oh dear, I’m so worried about my Tibi…How can anyone run such a terribly long way? If only God will keep him safe and not let some car run him over.

When I was a skinny little girl, I actually walked to Bistrita once. But there weren’t so many cars back then. The road belonged to bullock-carts with wooden wheels. I remember doing the whole journey barefoot, rather than spoil my town-and-specialdays shoes. In those days shoes didn’t grow on trees like they do now. I got there in three and a half hours, but I remember the trip back took me over five hours.

Those were hard times, we didn’t have very much to live on.”

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Flaviu Olinca, Tibi, Cristi Maxim and Ștefan Antohi just before the start

Our oddly-colored and hurried gaggle of runners was a curious spectacle sweeping through the countryside. For a while we ran next to an old man in a horse driven cart carrying a large white pig to market. In another village, two old women unobtrusively cross themselves as they timorously watched our group out of the corners of their eyes. It was a perfect metaphor of the old Romania and the new.

We pass the 50 kilometer mark in Bistriţa where an unexpected bunch of volunteer tree planters are yelling, shrieking and clapping for us all. The volunteers, who come in buses from Beclean, are heroes of a different kind, on the front line of saving Europe’s most spectacular forests.

The group is periodically joined by unexpected runners with nicknames like “Horse Trail” and “Tarzan.” The problem with the guest runners is that their infectious enthusiasm unintentionally increases the pace of the run.

215 KM Tibi’s rest stops become more frequent and his words become sparse. His unease is something you can almost touch. Sitting on the bumper of the car with a towel over his shoulders, he takes bites out of a salmon sandwich as if it were a piece of sponge.

As day turns to night, we reach the 100 kilometer mark, just north of Dej. We are joined by Tibi’s brother Alin. In his black balaclava, Alin looks like an oversized, blue-eyed seal. He is in a festive mood, trying to make all of us believe that we are having an incredible adventure, a great story to tell our grandchildren.

Although we have not planned for this, an organic wall of people forms around Tibi, as a swarm of bees changes shape and direction according to the flightpath of the queen. The cyclists are positioned on the side towards the road, those with brighter back lights forming the company’s rearguard, while the runners, some five of them at the moment, are in a compact group, creating a human cage around Tibi.

On the way out of Gherla, at that place called Băile Baiţa, we are greeted by a supporters’ gallery complete with head-torches, cowbells and provisions. It’s so pitch dark that all you can see are shards of people. You identify friends from

their voices. Among the gallery I recognize my wife, well swaddled up and with a thermos of tea in her hand, along with Andrei Dăscălescu, Nia and Mircea Miclea, and several other friends. Their presence was a comfort.

A cyclist lies down on his back with his legs supported in the vertical trunk of a tree, while Tibi gets treated for some nasty lacerations on his feet.

Under glow of torchlight, Tibi squeezes his now swollen, bandaged feet into a new pair of running shoes.

What lies before us now is a relatively straight section of road, around 30 km in length, completely exposed to an obstinate, gusting headwind.

Somewhere in the darkness of this road, my old childhood friend, Paul Borde, emerges on his bicycle. Crazily, Paul has ridden by himself out from Cluj to meet us. None of Paul’s clothes are on straight. Instead of a headlight he has a torch fixed to his handlebars with sticky tape in such a way that it illuminates his pedals more than it does the road. He’s half-frozen because he’s not wearing nearly enough clothing and he left his woolly hat at home, but he still brings with him a fresh breath of enthusiasm. Tibi smiles and hugs him, as if to steal a little of his energy. He gives all of us the feeling that there isn’t far to go now, Cluj is somewhere close by.

Photos: Voicu Bojan 13

The Tășu treeplanters greet Tibi in Bistrița.

Tibi, arriving at the finish line in Cluj-Napoca

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Soon we see an absolutely glorious sun is rising over the almost-frozen earth. But this natural beauty is mitigated by the smell of the derelict Bonțida pig farms. Adjacent to the pig farm, I pick out weary, pudgy gold-braceleted ladies in high heels descending the steps of an inn, steadying their thoroughly drunken husbands. We attempt to smile, but all anyone can manage is a fixed grimace reflecting lack of sleep and exhaustion.

The first stop in Cluj is an ambulance containing two doctors who (at the request of Horaţiu Morar, the organiser of the AROBS International Marathon) will decide whether Tibi can complete the final 42 kilometers of his run. Outside the ambulance, the team is worried. The Tășu supporters’gallery, with their placards and cowbells, are frustrated because they can’t see their hero. The tension is almost unbearable. Is this how it ends?

After a long wait and just a few seconds before an announcer proclaims the start of the Cluj Marathon, Tibi steps out of the ambulance. Stormy-faced and frowning, he then hurls himself into a sea of hurrahs and

hugs. He is accompanied on the marathon

by Toma Farcane and Horaţiu Iovanăţ, the official pacers. They are joined by Ștefan Antohi, the surprise kid from Iași, determined to bike and run alongside Tibi from beginning to end.

In the general chaos, like a colored wave, the now subdued running gaggle of humans begins to move past the starting line. The flock surrounding Tibi does almost a complete circuit around the stadium and then exits through the Someș gate into the streets of Cluj. They are the last runners to leave.

Things get very tough for Tibi as he has passes the 200 km barrier. After km 25 of the final marathon his body instructs his mind to refuse any kind of nourishment. The result is two steep drops in his blood sugar level, leading to fainting and brief losses of consciousness. Toma and Horaţiu are quick to come to his aid, flanking him closely, and holding him up until their friend can muster the strength to walk. With each struggle, he finds a way to run again. Cap pulled down over his eyes and head hanging, he seems far away from us.

215 KM Followed by a silent army of people, I am shaking as I run slowly at Tibi’s side. Unexpectedly, out of the blue, Tibi tells me quite simply that he loves me. “Yes, mate, I know, and I love you,” I reply. And I swear to myself then, on the spot, that one day, as a thank you for those words, I will tell the story of his run to the very best of my ability.

How could you not love him? Tibi awoke in each of us a latent, dormant instinct.

Something that had been waiting, years, maybe decades, to be awakened. He demonstrated that it is worth believing in things that have never been seen or talked about before.

He reminded us that “comfort zone” is a synonym for hell. That we are explorers in a country whose borders we do not know, but which deserve to be searched out. That the only way we can discover our potential is by fighting the artificial limitations that have been imposed on us. He reminded us that we are “alive”.

29 hours and 50 minutes after leaving Tasuleasa in the rain, weighing 7.8 kilograms less, flanked by dozens of friends infected by his vision, Tibi Ușeriu crossed the finishing line inside the Cluj Arena.

An indescribable atmosphere of grace was felt throughout the stadium at the moment he finished.

Everything that came after the end of the race was more glorious than I had even dared to dream.

I left Tibi stretched out on a bed wrapped in icepacks, with a cardboard pizza box on his chest.

His smile was crooked but kind of happy.

POSTSCRIPT

This excerpt is from Voicu Bojan’s six part series on Tiberiu Ușeriu’s 215 kilometer run from Piatra Fântânele to Cluj in 2015. The full Romanian version can be found at www.romaniaone.org In March 2016, Tibi Ușeriu was recognized

by President Iohannis for winning the Arctic 6633, the world’s most extreme ultramarathon.

His remarkable life story of redemption, love and community was recently published in his autobiographical book entitled “27 DE PAȘI”.

Photos: Voicu Bojan 19

Saving the cinema VALENTIN ȘCHIOPU

Victor Purice demonstrated the power of a single person who refuses to say ‘no’

Saving the Cinema You only need one person. Just one. One person who will say “no” when others insist he gives up.

Just one person who refuses to acknowledge “that’s just the way it is”.

His small victories won’t be documented anywhere.

He walks on the road of seemingly lost causes, much like a post-apocalyptic hero who sees the faintest light of revival.

The man we are speaking of is Victor Purice, the director of the “Dacia” cinema house in Piatra Neamț, one of the few state cinemas still standing in Romania.

him to give up the madness. But that would mean leaving the place in which he felt more alive than anywhere else in the world.

THE BEGINNING

Victor Purice discovered the world of film when he was in the sixth grade. The movies were played at the cultural center in his grandparents’ village. One time, he got sick while the Black Tulip was playing and an ambulance was called halfway through the film. He was crying uncontrollably. The assistant took him aside and asked him what was hurting. “I didn’t catch the end” – responded the boy.

During Ceaușescu’s time, at 16 years old, Victor was hired at one of the three cinema houses in Piatra Neamț. He became an operator and made peace with the fact that his life would forever be bound to cinematography.

From the privileged position of the projection room, he gleefully anticipated the audience’s reaction to moments of drama. During “Gypsies are Found Near Heaven”, the love story between the irresistible Rada and the horse thief, Zobar, there was an erotic scene that was controversial for the ’70s-‘80s. After taking a bath, Rada uncovered her breasts while Zobar gave her a lustful gaze.

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Dacia Cinema

When the “Great Destruction” began in the 1990s, Victor Purice told himself that the cinema would see its end only when he was ready to go too. During the hardest of times, Victor Purice projected films even when there was only one spectator in the Dacia cinema.

For years, he would eat there, sleep on the office couch and cry for hours after speaking with his wife and daughter living in Italy. They would beg

The audience heaved a long sigh when the actress demonstrated an unbelievable amount of cheekiness by taking off her skirts. One, two, three, four, off they came... an agonizing amount of titillation for the male public.

Victor laughed in the cabin knowing that their expectations would not be fulfilled. In the dim light of the “Dacia” cinema, the men were slowly leaning forward and drawing their faces closer to the screen with every skirt that dropped to the floor.

“Come on, dummies, they’re not going to show that!” grinned Victor slyly. When the tease ended, the spectators would lean back into their seats with obvious protest.

In 1970, the Dacia cinema house opened with the premiere of Swan Lake on the big screen. Victor was among the 30-40 spectators and was quick to get hired.

His responsibility was to bring movies from larger cinemas in Galați, Brăila or Iași. He still has the backpack which he used to transport the film.

A three-and-a-half hour film had four rolls and weighed “80 kilograms, the same as a priest.”

Hundreds of people would wait for him to arrive in front of the cinema in Piatra Neamț. “I was welcomed like King Mihai. Victor has arrived, Victor has arrived!”

People would go crazy and fight to get in line at one of the three ticket booths. In those times, the windows of the ticket booths would fall victim to the chaos and have to be repaired twice a week.

The “Great Destruction” is Victor’s term for the post-Communist period when the government stopped functioning, crooks and bandits stole everything they could get their hands on, and private sector investment was non-existent.

After the Revolution, the first meeting for the reorganization of the cinema houses took place in the “Cozla” cinema house, which has since fallen to ruins.

Art critic, Valentin Ciucă, invited Purice to the board meeting. It gave him great satisfaction to look around the room at the people who, overnight, had to learn how to get by without the help of “Daddy Ceasca.” (nickname for Ceaușescu).

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A few years later, around 1,000 spectators crammed into the cinema house to watch Titanic. The cashier would throw the money on the floor because there wasn’t enough space to fit it all into the cashbox.

THE “GREAT DESTRUCTION”

Photos: Raul Ștef

During the movie “Green Ice“, a film from the ‘80s featuring Anne Archer, Ryan O’Neal and Omar Sharif, it was absolute pandemonium trying to get a ticket .

“In the times of Ceaușescu, film was one of the few outlets. Somehow, in the darkness of the cinema rooms, you felt that no one was supervising you, that you could take a break from the outside world, from that grey reality.”

In the ‘90s, stealing was more abundant that ever.

Purice remained in the projection cabin while in the main hall, the ticket booth became a den of thieves.

“Tickets that were sold to spectators on the street were sold once again at the ticket booths. Lots of dirty money was being made.” says Purice.

One of the Cinema administrators had a heart attack when the police caught him. His successor was also caught stealing and was forced into retirement.

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

In 1996, Victor became the Director of the Dacia Cinema. He gathered all 18 employees and laid down a new set of rules:

– Starting today, the stealing is going to stop. An already sold ticket isn’t going to circulate once again through here.

– What, boss, we can’t even take a packet of cigarettes?

– No, nothing!

After a week, Purice found himself the lone employee. He was the operator, cashier and janitor.

He hired his brother and then God provided an angel named Cornelia to handle the accounting.

That’s when the battle began. It took Victor another 20 years to be proud of his cinema house once again.

FIGHTING THE COLD

Even though the 3 Dacia employees often got paid months behind schedule, the biggest challenge was having money to pay the heating bills.

The winters in Piatra Neamț are not mild. Victor handed out blankets and hot tea to keep his audience warm. He also gathered the audience in the front row so they could be warmed by a hot air blower. On many days, he would look out the window waiting for “the humanity”, as he liked to call it, to arrive. But humanity had forgotten the way to the theatre.

“I said –Lord, do something, help me! I was suffering in the cold. The radiator did nothing for me. But most of all, I was suffering for the spectators. When I would go sit in the theatre, I’d think - Man, it’s still this cold? I asked God to not let there be any more freezing weather.” (Victor Purice)

Photos: Raul Č˜tef

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Saving the Cinema

“At the beginning of the ‘90s there were approximately 450 cinema houses in Romania. In the last twenty years, these places have disappeared from the cultural map of Romania. They are now bingo halls, money exchange offices, construction material storage sites, church buildings, clubs, discos, restaurants, clothing stores and supermarkets, or they were deliberately abandoned and left to degradation.”

This is the conclusion of Save the Big Screen interactive platform, which created a map in 2014 showing all the cinema houses that were still owned by the state. About 80% of Romanian cities no longer have these buildings.

FAMILY In 2003, Victor’s only child, Alina, left to work in Italy. She was very young and Victor was devastated. When he found out she was a cleaning lady, Victor sold his car and went straight to Italy with the intention to bring her home.

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“Alina, dad loves you, you’re my only child. Come home, baby! Let me stay, let me stay a little while longer and you’ll see that everything will be OK, she kept repeating. I would leave her apartment and go sit on the stairs of a cathedral, crying. Man, how do you leave your child here? The next day, the whole process would start all over. Finally, I let her stay, and after two years, Victor’s wife, Tamara, went to Italy as well. They called me to invite me to the wedding. That’s another story.”

On the way to the wedding in Viterbo, 65 kilometers from Rome, the bus driver warned Purice:

“Hey, Mr. Victore! I’ve seen a lot in my day. Italian men after young ladies. Your son-in-law will probably be around your age, Mr. Victore! I think you two will get along splendidly!”

“Get out of here, my Alina?” said Victor, although the thought had already crept into his mind.

When they arrived, Alina was waiting for him in the bus station with an older man. The bus driver braked suddenly. “Yo, Mr. Victore, I told you, now look at him. Actually, he seems a lot older than you!

Purice’s heart became as small as his name.

Purice got out of the car, fuming, ready to welcome his son-in-law with a couple of blows. “Don’t call me daddy, don’t call me daddy. Put the bags in the car and leave me alone,” said Victor angrily to his daughter as he got in the driver’s seat. While he stared with vengeance at the man he was supposed to welcome into his family, Alina said. “Dad, calm down, that’s not Claudio, that’s his father, my future father-in-law.”

Victor burst out laughing and took them both in his arms, shouting for joy.

TIME TO GIVE UP ?

After the wedding, Victor’s wife, Tamara moved to Italy to care for the two new grandchildren.

Victor missed his family and was depressed. He wondered if he had been negligent in this absurd battle to save the cinema. Maybe he should heed his family’s advice.

“Dad, the cinema house is going to crumble down on you. You’re fighting with windmills. We’re not going to force you, but at least try something else.”

In 2011, he left for Italy with the intention of staying. He took a month off and then asked for another 60 days off without pay: “I didn’t tell anyone about my intentions because I risked discovering that my cinema would be turned into a night club, if and when, I returned home.”

– In my country, I create culture. I’m the director of a cinema.

– What do you mean?

– That’s what I mean.

– So then why did you come here?

– I came here to scope you out, to see how you treat Romanians.

After one month away, Victor returned home and swore that he’d never leave Romania again.

– Gentlemen, thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for me, but I’m going to return to my little home.

– What do you do in Romania? You’re leaving… but how much do you make there? People are dying of hunger in Romania.

The filmmakers decided to base the documentary on a single story, the story of Victor and his three employees – Lorena (“a chameleon-actress, because she has had red hair, blonde hair, long hair and short hair”), Cornelia, and Gheorghe, Victor’s older brother.

30 days later he cashed his paycheck and carried out this dialogue with his boss:

Shortly after returning from Italy, a film production team led by the young director Alexandru Belc sought out Purice to create a documentary about the remaining cinema houses in Romania.

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CINEMA, MON AMOUR

Photos: Raul Ștef

He got a job as a driver. In reality, he was the poor Romanian who did everything. He drove, carried, lifted to the point of complete exhaustion and utter meaninglessness.

Alexandru’s team filmed for almost three years.

“I asked them to depict reality, to show us the way we are, nothing false, no stunt doubles. If you manage to film it when it happens - long live your family, if you don’t, too bad!”

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Ultimately, Alexandru Belc created a gem, a documentary called “Cinema, Mon Amour” or “Cinema, My Love”. The film first appeared in a short version in 2014 and then in the final format in 2016, circulating in film festivals all over the world.

Thanks to the documentary “Cinema, Mon Amour”, Purice escaped anonymity. In the last few months, he has received guests from all over the world.

His fame has begun to open new doors. A few years earlier, his desperate cries for help landed on deaf ears. Now, “that crazy Moldovean guy” has turned into “Ah, I greet you with respect, Mr. Purice”.

Victor Purice was convinced that the digitalization and modernization of the cinema house would bring the people of Piatra Neamț back to “Dacia”.

Using his new connections, he managed to acquire the 3D technology system from the cinema house “Patria” in Bucharest. The 3D system was just lying there, unused, in a cinema that had been closed down years ago due to a potential seismic hazard.

He repaired the 3D system and in March 2016 brought Star Wars to Piatra Neamț. On a wall at the entrance of the cinema house, these words were written: “The force is within, deeply hidden”.

This force had also awoken “the humanity,” who was once again pouring into the cinema, filling its hall. There were 500 people, the largest group since Titanic.

Among them was Tamara, Victor’s wife.

She took him into her arms and kissed him.

“Finally! I never thought that you’d one day succeed. You didn’t fight in vain, look, your dreams have come true!”

Victor locked himself in his office for five minutes and had a good cry. He returned, all smiles. He had won!

Saving the Cinema

THE YOUNG GENERATION After Victor’s return from Italy, another surprise awaited him. Young people in Piatra Neamț began to join his cause.

Andrei Dăscălescu, the organizer of the local summer film festival “Filmul de Piatră,” helped him create a sponsorship with Ardealul Pharmacy to purchase a $200 video-projector.

Later, a group of 16-year old girls created a Save Dacia! Facebook campaign. The teenagers organized a four day festival of Romanian films at the Dacia that raised $2500 to purchase building materials for renovations. Of course, Victor was the skilled labor.

“I never spoke against the younger generation. On the contrary, I criticized those who speak against them and called them crazy. Crazy? In reality, the older folks have no idea how to interact with them.

I was completely surprised when we created this movement to save the cinema house. When I saw these teenagers cleaning the room, how hard they were working, I said: this can’t be real!

Something tells us he’s going to make it. He’s only one man, but a man who knows his place in the world and is committed to his calling. That’s all it takes.

“The best day for me in the cinema is when I have a full house. I’ve had so many and I know I’ll have more... For years, this cinema hall was dead, there was nothing to do.

You should see it on the weekends now, it’s hustling and bustling.

This is an instrument for socialization. You meet people in flesh and bone. There are people who haven’t been to a cinema house in 20-30 years.

Now they come and rediscover a world that they believed was lost. People come back after so long, thank me, and take me into their arms. I consider myself a very lucky man.

But wait, I’m not going to stop here. I have to ensure that all the right conditions are in place. I have to do everything, step by step. The real fight actually starts now.

Hey, do you ever do this at home? No, only mom and dad clean. So why are you doing it here? Because I like it and I want to work with you to accomplish your dream to have a cinema house.

They’re my protégés. They get things done on Facebook. Now, they want to create a campaign to get personalized chairs. Each one wants a chair with their names on it. It’s theirs when they come to the cinema. When they don’t come, someone else can use it. It sounds promising.

THE FUTURE

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Purice says that he still has a lot of crazy ideas. He wants to transform the cinema into a real cultural center where theatre productions and classical music concerts are held.

Photos: Raul Ștef

The Director of “Dacia” smiles, sure of himself, and says that he wouldn’t abandon his work of 30 years for all the money in the world.

Professor of Imagination ROXANA GARAIMAN

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Dorel Zaica uses his artistic talent to inspire young minds with the gift of learning

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Professor of Imagination

Every ten minutes, the screeching sound of the cable car rings through the open window of Dorel Zaica’s workshop. Undisturbed and gesticulating grandly, the Professor recounts the details of his life’s passion.

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“We have no idea how to educate our children. We completely underestimate them. Ever since I began applying this exercise in the classroom, the students have surpassed all the expectations for their grade level. It’s unreal! I have learned right alongside them.

Soon, I’ll be celebrating half a century of practicing this form of mental gymnastics.”

Dorel Zaica turned 77 this year. Considered the father of creative learning in Romania, Zaica has been stimulating the imagination of children since the 1970’s.

He has published a number of books: The Zaica Experiment, Involuntarily Chronic: Confessions at the Childhood Age and The Childhood of Poetry.

“For many years Dorel Zaica has been the most prominent and original figure of artistic pedagogy in

Romania. Specializing in the education of elementary aged children, he seeks to stimulate the creativity of students by appealing to their ludic instinct, as well as to their innocent courage and the freshness of their life experience,” writes Andrei Pleșu in the preface of the book The Zaica Experiment, published in 2001.

At Dorel Zaica’s workshop, I found a man who has never stopped playing or feeling joy. A man who allows himself to imagine a better world.

Remarkably energetic, the professor greeted us at the lobby of a neglected building and led us to a tiny forged iron elevator. On the fifth floor, he opens the door to a crowded apartment and jumps right into his stories.

“I became an art teacher against my will. I started teaching in the neighborhood school against my will.

And, also against my will, I discovered these exercises in creativity.”

“When I was little, I passed the time by pretending my fingers were playmates. I drew a face on one finger. On another finger, I’d draw feathers around my nails. I’d draw fat people, skinny people, all kinds of fun characters.“ Then, it crossed my mind to invent a little story and my classmates keeled over with laughter. Soon after, I had an audience in the schoolyard. With extraordinary ease, I invented story after new story.”

The finger puppet show, improvised

by Dorel Zaica, wasn’t only a game for children in 1940’s Bucharest. It was a refuge in the face of a harsh reality that was hostile to innocence.

“My childhood was sad; the poverty was sinister. A bomb was dropped right on our own home. Almost everyone outside in our yard died, except for myself.

My mother was inside. She escaped with her life, sandwiched in a pile of debris from the fallen ceiling.”

What is time?

A beautiful horse that is spinning the earth.

(Adrian, 5 years old) What are weeds?

Weeds are plants that are useful only for themselves (Daniel, 12 years old).

What is betrayal?

Betrayal means a dead friendship (Adrian, 11 years old).

using very simple movements so that they could get accustomed to my representations.”

What does being patriotic mean?

Patriotic means when the boss calls his employees to work. (Jeanina, 8) What is thirst?

Thirst is when you see some cola while you’re out and you want to get some but mom doesn’t get it for you because then there won’t be money left for food. (Alexandru, 7) What is a job?

A job is when a person signs a registry book or stays to have a coffee. (Florin, 7)

What is happiness?

Happiness is when a person is standing in line and tells the other person that the store is empty but then suddenly they see that there’s something there. (Niculina, 7) What is a newspaper?

The newspaper is for us to know our comrade Ceaușescu’s whereabouts.

What are germs?

Germs are little bugs that are tiny and hidden around the same corner store. When they see that you’ve bought potatoes, they jump onto the potatoes and if you don’t wash them, you’ll die.

(Dan Zaica, 7)

Excerpt from The Zaica Experiment (questions and answers prior to 1989)

What is a home?

A home is where man shelters his life from natural phenomena.

After the war, the Zaica family was moved to the Bucharestii Noi neighborhood. Dorel, entering the 6th grade, used his creativity to make new friends.

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“My need to continuously improvise pushed me to make new friends in Bucureștii Noi with my puppet theater. It was hard since I had to start from scratch,

Photos: Lucian Muntean

Excerpt from The Zaica Experiment (questions and answers prior to 1989)

Dorel Zaica’s parents didn’t care about an artistic future.

“My father put me in Saint Sava High School. It was ridiculous. The discrepancy between myself and the other students was so great that I didn’t understand anything. I drew non-stop to spite my father.

The teachers failed me at a surprising speed. I still didn’t do my work in the second year. I just kept drawing. After another trimester, to my good fortune, they kicked me out.”

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Eventually, his father relented and enrolled him as a part-time student at the Visual Arts High School.

“I remember a math class with a Jewish teacher who was in love with symphonic music. This Jewish man taught math so beautifully that I never failed again.

He showed me that mathematics is sublime, a blend, like architecture, with artistic and technical elements alike.”

Dorel likes to tell the story of how his lifelong friend, Ștefan Sileanu, made it to the Visual Arts High School. Two artists were painting a church in the village of Pătârlagele, near Buzău, when they discovered the boy who was destined to play the role of Vlad Țepes in the 1980’s film.

“While they were painting at the entrance of the church, a little shepherd boy stood watching them. I don’t know what he saw from the outside, but something lured him over. Afana (one of the painters) didn’t need too many hints. He went over to the boy and spoke to him warmly — in his usual manner: Tell me little boy, do you like what you see?

Do you want to paint as well?” recounts Dorel Zaica in his book.

They were dumbfounded, when they saw how well the child drew, how could a little shepherd boy from a poor village school be so cultured?

“When they brought electricity to the villages, the communists put megaphones everywhere.

You could even hear the propaganda in the field.

So Sileanu would listen to radio programs while he was tending his sheep. Besides announcing the daily news, the radio also aired cultural and theatrical performances. Sileanu remembered everything, information stuck to him like a magnet.”

The painters were able to persuade Stefan’s parents to register him in the Visual Arts High School. Dorel Zaica and Ștefan Sileanu were inseparable in high school and went on to study together in the Faculty for Visual Arts at the local university.

Professor of Imagination In their second year, a scenography student asked Sileanu to take a role in a theatrical performance for the school, which greatly impressed his professors. They convinced him to transfer to the National University of Theatrical Art and Cinematography (UNATC), previously known as IATC Theatre and Film Art Institute.

The life of Dorel Zaica, on the other hand, seemed to take a 180-degree turn after completing his art studies. Although he dreamed of becoming a painter, the communist regime made him become a drawing teacher. It seemed as if anonymity, not fame, was his destiny.

In 1965, I was assigned to a school with many poor, needy children in the Dudești neighborhood on the south side of Bucharest. It was clear that the school had no money for drawing blocks or colored pencils.

I had two brothers in my class that shared one pair of shoes. So I asked them: “If we were to occupy ourselves with intriguing and amusing activities, would you be interested?”

“Yes, of course, but we don’t know how to do anything like that.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.”

Dorel Zaica recounts how he first became aware of his students’ artistic potential while wearing a Santa Claus costume at a Christmas party.

When I saw their little eyes fixed on me, their emotions moved me in a strong way. A mother tried to fix her child’s collar but he wouldn’t let her because he was transfixed on my every move.

I kept asking them trivial questions. What are your names, how old are you, where do you live. A little girl responded by saying: “ I live in the puddle, beside the elevator”.

Her answer penetrated me. God, she wasn’t joking!

That neighborhood was like a military camp.

Building after building after building. It had become Romania’s biggest city with 600,000 dwellers, without any sort of urban plan. It never occurred to them to build a store or cinema. The kids would play in the alley in front of their buildings.”

After that Christmas celebration, the young teacher Dorel Zaica started asking more questions. The responses impressed him so much that he started to write them down.

He learned there is no such thing as a wrong answer, just a badly formulated question.

I perfected my ability to ask questions, slowly but surely. I became a writer. I developed the capacity to ask questions in rhymes. Children are very receptive to question styles and respond in the same way.

Photos: Lucian Muntean 35

Photos from “Zaica Experiment”

Professor of Imagination

“Why does blood run through our bodies? Can’t it do its work while standing still?

“Blood doesn’t stand still, because it constantly goes to work.”

Dorel Zaica tells us that he was a lenient teacher.

He came to the conclusion that it was the only way he could help his students relax and allow their imagination to run free.

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He learned this through his own mistakes and those of others.

“I taught drawing lessons while their primary teacher was in the classroom. Once, I asked one of the children a question and heard a deadening noise behind me.

Their teacher had jumped out from the back of the classroom and smacked the child on the head. The child became paralyzed and his eyes glazed over as if he had gone mad. The woman was yelling in his ear that he had forgotten yesterday’s lesson about spring: how the sun starts to smile, snowdrops appear as the snow melts and birds begin to travel.

She was pouring onto him all these clichés.

For my entire life, I’ve regretted that I didn’t intervene.”

As a result, Zaica was determined to never burden a child with someone else’s template and to transform his classes into an environment in which everything became possible.

I taught them to value other people’s opinions, not to laugh or judge. I told them,“This isn’t a lesson I expect you to learn by heart. We are playing a game here. This is a serious game. Don’t you see that we’re constantly progressing in the ideas you are coming up with and performances you are giving?”

In 1979, Zaica was invited to the Institute of Pedagogy where researchers asked him to be part of a scientific study.

There had been a demand from UNESCO to create a method for applied creativity. The people from the ministry had no idea what that was. They told me that I was the only person in Romania who practiced applied creativity.

Zaica discovered that empathy is a good means for stimulating creativity. The greater the emotional build-up, the more spectacular the results.

One time I told them: “ Yesterday it snowed, did you build a snowman?”

“Yes!! “ “But did you ever think that after the joy of daytime, your snowman is alone and abandoned in the night?”

Suddenly, all of their expressions became very serious and their minds jumped to life. I took the thought further.

“How can we surprise the snowman when you play with him tomorrow?”

The first response came from a little girl who drew herself standing on her tiptoes as she reached to put a heart on the snowman’s chest. I asked her: ”Why did you give him a heart? “

“Now, he can come with me to school.”

Then a classmate asked “How can the snowman go to school with you if he doesn’t have legs?”

As the classmate drew, you could see everything that went on in his mind. First he drew a snowman with legs standing next to a road. Then drew himself in a sled racing down the road toward the snowman.

Eventually, he crashed into the snowman, making a hole in the snowman’s torso and leaving him bow-legged.

Zaica remembers how he made use of humor to win a contest organized by CEC Bank. The theme was fairy-tale characters with bank accounts.

It was the biggest competition in Romania, with real prizes. I got the kids going by posting large images from three black and white movies on the school

board. I asked them to write all the characters they knew on a piece of paper and a joke from each of the characters.

That’s all it took. The speed at which they worked was awe-inspiring and the results were incredible.

And the jokes were hilarious.

The minister, CEC BANK and the Union of Visual Artists, gave out the award. We won a free summer camp that year for the all the children in our group.

After a life spent dedicated to the creativity of others, Dorel Zaica feels that he has finally found the freedom for his own talent.

“I have begun to reach my artistic potential in the last few years. During Communism art was used exclusively for propaganda and I never wanted to compromise. So I used my artistic talent for the best purpose I could find – to inspire young minds with the gift of learning.”

What is a secret?

A secret is when the militia can’t find out. (6-year-old child) A secret is a man who they call the secretary of the party. (6-year-old child) What is a ministry?

A ministry means you go there to take revenge.

(Constantin Păun, 9) The ministry is big, kind of like a type of police, but at the top, it says Ministry (Victoria, 7) A minister means when someone writes something then goes to another person and that person sends him to another person. (Aurelia, 8) What does it mean to be eternal?

Eternal is when there are two thieves and shots are fired, one dies and the other stays standing, eternal.

(Victorița, 7)

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Eva Mozes Kor, sitting before the students and teachers of George Coșbuc National High School in Cluj.

Forgiveness is the Best Revenge VALENTIN SCHIOPU

Auschwitz Survivor Eva Kor has powerful words for students at her former school in Cluj

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Forgiveness is the Best Revenge

The last photograph taken of the Mozes family before their deportation.

The twins Miriam and Eva are on either side of their mother, Jaffa.

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Eva and Miriam Mozes, twin sisters, survived the monstrous experiments conducted by the “Angel of Death,” also known as Doctor Josef Mengele. They endured the experiments he oversaw in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Miriam Mozes died of cancer in 1993. At age 82, Eva Mozes continues to spread her message for forgiveness and healing – tikkun olan – as the Jews call it.

In memory of the Mozes family, five Stolpersteine (in German meaning, stone which you stumble across) lay in their home village of Port (Sălaj County). Each Stolpersteine is a cobblestone containing the Holocaust victim’s name, birth date, and year of deportation. The five Stolpersteine in the village of Port commemorate Alexander and Jaffa Mozes, Eva’s parents, and the four sisters, Aliz, Edit, Miriam and Eva. Only Miriam and Eva survived Auschwitz.

In October 2016, Eva Mozes Kor returned the school in Cluj that she and Miriam attended after their release from Auschwitz seventy years ago.

At that time, it was called “The Regina Maria School for Girls.” Today, it is the “George Coșbuc” National High School of Cluj.

The octogenarian, who currently lives in the United States, wanted to share her story with teenagers.

She asked them to immunize themselves against any form of prejudice. The “cancer of the soul”, as she calls it, and to never isolate those amongst them who are less popular.

Eva Mozes Kor uses her wheelchair to relax the students before tackling the gruesome subject matter of her life. “I love speaking. It’s a good thing that I’m here to speak. Not all Romanians are good gymnasts.”

Eva’s message to the high school students in Cluj: A Survivor’s Teachings, Dedicated to Youth “My name is Eva Kor, and I’m a survivor of Mengele’s medical experiments in Auschwitz.

I’m 82 years old and I’m struggling to survive old age. As you can see, my old age - with all its problems - presents me with a variety of challenges. That being said, if I put myself in your shoes, I know how difficult it is to be a teenager.

I travel a lot. I challenge youth to try to become the best version of themselves. You can’t be anyone but yourself. You can try to imitate a movie star or athlete, but at the end of the day, you have to be yourself.

You have to be the best that you can be.

In the USA, I see lots of students eating lunch by themselves. It makes me so sad that none of their classmates make any effort to include them.

When we were released from Auschwitz, we were dressed in rags full of lice. Romania was very poor after the war and you couldn’t find too many stores that sold nice things.

An aunt from the States sent us clothing that was far too big for us. We looked ridiculous in everything we wore and our classmates often made fun of us.

Finally, in 1948, the aunt who was raising us in Cluj sent a letter to our relatives in in the States saying: These clothes fit the girls so poorly, couldn’t you just send me some material instead? That’s how we ended up with clothes that fit us.

This is my prayer to you. If, for one reason or another, someone doesn’t fit into your horizons, help them do it! Accept them as they are! You have the chance to help someone who might really need you.

One day, this person could become an important figure in your life.

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I was a student here from October 1945 until 1950. At first, I didn’t speak Romanian very well. I was raised

My sister Miriam and I were 11 years old when we entered this school. We wanted to be accepted by the other students. But we were ignored because we didn’t have nice clothes and didn’t speak well.

Photos: Raul Ștef

You’ll have to study hard, work hard and overwhelm others with goodness.

in a Jewish family and completed my elementary school in Hungarian.

Eva Kor in a visit to Auschwitz.

The fact that many of you have gone to Auschwitz is impressive. It would be interesting to go there with students from my former high school. Rather than talking about the ways that people were killed, we will talk about how I survived.

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When I go there, I always make a point of stopping at the exact spot where I saw my family for the last time. When you lose someone dear to you, you’ll remember exactly what they looked like and where they were the last time you saw them.

I never had the chance to say goodbye to my mother.

Three years ago, I wrote her a goodbye note. I also wrote one for my father. They are letters that explain who I am and the source of my strength.

Your memories become the source of your strength.

Even if you forgive, it doesn’t mean you’ll forget. How could you forget something that was a part of you?

If you cut your hand, your hand will heal and you’ll be able to do the things that you did before.

But you’ll have a scar that will remind you of what happened there. But this scar should not hinder you from living the way you originally planned to live.

Every time life gets tough, we shouldn’t give up. We have to do everything we can to get through it. When you have a hard day, ask yourself how the prisoners in Auschwitz survived. They didn’t give up on their lives. Don’t ever give up on yours!

I wish that the leaders of this earth would meet in Auschwitz rather than meeting in Switzerland or in a nice European hotel. All the important meetings on this earth should take place there, especially those related to peace.

Forgiveness is the Best Revenge

The moment when Auschwitz was liberated. Eva and Miriam Mozes in the first row.

“SCHNELL, SCHNELL, SCHNELL!” In March 1944, Alexander and Jaffa Mozes, along with their four daughters and dozens of other Jews, were crammed into a train that normally carried livestock. After four days without any food or water, they found themselves on the selection platform in Auschwitzk-Birkenau, amongst the shouts of German soldiers repeating: “Schnell, schnell, schnell!”

The twins were violently pulled away from their mother. In a matter of minutes, they had become orphans. Their new family became 30 sets of twins, ranging between the ages of 2 to16.

Their barrack was full of rats and lice. On their first night in Auschwitz, Eva woke up screaming: “There are mice, there are mice everywhere!” An older girl immediately shut her down: “Get used to it! Yes, they are everywhere, but they aren’t mice, they are rats!”

When they went to use the bathroom for the first time, they tripped over the dead bodies of two children. They were in hell.

THE BLOOD LABORATORY

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The twins were awakened every morning at 5 am for roll call. The first order of business was a morning inspection conducted by the diabolical Mengele. He would slowly stroll by each of them.

Photos: Raul Ștef

Jaffa squeezed the twins’ hands vigorously. In the overwhelming chaos, their father and two sisters had been separated from them. A German officer asked the mom if the girls were twins. “Is this good or is this bad?” Jaffa inquired after having confirmed that Eva and Miriam were born on the same day.

“We were taken into a large building where they shaved our hair and undressed us. Two soldiers held me down so that I could get tattooed on my left arm.

I became A-7063 and Miriam became A-7064. Then we were brought into a horse’s stable, which was located on the outskirts of the concentration camp.

This became our barrack. I have never seen a place of such misery and cruelty,” recounts Eva.

Forgiveness is the Best Revenge Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the twins were kept naked in a room for up to eight hours at a time, in order to examine and measure different parts of their body. “It was absolutely humiliating,” remembers Eva. Tuesday and Thursday, they spent the day at the blood laboratory.

“They tied both our arms to limit our blood circulation. They would draw a ton of blood from our left arm and then give us five injections in our right arm. We didn’t know what they were injecting into us. It was rumored that they were injecting us with microbes, illnesses or medication.”

After a couple visits to the blood lab, Eva began feeling very sick with a high fever. She tried to hide her weakness because no child ever returned from the hospital. At a morning inspection, Mengele identified red spots all over her body and sent her to the hospital.

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“The people seemed to be more dead than alive. Mengele, accompanied by four other doctors, wanted to know how high my fever was. Then, he started laughing sarcastically and said: What a shame, she has just a couple of weeks to live! I refused to accept his verdict. I wanted to prove to him wrong.

I wanted to see my sister again.”

The only memory I have of the next 14 days is crawling across the barrack floor to get water.

People were dying around me. I kept my mind focused on an image of Miriam and getting out of that hell. A month later, after my fever subsided, I saw my sister again. She looked like a zombie. I asked her what had happened in my absence and she told me that she could not or would never tell me about it,” recounted Eva. “Forty years later we discovered, in the Auschwitz Museum, that if I had died, Miriam would’ve been taken to the laboratory and killed with an injection to the heart. Then, they would’ve performed a comparative autopsy.”

According to Eva, 1,500 pairs of twins were involved in Mengele’s experiments. Only 250 survived.

After their release on January 27, 1945, Miriam and Eva spent nine months in a refugee camp in Katowice, Poland. Here, they reunited with Rosalia Csengeri, a friend of their mother, whose twins were also victims of Mengele’s experiments.

Rosalia helped the two girls return to Romania in October 1945. In their family home, all that was left were three pictures in broken frames lying on the floor. This was all they had of their family’s past.

“I DISCOVERED THAT I HAVE THE POWER TO FORGIVE”

Their father’s younger sister, who was also a Holocaust survivor, became their caregiver in Cluj. In Romania, the communist regime had just taken over.

“The Communists arrived with beautiful slogans: Fraternity, Freedom, and Equality. Wow! I wanted freedom, I wanted equality, I wanted fraternity. So I became the commander of a brigade of 30 young pioneers. On the morning of May 1, 1948, they told me to lead my brigade in a parade. I did it.

Later that afternoon, I went to a picnic and then another parade. By evening, I had had enough of parades and sent my colleagues home to study.

The next day, we were summoned to the Directorate.

They asked: Where were you last night? Why were you not present at the parade? We told them we went home to study. They replied: When you’re in the communist party, you’re not supposed to think, just follow the orders. Is that clear?

I whispered to myself — I am an Auschwitz survivor, you cannot hurt me. Then I told them that I didn’t like their party anymore and resigned. They told me I would never be allowed attend high school in Cluj.

“So I applied for a visa to Israel. It took two years to get it,” explained Eva.

In Israel, the twins went to an agricultural school for Holocaust orphans from 30 different countries.

In 1952, when the twins turned 18, they enrolled in the Israeli army.

Eva married another concentration camp survivor, Michael Kor. In 1960 they moved to the USA and settled down in Terre Haute, Indiana.

discharged through ventilation ducts. When the granules touched the floor, they would turn into a dust that would then rise.

After the death of her sister Miriam in 1993, Eva visited Han Munch in Germany. He was a Nazi doctor who personally knew Doctor Mengele and had actively participated in the extermination of Jews in the gas chambers.

Eva invited Dr. Munch to be her guest at the 1995 ceremony commemorating 50 years of freedom for the Auschwitz survivors. Before the hushed public, with Munch at her side, Eva declared that she forgave all the Nazis for the suffering they had caused her family.

In the USA, Eva founded the organization called CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) as well as the CANDLES Holocaust Museum. Through these two organizations, she sought to enlighten the public on eugenics (controlled breeding of humans) and the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the best revenge. From the minute you forgive, those who have hurt you have no more power over your life. Fury? Hitler was an angry man. Fury leads to war. I don’t believe there has ever been a war provoked by joyful people.”

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We told the people that they were going to take a shower. The room was clean and polished. They even sprayed the chambers with perfume. When the chamber became full of people, the watertight doors were closed. The gas didn’t come from the showerheads. White granules of Zyklon B were

“That day changed my life. I realized that I have the power to forgive. From that moment on, I felt the pain and burden that I had carried with me for the last 50 years was lifted. I was finally freed from Auschwitz. Finally freed from Mengele.

Photos: Raul Ștef

“He told me that Mengele never spoke about the experiments. They were secret. After he said this, I asked him: Doctor Munch, can you by any chance tell me anything about the gas chambers? His immediate response was: That’s my problem, it’s the nightmare that I’ve relived every single day since then.

The people climbed on top of each other, trying to save themselves. They started to form a mountain of intertwined bodies, with the most powerful at the top. When those on top stopped moving, Dr. Munch knew that everyone else had died. He prepared a single death certificate, without any names, just the number of dead.”

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48 PressOne Quarterly | Volume 2

Cristian Borz in the pasture belonging to Maniu’s family.

Return of Iuliu Maniu BIANCA FELSEGHI

Cristian Borz’s 15 year crusade to recreate the home of a founding father to modern Romania

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Return of Iuliu Maniu

1939, Iuliu Maniu in his orchard on the Țarinei Hill in Bădăcin.

Iulia Maniu was a leader in forming modern Romania after World War I. He served as Prime Minster from 1928 to 1933. Maniu fought to protect the rights of Jews during the 1940’s and his party led the opposition to the Communist Party in the 1946 elections.

Sentenced to prison by the Communist Party, along with thousands of other political dissidents, Maniu died in Sighet Prison in 1953. There was no death certificate, tombstone, cross or family notification to accompany his death.

For decades, Maniu’s family members have tried to locate his remains. Along with philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu, Bishop Ioan Sociu and the Orthodox monk Daniil Sandu Tudor, Iuliu Maniu is counted as one of the great missing figures of the communist penitentiary system.

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In the book Romanian Diaries – 1944 to 1947, Senior US Representative to Romania, Burton Berry, says “Iulia Maniu has an enormous political following in the country, and I believe the respect in which all Romanians hold him eclipses that held for any other Romanian.”

However, in a very strange and almost magical way, Maniu’s presence in Bădăcin, a small village in Sălaj County, is felt more concretely now than ever before.

Iuliu Maniu

Here, Cristian Borz has embarked on a 15 year mission to bring home the last prominent politician of Greater Romania.

It’s the middle of September in Bădăcin and there are autumn crocuses all over Iuliu Maniu’s pasture.

Borz has finished building a fence around what remains of the Maniu family property.

The old house, nestled in a vineyard, is connected to the cemetery by an alley lined by rustling “noble” trees. The setting evokes images of a thriller film where the criminal returns to the crime scene, full of regret.

THE MEMORIES OF THE OLD CHURCH CANTOR

Cristian Borz, a Greek Catholic Priest, was sent to reestablish the parish in Bădăcin.

“The bishop told me: You have to go to Bădăcin, to reestablish the Greek-Catholic church and to implement Maniu’s will and testament.

Iuliu Maniu’s testament had become public in the early ‘90s. More so than a parish, a mission was assigned to me,” relates the priest.

Having just arrived home from work, Borz was surprised to find a reporter and a photo journalist poking around his little hilltop church.

“When I arrived in Bădăcin, I knew that he was the Prime Minister and a founding father of the union of Transylvania to Romania in 1918. But what really impressed me were the memories of the village people.

The church cantor was a little old man who had personally known Maniu. He had such a sharp memory that whatever he said could be verified in documents and with historical dates. He was an extraordinary person who left a real impact on me” recounts the priest Cristian Borz.

That’s how he also found out about Maniu’s joy in financially supporting the good students in the village all the way through university.

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Volunteers, repairing the fence. Cristian Borz’s Facebook page.

A bust of Iuliu Maniu seen from his memorial home.

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The conversations with the elderly cantor ignited a deep passion in the young priest’s legal efforts to reclaim the land belonging to the legendary political figure. A passion and a frenzied search: where had Maniu been buried?

“There were three prior attempts at finding the remains of Iuliu Maniu. The first was in 1971. His sister, Nena, wrote to Ceaușescu asking where Maniu had been buried. To her surprise, she was visited by a Securitate officer who said: We’ll give you his remains, but don’t cause a scandal. Just call a priest and that’s it.”

“The family was thrilled. They were promised that they’d be called to the exhumation process. After a month, the same officer announced that the remains would be brought to them in Cluj. What the Securitate officer did not know was that Maniu had been wounded in the First World War and had a rod in his left foot. That was the first thing the family checked and the rod was not there. The Securitate

officer’s medical and legal certificate stating that these were the authentic remains was phony.”

(Cristian Borz)

In 2006, the last political prisoner in the Sighet penitentiary, Alexandru Szatmari, declared in an interrogation session that Maniu’s remains had been put in a crate right after his death. He stated that because the crates were so short, Maniu’s feet were cut off.

“As a result, they began digging in the cemetery that was dedicated to the political prisoners of the Sighet penitentiary and they found a skeleton that was missing its feet. Samples were taken from the skeleton and sent to the National Institute of Legal Medicine in Bucharest.

Then, the samples disappeared. No one knew if they had made it to Bucharest. In the spring of 2007, the government prohibited anymore digging in the Sighet Cemetery of Political Prisoners. Since then, no one has done anything,” says Cristian Borz.

Iulia Maniu’s childhood home desperately needs a new roof.

Borz is wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it from a Christian summer camp that he organizes annually: “Put your soul into everything you do.”

was first, and then love for his people and for his family. That’s how he was educated. He lived these values to the end.

“For 15 years I’ve been taking care of this place with the desire to renovate it and to make it accessible.

But, every time I get close to accomplishing it, something else comes up and then something else again. I don’t know why there is this fear, this passive resistance.“ (Christian Borz)

Inspired by Catholic tradition, Maniu never married.

Shortly before his death he mentioned being in love with a woman named Clara. But he dedicated his entire life to politics” said the priest of Bădăcin.

Maniu’s friends nicknamed him “The Sphinx” for pioneering the concept of a secular pastor.

You can almost see Maniu strolling through the apricot orchard, steadying himself on a bamboo cane, and wearing his suit with the frayed cuffs. In his other hand is a hat and his breast pocket is crammed full of cigarettes and candies.

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Maniu celebrated his birthday on the feast of Saint Demetrius. It was in memory of his grandfather, Demetriu Coroian. In the hierarchy of his values, God

With a gentle voice that accompanies dusk’s approach over the leaves, Cristian Borz tells us more about Maniu. He is absolutely poetic, lacing history together with an aroma of parables.

Photos: Raul Ștef

“He’s the only political figure who was able to weave politics with Christian morality. He didn’t differentiate between the two. Today, this seems to be an unreachable ideal. However, Maniu demonstrated that it’s possible.

In the cemetery at Bădăcin, you’ll find an empty tomb and a cross with Iuliu Maniu’s name above it.

Return of Iuliu Maniu

Cristian Borz explains the restoration plans of Maniu’s House.

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After gathering numerous documents and witness statements for his family property reinstitution request, Father Borz ended up writing a book.

explained in such detail it seems Pop had a sense that it would be torn apart and pieced together decades later.”

Titled “The Monograph of the Village of Bădăcin and the Maniu Family,” the book is already in its second printing. It’s been enlarged and revised.

From now on, the village and the man who was prime minister three times will be permanently memorialized. They are chained together in martyrdom. Twenty-three of Maniu’s family members were behind bars in the 1950s.

In the basement of the church in Bădăcin are the objects that were recovered from the home of Cecilia, Iuliu Maniu’s sister. Her life met a chilling end after being put under house arrest in Șimleu Silvania. She died of starvation.

It wasn’t only the stories of the Maniu family that started to find their way back to Bădăcin. All sorts of family belongings started to reappear. It was as if they had their own will and in a miraculous way found their way home.

Other personal items belonging to Maniu were found in different stages of the restoration of the home.

HOW A MYTH IS BUILT

“Maniu’s nephew, Ionel Pop, documented in great detail, the state of the family home in 1946. Pop actually grew up in the home. Every room is

Borz picked up a desk and a rug from Maniu’s study from an old man in Baia Mare who wanted to return it before he died. After lingering in the office of a prosecutor, Maniu’s cane and hat were recovered from someone trying to sell them online.

“It is as if the place wanted to save itself,” said Cristian Borz, constantly coming up with astonishing stories.

CARRYING YOUR CROSS TO THE END Restoring Casa Maniu (the Maniu Residence) is now a life mission for Cristian Borz. In 2015, he initiated a worldwide fundraising campaign for the restoration. By the end of February 2015, he had raised 4,575 Euros, 4,505 US dollars, 155 pounds, 100 Canadian dollars and 117,133 RON. He has deconstructed 7 decades of interior modification to return the home to its 1947 structure. The foundation and the wall were also fortified. He needs to raise another 182,000 Euros to get the home back to its original state.

“Now, the problem is the roof. Twice, we were refused permits by the local government. The Institute of Patrimony told us that we are eligible and offered to help. But on the 6th of September, I received a list with all the documents that are missing in the file and as a result, kept us from accessing funds from the national restoration program.”

Cristian Borz has three children, two girls and a boy. Each year he takes his girls on a walking pilgrimage from Bădăcin to Sighet. It includes visits to the birthplace of three patriots with roots in the Sălaj: Simion Bărnuțiu, Iuliu Maniu and Corneliu Coposu. Borz calls it the ‘Journey of Romanianism’.

“Getting closer to Maniu has really changed me. While reading about him, I am awed by the strength of his character. Toward the end of his life, even though he was alone in his cell, no one ever heard him complain. Nicolae Carandino, the former director of the newspaper “Justice,” said other prisoners argued with the guards about their loneliness, hunger and cold.

Sometimes they yelled, swore or screamed.

Maniu quietly carried his cross to the end,” said Father Borz.

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56 PressOne Quarterly | Volume 2

lord of the mountains MIRCEA GHERASE & LUCIAN MIRCU

Volunteers in Timișoara learned that the secret to change is not fighting the old, but building something new

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Lord of the Mountains

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“The most important lesson that Alternative Sports Club can offer our society is that sometimes you have to start from nothing. That`s what we did,” says Horia Colibășanu, the first Romanian to climb seven peaks over 8,000 meters.

“Most of our sports programs have fallen apart.

Soccer has gone completely downhill. So has gymnastics. Not to mention the doping scandal involving our canoe and kayak teams. All of the sports financed by the State over the last 20 years have failed miserably. Simona Halep and Irina Begu made it to the top using their own money to cover expenses.

I was incredibly proud this climbing season in the Himalayas. A Swiss, a Slovak, a German and a Romanian all attempted a new route. And it was the Slovakian-Romanian team that made it up the 8,000 meter peak first.”

Colibășanu is a 39 year old dentist. When I last saw him two months ago he was 20 pounds heavier.

He was all muscle, or “power” as he likes to say.

Now ironman muscles have been replaced with the chest of a boy.

This deflation has happened every spring for the last 15 years. Three weeks ago, Horia climbed Manaslu Peak (8,163 m) for the second time in his life. It was his first ascent without a Sherpa or auxiliary oxygen.

Now the training for his next climb begins in the forest near his home in Timișoara. I usually can’t keep up when we run together. This time, he’s not taking it very seriously. He stops on the stoneridden alley of the Green Forest.

“In Communism, sport was a means to obscure the wheels that were driving the whole system.

People were a mass to be manipulated. As we are discovering in gymnastics, athletes were used as tools to prop up the system. Their personal development was completely disregarded. Many of them are deeply bitter.”

Sports are intended to develop the individual and to give athletes the opportunity to become complete human beings. We are still coming to grips with deep scars from our communist system.”

Horia begins to jog once again. It’s a beautiful morning with the buzz of summer in the air. He gestures to the surrounding forest:

We have a good reputation because we organize ourselves. There were about 12-14 founding members who created Alternative. All are passionate about the mountains. The Club continues to be run by people of great quality.”

Andrei Simu is “the organizer.” We met in the middle of December, just a hundred meters from the spot where the 1989 Revolution exploded in gunfire. Our meeting place was at the Kinder Café, a coffee house for parents and a play place for children. It is the urban gathering spot for the families of Alternative.

Simu is a 35 year old software engineer and has been the President of Alternative Sports Club since its founding. Andrei Simu, Horia Colibășanu, Cristian Tecu and Dragoș Dubina were all formerly part of the Romanian Alpine Club, founded in 1934.

Colibășanu explains,

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“We realized that there was no point of taking part in a sports club that didn’t have the same vision as we did. After creating the Club, we realized that we didn’t need a boss. We organized ourselves and did things as we wanted.”

Photos: Mircea Gherase

“Whenever you cut down an old forest, something will grow back in its place because there is light and sunshine. That’s why we decided to create the Alternative Sports Club. We aspired to create a club that grew in the light of healthy values.

THE PEOPLE

“The Romanian Alpine Club was based on alpinism, whereas the Alternative Sports Club included mountain biking as well. In fact, Alternative includes a variety of outdoor sports.

Two of our members are into fishing and so we introduced fishing. And now, about three quarters of the club members play volleyball, so that’s an important activity.”

Alexandru Ceaușescu and Andrei Pedra prefer to spend a couple of nights outdoors by the Vânturătoarea Falls in the Cerna Mountains, as they set the rock climbing routes for Petzl Roctrip 2014.

Lord of the Mountains

HERCULANE CLIMBING OPEN

SPORT CLIMBING

In 2002, Alternative organized a climbing competition called the Herculane Climbing Open (HCO) in the Cerna Mountains. The nearby Herculane Springs drew climbers attracted to the limestone mountain walls and medicinal drinking water.

Forbes Magazine ranks rock climbing as the third healthiest sporting activity and says, “It’s anaerobic.

Based on explosions of energy that permit the climber to get to the next rock. Although this doesn’t really help the heart, it’s amazing for strength, endurance and flexibility.”

After two editions of the Herculane Climbing Open (HCO), participation in the championship exploded.

“All of Romania was there,” says Simu. In its third year, HCO became the largest rock climbing event in the country and a real festival.

“Alternative is a club that was born out of a passion for mountains, for climbing and alpinism. Over the years, it has become the most important club in this mountain region.” says Iustin Ionescu, the president of the Romanian Federation of Alpinism and Rock Climbing.

The HCO requires setting at least 30 different routes. For months on end, the alpinists living in Timișoara spend their weekends suspended in thin air or clinging to a cliff.

“You can’t ask nature to offer you exactly what you need. That’s where your imagination kicks in. You have to be able to see a line around where it would be enjoyable to climb.” Simu explains from the Kinder Café basement.

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“You also have to set the anchors at spots where climbers can repel down in a straight line. Then, you clean up the cracks with a brush and remove boulders to make the route as safe as possible. You don’t want rocks falling onto the athletes’ heads.”

As the word spread of their work throughout Romania, people began saying: In Timișoara there is a climbing club like the ones in Germany.”

Alexandru Ceaușescu, a volunteer, rests at the bottom of the rock wall by the Vânturătoarea Waterfall, located in the Cerna Mountains.

Alpinists distinguish between traditional climbing and sport climbing. Traditional climbing uses artificial means, such as stirrups or pitons, (metal spikes that are driven into a crack or seam in the rock) to expedite and safeguard the climb. In sport climbing your rope is secured to fixed anchors and that’s it.

PRAIRIE KIDS

Timișoara is a former swampland between the Timiș and Bega rivers. The nearest mountain, Mount Mic, is 120 kilometers away. The Cerna Mountains are three hours away.

It’s surprising to see a city as flat as a skating rink playing a pivotal role in mountain climbing. Why didn’t this happen in Sibiu or Făgăraș?

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Cernei Mountains

During HCO 2014, the climbers and the mountain goats share a ridge beside the Vânturătoarea Waterfall.

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In the 1980s, students at the Timișoara Polytechnic University began scaling a brick wall by the university. “It was actually a brick fence about two meters high and 50 meters long. We also had a poplar tree in the Botanical Gardens and an oak tree in the People’s Park which we covered in pitons,” recounts Fane Milota.

The equipment was also improvised. Fane managed to get his hands on some carabiners from the local fire department. But he couldn’t find proper climbing shoes, so he climbed barefoot. He was barefoot when he participated in his first official climbing competition in the late 1980s.

Supported by Eugen Seracin, a mathematics professor at the university, Fane Milota made it to the Army Sports Club. Milota went on to win seven national championships.

Around the same time, Professor Seracin founded the alpinism section within the University Sports Club. From this Club, many top athletes emerged such as Cornel Gălescu and Claudiu Vidulescu (the latter immigrated to the USA and coached the national junior climbing team).

“In ’99, after I climbed Mount Tian Shan (7,439 meters), I got a room in the dorm that was

designated for students belonging to the University Sports Club. Many of the Alternative folks first met there,” remembers Horia.

Horia doesn’t think there’s anything unusual about the fact that this alpine movement was born out of a prairie town.

“Alpine movements usually rise out of cities where there is culture and money to support the activities.

In the 1930s, it was climbers from Vienna and Munich, not from Salzburg or Innsbruck, that began climbing Mount Eiger. The climbers came from university cities. Culture doesn’t propagate itself without money. But money alone doesn’t create culture. Money just helps the culture to flourish.”

Fane Milota believes Alternative grew out of the prairie because we long for what we don’t have.

“You become a lot more motivated than the person who has mountains nearby. Since high school, I would spend the entire week thinking about how I would run off to the Herculane Mountains during the weekend. Since the experience was short, you lived it with intensity.”

Lord of the Mountains

ALTERNATIVE ON FOOT Alin Tănase is a software programmer and member of Alternative since 2007. After running a marathon in the Piatra Craiului Mountains, Alin and his wife Gianina decided to start the Herculane Marathon. “We wanted runners to see that running in the mountains has its own value and we wanted mountain climbers to see that they could also become runners.” They chose the Cerna Mountains, known to them from their climbing excursions, as the location for the marathon.

“In the Club, the initiatives of every member are encouraged. If someone brings forward an idea that attracts volunteers, we get involved whether it’s a sporting activity or environmental action.”

My first contact with Alternative was preparing a marathon course that began in the Tesna Gorge and finished at the peak of White Rock Mountain. There

were 20 of us sleeping in neighboring tents. We woke at 5 am and were separated into small teams.

Tools were passed around and communication checkpoints were established. Equipped with shovels, large garden shears and saws, my team cleared a trail all the way to the top of the Mehedinți Mountains. One team member worked all day with his 4 year old daughter on his back.

In the evening, we gathered around a fire and enjoyed some mushroom stew. I met a programmer named Sebastian who was a volunteer like myself.

He confessed that Alternative seemed to be a bit elitist. Before becoming a member of the Club, even Alin Tănase found it to be exclusive. Later on, he realized that the entry into Alternative happens organically, by spending time together.

Tănase recognizes that the group might have some unique characteristics: “It’s important not to dilute ourselves in the great mass of people that watch television and hang out at malls.”

Photos: Mircea Gherase 67

Lord of the Mountains

Ion Icme, medical surgeon and member of Alternative, leads a technical seminar at the Herculane Marathon.

CHALLENGES

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In 2014, the Tănase couple stopped organizing the marathon because they moved to Răcădău, near Brașov. After they left Timișoara, no one took on the responsibility of organizing the Herculane Marathon. The competition didn’t even take place in 2015.

Another Alternative member laments “The club has entered into a type of lethargy. The only planned activity we carried out this year was HCO. It went well, just like every year. Adi Margea was mostly responsible for the organizing of the competition. It’s the activity he’s most passionate about.”

Adi Margea, 32 years old, grew up in Arad. An Alternative member since 2004, his college thesis was a business plan to start a climbing gym.

He found his business partner while climbing in the Retezat Mountains, “My partner sold his car and I took out a loan (with the help of my parents).

In October 2008, I opened the gym. The people from Alternative all came. Over the years, some people gave up climbing, but new people are signing up to try it out. This year, I’ll be done paying my loans!”

This year, the group at the gym took on the responsibilities for the 15th annual HCO.

Volunteers work eight weekends in a row and then an entire week straight before the competition begins. Each athlete covers their own room and board. The cost of participation is only 15 US dollars. In the end, the organizers always have to cover some of the costs themselves.

Iustin Ionescu, admires the persistence of Alternative, “Since 2002, Alternative has organized the HCO. It is remarkable to have done this for 15 consecutive years.”

THE FUTURE “Back in the day, people would look for a means to escape daily life. We had more time than money.

Now, we have cars and the trip to the mountain is much faster. But for some reason, less of us go. Now people spend their weekends traveling in other countries or visiting other cities,” says Adi Margea.

This excerpt is from Mircea Gherase and Lucian Mircu’s article titled Lord of the Mountains published by RomaniaOne. The full Romanian version can be found at hora.romaniaone.org

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The alpinist asks himself bitterly: “Are they all in the mall? I guess we belong to a generation that looks at life differently. Maybe our own kids will grow up with our spirit, but I believe they’ll be a minority. I’m not a pessimist. I do think that sports will always be an important part of life.”

Margea believes that older Club members, currently occupied with children, will return as mentors for the next generation. Horia Colibășanu is also convinced they’ll reappear: “At the end of the day, the greatest resource each country has is its people. Few as we might be, we have a certain knowhow and have learned to believe in ourselves.”

Photos: Mircea Gherase

After my meeting with the Club members at Kinder Café, I went up Mount Retezat with Colibășanu.

Besides the cabin operator in Gențiana, we counted only two other people on the mountain.

The new sport that’s in style is called bouldering.

It is a form of rock climbing that is performed without the use of ropes or harnesses, usually up to a height of 5 meters. It’s practiced on both natural and artificial walls. In January 2016, Margea’s gym held a national bouldering event. About 80 people registered for the event.

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Tibor Kalnoky comes home ROXANA GARAIMAN

Born in Germany, raised in Paris, Tibor feels most at home in the simplicity of Transylvania

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Tibor Kalnoky is the descendant of a family whose origins date back to the 13th century.

Tibor Kalnoky comes home

Prince Charles’ guest homes in Valea Zălanului Tibor Kalnoky was born in Germany and raised in Paris. He is fluent in five languages and well connected to the network of European nobility.

However, Kalnoky (49 years old) says he feels most at home in the simplicity of rural life in Transylvania.

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Tibor moved to Romania 20 years ago. His work was largely hidden until 2016, when Prince Charles announced he would be sending Count Tibor Kalnoky as his official representative to the funeral of Romania’s Queen Anne.

Count Kalnoky manages the property the Prince of Wales owns in Valea Zălanului. His relationship with the British royal family goes back many years.

In 2011, he was a guest of honor at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

“I’M READY, LET’S DO SOMETHING TOGETHER!”

Prince Charles has at least 10 traditional properties in Romania and Count Kalnoky affirms that the heir to the British throne loves them deeply.

“In Romania, he discovered exactly what he has been preaching about in England for forty years. That’s why he’s so passionate about our country.“ While in England, the Prince of Wales learned about what we were working on in Micloșoara. Through some mutual friends we passed along an invitation for him to visit us. He said, “I’m ready, let’s do something together!” He wanted to have his own place to reconnect with the natural world. First, he bought a house in Viscri and a little while later, he bought the house in Valea Zălanului” recounts Tibor Kalnoky.

The Count explains how quickly Viscri became a tourist attraction, inspiring Prince Charles to increase his impact on the community by creating a center for tradition and craftsmanship.

“We transformed a shed into a great conference hall and this year we had eight different cooking, restoration and sewing classes for people in Romania. We also gave scholarships.

The Panorama that Prince Charles saw in Valea Zălanului

People in Viscri have a beautiful life but are missing the critical element known as capital. We are looking for ways to generate income in Romanian villages.

We believe that tourism, craftsmanship and artisanal production will help greatly.

We also believe there is a chance of accomplishing this through cooperatives. It’s difficult to have the benefits of cooperatives understood in Romania because they were abused in the past.”

The Prince was thrilled and he decided to buy the property. It is a place he now visits every spring.

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“After he bought the house in Viscri, I had a discussion with the Prince of Wales regarding a certain reality. Even though his vacation home was beautiful, I believed he would be better off finding a place that was closer to nature, more isolated. A place that has pastures and flowers. After the Prince described his ideal location, I said, ‘Yes I know this place – Valea Zălanului!’

“We climbed on the rooftop of an old home and had a splendid view over the valley. I asked if this would work.”

Photos: Lucian Muntean

PRINCE CHARLES AND THE COUNT WALKED FOR 18 KILOMETERS

As a result, in the spring of 2008, during a visit to Micloșoara, The Prince and The Count took an 18 kilometer walk to Valea Zălanului.

Szeckler dancers in Romania.

FROM BRÂNCOVEANU TO FRANZ JOSEF

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The origins of the Kalnoky family date back to the 13th century. Noble titles were distributed in the 17th century and Tibor Kalnoky says that during this time one of his ancestors was named the Chancellor of Transylvania in the Viennese Court.

Also in the 17th century, the Kalnoky family became close to the Lord of Wallachia, Constantin Brâncoveanu. In this way, an entire generation of his family was raised in the court of the Lord from Bucharest, occupying specific functions in the central administration.

Tibor’s most famous ancestor was Gustav Kalnoky, who was the Minister of External Affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 14 years and the right-hand-man of the Emperor Franz Joseph I.

NEITHER TIBOR KALNOKY NOR HIS FATHER SPOKE HUNGARIAN When communism was established in 1947, Tibor’s father was only 8 years old. His father was exiled to the United States where he had a difficult upbringing. His dad spent his career working for IBM, which ultimately brought him back to Europe.

Tibor was born in Germany in 1967.

In 1987, while Tibor was studying veterinary medicine, he convinced his father to carry out a clandestine excursion to Romania to discover their roots.

“We came to Romania in the darkest of eras, when there was no gasoline or light. We had very few expectations. We came to visit some family members and the family home.

What surprised us were the people. They were very welcoming. This is how we rediscovered our homeland, the place we belong.

Tibor Kalnoky comes home

The home of Count Kalnoky in Micloșoara

We assumed that all the good had disappeared and very bad people would inhabit all that was left of this land. When my father left Transylvania, it was during an incredibly turbulent period that he considered a living hell. He believed that if he returned, he would end up in jail.”

Tibor recounts how people remembered his father the minute he stepped foot in Covasna. Every single person in the village gathered together to get a look at them. Although they couldn’t communicate with the locals directly, because neither he nor his father spoke Hungarian, this moment was an extremely touching experience.

“At some point we received warning that a convoy of cars was on its way. Since very few cars circulated during that time, the people assumed that it was the Securitate and so they helped us escape through the forest” recounts Kalnoky for The Telegraph.

“IT’S EMBARRASSING, THIS COLOR MEANS POVERTY!”

After 1990, Tibor bought a peasant home in Micloșoara and began the process of reclaiming his inheritance.

“We returned in the nineties. I left behind my entire life in France and in England, where I was raised, and look, it’s going great. I am in need of nothing.

My old friends still visit me here and I think we’ve become closer because our guests find this place to be extremely intriguing.”

In 2004, the Kalnoky family moved to Valea Crișului.

There, a 19th century school bearing his name can be found, along with the castle that he restored.

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Their home in Micloșoara was turned into a heritage guest home and the Count added more peasant homes to his patrimony.

Photos: Lucian Muntean

Moreover, the locals helped them escape the agents of the Securitate who had found out about their visit and had come looking for them.

As a result, the first visit was a short one but Tibor says this was the moment when he fell in love unequivocally – with Transylvania.

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The Kalnoky castle in Micloșoara.

“When the locals saw that I was painting the house blue they said: No, don’t do it. It’s embarrassing, this color means poverty! This was because they associated our traditional architecture with the difficult existence they had to endure for such a long time. To their great surprise, this house is the principal attraction for all the visitors and officials who come to visit us.”

MUSEUM OF TRANSYLVANIAN LIVING In November 2016, Tibor inaugurated his newest project, the Museum of Transylvanian Living in Micloșoara. The museum is a family estate that has been standing for 500 years. After it was confiscated by the communist regime, it became an agricultural warehouse, and finally, a tailor’s workshop.

“Our motivation is cultural. We want to protect the values and the traditions of this area. It’s not about inheriting wealth. The castle is not my property as it belongs to the state. I made a concession. It’s about a need of mine, an instinct.

We have this tradition of restoring homes. This is because in our family history, every 50 years, someone came and would demolish everything.

First came the Mongols, then came the Hapsburg’s and so on. The castle was destroyed in 1848 by Austrians. The library was burned down ... there was always someone who came and destroyed our things.

Photos: Lucian Muntean

The home of Count Kalnoky in Micloșoara

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Tibor Kalnoky comes home

The terracotta stove was remade by restorers who respected the traditional model.

“The estate and castles in Romania are a forgotten treasure. They were either destroyed in communism or neglected in the post-communism period.

The nineties were the hardest time for historic monuments here in Romania.”

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In 1997, when The Count moved to Romania, his ancestors’ estate was a wedding hall. The building was in an advanced state of degradation.

Tibor supervised the restoration work in order to ensure the traditional methods of restoration were respected and consulted historical documents to ensure that the medieval aspect of the building was accurately remodeled.

“These decorative designs were brought back from Vienna, when a member of our family was the Chancellor of Transylvania” recalls The Count pointing to the yellow frames on the facade of the building.

“When the Chancellor was living in Austria, he sent a letter home with images describing how to decorate the house. It still has great effect. This type of exterior decoration is unique in Romania.”

A renaissance garden was recreated on the 12 acre estate to replicate the way it had been described in 1698. There is also a lake with a pavilion and an English park with lush trees. On the interior, the museum will occupy three furnished rooms, reflecting the 17th to 19th century.

Amidst the most valuable artifacts is a Renaissance harpsichord that will be used for concerts.

“My objective is to demonstrate how life was in the previous centuries in a building of this sort. It will be a living museum. I’ve visited many museums since I grew up in Paris. I know the Louvre like the back of my hand, but I don’t like a sterile concept that’s devoid of any life. When you see objects with tags on them, you lose the capacity to connect with them.”

The garden of the castle in Micloșoara

“In Romania, we have a few ethnographic museums and memorial homes. Thank God, a trend has started in rural Romania.”

What’s missing, because the communists destroyed it, is a representation of the upper echelons of society. We don’t really have the estates or castles looking the way they did two hundred years ago.

We have Peleș and Bran, but the others don’t really display any sort of continuity. This is the goal we want to accomplish.

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Room 32 ROXANA GARAIMAN

PressOne Reporter Roxana Garaiman discovers that the homeless are not bums

Room 32

They start life with a family and a home. But along the way, the fragile nature of human existence deals them overwhelming setbacks. Whether it’s a bad decision, a sudden loss or sheer stubbornness, they find themselves with nothing.

Some find themselves living in a shelter. In a room like Room 32, at the St. Johns Integrated Social Services Centre for Adults in Bucharest, Romania.

I spent a week with the residents of Room 32 and realized this could happen to any of us.

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NELU

“What I disliked most about being homeless was that I always smelled of smoke.”

That’s how Nelu begins his tale. He is one of five men living in Room 32 whom I visited numerous times during a very cold week in January.

Nelu is 66 and spent 12 years living on the streets.

Yet, he has nothing in common with the people we generally label as “homeless.” He’s clean and well-

kept. He enjoys tidiness and describes himself as a homemaker.

“I’ve slept under balconies, in train stations and in the basements of apartment buildings. The last place I was living in was a cemetery, sleeping in the catacombs. When you’re on the streets, you have to live by the rules of the streets. The governing rule is the fist.” He scrunches his hand into a tight fist as he looks directly at us, waiting to see our reaction.

Room 32 is decorated with origami, gifted by a female cinematographer who used to live on the first floor. Nelu loves flowers and recently picked up decorative pebbles from the grocery store parking lot to place in his flowerpots.

Nelu is a locksmith by trade and carpenter by passion. He shows us a table that he made out of raw wood. There is a little bench beside it, where he invites us to sit.

He’s trying very hard to be a good host. He serves us with some crunchy snacks and orange juice. He’s a bit noisy, but creates a welcoming atmosphere.

Room 32 Valeriu, one of Nelu’s roommates, jumps up to offer us some hot tea.

“The mugs are clean, you know. I added some lemon,” says Valeriu as he puts the mugs down on the table, beside a bottle of Hellas beer. After he stirs in some sugar, he leaves the spoon on top of one of the mugs.

“The number on my bed pisses me off!” bellows Nelu suddenly. “I’m number 167. Just like in jail.”

He points angrily to the numbers, exposing the cuts and scars on his arms, along with an old tattoo of a woman carrying a crown. She represents his mother, even though it’s just a symbolic tattoo.

He can’t remember what his mother looked like. She died when he was six years old.

Nelu was born in Bucharest, but ran away in the eighth grade. His father was brutally strict. He ended up in the home of his uncle, Costache Sava, the former director of the Arpechim Refinery in Pitești. His uncle brought him to work in the factory, while Nelu took night classes to graduate from high school.

Nelu met the love of his life at a monastery near Curtea de Argeș, while he was in the military.

Eventually they married and settled down in Bucharest where they had children. The Communists assigned Nelu to work at Vulcan, a Romanian manufacturer of power plant boilers.

Nelu’s life changed when Vulcan sent him to work outside Romania. He spent time in Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq.

We escaped from Mosul and slowly made our way to Ankara. We were afraid that they would kill us. And now look where I ended up. In this shelter.”

While working in Cologne, Nelu fell 40 meters off a scaffold and spent seven months in a German hospital. Unable to work, Nelu returned to Romania. He found his door locked. After 13 years of marriage, his wife had left him for his best friend.

He remarried a woman who died in 2002.

This was when life overwhelmed him. He lost his mother as a child, was bombed in Iraq, was severely injured in Germany, his first wife left him, and his second wife died.

Nelu sold his home, turned to alcohol and alienated himself from his children.

“I’m extremely proud of my children. My son is a boss in the police force. My daughter is a manager in England, at Parallel 45 Design Group. I’m proud of them. I’m the bad one. I’m the guilty one. I created a lot of problems for them. I haven’t seen them in 12 years.” Since then, Nelu has spent most of his time on the streets.

The 386 bus stop, the fifth bench, across from St Nicholas Church, was my home for many years. That’s where I began to beg.

Then I found a new building on Taberei Street. For two years, I lived in the basement. After two years, the property manager and building president came down into the basement to do some repairs and found me. I had 32 pairs of shoes!

When they saw all of my clothes hanging on the pipes, they froze. Thankfully, they saw that I spoke nicely and wasn’t doing anything wrong, so they left me alone. However, after four years, the building’s administration changed and I was forced to leave.

Why did you chose to live on the streets for so many years?

I wanted to punish myself.

Photos: Lucian Muntean

We were in Mosul, in Iraq, when the Syrians began to bomb us because they had no idea what we were doing there. We were working for Vulcan, making central heating units in a military equipment factory.

We were not there to fight. Curiously, there were also thousands Romanian seamstresses working in Iraq.

He was working in East Germany during the Revolutions of 1989. He celebrated for the Germans, celebrated for the Romanians, then headed west to Cologne for good paying construction work.

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Room 32

Nelu, (on the left), together with a neighbor who lives on the same floor.

What made you change your mind?

Something trivial. I was at the cemetery with a colleague – also a bum. We smelled really bad. I really wanted to smell better, so I went to St. Johns.

THE MOVE TO ST. JOHNS In addition to a $150 monthly welfare payment, Nelu has a small business selling used books.

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His inventory of old books is neatly organized according to size. He’s read them all. But his heart belongs to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

Nelu‘s book collection

It’s nice and warm in Room 32, but Nelu has his bags packed. He doesn’t know when an order will come from “above” to free the bed. The rules have continuously changed in the last few years.

“You know, I’m not a bum! I’m an APWAH,” exclaims Nelu. APWAH means Adult Person Without a Home.

The St. John’s Integrated Social Service Center for Adults

VALERIU Valeriu (photo) returns, emotional.

You know, you stirred something in me. Initially, I didn’t want to be interviewed by you because I had just found some inner peace. But I changed my mind after I read this Sandra Brown book. You know what I am finally discovering at 66 years of age? Wisdom.

Valeriu is a mechanical engineer by trade. He’s been living in the shelter since 2014. A cousin brought him in.

Homelessness began when he was working in Rome. He was trying to save money for his daughters’ university tuition.

His life began with a good childhood in Pașcani.

He wasn’t so brave in high school. He graduated high school in Oltenița, where he fell in love with a girl named Emiliana.

I fell in love with her appearance. I always liked the way she looked. There was nothing about her I didn’t like. But I was never with her, I only wished for it.

When it was time for him to go to university, he was accepted into the Faculty of Construction in Bucharest. He chose construction because of fear.

Fear of not having a job.

After university, he started work at a Hydroconstruction plant.

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“I got along well with my parents, but mom was very possessive. I became aware of this later, but don’t judge her for it.”

I went to many clubs after turning 50. I became the animator for two clubs. I would energize the crowd and get everyone to start drinking. Then I’d station myself in front of the DJ, start dancing, and get everyone on the dance floor.

Photos: Lucian Muntean

I slept on the streets of Rome pretty often. But I always made sure to choose a spot somewhere near a police station because they don’t rob anyone near there.”

His favorite childhood activity was folk dancing. He still dances tango, waltz and has a deep connection to the rhythm of music.

Valeriu as a university student.

My first job was at the Costești dam, in the Botoșani area. You have no idea what kind of chills some workplaces give you. Once, I had to walk for six hours in the snow to get to a village that didn’t have water.

In Botoșani, he met a French teacher named Nuța.

He married her at age 29, despite his mother’s opposition.

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Then life got hard. Problems at work, the death of his parents, and depression.

“I have two girls: Oana Diana and Cristina. Each have two children of their own. My wife and I divorced about 10 years ago. She left me so devastated that I didn’t read the divorce agreement for five years. When I finally read the papers, I saw that Cristina was not my daughter.

I maintain a relationship with my daughters through text messages. We talk at Christmas, Easter and on birthdays. I’m happy for my daughters that they are where they are. I’m happy they have my telephone number.” I don’t want to say that I was a saint. I did some unreasonable things. I know that I have problems. My cousin found me a doctor who I’ve been seeing for the last three to four years. I have Bipolar Affective Disorder.

After a few months of living in the shelter, Valeriu met Sanda. She also lives in the shelter. He hopes to rebuild his life with her.

“She is older than me and it’s a good thing. She knows what marriage means. I think we’re experiencing a beautiful thing together.

Her story is a lot sadder than mine. She is a hero with a pure heart. At my age, what else could you possibly ask for than a person with a good heart who cares for you?”

Valeriu is currently looking for a job. He would like to start renting a place with Sanda in the spring.

Valeriu at age 30 with his parents

Room 32

PAFA APWAH, means Adult Person Without a Home, an acronym used in the social services sector. (In Romania, PAFA)

According to the statistics published by the Samusocial Association, almost half of the people we call homeless end up on the streets as a result of a divorce or family conflict.

Most of these people lost their jobs when state-owned business failed, explains Alina Mirea, a social worker at Samusocial.

“A person ends up on the streets when their social network is exhausted. Most of us, when we go through tough times, have a brother, a friend or a neighbor who we can go to for support. If a person doesn’t find support during tough times or someone to pick them up after they fall, they will end up on the streets,” says Alina Mirea.

Image from “St. John” shelter.

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#rezist LUCIAN MUNTEAN RAUL ȘTEF

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The anti-corruption demonstrations this winter were family affairs.

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

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