Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu

31 mai 2008

THE RELEVANCE OF THE COMMUNIST PAST 28/05/2008

Radio Roumania International

"Launched at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest, the project is an effort to reconstruct the history of the Romanian gulag. Arrested by the communist political police in the late '40s, while a high school student, the former Christian-Democratic MP and member of the Senate Committee for the investigation of abuse and corruption, Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu (http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Ticu_Dumitrescu), is the president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners and initiator of the Lustration Act- the law that was supposed to ban former communist dignitaries from power.

The first part of the series, titled “Recourse to Memory” and written between 1979 and 1981, when Ticu Dumitrescu was running a small forestry site in Vrancea mountains, Eastern Romania, includes the actual memoirs. The other two volumes, entitled “Recourse to Documents,” include statements, transcripts and reports on the interrogations he was subject to. Dumitrescu presents here information on the operation of the communist repressive apparatus, the Securitate in particular. Unlike other authors that have approached similar topics, Ticu Dumitrescu had an opportunity to study the Securitate archives within the CNSAS, which contributed to the exposure of hundreds of people who collaborated with Securitate or were involved in political policing, and at the Justice Ministry, where he obtained copies of important documents.

Attending the event, President Traian Basescu, who in December 2006 officially denounced communism as criminal and illegitimate, resumed his criticism of former communist party leaders who are still present in today's political arena. He stated that, while he would never go as far as to claim that he was a dissenter, he would nonetheless struggle to have “the truth on communism brought to light.” Ticu Dumitrescu decided to publish these memoirs, which he felt was a “moral duty,” after having survived persecution in communist prisons, so that his experience may help the generations to come. They are only one page in a large-scale trial of communism, added to other works that look at the crimes of the former regime. During thousands of days of incarceration and investigation, Ticu Dumitrescu never lost heart. This earned him, quote, “the most paradoxical title of nobility in the history of mankind:” that of political prisoner. It cost many people their lives. Those who received this title didn't seek it, and those who offered it didn't realise it was ennobling."