Opened in the
\nformer prison in Sighetu Marmatiei, the museum tells the story of the communist
\nreign of terror between 1950 and 1960, when some 100,000 Romanians were killed.
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The Academia
\nCivia NGO run by writers Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan has managed to create
\nthe first museum devoted to these victims in the mid-1990s, which has since
\nbeen a landmark of civic awareness. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Ana Blandiana
\nspoke about the Memorial this year, when Romania marks 30 years free of
\ncommunism. This is the opinion of a writer, not a researcher, whose
\nheart-rending words echo the unimaginable abhorrence whose tragic effects
\nlinger to this day. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Ana Blandiana: The Sighet Memorial is a book in itself. To
\nme, it is an unwritten one. It very much resembles a medieval liturgical book
\nthat teaches by means of memory. It’s a book teaching you how to retrieve memory.
\nThe biggest achievement of communism, which became apparent in a dramatic way
\nonly after 1989, was that it created a man without memory, the new man, the
\nbrainwashed man, who didn’t need to remember who he was, what he had or what he
\ndid before communism. Memory is a form of truth and it needs to be destroyed in
\norder to destroy or manipulate truth. Destroying memory, a crime against both
\nreason and history, is the primordial work of communism. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The two writers
\nfelt the need to turn Sighet into a place for memory, considering it is here
\nthat the Romanian elite of the 1950s perished. Their effort is but a small part
\nin the wider project of retrieving the past, deformed by Marxist ideology. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Ana Blandiana: To us, creating the Sighet Memorial was not
\nan end, but a means. We didn’t set out to create the perfect museum, where the
\ncrimes of recent history should be artistically and scientifically laid out on
\nshelves, gathering the dust of contemporary ignorance. What we wanted and
\ndesperately sought was a means to recuperate the definition of a generation
\nthat was brainwashed and lost all its bearings, a generation incapable of leaving
\nanything to the coming generations. The Sighet Memorial Museum is the place
\nwhere young people can learn things that neither school nor their families were
\nable to teach them. Here they read documents, see pictures, listen to analyses
\nand testimonies on the horrors of the second half of the 20th
\ncentury perpetrated in the name of class hatred and the repression of the most
\nbasic of human rights, a hatred that fuels history itself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Hatred: this
\nword was the cornerstone of Marxism, a regime that repressed the innocent. Everyone
\nwho’s experienced this regime has felt its force to the full. It is a feeling
\nthat continues to affect society today, which we would better be able to
\nunderstand if we looked closer at our communist roots, Ana Blandiana argues. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Ana Blandiana: In fact, hatred and fanaticism continue to
\nexist beyond the disappearance of the institutions that proliferated them.
\nIndeed, communism as a system is gone, but its methods and mindset have
\nendured. Analyzing communism is as useful to the past as it is for the present.
\nSuffice it to recall the members of terrorist cells in the 60s, 70s and the 80s
\ntrained in military encampments and shooting ranges in Eastern Europe. Then
\nthey put their training to the test in attacks carried out in Western Europe.
\nThey used Soviet and Czech weapons to understand that the study of communism
\nand its methods can be used also as an intelligent means to understand and
\nsolve some of the world’s current issues. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Is communism
\ninstrumental in understanding the post-communist reality? Ana Blandiana
\nbelieves it is.<\/p>\n
Ana Blandiana: The main issue is to see to what extent
\ncommunism can be relevant in post-communism, to the last 30 years. I’ve taken
\npart in a wide survey conducted by the ‘Observatorul Cultural’ magazine, and
\nthere was a question whether the communist and anti-communist rhetoric will
\nstill be able to impact the next four rounds of elections in Romania. Most
\npeople answered no, and the topic of the rising prices will be infinitely more
\nimportant to them. At the same time, I believe we need to answer this question,
\nbecause, from the point of view of freedom and justice, of human rights, of
\neconomy, things have changed, we’re no longer under communist rule, of course.
\nBut if we look at how the diabolical methods of manipulation and obscuring the
\ntruth were used in communism, we cannot hide the fact that there are times in
\npresent-day Romania when things are disturbingly similar to what we’ve
\nexperienced before.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The Sighet
\nMemorial remains a meaningful place for understanding and relating to the past,
\nwhich continues to live in the present. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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