The Romanian writer and anti-communist militant Paul Goma has died, aged
\n84, in a Paris hospital, where he had been admitted after becoming infected
\nwith the new coronavirus. After the death of King Michael in 2017 and that of the
\ndissident teacher Doina Cornea in 2018, Romanians have not lost yet another
\nsymbol of anti-communist resistance. <\/p>\n
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Paul Goma was born in 1935 in Bessarabia into a family of teachers, who,
\nfive years later, took refuge in a reduced Romania following the annexation of
\nits eastern territories by the Soviet Union. Goma was arrested in 1956 for harbouring
\nhostile opinions towards the communist regime in Bucharest, a satellite of
\nMoscow, and sentenced to two years in prison, followed by a period of house
\narrest until 1963. In 1977, the Securitate, the regime’s political police, again
\narrested, interrogated and tortured him for his criticism of Nicolae Ceausescu’s
\ndictatorial regime. <\/p>\n
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He was, in effect, expelled to France, and was stripped of his Romanian
\ncitizenship. In Paris, he was the target of an attempted assassination by parcel
\nbomb masterminded by the Securitate. Paul Goma is the author of more than 30
\nbooks, including fiction, memoirs and history, many of which were incendiary on
\naccount of their great courage. <\/p>\n
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A man of sharp wit, he also turned his irony on himself, as can be seen
\nfrom this excerpt from a rare interview he gave to Radio Romania: <\/p>\n
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I was merely carried by the waves of history. I was no rebel, but merely
\nsomeone who endured it all, as a Bessarabian, as a refugee and as an ordinary
\nperson; someone who, when he heard something he didn’t like or thought it was not
\ntrue simply said ‘that can’t be’. More like the clown of the class who can’t
\nkeep his mouth shut.<\/p>\n
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Paul Goma will always be a name who inspired hope and strengthened our
\nresistance, said prime minister Ludovic Orban in a statement. The Romanian royal
\nfamily also regret the passing of Paul Goma, describing him as one of the most
\nemblematic figures of the intellectual resistance against dictatorship. (Tr.: CM)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man seen as one of the last great moral authorities of the Romanian nation has died in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":85199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[31341,39918],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-85198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-death","tag-goma"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n