An Iron Curtain Breakaway

About the Book

Under the Romanian Ceauşescu's totalitarian regime the author has decided to leave the country. After a year of struggle with Securitate, the secret police, he received a passport to travel to visit his family in France. There he accepted an offer for a teaching position in the United States. He came to United States and started a fight with the Securitate to be reunited with his family. An eighteen months separation ordeal followed. The bonding between him and his wife based on love and trust was their defense against the Securitate conniving to separate them. After winning this fight and being reunited these Memoirs relate how each family member has succeeded in spite of the extensive differences between their previous life and the New World. The author reaches the conclusion that the most important events of his life were marrying his wife and replacing the Iron Curtain with the Statue of Liberty. His life story could be a lesson from the struggle against a totalitarian regime to adaptation to a different world and the power of love.

About the Author

The author of these memoirs, Maurice, was born on the year when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. As told in the first part of his memoirs, he spent forty-seven years in Romania, an Eastern European country, where he experienced a fascist regime and survived World War II and the Holocaust. This was followed by life under a communist regime behind the Iron Curtain, a fence enclosing a labor camp with hundreds of millions of captives. He became an expert in medical research but, not being a Communist Party member, was refused professional promotion. Accused by the Securitate, the KGB-like Romanian secret police, of transferring results to visiting Western scientists, he was banned from teaching medical students. Sidonia, his wife, was refused a doctoral degree because her father owned a land that was taken away by the communist regime. Under Ceauşescu’s increasingly oppressive regime, Maurice and Sidonia decided to leave the country. After a year of struggle with the Securitate, they got passports to visit Maurice’s family in France. In France, Maurice received an offer for a teaching position in the United States. The two indispensable conditions that Maurice was considering when planning for this breakaway, a tourist passport and a job, were fulfilled. When Maurice and Sidonia were informed by HIAS, the agency that assisted refugees, that it would take nine months to have their two teenage children released from Romania, Sidonia had to return to care of them and her old father. This was the start of a fight between the Securitate and Maurice and Sidonia. An eighteen months’ separation ordeal followed. The Securitate was blackmailing Maurice to force him not to claim being a political refugee while persuading Sidonia to divorce him. In this clash, the Securitate was using informers, censorship, and public meetings. The most harmful was their threat of endless separation. Fighting back, Maurice pressured the Ceauşescu regime to release his family by garnering support from United States congressmen and threatening the regime with public demonstration. Providing moral support to Sidonia and the children through letters, phone calls, and packages was essential. The bonding between them based on love and trust was the best defense against the conniving Securitate.