Tag #133441 - Interview #101072 (Zsuzsa Diamantstein)

None of us ever discussed politics. Back then it was all the same for a young girl what was going on throughout the world or in politics. My parents never took part in any political organization, and my stepfather, although he was somewhat leftist, never took part in anything. When we came back [from the deportation], it was natural for the youth to consider that socialism was the future. It's unfair to accuse Jews for introducing the communism, because it was natural, they really believed discrimination, both racial and religious, will end, and this idea dominated amongst the youth. In 1945 my husband joined the party and he took seriously his duty. As intellectual he held seminars, taught Marxism in the party school, this was his task. He had no particular task, he was only assigned to do this, and so did many others. In the beginning the youth joined the party because they believed in its goals. I didn't join it because I was quite backward, and I had an inferiority complex that I wasn't smart enough for that. The fact is, that as time passed by my husband became utterly disappointed by the turn of events, and he even became ill when he saw what that beautiful idea turned into, but that's a different story. Unfortunately he didn't live to see the collapse of that terrible regime [cause by the Romanian Revolution in 1989] [15] that crushed people, personality or thought. He died in 1986, but he suffered terribly when he saw what this world has become.