Selected text
In 1953, when the International Youth Festival was held in Bucharest, he left for Western Europe dressed as an Arab and got as far as Germany. [Editor’s note: The fourth Youth and Student International Festival took place from 2-14 August 1953. This was the first direct contact since World War II with foreigners, who were the few thousand youth attending the festival.] He went to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg, where he boarded an American ship. The Americans caught him, beat him up and forced him to disembark, so he had to return.
He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate [9] seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.
He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate [9] seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.
Period
Year
1954
Location
Cluj Napoca
Romania
Interview
Andrei Lorincz