Cartianu: "After breaking the Romanian people’s backbone, the communist era continues to send us the bills"

We now have a model in Romanian Justice. The general attorneys have sentenced the Romanian state to a compensation worth of  500.000 euros to a former political prisoner. The conscience money represent the moral and material losses endured by Lucian Orasel, for eight years (1956-1964) spent in communist jails.

The “Orasel” case could be the start of thousands or even tens of thousands of similar trials. The victims of Stalinist-communist terror have all the moral and legal rights to compensations. The way these “people’s enemies” have suffered, especially during 1947-1964, cannot be forgotten with money.

Their price, if there is one, is greater than all the world’s riches. The gruesome tortures, the wrecked destinies, the starving families, the massacres, the decimated Church, the crushing down on intellectuals and the world going upside down - there is no financial cure for all of that. And still…

And still, people have the right to ask for this modest form of relief and gratitude from a society who pretends to be civilized. It’s not enough, but it’s a little more than nothing. No one can cure crushed bones, nor bring back the dead and the years stolen from these lives cannot be returned.

So, we have no right to judge when it comes to well deserved compensations to the victims of communism. We do however, from time to time, have the right to realize how much the criminal regime, imposed by the Red Army, continues to harm us.

The Romanian society paid has paid more then it could handle during the 1950’s and as a reward she had her key points destroyed: Church, Army, political system, property, intellectuals. Its spinal cord was broken. In the fifties, the Romanian nation paid more then it could handle, and as a reward found itself crippled in key assets: the church, the army, the political system, the ownership, and it’s intellectual bodyAfter the fall of the communist regime, we have all compensated the successful intellectual set-back achieved by the communist regime. It’s like even now, we can still hear the slogans of 1990: “Death to intellectuals” , “IMGB established order” , “We work, not think”.

We can still catch glimpses of hordes of miners driven by Ion Iliescu – primary figure of the “red plague” – against the “legionnaires from Piata Universitatii”. Then, in the nineties, communism stripped another layer of skin from the Romanian nation. The regime died, but it’s lieutenants we’re still scavenging thru the country crippled body.

But the compensation isn’t over yet. Every once in a while, communism sends us another bill, another invoice harsher then our monthly maintenance bill. But we, Romanians, have to pay them all, as every time we have a debt to settle, Romania represents us, on the other hand, every time we have a benefit, Romania represents them. The same them who imprisoned us, tortured us, broken our bones at the Canal.

Now, them again, thru endless law suits bury our hopes to get back our confiscated houses, lands, our stolen dignity. If the victims of the Romanian gulag will ever convey on suing the government, reparations will reach billions of Euros. We have nothing to say against them. We can only realise that these reparations will not be paid by Gheorghiu-Dej, or Ceausescu, or Nicolski, or Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, Draghici or Ion Iliescu!

These reparations will be paid from the national budget, therefore from us. Including those belonging to the political detainees of that time, their children and their grandchildren.