Romania is not the first country that comes to mind when you’re thinking of a vacation. But there it is, a country of enormous beauty and a bucket full of incongruity. Imagine white sandy beaches being lapped by the waters of the Black Sea. Imagine skiing down the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains past the magnificent 19th century palace of King Carol I or visiting Dracula’s castle.
And, finally, imagine the difficulty of trying to retain a bucolic lifestyle for twenty million Romanians living next to the more troubled countries of Hungary, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, and tiny Moldova. Bordering the Balkan peninsula hasn’t historically been a peaceful neighborhood. First the area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later, the ethnic war that followed the death of Tito and the collapse of Yugoslavia spilled blood across the region.
Romania is a very homogeneous country. 95% of the population follows the Romania Orthodox church, akin to Russian Orthodoxy, with its own Archbishop. How religious the younger generation is, is open to question.
But what makes Romania so interesting is its 20th century history and how it fails to deal with it.
Present day Romania came into existence when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I. From then until the onset of World War II it was a peaceful, mostly rural, monarchy, struggling along with the rest of the world, to survive the Great Depression.
In 1940 as France, and most of Europe, fell to the avalanche of Hitler’s storm troopers, Romania threw off its peaceful cloak and allied itself to Nazi Germany. Come in, it invited, as the King and his family fled.
You want our Jews…no problem. We can offer our nearly one million Jews as an appetizer to satisfy your thirsty palate. Intentionally ignored was the fact that these Jews had lived in complete harmony with fifteen million Romanians for centuries. You want us to deny that harmony…not a problem. Concentration camps, such as Bieganowski were built and, under German occupation and Romanian acquiescence, nearly one-half million Romanian Jews were slaughtered.
As the war ended and Soviet troops replaced fleeing Nazi armies, Romania instantly became pro-Communist. Swastika banners down…Hammer & Sickle banners up! Presto! Chango! Nazis bad, Russians good, Jews still forgotten!
That conversion lasted until 1989 when food shortages and economic frustrations brought down the Berlin Wall, East Germany imploded, and the Soviet Union verged on collapse. The well-televised mini revolution against the Romanian leader, Nicola Ceausescu, and his wife, introduced an overnight democracy. Hammer & Sickle down, European flags up. Of course, we were really in favor of democracy all this time. More recently the country has joined the Economic Union and looked ‘west’ for its future.
But what does it say about a country and its people that can change its allegiances and principles as easily as changing a shirt.
Our licensed guide through the country, a lovely man, an educated man, openly admitted that none of this is taught to the children, not the downfall of the Monarchy, the allegiance and support of Nazi Germany, the instant conversion to Communism and, most despicable of all, the tacit acceptance of the killing of their Jewish neighbors.
Romania! Bucolic, yes! Lovely and romantic, yes! A dark, buried history, definitely!