Living book: Mircea Vladimir Bârsan (Vova), Romanian painter, professional photographer
(fragments)
"I will tell you about some facts that gain significance over time... There are events that everyone wants to forget, so that we are no longer bothered because we live in another era, and people are different. These facts severely affected me psychologically. I had no power in 1940, when we had to take refuge from the territories ceded by Romania. There was another totally unpleasant event: my father was arrested by the so-called "Salvation Army”. We went to mother’s parents who lived in Cluj and we made every effort to move to Romania.
On Feleacului Hill, on the road that leads to Turda, there was the border... We obtained permission to leave the territory on September 14, on the Day of the Cross. It was drizzling. My mother took a birch; she had taken a suitcase in which we had our documents. We went up Feleacului Hill, where the Hungarian picket was... Now it's full of buildings, it's not what it was anymore. And the Hungarians told us: Get naked! We said: What do you mean by that? They said: Get bare skinned! Thus we can see if you carry anything of value across the border. We got undressed and they allowed us to walk further without wearing anything. After we passed the barrier, my sister said: "Mother, can we now sing Long Live the King?" My sister was five years old. We were very excited... The Romanian army - the border guards - were waiting for us with blankets because they knew that this was their custom.
Today, they neither want to talk, nor do they want to remember something like that and accuse people of ripping up the past to incite... But that is history.
I am often asked by young people like you, who work on television and attended my classes where I taught them how to do a report, if I still have schoolmates, but it is difficult to have any when you attend four classes in ten different locations.
My father as a legal military officer was moving from one military base to another. He was taking us with him, because we had nowhere to stay. The army provided us housing. At one point we arrived at Siret, in Bukovina. There was a unit of mountain troops performing a military exercise. As part of this exercise the military had to reach Cernăuți. For that they passed through the locality Biserica Albă... Here in 1940 the Russian Communists had killed 4800 Romanians by shooting them in a forest... They had allowed them to leave the occupied area, but they had waited for them in the forest and slaughtered them. Not one or two, four thousand! Many of them were accompanied by their wives and children... These are the horrors of the war that is not much discussed."
Mircea Vladimir Bârsan (Vova)
"I will tell you about some facts that gain significance over time... There are events that everyone wants to forget, so that we are no longer bothered because we live in another era, and people are different. These facts severely affected me psychologically. I had no power in 1940, when we had to take refuge from the territories ceded by Romania. There was another totally unpleasant event: my father was arrested by the so-called "Salvation Army”. We went to mother’s parents who lived in Cluj and we made every effort to move to Romania.
On Feleacului Hill, on the road that leads to Turda, there was the border... We obtained permission to leave the territory on September 14, on the Day of the Cross. It was drizzling. My mother took a birch; she had taken a suitcase in which we had our documents. We went up Feleacului Hill, where the Hungarian picket was... Now it's full of buildings, it's not what it was anymore. And the Hungarians told us: Get naked! We said: What do you mean by that? They said: Get bare skinned! Thus we can see if you carry anything of value across the border. We got undressed and they allowed us to walk further without wearing anything. After we passed the barrier, my sister said: "Mother, can we now sing Long Live the King?" My sister was five years old. We were very excited... The Romanian army - the border guards - were waiting for us with blankets because they knew that this was their custom.
Today, they neither want to talk, nor do they want to remember something like that and accuse people of ripping up the past to incite... But that is history.
I am often asked by young people like you, who work on television and attended my classes where I taught them how to do a report, if I still have schoolmates, but it is difficult to have any when you attend four classes in ten different locations.
My father as a legal military officer was moving from one military base to another. He was taking us with him, because we had nowhere to stay. The army provided us housing. At one point we arrived at Siret, in Bukovina. There was a unit of mountain troops performing a military exercise. As part of this exercise the military had to reach Cernăuți. For that they passed through the locality Biserica Albă... Here in 1940 the Russian Communists had killed 4800 Romanians by shooting them in a forest... They had allowed them to leave the occupied area, but they had waited for them in the forest and slaughtered them. Not one or two, four thousand! Many of them were accompanied by their wives and children... These are the horrors of the war that is not much discussed."
Mircea Vladimir Bârsan (Vova)