And so we arrived in Yugoslavia. The plan was to wait for a cart, I don’t know where from, but nobody was waiting. So, we disembarked and I shall never forget – I was eight years old – probably children feel what adults feel, but I looked at the Romanian bank and I wondered whether I would ever see that bank again (weeps). And my whole life, from the age of eighteen to fifty-three, from eighteen, when I realised that we would never go back, I tried to accept that I would never see that bank again – and I was wrong, it was the great miracle of my life.
And so we disembarked on the Yugoslav bank, the Yugoslav border guards arrived, the adults said they wanted political asylum in the West, they put us on a boat, we travelled down the Danube to Belgrade, we spent the night in Belgrade. Mother, who is enthusiastic by nature, wanted to send a telegram to Tito, Marshal Tito, to thank him for not sending us back, because he could have sent us back. So, the next day we went by train to a place called Kovačica. We got off the train, we walked for a time and came to a place where there were tall white walls and a big gate and we went through the gate and there was a small, white, rather dilapidated building. It looked very ugly and I asked Mother what it was: she told me it was a hotel. I had been to Switzerland and Italy, I knew it couldn’t be a hotel. And we went into that building, which was dark, and in front of us there was a staircase leading up. It turned to the side and led up. On the left were some bars and a barred door in the bars, and it opened… and there was a small corridor and on the right there was an iron door and we went through the door into a room with a single barred little window high up, with straw on the flaw, with grey walls… and they closed the door. I shall never forget that feeling, that thick metal door with a little window in it, through which anybody could look. Fortunately, they didn’t lock the door, because that’s a horrible feeling, to be locked in like that.
And so I don’t remember there being anybody else in that cell when we arrived, but we were women and children, that is, Mother, Mrs Bezi, the other mother, the three boys, my sister and myself. And in time others arrived. Father Surducan’s family arrived: the priest, his wife and son, who they called Puiu. Another family also arrived, whose name I don’t remember, with a little boy. Puiu was seven, the other boy was nine or thereabouts. And in time the cell filled up with women. I remember that a peasant woman and her fiancé arrived, they wanted to get married, and so we all tried to find something to give them as a present. And we each had a shawl, which was precious, because the place was full of flies, and when we lay down after the meals to rest, we’d cover ourselves with those shawls, but even so we gave them as a gift. Whoever had one, gave it as a gift.
And on Sundays we could go outside. There were two other priests there: Father Florian Gîldău and Father Vasile Leu, besides Father Surducan. And one of the priests married the couple. And I remember that the young newlyweds sat all day in a corner… It made an impression on me.
The men were held upstairs, where it was more crowded… There was a Naum Neagoe, who used to laugh at how they were like sardines: at night when they slept, if one turned over, then the others had to turn over too.
And so the group left, with the Economu family, and they made them go out by the window, the window of the cell where we slept. One after they other, they went through the window. The last was a young medical student, who turned to father, and said: “What shall I do, Mr Popa? Shall I go or not? I don’t have the shoes for this mud,” and father said: “Here are some shoes the priest left me” – that must have been Father Boștinariu, who was Catholic, I don’t know – he had been left a pair of shoes and he gave him the shoes and he left. And we went to bed, dreaming, as you can imagine, of Greece.
They were going to eat oranges, sardines, olives… What a dream! When we woke up the next morning, it was a beautiful day and again we imagined what they would be eating that morning, lucky them… and the peasants came to start work and they told us they’d been summoned to dig a grave that night to bury a group of some twenty persons and they described their clothes and we realised that it was the group that had left the evening before.
R: But why?
I: Who knew? But I shall tell you why later. The adults said: “What about going to Greece? You said they were going to Greece.” “They are in Greece. We took them to Greece,” when you asked them why and what they had done. They were just lies. So, they kept saying that they had been taken to Greece. In the end the peasants told us, they came and told us they had been summoned, they described their clothes. In the end, the druzhi said: “Yes, it’s true, we had to kill them because they tried to escape.” “What do you mean, tried to escape? You took them away…” They took them.
R: They took them to freedom, yes.
I: “Well, the proof they tried to escape was that they left by the window.”
R: So it was all a game?
I: A set-up. But I’ll tell you why later. They did that set-up, and it was all lies, in the end communism was based mostly on lies. So they left. You can imagine how we felt.
And let me tell you… The hospital was when we were at Zrenjanin, in the camp. In the camp things were more relaxed. In the men’s quarters there were tables with chessboards, where they played chess. And there were people who tried to go to the hospital. For example, one would pretend to have poisoned himself by swallowing a copper coin that was green. They didn’t really believe any of it. When we were at Kovačica we would have to queue, a young woman fainted, said she was pregnant, but the druzhi didn’t believe that either. But I really did get sick: I had a fever, the symptoms of appendicitis. They took me, put me in a cart and took me to the hospital in Zrenjanin. A small, white, clean hospital: enchanting! They took me there, put me in a very, very clean bed. Very nice doctors came to examine me. They let Mother stay with me. Father waited outside. I’ll never forget when they brought me food: there was a plate, on the plate there was some meat among other things. I hadn’t eaten meat for such a long time! And mother asked me: “Do you think I could give a little bit of your meat to Daddy?” Daddy was waiting outside. I could see him through the window. He looked like a beaten hound. And there was a terrible struggle inside me. I told Mother: “Yes,” but it hurt and I felt so guilty about being hurt because of that little but of meat (weeps). And so you have just a little idea of it.
The doctors said I had an inflamed appendix, but I was too weak for them to operate on me and they sent me back. And everything turned out well. When we reached France, the doctors examined me and they saw that my appendix had been or was inflamed and had to be taken out and they operated and I got rid of my appendix.
... I looked towards Romania and I asked myself if would ever see it again...
Ingrid Fotino at the time of her arrest
photo: Arhiva foto a Memorialului Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei - fond Ingrid Fotino
photo: Arhiva foto a Memorialului Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei - fond Ingrid Fotino
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Born 31 May 1940, Bucharest.
The interviewee comes from a family persecuted from the very beginning of the communist regime in Romania. Many of her close relatives were kept under surveillance, interrogated and imprisoned by the regime. Her father, a lawyer and the joint-owner, with his father, of a number of well-known firms in the textiles sector, was arrested in 1947 and imprisoned for many months at Jilava. The likely motive for the arrest was the fact that in 1946, as a consultant in the economic mission sent to Moscow to negotiate the strategies that were to be applied in the textiles industry, Ervin Popa was the only member of the delegation who refused to sign the final treaty, which he believed was to Romania’s disadvantage. Her mother’s sister, Lidia Gavrilescu, was imprisoned for more than four years in a series of women’s gaols, and her uncle, Constantin Niculescu, an officer in the navy, was imprisoned for five years at Aiud.
As a result, in 1948, in an attempt to flee communism and the atmosphere of terror during the years immediately after the war, and following Ervin Popa’s arrest and imprisonment for a number of months in 1947, the Popa family (parents Ervin Popa and Ariana Popa, née Gavrilescu, and daughters Ingrid Alina and Alda) clandestinely crossed the border from Romania into Yugoslavia. They made a perilous crossing of the Danube in a group consisting of twelve persons: besides the Popa family, there was another family of two parents and three sons, and three men who helped with the launch and also who took advantage of the opportunity to flee the country.
On reaching the other bank of the Danube, after a brief moment of jubilation, the Popa family was arrested by the Serbs and imprisoned in the camps at Kovačica and Zrenjanin. Conditions in the two camps proved to be very harsh, in terms of both food and hygiene and for both adults and children.
After two years, they were taken to a camp in Bitola (Macedonia) before being released in Greece. Regarding this camp, the interviewee mentions that the guards used to fake escapes as a means of disposing of prisoners. For example, on 30-31 January 1950, the Economu family, comprising husband and wife Narcis and Elena and two children, Liliana and Sandu, were part of a group of around twenty persons who were granted apparent leave to head to Greece. The release proved to be a ruse and all the members of the group were killed by the camp guards. It seems that the purpose of such tricks was to send a harsh message to Romanians thinking of fleeing from communism.
The Popa family was released as part of a group of thirteen persons on 9 February 1950 and travelled to Greece, and thence to Italy and finally Switzerland, where they had acquaintances. They subsequently spent two years in France, where they began to rebuild their lives. They were familiar with French culture as Ervin Popa had taken his doctorate at the Sorbonne, and Ariana Popa, whose mother died when she was very young, had been raised by nuns at Notre Dame des Cieux and had learned French at an early age. The Popa family later moved to the United States of America, where Ariana Popa found a job at the French Lycée in New York and Ervin Popa in a textile company.
Ingrid Fotino (née Popa) lives in the United States of America. She is married and has two daughters.
