In college the pressure was again on us to become members of the Communist Party. As usual, they asked the best students to join first. And being one, I was asked. I was quite evasive about it. They asked me a few more times but I managed to postpone it indefinitely. We had a lot of political propaganda meetings anyway and I hated those. I did my best to leave early or not attend at all. I did not want any more political propaganda, more meetings and having to pay membership dues too. I did not like the system but I was afraid to say so openly. Of course, everybody criticized the system, there were a lot of political jokes told at parties among friends but generally, when you were not sure whom you were talking with, it was much wiser to keep your mouth shut. People had been known to disappear who had been too open in their disapproval.
We also had more of the mandatory “volunteer” work for the motherland. One late summer, when classes were about to start for the new school year, word came that the harvest had not been collected and soldiers, inmates and students would be “drafted” to go work on it.
For three weeks we were supposed to be taken to a small town on the coast of the Black Sea (about 5 hours away from home by train), lodged in a military building of some sort and put to work. We went by train. The weather was cool but still nice. The sea was turning colder but it was still possible to go into the water. In the beginning it seemed like a nice vacation.
But pretty soon, it became abundantly clear that it was forced labor. We slept 10-15 in a large room. We were awakened at 5. We got some kind of breakfast (not very consistent or tasty) in the cafeteria and then we were taken by truck to the fields were we would stay all day shucking ears of corn. We worked in groups of say 6-8. Each group was given a mountain of corn to finish shucking by late afternoon. It was non-stop work. And not easy at all. We would sit on the ground around the mount of corn and work on it. Some of our college teachers would come to visit and occasionally lend a hand but only for a few minutes. Our English born professor came one day and declared that it was great fun to work on the corn. He did not resist more than half an hour at the most. Some party people (security police, I imagine) were after us, urging us to work harder and faster. Lunch would be served on a metal plate. And it was cheap, horrible food. For me, who was very finicky about food, it was totally unpalatable. It was brought by truck at midday. If you had to go to the bathroom, the corn field was all yours.
At dusk, we were taken back by truck. We would wash briefly and then go to dinner at the cafeteria. The food was on regular plates but hardly any better than the one served in the field. After about a week of this regimen, I was totally fed up, mad and disgusted and being an aggressive kind of person, went to the person in charge and complained about it. I even went to the kitchen staff and said that I would go on strike and stay there, not moving until they fed me a nice meal. I was shaking with indignation and crying crocodile tears at the same time but I stayed there until they cooked some tough, greasy steak for me. Anyway, it was better than the regular fare.
What was even more infuriating was that practically every night, the security police would gather us and scold us that we were not working hard enough, that we were not patriots. They even threatened us that unless we cleaned up our act and did better, we would be charged room and board. Of course, I protested saying that it was not our wish to be there. I even led a kind of “uprising”. One day, the weather was bad, rainy and cold. Still, they took us to the fields and expected us to work. A few of us convinced all of the others that it was not right to force us. So we stopped working and found refuge from the weather in an old abandoned house. After this, we were threatened that we would be kicked out of college. But, of course, they would have had to kick a lot of us out so they didn’t after all.
After a week or so, I couldn’t stand it. I got extremely depressed and cried all the time. So, I was sent to the camp infirmary, which was staffed by med. students. When I got in, a young man sat me down and proceeded to write notes. He knew my name, my age without even asking. I was amazed and asked him how he knew that. He answered that he was one of my classmates from General School and we have been in the same class for 8 years. He had changed a lot since that and that’s why I did not recognize him. He sent me to see a specialist.
In the meantime, I had called my mother home and described the situation with the work camp. She was outraged and promised to come to “save” me. It so happened that the specialist (I guess it was a psychiatrist, I don’t remember) decided to come to my rescue and stated that I was not to continue the work at the camp. So, I gathered my stuff and went to the train station to return home. Just as I was waiting at the station for my train to arrive, my mother arrived from Bucharest. Happily, we took the train back home together.
But I was not excused from work. Together with other students that somehow had been deemed not fit for the work camp, I had to go to the University every day and do translations, administrative work and the like. This was much better. The work lasted for weeks and weeks and so the courses were all delayed. Then we had to rush to be able to make up for the delay.
There was also military training. This time, real military training. It was once a week and a couple of weeks during the summer vacation. We were issued military uniforms, with heavy boots, winter coat included. When I put the full military costume on, it was so heavy, I could barely move. We were supposed to shoot real rifles. A female sergeant who was one tough lady trained us.
After the first day of training, when I had to carry all my equipment, and dropped everything on the city bus home because they were simply too many items and too heavy, I knew that I was in for some long, hard task. Luckily, I found out that if your weight was under 100 lbs. (45 kilos), you would be exempt from military duty. I was extremely skinny, right there on the verge of 100 lbs. I went to the students’ polyclinic right after military training when I was red in the face from exhaustion, my heart beating very fast and angry as a rabid dog and sure enough, the doctor put me on the scales, listened to my heart and found a murmur too and my military career was gloriously ended.
During the years in college, I had numerous courses that were interesting, fascinating, courses, which I loved. There was also a good number of them which I disliked, or considered totally useless but I managed to do an excellent job in all of them. We had gym and we were graded for it even in college. Most of the exams were written and most of them were in essay form. My most unexpected success was getting the top grade in an exam on 18th or 19th century English poetry. Poetry was my least favorite subject but I managed to ramble quite eloquently, I suppose.
(to be continued)
Simona Georgescu
