Demostene Andronescu (en)

“If I hadn’t managed to write poetry in prison, I would have died”. Born on 3 December 1927 in Câmpuri, Vrancea County, on the border between the contemplative spirit of Moldavia and the humble spirit of the mountains, Demostene Andronescu is a rare mixture of poet and fighter, lyrical dreamer and man of action. His medieval knight’s nature prevented him from being “good” in the face of Communist torment, and at the same time saved him from perishing in the dungeons in which he suffered for 12 years. A former troop boy, he studied in Bucharest. He graduated from the […]

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Hunger was no joke in the 1950-54 period, especially in Jilava. The bellies of many of the bourgeois who had been arrested and investigated a few months earlier in the huts of the Ministry of the Interior Affairs hung like Masonic aprons over the shameful parts of their bodies. Others, younger and hungrier, had the same bellies not hanging out, but hollowed out to the point where they looked like seashells, with the navel protruding like a finger from the centre. And for those who had been in prison since 1941, the bones crackled under the skin like poor carpenter’s […]

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