“Romanians eat everything”. I kept hearing this phrase as I was working in the kitchen chopping vegetables. I would cut the top off a carrot, trying to be careful not to waste, and Anna would tell me to cut less off, “Romanians eat everything”.
Depending who it would have been I would have gotten annoyed, but I had been working with her for the last several days chopping vegetables, mashing potatoes and stirring big pots of soup, and we had built a relationship. She also pointed out the things I did well.
Standing in the kitchen taking meat off the bones and talking to her I suddenly realized that she had lived through communism.(it’s a similar realization that your grandparents lived through the Great Depression) She knew, first hand, what she was talking about. Everything was rationed; milk, meat, bread… You had to use EVERYTHING.
One of the other cooks, that week, was also Romanian; however her story was very different. Newly married, at the start of communism, her and her husband got a train to Italy where they made their way to America. Leaving Romania at that time meant leaving your nationality; they gave up their birth certificates, passports, and all other identity papers, they traveled with passports that said “no nationality”. When communism fell they went through a seven year process to regain their Romanian citizenship.
Hanging out in Bucharest, for the weekend, I started reading In God’s Underground; the story of Richard Wurmbrand. He was a Pastor in Romania during communism. His wife, Sabina, said, “Go and wash this shame from the face of Christ,”
“If I do, you’ll lose your husband”, Richard said.
“I don’t need a coward. Go and do it.”
As a result he spent 14 years in prison. As I was reading I realized that I was in the same city where he was imprisoned. I looked it up and realized we were a thirty minute walk from where he was imprisoned at some point.
It’s strange to realize that you are in a place where, not all that long ago, there was hunger and no guarantee of food the next day. Where being a Christian was one step away from your death sentence, the in between step was torture to make them confess and betray fellow Christians.
Romania and Bulgaria have come a long way in the 28 years since communism fell; however they still have a long way to go.
