Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 August 2005 17:34:24
Plenty of people remember what they were doing at particularly significant points in history. Given that my thing is eastern Europe, a good place to start would be the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989. I was in the first term of my final year at uni (the first time I was at uni!) getting ready to go on a weekend away with the Christian Union (having become a Christian during the first term of my first year a couple of years earlier). There were a couple of German students there whom I remember being in tears, and at the time I never really understood the significance of it all. We'd prayed over the previous two years for the people "behind the Iron Curtain", but didn't know all that much about it - we heard that Christians were persecuted for their faith, and that life was grim, and that Communism was such a stronghold that nobody could ever believe it could fall. And then, in eastern Europe, it just did. Over November and December of that year I watched with the rest of the west as one country followed another in having largely peaceful revolutions and overthrowing the ruling communists.
Romania in particular though was different. The "revolution" was more violent, and the story more dramatic. Everywhere else the leaders had seemed to be faceless bureaucrats, but the Ceausescus were different - huge, megalomaniac personalities, difficult to comprehend. Watching Ceausescu make that speech to the assembled crowds in Bucharest, and the look of incomprehension on his face when the chanting started, and then the dramatic escape attempt followed by execution on Christmas Day 1989 - it captured my imagination, and that of a lot of people. Having been involved in Romania since, particularly the charity scene, it was clear that Romania was seen as a lot "sexier" than the other eastern European countries, who were often cynical whenever Romania was mentioned as they couldn't understand why it seemed to be getting more attention and help than them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Of course, in the early months of 1990 the full horrors of the Ceausescu regime started to emerge, and in particular the horrors of the thousands of children in those horrendous orphanages. I couldn't get it out of my head, although I didn't do anything about it then. What could a soon-to-graduate music student do, what use could I possibly be? So I prayed, and then just got on with life.