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Picture of Ioana Voicu-Arnăuţoiu

Ioana Voicu-Arnăuţoiu

IOANA RALUCA VOICU-ARNĂUŢOIU (Poienărei, Romania, 1956) is the daughter of anti-communist partisans who survived for nine years in the Carpathian Mountains after the Second World War. After their capture in May 1959 she was sent to an orphanage from which she was adopted by a Bucharest family unaware of her origins. Her father, Toma Arnăuţoiu, was executed in July 1959 and her mother Maria Plop died in prison in Miercurea Ciuc. Ioana only discovered her roots after the fall of Ceauşescu. She has researched the Securitate files and written about her parents as well as about Romanian composers persecuted under Communism. The two documents presented in this edition of the Hungarian Review are extracts from her research. Today, she is head of the Chamber Music Department at the National University of Music in Bucharest. She is a graduate of the same school (1979 violin class) and holds a musicology doctorate. Between 1982 and 2000 she was a member of the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra.

THE LAST REFUGE

Anti-Communist Partisans in the Romanian Mountains In 1990 in Romania, soon after the fall of the Ceauşescu dictatorship, 34 year old Ioana Voicu began searching for her real parents. She had been brought up in an orphanage, to which she now returned with a simple question. She wanted to find