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Paul Goma was born on October 2, 1935 in Orhei, Bessarabia, into a family of Romanian teachers, but came to Romania after Bessarabia’s surrender to the former USSR.
A student from the Gheorghe Lazăr high school in Sibiu was expelled because he had supported the cause of some people investigated for anti-communism at the school.
That early ideological outburst would later mark his entire life. Finally, he graduated from Radu Negru High School in Făgăraş, in 1953.
A year later, he started courses at the Mihai Eminescu Institute for Literature and Literary Criticism in Bucharest, but that period was also marked by problems.
It is well known that during his studies he was arrested and sentenced (March 1957) to two years in correctional prison.
Organize a hostile demonstration
The charges brought by the communists were related to an alleged “attempt to organize a hostile demonstration”.
In fact, it was nothing more than a proof of solidarity with the events in Hungary in November 1956. Goma also protested against the imposition of Russian as a compulsory language in schools.
He was released in 1958 after a period of detention in Malmaison Prison (Bucharest, an elite prison), Jilava and Gherla Prison.
Sent to discover Bărăgan
To remove him from the circuit of those who raised problems with the communist regime, the mayors of those times decided to send him to Bărăgan, with a mandatory address.
He lived in the village of Lăţeşti, Feteşti district, until 1962 and was an unskilled worker, traveling photographer, trumpet player and technician.
In June 1965, the year Nicolae Ceausescu took office, he resumed his studies at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Bucharest. He did not complete his course and dropped out of college.
Join the Romanian Communist Party
A very important episode in his biography came to an end when Czechoslovakia was invaded by the USSR in August 1968.
Very impressed by Romania’s policy of independence towards Moscow, he became a member of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR).
The communist experience did not last until 1971, when he was excluded from the RCP due to the full publication of the novel Ostinato in the FRG, after being censored in the country.
“In the spring of 1977, in an open letter broadcast by Radio Free Europe, the brilliant writer sympathized with the Charter 77 movement of Czech intellectuals.
On April 1, 1977, he was charged with high treason and arrested, but, following international protests, he was released on May 6.
On April 14, 1977, he was expelled from the Union of Romanian Writers (USR), of which he had been a member since August 1968 ”, shows Agerpres.
Romanian citizenship revoked
In November 1977, Paul Goma’s Romanian citizenship was revoked and the writer was forced to leave for France.
In the Hexagon, he settled permanently with his family and in 1980 he rejected the offer to receive French citizenship.
After the Revolution, he began to publish his books in the country. There were more than 40 volumes integrated into Romanian novels, testimonies, dialogues, magazines and articles.
All of them have been translated into French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, an indisputable mark of Paul Goma’s literary talent.
The novel Ostinato, a fictional testimony about Romanian prisons, was published in Germany (1971) and later in France.
Eugen Ionescu called Paul Goma “Solzhenitsyn of Romania” being impressed by the content of this book of reference in the author’s work.
Dictatorship Analysis Commission
Goma was part of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania for 8 days, established by the Romanian Presidency in 2006.
On November 22, 2011, Paul Goma was a member of the Writers Guild, according to 1990 decisions, reconfirmed by the USR Council in November 2011.
At an address of the Romanian Interior Ministry, dated October 21, 2011, Paul Goma was on this date with the status of Romanian citizen. In April 2013, the writer also received citizenship of the Republic of Moldova.
On September 24, 2015, the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER) organized the international symposium Paul Goma – 80 years, which focused on the role played by the anti-communist writer in the revitalization Romanian exile and the struggle for human rights. the communist regime.
He died on the night of March 24-25 at the La Pitié Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, where he was hospitalized, after the Covid-19 infection, ”shows agerpres.ro.
