🇷🇴 Romania’s Anti-communist Resistance Movement
In March 1944, the Soviet Red Army invaded Bucovina and began the “liberation” of Romania.
People fled into the forests and surrounding mountains and began forming Anti-Bolshevik Partisan Units.
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A lot of people joined the volunteer batallions which soon numbered in the thousands, however, this was not even nearly enough to stop hundreds of thousands of communists invading the country.
Map of Romania with armed resistance areas marked in red.
Macoveiciuc Group, with over 40 members.
They ambushed Soviet troops which had occupied their native Bucovina.
Partisans fled to the mountains where they continued planning campaigns against the communist government.
Teodor Șușman – anticommunist fighter of the Apuseni Mountains
Șușman became a mayor and was well-respected figure within his community.
When he refused to sign up for the Communist party in 1946, he and his sons were blacklisted.
His sons and friends chose to escape with him in the mountains and become resistance fighters.
Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu, led a small group of partisans in the Făgăraș Mountains from 1948 until its demise in 1956.
Such units were supported by thousands of civilians which supplied them with food, shelter and clothing.
Gavrilă Group on an undated photo, some members were as young as 18.
Shepherd sheds were common hideouts for resistance fighters.
Located in the deep Transylvanian forests they were harder to reach and find by the communist authorities.
The public support the fighters received was enormous.
A lot of people called them "haiducii", which in the past were armed fighters against corrupt institutions and invaders.
Dumitru Opris supported the partisan groups of the Făgăraș Mountains and spent 3 years in prison for it, after which he returned home weighing 45 kg.
Dumitru Opris today.
He offered shelter to the partisans before being arrested.
“I still keep the straws they slept on in my shed”
They had some support from foreign countries as well.
The SOE (Special Operations Executive) in Britain parachuted weapons like machineguns and rifles and some uniforms into Romania.
Weapons of the resistance group "Grupul Carpatin Făgărășan" seized by the Securitate
The CIA had recruited displaced Romanians in Austria and Germany to be trained as agents, and were then parachuted into Romania to conduct supply route disruptions, bombing campaigns and assassinations of high ranking officers of the newly formed “Securitate”, the Romanian KGB.
Family members of anti-communist fighters were rounded up and executed or sent to one of the various concentration camps in rural Romania.
The resistance movement, although it had massive support, was near Eradicated in the early 60s, as communist Romanian forces tightened their stronghold grip around the remaining bands of fighters.
In the late 50s most guerrilla units were in a shambles.
Partisan Ion Ilioiu.
He was tortured in prison until his release in 1964, he died in 2012.
"If it would start all over again, I’d do the same thing.”
Although most of the units had been liquidated or arrested by the 60s, some units remained active for quite a while, with the last fighter being arrested in the 1970s.
To end this thread I'd like to share some passages from Vasile Motrescu's diary, a partisan from Bucovina...
"To call oneself a partisan must give up everything, you have to give up life and put it in service of the nation, for the conquest of freedom for the Romanian people."
"Your (communists) policy is like a spider’s web, you collaborate in the beginning with slogans, stages, periods, etc, until you reach the age of maturity, then you show your teeth of beast."
"Bucovina is crying, bathed in blood…
Every night I fall asleep alone and cold. And every single night I dream that I am at my father’s place."
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