Paul Goma


Paul Goma was a Romanian writer, known for his activities as a dissident and leading opponent of the communist regime before 1989. Forced into exile by the communist authorities, he became a political refugee and resided in France as a stateless person. After 2000, Goma has expressed opinions on World War II, the Holocaust in Romania and the Jews, claims which have led to widespread allegations of antisemitism.

Biography

Early life

Goma was born to a Romanian family in Mana village, Orhei County, then in the Kingdom of Romania, now part of Moldova.
In March 1944, the Goma family took refuge in Sibiu, Transylvania. In August 1944, finding themselves in danger of involuntary "repatriation" to the Soviet Union, they fled to the village of Buia, by the Târnava Mare River. From October to December 1944, the family hid in the forests around Buia. On January 13, 1945, they were captured by Romanian shepherds and turned over to the Gendarmerie in Sighişoara, where they were interned at the "Centrul de Repatriere". There, Eufimie Goma forged documents for his family; however, Maria Goma's brother, who didn't have forged papers, was "repatriated to Siberia". In June 1945, taking advantage of the forged documents, they returned to Buia. Later on, Paul Goma would describe his family's refugee saga in the novels Arta refugii, Soldatul câinelui, and Gardă inversă.

Dissident in Romania

In 1954, he was admitted to the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest. In November 1956, he was part of the Bucharest student movement of 1956: during a seminar, he read out to other students parts of a novel he had written about a student who establishes a movement that is similar to the ones in Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Goma was arrested on the charge of attempting to organize a strike at the University of Bucharest and he was sentenced to two years in prison. He served his sentence at the prisons in Jilava and Gherla, and then was put under house arrest in Lăteşti until 1963.
As a former political prisoner, he was not allowed to resume his studies and he had to work as a manual labourer until 1965 when a decree allowed former prisoners to study at the University. In September 1965, he was re-admitted as a first-year student at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest.
At the end of August 1968, Goma became a member of the Romanian Communist Party, in an act of solidarity with the Romanian position during the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Several months later, Goma attempted to publish a novel, Ostinato, but it was not allowed by the censors after one of them claimed to recognize one character as Elena Ceaușescu. Nevertheless, he published the novel in translation in West Germany in 1971, as a result of which, Paul Goma was excluded from the Communist Party.
During the summer of 1972, he was allowed to visit France, where he wrote Gherla, a novel based on his experiences in the Gherla Prison. This book was also denied publication in Romania but was published in France in 1976.

Goma's 1977 letters

In 1977, Goma wrote a public letter expressing solidarity with the Charter 77, but, finding few friends willing to sign it, he wrote another letter, addressed directly to Ceaușescu, in which he asked him to sign it, as the two of them were the only Romanians not afraid of the Securitate. Following this, he wrote another letter in which he called for respect for human rights in Romania.
In February 1977, Ceaușescu made a speech in which he attacked the "traitors of the country", referring to the two letters Goma wrote. The following day, a police cordon was in front of his building, not allowing non-residents, to prevent people from signing Goma's letter. The authorities tried to convince Goma to emigrate, but he refused. As the police cordon got more relaxed, several more people signed the letter and they were arrested on exiting Goma's apartment.
In March, he wrote an even tougher admonitory letter to Ceaușescu, urging him not to break the bond between the people and him, a bond that was created after Ceaușescu condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and attacked the Securitate whom Goma said were "traitors and enemies of Romania, who produce nothing and prevent those who produce from producing more". In the meantime, Goma gained the support of two intellectuals: psychiatrist Ion Vianu and literary critic Ion Negoiţescu; in all, he had 75 signatures.
Called by Cornel Burtică, the Secretary for Propaganda of the Central Committee, on March 12, Goma got the promise of being allowed to publish again, but he refused as he said that he wants not to be followed by the Securitate. A week later, a former boxer, Horst Stumpf, broke into Goma's flat and attacked him; the attacks repeated the following days. As he was barricading himself with some friends in his apartment, he gave an interview to French TV station Antenne 2.
Goma was arrested and excluded from the Writers' Union of Romania. Following his arrest, he was attacked in the Romanian media: in a Săptămîna article, Eugen Barbu called him "a nullity", in Luceafărul, Nicolae Dragoş said he was "rousing reactionary elements" and in Contemporanul, Vasile Băran, not mentioning Goma, claimed that "individuals calling themselves writers and journalists sully with the dirtiest of dirt our noble profession".
An international appeal for his release was launched, among the signatories being Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. Goma was released on 6 May 1977, four days before the anniversary of 100 years of Romanian independence, celebrations which Ceaușescu didn't want overshadowing by Goma's arrest.
On November 20, 1977, Goma and his family left Romania and went into exile in France.

Exile in France

On 3 February 1981, Goma and Nicolae Penescu received parcels in their post. Penescu opened his parcel to find a book and when he lifted its cover an explosion wounded him. Goma, who had received two death threats since his arrival in France, called the police. Both packages had been sent on instructions by Carlos the Jackal.
In 1982, the Securitate planned to assassinate Goma. Matei Haiducu, the secret agent sent by the Securitate to carry out the plan, turned to French counter-intelligence. With the help of the DST, Haiducu simulated an attempt on Goma's life, by poisoning his drink at a restaurant; the drink was then spilled by a French agent, pretending to be a "clumsy guest".
Although Goma's numerous works were translated worldwide, his books, except the first one, were published in Romania only after the 1989 Revolution. He lived in Paris as a stateless political refugee, his Romanian citizenship having been revoked after 1978 by the communist government.

Death

On March 18, 2020, Paul Goma was hospitalized at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris after being infected with COVID-19 and died on March 25, 2020. He was 84.

Controversies

Some of Goma's post-2005 articles and essays have been criticized for their strong antisemitic nature. In particular, in his "essay" Săptămâna Roșie , he tried to rewrite the Romanian history of the years 1940–1944, claiming that the Jews exaggerated the numbers of the victims of the Romanian holocaust, that communist Jews made things up and that Jews were not the victims, but the perpetrators of several of the heinous crimes of those times, using thus strategies common to holocaust denial.
Goma rejects these criticisms and claims that he has filed libel lawsuits against his accusers. He asserted that his wife was Jewish and stated that similar arguments were used against him by the Securitate in the 1980s. On January 30, 2007, Goma was awarded the "Citizen of Honor" distinction by the Municipal Council of Timișoara. In February 2007, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania and the Israeli Embassy protested against the distinction, arguing that Paul Goma was the author of multiple antisemitic articles.
On April 5, 2006 he was invited to become a member of the Tismăneanu Commission, a body charged with researching the crimes of the communist dictatorship in Romania. Nine days later he was dismissed by the Commission's president, Vladimir Tismăneanu, who explained the exclusion based on Goma's questioning the moral and scientific credibility of the president of the Commission, and disclosing of their private correspondence.

Literary contributions

Goma's literary debut came in 1966 with a short story published in the review Luceafǎrul with which he collaborated as well as with Gazeta literarǎ, Viaţa românească and Ateneu. In 1968 he published his first volume of stories, Camera de alături. After Ostinato and its West German publication in 1971 came Uşa in 1972, also in Germany. After his forced emigration in 1977 and until his books could again be published in Romania after the 1989 revolution, all his books appeared in France and in French. There followed such novels as Dans le cercle ; Garde inverse ; Le Tremblement des Hommes ; Chassée-croisé ; Les Chiens de la mort, which details his prison experiences in Piteşti in the 1950s; and Bonifacia. The autobiographical Le Calidor appeared in French in 1987 and was subsequently published in Romanian as Din Calidor: O copilărie basarabeană in the Romanian émigré journal Dialog, edited by Ion Solacolu.
In its totality, Goma's literary work comprises a "persuasive and grimly fascinating exposure of totalitarian inhumanity" from which, in his own case, even foreign exile was no guarantee of a safe haven. In such later novels as Bonifacia and My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest, the biographical element dominates as he focuses on his childhood and adolescence in Bessarabia. Several sets of diaries, all published in Romania in 1997 and 1998, shed light on Goma's later life and career: Alte Jurnale, which covers his stay in the United States in autumn 1978 but concentrates primarily on 1994–96; Jurnal I: Jurnal pe sărite ; Jurnal II: Jurnal de căldură mare, covering June and July 1989; Jurnal III: Jurnal de noapte lungă, covering September to December 1993; and Jurnalul unui jurnal 1997, focusing just on that year.

Published works