Litera

My Peaceful, Multiethnic Village

I saw the light of day in an atypical village of Bucovina. It was a multiethnic village, a kind of summary of Europe. A European Union avant la lettre. It is there, I believe, that a direction in my life was traced, an ecumenical dominant feature, one of understanding of

Memoirs Of A Witness

I was born and I spent my childhood in the capital of the country that is called Romania, a state that at that time had prided itself for about a decade with the name of Greater Romania, which was a creation of the preceding generation, but also the outcome of a long series

Vasile Socoliuc

Vasile Socoliuc was born on August 7, 1937, at Tisauti, Suceava County. After taking courses at the Fine Arts School in Bucharest, he attended the N. Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute, graphics department. He worked as a graphic artist with the Publishing House for World Literature,

Ukrainians

The Ukrainians from Maramures and Bucovina – the GuzulsThe Ukrainian settlements in northern Moldavia and Maramures, situated in areas neighboring the Ukrainian ethno-linguistic massif and its prolongation, are the oldest in the country. Archeological and linguistic testimonies

My Grandfather Mehmed Ali

My grandfather Mehmed Ali was an old-fashioned Turk. He wore a long beard and the traditional Turkish costume. Each morning he would sit down next to the charcoal, the earthenware pot filled with live coals, sip his coffee and puff his long-stemmed chibouk. He would often

The Serbs

Short history The Slavs, the ancestors of the Serbs, began settling on Romania's territory in the early Middle Ages. The Serbs from north of the Sava and the Danube, as well as those who went to the Balkan Peninsula, in the 7th century, became Christians in the second

The Ruthenians

I was, am, and will remain, a Rusyn. Aleksander Dukhnovici A short historyThe Ruthenians are a population that is descended from a Slavic branch of the Indo-European nations. Their name is mentioned by Julius Caesar, with reference to a Celtic tribe settled in Gallia Narbonensis.

The Violin Player Ion Voicu

It is hard to say when the Gypsies came to Romania for the first time, and then settled for good, but the oldest documents date from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the royal charters mentioned the fiddler slaves, sold alongside the dependencies and objects from

The Wild Wine Gallery

excerpt Bunthe had thought it appropriate to put up their two unexpected guests from Bucharest with Father Calist. The villagers were saying they had got lucky. The weather was beautiful, spring was coming. The sun shone as if it was already April. The wildflowers that

The Lipovan Russians Of Romania

The beginnings of Lipovan Russians in Romania need to be sought in the dramatic events that caused considerable upheaval in Russia, in the late 17th century, eventually leading to the division of the Russian society, and prompting a religious and social crisis the consequences

Jewish Identities In Interwar Bucovina

There were Jews in Bucovina even before its existence as a separate province. As early as the 18th century, some Jewish families in the German area looked for a better life in this northern part of Moldavia, which subsequently became Bucovina. Here they were given more protection

Religious Conversion In 19th Century Moldavia

The baptized JewIn the late 1990s I had planned to include at the end of my book The Imaginary Jew in Romanian Culture a chapter entitled The Baptized Jew. As I worked on this subject I realized that it had been extensively discussed by the historian Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu