Posted on 07/30/2013 7:42:29 AM PDT by BigEdLB
It was Christmas Day 1989, Adina Spire’s twelfth birthday, and she and her family were celebrating both occasions in their apartment in Arad, Romania. Suddenly, five soldiers burst through the door. Adina’s younger sister was quickly hidden in a kitchen cabinet, but it was too late for the rest of the family. In front of Adina’s eyes, the soldiers gunned down her mother and father. They next seized Adina, raped her, and beat her senseless. It was days later that she awoke from a coma to find herself in the nearby Bezdin monastery, where Orthodox Christian nuns cared for orphaned girls.
Adina’s sister was also there. And so was her beloved cello, which, unknown to Adina at the time, her sister had gone back to get from the house. Adina had played the instrument since she was big enough to get her body around it—she used the smaller viola like a cello at first— and it was like another member of the family to her. Her parents had also been musicians, her mother a cellist and her father a composer. Music ran in Adina’s blood, and it would be one of the reasons that the horror of Christmas Day 1989 would not vanquish her spirit.
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
I’ve actually been to Arad and Timisoara. My grandmother grew up in Timisoara and my wife and I took her back to visit in 1979. In Arad, we visited the mother of a Boston friend. In a park there, the mother slipped us a heavy gold necklace to take to her daughter.
My wife and I share a memory of the meeting with the mother. In the park, she sat on a bench and we, in our twenties, sat on the grass. She told us, “Don’t do that. Only gypsies sit on the grass.” I guess that’s why they had to get rid of them.
Haunting story. I’m glad her good spirit prevailed. It seems ironic that she found freedom in Russia.
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