A Child of the Decree: Keeseville memoirist reflects on life in Romania, coming to America

PLATTSBURGH — Maria D. Holderman received a perfect score shortly after her December birth in 1967 Dragasani, Romania.

This seemingly routine assessment of an infant made all the difference in her life, even in her very living.

In her new Adelaide Books release, “Children of the Decree: A Journalist’s Battle to Save Romanian Orphans and Herself,” the Keeseville resident’s memoir time travels between her selves in her country of origin and the U.S.A. that offered her refuge from dangerous times in Romania.

From 1997 to 2001, Holderman was the “Diane Sawyer of Romania” (pen name Dana Achim.)

Before leaving her native country for the United States on a one-way ticket, she was a bestselling author and an investigative reporter for the National Daily in Bucharest.

With more than 1,000 published investigations and articles, and more than 50 documentaries and investigations produced for Romania’s Antena 1 TV station, she advocated for human rights and social reform.

Holderman was the first reporter to delve into Romania’s international adoptions, exposing the scandal of the underground trafficking of children.

Her press campaigns forced justice reform ultimately abolishing international adoptions until new laws took effect four years following her departure.

DECREE 770

In “Children of the Decree,” Holderman adeptly switches between her origin story in Romania, one of the Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu’s “New Man,” and her entree into a Vermont version of the American Dream.

“It’s a story of my generation that were called the children of the decree,” Holderman said.

“I was born in the first generation of ordered children by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who wanted to increase the population of Romania and wanted to form his army of fighters for communism.

“His vision was to create the best children, best athletes, smart, competitive, problem solvers. He was, ironically, removed from power after the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 by my generation.”

Ceausescu’s “Decree 770” was issued after her parents, educators, met.

“The census was in the summer of 1966,” she said.

“He banned and prohibited all the birth control and, of course, abortion. You couldn’t find condoms. You couldn’t find pills. You couldn’t find anything. There were over 10,000 women that died. I researched it.”

Holderman recalls an aunt, her dad’s sister, an OB-GYN nurse, and her mother’s whispers about what was going on.

“There were so many women that died,” she said.

“Everything was secret. There was security in every single hospital.”

Every three months, women were brought in for gynecological examinations.

“They were like sheep going to slaughter,” she said.

“Take off your pants, sit on the table. It was humiliating. They were checking to see if they were pregnant, so they couldn’t have an illegal abortion. We lived in a dark time where no information was coming in, and no information was going out surprisingly.”

‘ENEMY OF PEOPLE’

Her memoir also chronicles family members, so-called “enemy of people,” who were greatly affected by communism.

For her, the current situation between Ukraine and Russia raises red flags.

Ukraine danced with Russia right after World War II.

“My grandfather was a political prisoner, and mom had to be adopted,” she said.

“It wasn’t just us. In fact when you read this book, you realize that there were many generations that were affected by that. We were all actually children of the decree. We were all condemned to a life without any information.”

In the memoir’s forward, Nadia Comaneci, a retired Romanian gymnast and Olympian, writes:

“Dana was a journalist in Romania and often fought for the underprivileged with tough press campaigns. In her belief for a better world, she fought the system and was successful in forcing change. But, at one moment in her life, she chose a different path. ‘Why?’ I will let her answer that question in her book. Dana’s story is similar to other people’s who were forced to leave their families and friends behind and start a new life thousands of miles away. For those who have experienced this hardship or not, this meant giving up everything of value in your life.”

CHILDREN FOR SALE

In Romania, underground black money could buy children, many children.

“Nobody cared,” Holderman said.

“My job was to figure out how they were placed in this orphanage in Bucharest that was called ‘Children for Export Only.’ They had a wing there. These were the best-looking kids that everyone wanted to adopt from all over the world, right? They were pampered. They were fed very well.”

Children were culled from all the other orphanages.

“There was was a triage center where they were sorted where they would go,” she said.

“It was like you were meat, right? Its quality is good. Everything was through a black market. That was millions and millions of dollars. I had to focus on one single part, and from there everything was destroyed.”

These international adoptions lasted from the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 until June 2001.

“Romania was the nursery, the European nursery, of these innocent children,” she said.

“Because of the mentality of the women, even if birth control was allowed and everything, the people were not educated how to protect themselves.

“They were giving birth and taking them to the orphanage. There were about 800,000 orphans from a population of 17 million. I think that’s a pretty high number. There were no statistics. There was no accountability for anything that was going on. That’s how I got frustrated because I was trying to figure out all these kinds of things. It took me years to get to this story right.”

CATHARSIS & GROWTH

Holderman started writing her memoir seven years ago as a way to get over her first husband, Lyman Dezotell’s death.

“I had to write it,” she said.

“That was the first version, but then I had five revisions. Two literary agents felt it was a very difficult book to structure and how do you narrow it down to this. We decided to structure it as it is right now. The book ends after the funeral and with me being pregnant and deciding if should I go back to Romania or I will stay.”

Spoiler alert: she stayed.

Holderman wrote her memoir to illuminate the international trafficking of Romanian children and to get people to look beyond another person’s seemingly funny actions, accent or skin hue to their unique story and Earth walk.

“Children of the Decree” brings closure, a catharsis, on those leaves of her life, in Romania, in Vermont.

“First, you write the book because you are upset,” Holderman said.

“You think about it and revise it, and your anger disappears. It took me about, let’s say, 20 years to come to terms that my destiny was that and I cannot change it.

“I have a new life. I remarried, and that’s when I moved here to Keeseville.

“But while in my life, I had so many obstacles, I also found a way to go around them and learn from them and become more compassionate as a teacher, as a mother, and as a person.”

Email Robin Caudell:

rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter:@RobinCaudell

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