Romania's Lost Children History of the Ceausescu Orphanages

Jean-Philippe LEGAUT

Images of abused, malnourished children, deprived of access to care, crammed into unsanitary buildings: in 1989, international opinion discovered with horror the hell of the "Ceausescu orphanages", to the point that their dismantling was a condition sine qua non of Romania's accession to the European Union.

Beyond the sensationalist representations disseminated by the press and international organizations, the reality of this phenomenon is still largely unknown. One thing is certain: due to a cruel lack of means and qualified personnel, these "children of the State" have, by the tens of thousands, endured for years, without any possibility of escape, the harshness of the living conditions under the socialist regime and daily violence within the institutions supposed to support them.

Based on unexplored national and local sources, on numerous testimonies from former minors in care, but also on his twelve years of observation and social work in the field, Jean-Philippe Légaut shows us why and how these structures condemned those they should have protected.

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