I'll try to address this topic being aware that I have not lived and do not live in a Western democracy and even if I could move and live in such a state, I still would not be able to fully understand what it really means to live in such a socio-political structure. The country I live in is a relatively young state, having been founded a little over 100 years ago (1918) and since its foundation it has gone through two dictatorships, a world war, fascism, communism and a bloody revolution. The family I come from was fully impacted by these events. Below, I will post a text that I composed together with my son and which obtained First Mention in a Treasure Hunt - History in My Home contest, organized by an association with a historical profile and whose jury also included the Faculty of History and the Society of Historical Sciences in Romania- all information must be supported by evidence: documents, photos, testimonies, etc. The Resilience of Identity In 1856, Barbu Știrbei, Ruler of Wallachia, abolished slavery, and the mother of the one who would be called Bădița Stanca was liberated from Pătroaia Vale Monastery, the place where in 1750 the first village school in Muntenia was established and which was later dissolved through the Secularization Law, initiated by Ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza. Shortly after, under circumstances that remain shrouded in history, Bădița Stanca was born and she was to become the wife of Mayor Manole Minculescu, a representative of the Peasant Party, with whom she had 9 children, of which 5 survived. On December 8, 1915, a year and a half after the beginning of World War I, Ioan Minculescu, my great-grandfather was born. Ion (Ioan) Minculescu completed primary school in Pătroaia commune and high school in Găești town, walking 14 kilometers daily on foot. His determination stemmed partly from competition with his brothers and partly from the need to establish an identity around his passion for history. In 1934, he finished high school and, due to financial constraints, had to wait a year before starting university courses. During his student years, he balanced studying with tutoring to secure his means of subsistence, also completing military service at the Reserve Officers School in Ploiești between 1936-1937. In 1939, Ion Minculescu obtained a license in philosophy and letters - history section with the "Magna Cum Laude" qualification. During his university studies, Ion Minculescu formed a friendship with Professor Nicolae Iorga and simultaneously met his future wife, Aneta (Ghiță) Minculescu, my grandfather Octavian Minculescu's mother, through and at the insistence of Professor Nicolae Iorga. Between 1939-1941, my great-grandfather completed pedagogical seminary and his doctorate, working as an archivist at the Central Institute of Statistics in Bucharest and as a substitute teacher at "King Mihai" Commercial High School, Boys' Normal School, "Spiru Haret" High School, and others. From 1939, he participated intermittently until 1945 in various military campaigns, with different missions. In 1940, upon learning that Professor Nicolae Iorga had been removed from the ranks of University of Bucharest professors and was under house arrest in his home in Vălenii de Munte, my great-grandfather sent him a letter expressing his dissatisfaction. One month before Professor Nicolae Iorga's murder, specifically on November 27, 1940, my great-grandfather received a response: "Dear young friend, you are the only one who felt that my forced departure from the University, being expelled like an unworthy servant, would mean a loss for education. You are the only one who wrote to me... What happens at the University after me concerns those who are there now. I cannot choose between people who have worked openly or against me and who a more just time will morally condemn, in whose coming I believe. Please accept my farewell. Nicolae Iorga" In 1941, while stationed at Strejnicu, Ion (Ioan) Minculescu paid for the construction of a cross in memory of Professor Nicolae Iorga, which he planted at the place where he was killed, with the inscription: "Here Professor Nicolae Iorga was killed - Raised by a grateful student." In 1942, my great-grandfather, as editor of the "Glasul Nistrului" gazette, focused on the morale of soldiers on the Tiraspol front. His articles highlighted the resentment of the entire young Romanian society regarding the 1940 context, the moment when Bessarabia and Bucovina were ceded to the Soviets, 22 years after the Great Union; nationalism and Christianity being the propaganda line observable in the content of all articles published in the gazette, regardless of their author. In 1948, Professor Ion Minculescu was subjected to a home search, during which various anti-Soviet brochures, newspapers, and books were found at his residence, writings he had kept as a memory and historical source from the war period. From the file of the National Council for Studying the Intelligence Archives, regarding Professor Ion Minculescu, he was arrested for 4 months and tried by the military tribunal, ultimately being acquitted due to the impossibility of establishing a clearly anti-Soviet political line by my great-grandfather, and thanks to numerous testimonies in his favor from professors, priests, and his acquaintances. It is worth mentioning the superhuman efforts made by my great-grandmother, his wife, who, being a member of the P.R.M. (Peasant Renaissance Party), did everything possible to prove his innocence. The experiences my great-grandfather went through during his detention cannot be proven by writings, nor do I consider it appropriate to attempt to do so. The situation of political prisoners, the psychological and physical trauma, and the torture they were subjected to from a visceral hatred are well-known, prophesied both by Feodor Dostoevsky in the volume "Demons" and by Friedrich Nietzsche, who predicts that the inversion of values creates the premises for a bloodbath: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, murderers of all murderers? What was the most holy and most powerful of all that the world has possessed has died under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? What water do we have to cleanse ourselves? What atonement festivals, what sacred games must we invent? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Must we not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?" This prophecy became a reality that everyone in the Soviet space in the post-war period experienced in one form or another, and whose monstrosity was revealed to the entire world by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn through his book, The Gulag Archipelago, a book written in his mind while in one of the Soviet gulags. In 1952, Ion Minculescu was arrested again, and history repeated itself. During this time, my great-grandfather worked as a teacher at various high schools in the country: Ploiești, Găiești, and Bucharest, from which he was consistently fired. From the Intelligence tracking file, it emerges that he was constantly monitored and persecuted until 1961 when he was recruited to be an Intelligence informant. From that moment, my great-grandfather's socio-professional life normalized, but in terms of family life, according to my grandfather, Dr. Octavian Minculescu, he lived an existence seemingly taken from Ivan Matveich, the main character of Feodor Dostoevsky's volume "The Crocodile". Ultimately, between 1964-1965, with the expulsion of my grandfather Octavian Minculescu, son of Ion Minculescu and Aneta Minculescu, from the Faculty of Medicine at Iași University, my great-grandfather divorced my great-grandmother, Aneta Minculescu, sold his share of the house, and moved to Bucharest, completely cutting ties with his family. Five years later, my grandfather managed to re-enroll at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bucharest, where he continued his studies, becoming Dr. Octavian Minculescu. In 1976, Ion Minculescu ended his collaboration with the Intelligence, following his retirement and inability to provide information about high school teaching staff, but repeatedly refused to resume family connections, showing a visceral aversion to everything this entailed My grandfather never spoke accusingly about his father. Dr. Octavian Minculescu was not a party member and suffered persecution during both the Communist period and the Antonescu dictatorship. At the death of my great-grandfather's brother, Constantin Minculescu, memories were shared, in which my father also participated, and about which he tells me that those present were amused talking about how the two brothers had managed to escape communist prisons by providing information to the Intelligence about each other. Lawyer Constantin Minculescu died on the day he was chosen as a candidate for the National Peasant Party in the parliamentary elections, which were supposed to take place in 1996. From my father, I also know that Aneta Minculescu's cousin, a history professor and a university studies colleague of my great-grandparents, whose name I will not mention, met her fiancé through my great-grandfather. The aunt never married because her fiancé was a political prisoner who served 18 years in prison. My aunt waited for her fiancé throughout this time, hoping for a reunion. Six months before his death, the fiancé was released, and my aunt brought him to her own home. The former political prisoner's health was precarious, both physically and psychologically, spending hours in bed with eyes fixed on the ceiling, and the only person he recognized was my father, whom he confused with my grandfather and whom he taught to make paper balloons. A few months after her fiancé's death, my aunt's house was demolished. My father, Florin Dragoș Minculescu, son of Dr. Octavian Minculescu, between 1995-1996, while a student at "Spiru Haret" High School in the history class, was invited to follow the courses of the National Intelligence Institute, for which he prepared intensely until a few weeks before the admission exam, when he was called and told that he had no place at the National Intelligence Institute with "your family's past". The passion for history, as a thread of identity, was transmitted through my grandfather to my father. Observing the appetite for history that Mircea Eliade focused on, my grandfather introduced my father to Mircea Eliade's nephew, who lived in the house from which Mircea Eliade left Romania, a house located just a few dozen meters from where we still live today, with whom he often had discussions about Mircea Eliade's life and work. The identity of a nation cannot be separated from the identity of the individuals who form that nation, regardless of the curves that historical context imposes and which are felt much more intensely by a nation like ours, the Romanians in the Carpato-Danubian-Pontic space. My father had only one meeting with his grandfather, Ion Minculescu, on which occasion the history professor made sure his grandson would not forget the following phrase: "Child, not even the Black Sea is our friend." Drama and tragedy generally characterize the history of Romania and the universal history, these representing the salt and pepper as ingredients, alongside customs, traditions, and language. The identity of an individual is also the sum of the experiences of their ancestors, and a well-defined identity cannot be constructed without knowing the history of family and national identity. A nation whose members do not know their history and therefore do not have a well-defined identity is destined for dissolution. Education is the only way through which a child can constructively build their identity, and this must begin early because: "He whose vision cannot cover History's three thousand years, Must in outer darkness hover, Live within the day's frontiers." - Goethe