Ceausescu's Children
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, the actor Ionica Adriana lives with her family in the North Yorkshire countryside - but her life could have turned out wildly different. Until the age of two-and-a-half, Ionica lived in an orphanage, in Transylvania, north-western Romania. From 1965-1989, the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu enforced a strict set of policies to set about vastly increasing the Romanian population. But widespread poverty meant it was impossible for many Romanian parents to look after their newborn children - and so many ended up in state-run institutions, where they received little care and attention, and where they were left in dirty clothes, to feed and fend for themselves. Ionica returns to Romania to uncover her past and the history of Ceaușescu’s barbaric orphanages. She explores what childcare and protection looks like in Romania today, meets someone who grew up in the state system his entire childhood and has an emotional encounter of her own. Producer: Sasha Edye-Lindner A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | All right there, fellow podcast lovers. This is seriously from BBC Radio 4 and I'm your host |
| 0:47.6 | Vanessa Casile. This podcast finds the world's best audio documentaries and puts them all in one place. |
| 0:54.8 | You're about to hear something gripping, extraordinary, and seriously unforgettable. |
| 1:00.3 | I'm going to have a look at it. I've got the passport on my hand. Place a birth |
| 1:06.9 | cleush and it also says it on my driving license as well it says birthplace |
| 1:09.9 | Romania. If I show people people think that I might not speak English and then I come out with |
| 1:15.8 | a Yorkshire accent and they're like, oh, that doesn't quite, that doesn't match. |
| 1:32.0 | We moved house 2006, I think my dad wanted to build his own house, so he did. Through lockdown I lost my flat in Manchester so I'm here |
| 1:34.8 | back in Yorkshire and I love it I might be biased but it is known as God's country. Mom, Cindy. |
| 1:44.0 | Mom, |
| 1:47.0 | This is my mom, Cindy. Oh here he is. Yeah. There's big boats. You can tell. And this is my dad, Anthony. |
| 2:01.0 | Right, so let me just do this introduction because I've got to do an introduction. |
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