I’m writing a novel about losers! I am very pleased with myself; my wife less, if not quite: “You write about losers! Sorry, master! Did you take out the trash? Did you peel the potatoes? Did this guy do his homework? have you done your laundry Look at him… he writes about losers! Why are we sad, it burns us?”. What to say? I take out the trash.

I recently read a book that came into my hands through a very special coincidence (life!), and what did I say? Allow me to inflame more burning passions among the Romanians, that is, among the old Romanians, forgotten by God on earth, because the youth have other things to do. “How Yorga shot Yorga” is the name of the book*, and there is nothing romantic or fictional about it, a poor book for historians, for library (or rather “archive”) mice. No offense, Peter Oprysh! (as if I see that he is answering me: Not taken). However, something oppressed me. I’m scared even now.

It is about the social status of the killers. There were two teams of assassins**: those who killed Madgeara (in the back, bullets in the back of the head – they were afraid to look him in the eyes!) and those who shot Yorga (from the front, they acquired courage and a taste for killing). The book focuses entirely on these two crimes, the perpetrators of which were never caught or convicted*** but I was not. Too little, that is, I am interested in the historical truth (I admit that in this particular case it is surprisingly difficult to unravel the truth), but the conclusion, how to call it, is professional: they were lost.

I leave aside the fact that both murders were completely groundless (neither the head of the legion nor the “comrades” knew either the plan of the killers, or even less the method of action: it was, so to speak, about “personal initiatives”! This is what I do , when I go to Carrefour: she puts bread, milk, yogurt, cucumbers and tomatoes on my list, and I come home in triumph with sardines, chocolate, baguettes, endives and beer! “And you had it, maniac” she says , “personal initiatives?!”) to focus on what interests me: the social status of the criminals. With the exception of the driver Štefan Jakobuta (known as “Fănică”), all the other killers were intellectuals. This detail (which I had no idea about , as well as all the details scrupulously recorded by the author and documented by protocols from the archives, generally of the Communist Security, but not only: some documents were compiled by the police of the Antonescu regime), I was very impressed, and it gave me reason to think.

What’s more: confirmed these killers with a higher education – and also a serious one, as it was done in the times of bourgeois landlordism. simply. Their life after (the crimes) was a beautiful and full life: they stayed in the camps in Germany, yes, but then they came out, worked, got rich, created companies, businesses, families, children, cooperated – fine! – with Bezpeka and died in old age, owners of small empires, respected and pitied, pillars of the community. Even Ștefan (“Fanny”) Cojocaru, the only guy who returned from Germany to Romania after the war, became a doctor of economics (!) with the work “Capital Formation in Romania” (1947); although he was also in prison, just in passing, he also died peacefully in his bed, after marrying his daughter in imperial style in 1972 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Bucharest, in a lavish wedding with over 100 guests (I hope, dear readers of the platform, that you still have enough memories of communism to fully understand what all this means!).

In other words, the killers of the two teachers were far from demented, brainless, bloodthirsty beasts (although “bloodthirsty beasts” they really were, at least until they realized what they were up to – the book suggests that he would have realized that, after a while, but I’m not putting my hand in the fire, because I got it right). So what were they? Well… here’s my answer: they were losers. By their age and education, they should have been high officials in the state apparatus – or at least sinecures, that is – but they were nothing. Nobody, as the Transylvanians say. They missed the career train (for which they obviously blamed others, primarily their victims), they remained sons of the rain, they clung to the Legion, hoping for it. But the Legion was full of them (actually, like them They were Legion). And then they came up with murders (“personal initiative”) to stand out. They stood out, needless to say: Horiya Sima got rid of them like rotten meat, so they ended up in the Buchenwald camp (which, surprisingly, they did. They survived).

Returning to my romance with losers: are all losers criminals? in particular? Or is it actually the other way around, namely: criminals are people who could have been someone, could have made their own destiny, but failed? I don’t have an answer to this question. Read the entire article and comment on it at contributors.ro