I met Ioana Magure-Bernard, to whose memory I would like to dedicate my notes today, face to face for just a few minutes in the early 1990s. She came to Bucharest for one of the first performances of the National Theatre. Festival as a guest of UNITER and its then president, the great actor Ion Karamitru.

I consider it useful to recall that the first years of the existence of this guild organization were not without interference, even persecution to a new style a politician who would like a limited democracy in Romania, original (for example, in 1994, UNITER was excluded from the ranks of the FNT organizers), so Ion Karamitru made sure that, whenever the opportunity arose, during the Festival or the Gala, to invite artistic and cultural figures from abroad, symbolic people of that free Europe, in which, as he believed, Romania should also be found. However, Ioana was one of the great voices that for several decades, from the Munich microphone of a radio station funded by the United States Congress, reminded and continues to remind Romanians that this free Europe exists. And that they are waiting for us.

Of course, these few minutes had their importance and emotions for me. Finally, I met a person with a personality and a voice that accompanied my childhood, youth and adulthood. I perfectly remembered the face of Ioana, the former announcer of TVR from 1965-1969. That is, the four years during which he formed an unrivaled duet with Sanda Sheranu. Undoubtedly, Joana and Sanda were the great stars of television, the ones who entered our homes night after night smiling and intelligent, both overcoming, by the way they did their profession, the plight of ordinary presenters who had to do it, tells us that we will see in the next few minutes or hours.

In 1969, Ioana Magure and Sanda Sheranu were the main presenters of the second International Festival Golden deer. Television moved to a new building, it was equipped with the latest generation equipment, it had all professionals without exception, the director of the Festival, Aleksandru Bokanets, coordinated an exceptional broadcast with many amazing and innovative video effects. Pesemne, they aroused the curiosity of the audience, so Tudor Vorniku decided that on Fr Publish TV to invite Ioana Magura and Ovidia the Second, the famous operator, to explain them to us. Then it was one of the last appearances on the glass Ioana Magura, who a few weeks later used a tourist visa in Israel and physically left Romania.

i say physical because with his heart, his soul, his mind he never left either his native country or his native language. She got an extraordinary opportunity to get a job as a radio announcer Free Europeunder the conditions that she herself described in detail in the book Director of our radio station as in several interviews given to the Romanian press after 1989.

Between 1970 and 1995 there was another great duo on shortwave with another great voice Gertrude Dumitrescu (Ioana Crisan). She was an announcer or director of a show (People, ideas, views) to Free Europe. And when necessary, during the tragic earthquake of March 4, 1977, she was even a telephone operator, receiving and forwarding to the studio where Noel Bernard was the first calls from listeners in Romania who wanted to know from the station. located about 2,000 kilometers from Bucharest, what actually happened in their country. In the days when Noel Bernard had the extraordinary idea to ask them American permission for Radioul de la München and 47 employees of the Romanian department to broadcast 24 hours a day, Free Europe it really became Romanian our radio station. Many years later, on the evening of December 18, 1989, as she prepared to close the daily broadcast with a summary of the day’s top news, Joanna received a note. He should have informed us that the show was going on. That something happened in Timisoara. Then Gertrude Dumitrescu, Liviu Tofan and Sorin Cunea took over the baton, and then all the employees Free Europe in Romanian. Romania was in a revolution.

In 1981, the Security Service managed to physically remove the legendary Noel Bernard. Ioana was not afraid, did not resign, but continued her activities in a short time. Why not after 1989 Free Europe in Romanian was by no means kind to the neo-communist regime of Ion Iliescu, in the laboratories of the Scientific Research Institute and in the mind of its head Virgil Megurianu, a plan was created that aimed to compromise the five major voices Free Europe. Including Ioana Magura-Bernard. Defamation and misinformation have easily entered the arsenal of the new security. And the operation organized by Meguryan, Iliescu and others was aimed at destabilizing the post. Joana gritted her teeth and got through it. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro