Farewell to Free Europe

In the year 1951 the US radio station Radio Free Europe started broadcasting in Romania. During the Ceausescu era the station was regarded as public enemy number one by the state. Tomorrow the station's Romanian service will close down. For Emil Hurezeanu who in the 1980s worked with the Romanian editing department on foreign affairs, the end of the broadcasting service comes too soon: "Each of the editors in his own way loved Romania, which in many respects was lost and which they nonetheless captured in their words that were broadcast night after night beyond the Iron Curtain to millions of eagerly waiting Romanians. ... Free Europe had a long and interesting life, even after 1989. While communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe, day after day we waited impatiently for our own obituary. It never came because the demise of communism, although already announced, was postponed - particularly in people's minds and even to this day. The new Free Europe ... remained a serious and valuable voice in Romania's confused landscape. It dies even though it should still live because it still has tasks to fulfil."

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