Romania: Ceausescu execution spot to become tourist attraction

The director of the museum in Targoviste gestures to the spot
where Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed
by a former military unit on December 25, 1989.

AFP - The grim barracks where Romania's brutal communist despot Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed are to be opened to the public in the latest bid to boost "dictator tourism".

The former military unit at Targoviste, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Bucharest, is to be turned into a museum and is due to welcome its first visitors in early September.

"Many Romanians and foreigners said they wanted to see the wall against which Ceausescu and his wife Elena were shot on December 25, 1989," Ovidiu Carstina, director of the museum, told AFP.

The death of the Ceausescus became one of the defining images of the revolutions which convulsed eastern and central Europe in 1989.

On December 22, as angry crowds gathered in front of the Communist Party headquarters, they fled the capital Bucharest in a helicopter. It was to be their final journey. They were stopped by the army, detained in Targoviste, and shot after a makeshift trial.

It brought to a grisly end more than 20 years of repressive rule aided by a huge security apparatus, where any free speech was ruthlessly suppressed.

The population suffered from food and power shortages and on top of that, Ceascescu's rule was marked by nepotism, paranoia and a deeply ingrained personality cult. Wife Elena was seen as the regime's 'number two'.

"Our aim is to present events as they unfolded, without making comments on the trial, the Ceausescus' life or the cult of personality," said Carstina.

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Source: France 24, August 22, 2013

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