The changing face of Eastern Europe

Romania's `mother' left large family of orphans

TERRY LEONARD

Houston Chronicle

BUCHAREST, Romania - Wailing infants compete for the attention of a single matron. Toddlers stand in their cribs, rocking from foot to foot, staring soundlessly ahead.

They are some of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu's youngest victims.

The 800 orphaned or abandoned children live in Orphanage No. 1 - Romania's largest - an understaffed complex of seven aging buildings on the capital's north side.

The oldest child is 3, the youngest a matter of days.

The older children eat their lunch off tin plates, drink milk or juice from tin cups, and play in Spartan rooms furnished with only a few plastic toys.

None of these children know about Elena Ceausescu, her ideas on family planning or visions of increasing the population for Romania's "Golden Era.' The wife of the communist dictator, who called herself "the mother of the nation's children" and who was executed with her husband on Dec. 25, personally supervised enforcement of Romania's family laws.

The laws prohibited birth control, abortions and family planning information for women with fewer than five children.

Mrs. Ceausescu envisioned Romania as a mighty state of 30 million people by the year 2000.

"The unhealthy and abandoned children living in this facility are the direct result of national policy," said Dr. Margareta Creteanu, the orphanage's chief medical officer.

"An ill woman could not have an abortion, so many genetic illnesses were passed to the children," she said.

She said about 40 of the children suffered from Down syndrome, genetic disorders or severe birth defects.

"Some parents don't want the children because they are ill. Some parents cannot take care of them," she said. "Some of the other children were abandoned because their parents already have too many children, or because their mothers were unwed and too young to care for their children.' In 1987, Ceausescu ordered a freeze on adoptions by foreign citizens who had been paying thousands of dollars in fees and more under the table to get a child.

Creteanu said there were 129 children at her orphanage whose paperwork had been completed, who were waiting only for a lifting of the freeze.

Without foreign adoption, most of the kids at Orphanage No. 1 face a childhood spent in state institutions. There is no shortage of children in the Romania the Ceausescus left behind.

By the time they reach 4, the children at Orphanage No. 1 will have been sent to state residence schools, said Creteanu.

At the orphanage, 180 people, including doctors, nurses and medical students, work around the clock to care for the children. The staff seems caring and efficient but overwhelmed by the numbers and the emotional needs of such young children.

In the rooms of white cribs, some of the toddlers shout with glee at the sight of visitors. They hold out their arms, pleading to be picked up. Others stare blankly and rock slowly from side to side as they stand in their cribs.