Service record — appointments and functions (1941–1948)

Note: the wording and intervals must be checked case by case against primary documents — orders, decrees, the Official Gazette — wherever indicated.

Chronology 1938–1948 (certain documents only)

• 12.05.1947 — Decree no. 1,035: promotion to general of army corps, published in Official Gazette no. 115 / 23.05.1947.
• 31.12.1947 — Decree no. 2,305: transfer to reserve on 01.01.1948, as general of army corps, published in Official Gazette no. 10 / 13.01.1948.

Working note: we shall add items for 1938–1947 only when you have, or when we find, the document: decree, order, Official Gazette, or military register.

Family memory

Episodes from family memory. They are not “documents”, but stories transmitted and retained in the household, with their inevitable emotional charge.

1. The first-born

In the house of the Niculescus, Radu came into the world first, with the privilege and the burden of the first-born: that of being, from the very beginning, the measure for the ten brothers and sisters who would follow him. In a hard household, his discipline was not one of parade, but one of daily survival. He was the first, and Linica came immediately after him, as if to confirm that the “line” had only just begun.

It was said of Radu that he had been disciplined and obedient from childhood — not a parade-ground discipline, but the discipline of a hard household, where every day was a small test.

The first years were weighed down by want: little money, many worries, a growing family, and a mother, Lina, learning how to keep the house “standing” even when everything seemed about to slide away. In such times childhood ripens quickly: not through spectacular tragedies, but through daily calculations, renunciations, and an order imposed by necessity.

2. The name “Cociu” and the gesture that changed a destiny

A neighbor, or an acquaintance of the family, better-off, childless, and bearing the name Cociu, offered to help the Nicolescu family: he undertook to pay for Radu’s studies, from school to high school. In a neighborhood, such gestures are not merely “help”; they are decisions that move a life onto another line. From there Radu also attached his name to it: Cociu became part of his identity, like the signature of a debt of destiny and of a path opened by someone else.

3. The shadow of the Pandur and the call of the uniform

The military roots of the family were lost in the echoes of 1877: in the family there was the figure of the grandfather with white locks, a pandur in the war of 1877. It was said that he had retained military habits: when the “Mihai Viteazul” Regiment marched out of the garrison with its band toward the firing range at Cotroceni, the grandfather accompanied it in step, with a stick in his hand instead of a rifle. In such memories, more than a century old, one can see how the army was not only a respected institution; it was atmosphere, sound, rhythm, an order of the world that seemed, to some, the only order possible.

4. The photograph as testimony

When Radu finished the Officers’ School, Lina — proud to the point of tears — ordered a special photograph: Radu in uniform, seated on a chair; she standing behind him, her hand on his shoulder. The image was more than a portrait: it was a declaration. In it one can see the mother-son bond and Lina’s hope that her eldest boy would be her support after the loss of Andrei.

5. Constanța, the ball, Miss “X”, and a slap as an argument of persuasion

At twenty-one, a second lieutenant, Radu arrived in Constanța. There, at the regimental balls, he met a young woman from the city — an elegant presence who made him believe that his life could begin “elsewhere” than in Bucharest. They walked together, went to balls together, and he came to love her enough to think of a marriage she desired from the depths of her heart. In a way, it was his first attempt to move the center of his existence away from his mother’s house toward a life of his own.

When Lina learned of this possibility, she became afraid — not so much of the young woman, whom she did not even know, as of the distance that would separate her from Radu. She quickly packed a few clothes in a small suitcase and set off for Constanța. She went to the garrison commander, asked for an audience, and told him her story as a widowed mother with eleven children, dependent on the support of her eldest son.

Radu was called to headquarters; he admitted his intention of asking the young lady in question to marry him. Lina asked him to break off the relationship; he refused. Then came Lina’s dramatic gesture, transmitted afterward throughout the entire Nicolescu clan as a “Take heed”: she slapped him, in the very presence of his superior, and threatened to disinherit him. In this story, the slap is not violence, but the last argument of a mother defending her only security. Besides, it was not the first slap Radu had received from his mother, who was used to distributing slaps left and right so that her sons would recognize her authority. The context and the age of the admonished son were different.

6. Transfer to Bucharest and a love that fades

The commander, impressed, ordered Radu’s transfer to the “Cuza” garrison in Bucharest, on Calea 13 Septembrie, close to the parental home. Radu tried to maintain the connection with the young woman from Constanța, but the correspondence grew rarer and, after a few months, ended: she had become engaged to someone else. Sometimes an emotional commitment changes not through great decisions, but through the fatigue of distance and the silence that settles between two letters.

7. Jeni and the alliance of the mothers

To prevent the Constanța episode from repeating itself, Lina began looking in the neighborhood for “a suitable girl” for Radu. She found Ioana, called Jeni. The daughter of Florica, a respected property owner in the area, Jeni was a young lady educated at a boarding school, well-mannered, cultivated, a perfectionist; she was not, it is true, a beauty. She was even a few months older than Radu, but what does that matter when a small fortune is involved: Jeni’s father had died and had left the girl a substantial inheritance, administered by Florica until her majority. The two mothers came to an agreement.

The meeting between Radu and Jeni was discreetly arranged by them: both were invited to the birthday of a common acquaintance, so they could meet “by chance”. Radu, courteous, when he learned that they lived in the same neighborhood, offered to accompany Jeni home. From there followed exchanges of books, walks, embraces, and finally engagement and a proposal of marriage.

8. Pușior 41: the house adjoining Lina’s

Lina offered the two newlyweds a house at Pușior 41, adjoining her own — a railroad-car house, with four rooms in a row perpendicular to the street, with two entrances and verandas reached through a wide side corridor, large enough for a cart or a car to pass through, and even for flowers or vegetables to be planted there.

The house belonged to the series of houses built by the Niculescu spouses along Pușior Street: first to be rented, then, if necessary, for sons when they set up homes of their own — a strategy of survival and continuity.

In the new house, on 8 February 1914 (new style), Nydia-Jeny was born, the only child of Radu and Jeni. A girl who, without knowing it, would later carry in memory, alongside the image of that house, the invisible tensions between her parents and the echoes of the two wars that were to come.

9. 1916: the retreat to Botoșani

In 1916, the country entered the war and soon the retreat to Moldavia took place. Radu, recently promoted captain, had to follow his regiment in this retreat. Being a new father, he was allowed to travel with his family as well. On hearing this news, Lina refused to remain in Bucharest: she gathered her children and, together with Jeni’s family, followed her favorite son to Botoșani, the city where Radu’s regiment had been quartered and where, at the Officers’ School, Titi, the third child, also was.

No sooner had they arrived than Linica fell ill with epidemic typhus. Over this drama Lina’s concern for the honor of the young girls, Ițu and Fany (Jeni’s sister), paradoxically overlapped: they wanted Bucharest life to continue in Botoșani too — walks, visits, conversations with other young people, balls — as if the world were stubbornly trying not to collapse. In a city where the male population was far more numerous than the female one, Lina’s task of keeping the two restless girls in check was not easy.

10. The overturned cradle and a lasting antipathy

A small episode took place at that time, but with later consequences: Marioara, Linica’s daughter, aged nine, trying to rock Nydia, aged two, overturned the cradle and, falling, Nydia broke her arm. Nydia never forgot the incident; later, in high school, her relationship with her cousin Mărioara was tense: Nydia, diligent and studious, would mock Mărioara, who was less devoted to learning, in front of others, and the aversion did not end there. Sometimes a fracture from childhood turns, years later, into a fracture between people.

11. Return to Bucharest

After the war, Radu found himself in the 6th “Mihai Viteazul” Infantry Regiment, a unit of the Bucharest garrison, founded by Cuza Vodă sixty years earlier under the name of Hunters’ Battalion. For Radu, this was the same military world he had felt close to almost since childhood, near his house on 13 Septembrie.

A captain, with the garrison close to home, Radu was well regarded by his superiors and the future seemed assured. Consequently, the Radu Niculescu family, returned from refuge, entered a period of euphoria due to the new prospects for Radu’s career.

From a certain point on, in the family one no longer said “Radu goes to work”, but “Radu goes to the unit” — as if his profession were a place, not an occupation. The uniform had become his second skin, and the way he spoke, remained silent, and decided carried that concision brought by the army: short sentences, calculated gestures, perfect politeness without ornament. In the house this was felt not through harshness, but through a tacit order, like a discipline transmitted without being taught.

It was also the period in which Radu learned, with Jeni’s help, how to behave in society and how to hide what displeased him or what should not be shown to others.

As can be seen in the photographs of the time (Figs. 1–3), Radu was a “fine” man, presentable: tall and handsome, with a bearing that came not only from the uniform, but from a care for posture learned over time; always well-groomed and perfumed, kind to everyone. Not in order to impress, but as a discipline brought down to the smallest detail, a sign that respectability was, for him, at once form, control, and protection.

Radu was courteous to ladies, and the uniform — especially on a handsome man — had an effect of admiration that women recognized. Gossip gathered around him in the neighborhood: some perhaps true, others certainly invented. People spoke of passing affairs and even of a child “attributed” to Radu — a rumor never proved, but fueled by the fact that that child was very intelligent and would later become a well-known engineer in informatics and electronics.

Jeni knew — or at least sensed — these “betrayals” and suffered, but did not show it. In such times, sometimes it is not the facts that hurt, but suspicion: that shadow that settles between two people and does not leave, because no one can catch it in their hand and strangle it. In any case, it was difficult to say what their true relationship was, because in public they seemed the ideal couple.

Promotions in rank came at the intervals set by law, the family’s financial situation improved, and Jeni’s fortune would have allowed them to live on a larger scale. Correspondingly, their social relations expanded: high-ranking officers, university professors, famous lawyers became the family’s new friends. Yet, although Radu, as he advanced in his career, made new friends in good society, the house on Pușior 41 remained fixed — the rooms in a row, the verandas, the small reception salon, the coat rack at the entrance.

12. The house does not change, and dissatisfaction grows

Hence Jeni’s desire to change the house, now too cramped and not at all elegant for their new acquaintances. She tried to find a larger one in a more central neighborhood. She even found one on Popa Tatu Street, and it was not very expensive: with some money from her dowry, it was perfectly affordable. The negotiations, however, were interrupted by the intervention of her mother-in-law, Lina, who would not accept her son moving away from her.

For Lina, every departure of Radu had a geometry of anxiety: not only the fear of losing him, but also the need to keep close what only apparently could no longer be kept. The pressures exerted on Radu had their effect, and the plan to move failed. Jeni gave up, but, an educated woman who did not easily show her feelings, she would never forget Radu’s submission to his mother’s orders. From then on she would intensify the pressure on him to detach himself from his kin in Dealul Spirii.

Meanwhile, her sister Fany, a beautiful and cheerful girl, agreed to marry a large landowner from Prahova and move to Ploiești. From then on Radu’s and Jeni’s trips to Ploiești would become more frequent.

The problem of receiving guests and increasing the comfort of the house, especially in view of Nydia’s marriage, remained urgent. It was decided to use the money saved to restructure the present house. First, by adding one upper floor, since the foundations allowed no more, a small apartment was obtained in which Nydia and her husband could live when the time came. Then the railroad-car style of the house was abandoned, and the architecture of the new house concentrated on a large salon, used as dining room and study, separated by an arch, creating a space large enough to receive more than twenty guests. The surrounding rooms, into which guests could withdraw, in fact served this salon.

13. Nydia, a fashionable young lady

Because Radu was at the unit all day, Nydia’s education fell on Jeni’s shoulders, although there was a fräulein and foreign-language teachers who also kept her occupied. Nydia had good grades at school. In time she had formed a circle of friends from high society, concerned with what was fashionable. Her father and mother loved her as their only child, and for that reason Nydia allowed herself to be spoiled, a habit she cultivated all her life, until death.

She told me that, while still a high-school girl, she went with her mother to Belgium, invited by a friend of Radu’s, the Romanian consul in Brussels, on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter. Radu could not accompany them because of service obligations. They settled into a central hotel and went down to the restaurant for lunch. Sitting at the table, the two of them, the waiter brought the menu. Jeni asked Nydia to choose what she liked. After a long analysis, Nydia pointed to something on the menu:

— I want this. Jeni looked at her choice and asked:

— Are you sure? There are so many other dishes on the list.

— I don’t care. I want this, Nydia said firmly.

— Very well, but you will eat all of it, otherwise there will be trouble, Jeni said just as firmly, and then gave the waiter their order.

After an interminable wait, the waiter appeared with the ordered dishes, one of which he placed before Nydia: an enormous silver tureen in which an entire boiled hen lay in a soup with dumplings.

— Would you like me to carve it for you? the waiter said, smiling, having understood the lesson Jeni wished to administer to her daughter.

Nydia had to eat from that huge hen, and the story remained in the family as a small lesson about caprice, pride, and the education of a girl raised to move in society.

14. Paul Teodorescu and the “society” house

Paul Teodorescu entered the story of Uncle Radu as chief, model of command, and close friend of the family. Through the regiment and through the world of officers, the house on Pușior Street came into contact with a social universe in which discipline, form, and prestige counted almost as much as facts.

In that setting, Radu’s connection with the regiment inevitably brought him into contact with the atmosphere and mechanisms of King Carol II’s court. Could one say that Radu was a “Carolist”? Perhaps the answer must remain cautious; but it is certain that he belonged, by career and by social formation, to a military world strongly marked by the forms of hierarchy and prestige of the interwar period.

15. Băile Herculane and Aurel

While at Băile Herculane with her parents, Nydia, already an eighteen-year-old young lady, is noticed at the restaurant by a slender, sunburned young officer, Aurel Niculescu. He begins to court her: invitations to dance, jokes, declarations, playful insistence.

Returned to Bucharest, Aurel continues to besiege her with telephone calls. At first Nydia was not in love with him. She used to say that at their first meeting, in front of Capșa, she saw him from a distance, so thin and dark-faced, that her first impulse was to run away. With time, however, she accepted him. Not like a flame, but like a decision ripening in patience.

16. The “misalliance” and the solution of schooling

Radu, making inquiries about the young man, learned that he was from Bucharest, from a humble family in the Piața Gemeni area. Wanting for his daughter a match “of rank”, he did not agree to this misalliance, all the more since Aurel had not even attended military school.

— What will this man do in the army? He will remain a lieutenant, at most a captain.

Jeni, however, agreed:

— Let them be, my dear; after all, there are divorces in this world too.

Faced with Radu’s refusal, Nydia found a saving path: through a friend she met the wife of the dean of the Faculty of Medicine and obtained from him permission to enroll Aurel in a one-year dentistry course accessible to medical students. Although Aurel was not enrolled in Medicine, he attended the course and completed it. With that diploma, Radu resigned himself and the marriage became “acceptable”. I must say that Aurel would never be a good dentist, which did not prevent him from retiring as a general, military doctor and dentist.

One thing remains clear: Radu loved his daughter very much. He would have done anything for her. But Nydia did not return his love in the same way. Until her death she blamed him for not having left her free in her choices, for always conditioning her with “what will people say?… a general’s daughter…”. Especially in the matter of marriage, she felt the pressure of being a colonel’s daughter like a leash.

17. The wedding of 1933, in the Regiment’s hall

Nydia’s marriage to Aurel took place in 1933, in the recently built festivities hall of the “Mihai Viteazul” Guard Regiment, where Radu was colonel. In this setting — the regimental hall, the prestige of the uniform, the good society looking on — one sees clearly how much, for Radu, his daughter’s marriage was not only an intimate choice, but also a public act.

18. The little moustache and the threshold of 1940

When he was young, until around 1940, Radu wore a discreet little moustache. Then, when he became a general, he shaved it off. In the family, that change remained like a threshold: an interwar Radu, of neighborhood and salon, passing into a Radu of institution, rank, and heavy years, in which even the face changed its discipline.

19. Neighborhood gossip

Radu was courteous to ladies, and the military uniform — especially on a handsome man — has an effect that the world of women receives with sensitivity. The ladies behind the curtains of their apartment saw him returning proudly along 13 Septembrie, for the length of two tram stops.

Gossip gathered around him: some perhaps true, others certainly invented. There was talk of passing affairs and even of a child “attributed” to Radu — a rumor never proved, but fueled by the fact that that man would later become a well-known engineer in informatics and electronics.

Probably Aunt Jeni knew — or at least sensed — Radu’s success among ladies, and I believe she suffered. In such times, sometimes it is not the facts that hurt, but suspicion: that shadow that settles between two people and does not leave, even if no one can catch it in the hand.

20. Radu Niculescu-Cociu: Chief of the Capital Police (1941–1942)

At the beginning of 1941 Antonescu, in his attempt to counter the destabilizing activity of the Legion with elements from the army, entrusted Radu, now a divisional general, with a function of extreme importance: Commander of the Bucharest Military District.

Radu’s term at the head of the Prefecture of the Capital Police coincided with one of the most violent and transformative periods in Romania’s modern history.

His appointment took place only a few days before the Legionary Rebellion, and his activity was marked by the transition from the National-Legionary State to the authoritarian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu, in the context of Romania’s imminent entry into the Second World War.

I. Managing the capital and suppressing the Legionary Rebellion

2. Militarizing and disciplining the police

3. Applying antisemitic legislation

4. Wartime public security

Radu was mentioned in the documents of the time as a rigorous executor of Ion Antonescu’s orders. Radu Niculescu-Cociu was replaced as head of the Capital Police on 10 February 1942, the quaestor Gheorghe Ionescu being appointed in his place.

The exact reason for the dismissal is not explicitly detailed in the sources consulted, but it fits the context of 1942, marked by major military tensions under the Antonescu regime, such as frequent replacements of generals — more than twenty in 1941 for “weakness in command” or “lack of energy” — and preparations for the Stalingrad offensive, where Ion Antonescu dismissed military leaders such as Iosif Iacobici for strategic disagreements. The period coincides with repeated government meetings in February 1942 focused on sanitary problems, food shortages, and the effects of displaced Jewish populations, suggesting possible dissatisfaction with the management of public order in the capital.

After leaving the Capital Police in February 1942, Radu continued to hold command positions in the army on the Eastern Front.

For more information on this period, see Pages of history (1940–1942).

21. The Eastern Front — commanding the 21st Infantry Division

After the Capital Police episode, Radu Niculescu-Cociu returned to operational command and took over the 21st Infantry Division (10 February – 1 November 1942), at the stage when the campaign in the East was moving toward the Don and entering the phase that would culminate at Stalingrad. The section below follows this transition and the strategic framework in which the division carried out its missions. See Command of the 21st Infantry Division (February – November 1942).

22. The Eastern Front — the 24th and 4/24 Infantry Divisions

In 1943–1944, Niculescu-Cociu first commanded the 24th Infantry Division and then, after the losses of the autumn withdrawal, the formation resulting from merger, the 4/24 Infantry Division. The episode includes the defense on the coast of the Sea of Azov, the encirclement and breakthrough at the end of October 1943, as well as successive withdrawals to the Dniester in the spring of 1944. See 24th Infantry Division (February – November 1943) and 4/24 Infantry Division (November 1943 – April 1944).

23. The Eastern Front — commanding the 1st Guard Division

The last command recorded here before the turn toward the Western campaign is the 1st Guard Division — an elite unit, taken over at a moment of maximum tension, when the front was approaching the country’s borders and the defense of national territory was becoming the absolute priority. The section follows the interval of command and the context of the reorganizations of spring and summer 1944.

I remember that, in the summer of 1944, Uncle Radu said he had been wounded in a car, together with the driver. I have not yet identified the document confirming the date and circumstances, but it is possible that the episode contributed to the end of his operational command in that period.

See Command of the 1st Guard Division (March – June 1944).

24. The Western Front — commanding the 7th Army Corps

In the final part of the war, my uncle took command of the 7th Army Corps and participated in the operations of the Western campaign, conducted after 23 August 1944. The military route covers the advance through Transylvania and Hungary and, in 1945, the fighting in Slovakia and Moravia, up to the opening of the pursuit toward Prague.

Theaters and objectives: Slovakia and Moravia, with key points including the White Carpathians, 10–12 April 1945, an action that closed communications west of the Váh River and protected the maneuver toward the Morava River; Moravský Písek, 24–25 April 1945, the “capture of the station and locality”; Staré Město, 1 May 1945; north of Brno, 6–8 May 1945, a defensive action mentioned as decisive for stability; and the attack of 9 May 1945, presented as the blow that “crushed the last resistance” and opened the way for the final pursuit toward Prague. Subordinate units included the 2nd Infantry Division, the 2nd Mountain Division, the 9th Cavalry Division, and the 19th Infantry Division, in the context of the battles around Brno and the operations in Moravia.

In the annex to the volume La comandă… there is reproduced, in copy, the “Special Report” signed by General of Army V. Atanasiu, commander of the 1st Army, proposing that Division General Radu Niculescu-Cociu be decorated with the military order “Mihai Viteazul” with swords, 3rd class.

For a structured presentation by episodes, see the page: The Western Campaign (1944–1945) — 7th Army Corps.

25. Back to a changed city

Return from war does not mean return, but relearning. The city is the same on the map, but no longer the same in its people. Friendships rearrange themselves, silences grow longer, and politeness takes on a defensive role. In the family, one felt that Radu had returned not only with experiences, but also with a new caution: not to say what must not be said, not to let oneself be pushed into a sentence, to let conversation “die” before it became dangerous.

26. The Aurel Aldea case: the sign that the rules had changed

For career officers, “after the war” does not begin with peace, but with a new kind of fear: the fear of the file. A well-chosen trial, a heavy name put against the wall, and the message reaches everyone without explanations. In the Bucharest that was rebuilding itself, one quickly learned that what mattered was not only what one had done at the front, but also what one could represent in a world in which power suddenly moved elsewhere.

General Aurel Aldea (1887–1949) had been a central figure in the days of 23 August 1944 and briefly held the office of Minister of the Interior (23 August – 2 November 1944). After the installation of the Petru Groza government and the acceleration of communization, Aldea entered the circle of those seeking some form of organized resistance: a network still fragile, but sufficient to become both target and example. In the autumn of 1945 the National Resistance Movement (M.N.R.) took shape, with the declared intention, according to its supporters, of defending the monarchy and preparing an anticommunist opposition.

Aldea’s arrest on 27 May 1946 opened the road to the trial known at the time as “The Black Coats” (11–18 November 1946), judged by the Military Court of Cassation and Justice. Dozens of defendants, military and civilian, were brought before the court, and the verdict, delivered on 18 November 1946, one day before the elections, fixed the “example”: Aldea was sentenced to forced labor for life. He would not leave prison: he died at Aiud on 17 October 1949.

For a general who had gone through two wars, such cases change instincts: one becomes attentive to words, visits, friendships, and sentences that “sound” wrong. Caution is no longer a character trait, but a technique of survival. In this climate, conversation is deliberately extinguished before it heats up; silence gradually becomes a form of defense.

27. Retirement and the beginning of privations

After King Michael’s departure and the brutal change in the political framework, the army entered a silent but efficient purge: restructurings, transfers to reserve, retirements that no longer had anything natural about them. For Radu this meant not only the exit from a career, but entry into a zone of uncertainty, where the past could at any moment become evidence for accusation.

After 1948, the family spoke of the danger of a trial for the Eastern Front and for the “old regime”, of the protection Emil Bodnăraș may have offered Radu, of the insufficient pension, and of the goods sold by Jeni, with the memory of the “Talcioc” where representatives of the great families arrived one after another.

28. The Talcioc: the economy of shame

The Talcioc was not only a market. For families that had fallen from one world into another, it was the place where objects that had once stood for continuity — a clock, a piece of furniture, a table service, a painting, perhaps a book — became negotiable goods. They were not sold only because they were useful, but because they still carried, for someone, a residue of prestige.

Jeni’s trips to the Talcioc remained in the family memory with a mixture of shame, necessity, and dignity. They went there not to enrich themselves, but to round out a pension that no longer covered the habits of a house used to another rhythm of life. See: The Talcioc.

29. The file: nameless fear

After the war, fear did not always have a face. Sometimes it had only a name: the file. It was enough for someone to say, “they have a file on you”, “they are asking about you”, or “be careful who they see you with…”. It was not paranoia, but adaptation. In the new regime, people learned to live near a file that could exist even when one did not see it.

The Eastern campaign hung over him as a possible pretext. It was not necessary to have done anything in particular wrong; it was enough to have belonged to the “old regime”, to have worn the uniform at the wrong moment, to have held positions, to have been visible. Hence the caution: short conversations, rare visits, a kind of discipline of silence.

30. “Protection” and the insufficient pension

After 1948, the family spoke of the danger of a trial for the Eastern Front and the “old regime”, of the protection Emil Bodnăraș may have offered Radu, of the insufficient pension, and of the goods sold by Jeni, with the memory of the Talcioc where representatives of the great families arrived one after another.

“Protection”, if it existed, did not mean freedom, but only postponement or avoidance: to pass through hard years without being crushed. The rest remained unchanged: care with words, discretion in relations, avoidance of any situation that might become interpretable.

31. Two houses, two budgets

Until around 1955, things were harder in the family than the mere existence of a good income in the same house would have suggested. Aurel earned well: he had a military-doctor’s salary and had opened a practice in the house on Pușior 41. But the budgets of the two families were separate. Radu and Jeni had more problems, not only because of the smaller pension, but also because they were accustomed to another regime of life, and adjustment inevitably meant renunciations.

When the pension was not enough, there was only one solution: something was sold. Objects that before had belonged to the continuity of a house — a clock, a piece of furniture, a table service, a painting, perhaps a book — became, one by one, “negotiable goods”. And the Talcioc remained in memory not as a market, but as a wound: the place where objects left the house in a loaded silence. See: The Talcioc.

32. Forgiven, but not completely

After 1948, the family spoke of the danger of a trial for the Eastern Front and for the “old regime”, of the protection Emil Bodnăraș may have offered Radu on the basis of a sympathy dating from the war. When some proposed that Radu Niculescu-Cociu, who had fired on the “Soviets” on the Eastern Front, be tried and imprisoned, it was said that Bodnăraș opposed it: “You cannot imprison a general who received the Order of Kutuzov from the Soviets.”

Radu was not tried and imprisoned, as happened to other comrades of his, but he suffered the same restrictions as all the others. The insufficient pension led Jeni to visits to the Talcioc in order to improve the family’s financial situation.

*) The Order of Kutuzov had been instituted during the German-Soviet war to reward commanders of the Red Army for skillfully avoiding enemy attacks and for successful counterattacks.

33. The threshold of adaptation: joining the party

Later, in 1955, Radu and a group of twelve other generals were granted the title of generals à la suite. Initially an honorary appointment of officer in German armies, à la suite was a military title granted to those no longer active in the army, with the right to wear the uniform of a regiment, without holding another official function. The new title was accompanied by a much larger pension, so the family’s material situation improved substantially.

In return, the venom of envy was unleashed among former comrades who had not been promoted. Radu used to meet a group of former comrades in front of the White Church on Calea Victoriei. Going to one such meeting, he was met by his comrades with insults and spitting. The underlying reason was, of course, that Radu was suspected of having adhered to the policy of the communist government, betraying the ideals of the old army.

This was not far from the truth. At the urging of Bodnăraș, the Minister of War, Radu joined the Romanian Workers’ Party (PMR), newly created, becoming a party member. Entering the party was a threshold of adaptation, perhaps also of protection, for him and his family. He did not do it with enthusiasm, but as a response to a world in which survival was negotiated through signs of conformity, and peace was often bought with gestures one would once not have imagined.

34. Farewell to Jeni

When we returned from Steierdorf in 1953, many unpleasant surprises awaited us in Bucharest. One of them was that Aunt Jeni had undergone surgery for cancer. The operation went well, Professor Hortolomei of Colțea Hospital being a reputed surgeon for such interventions. In the following years Radu and Jeni’s visits to my grandmother continued regularly. I remember them well: Uncle Radu sat at the head of the table in the dining room, which was also the room with my grandmother’s bed, while Aunt Jeni nestled in the bed or, in winter, pressed her back against the tall stove in the room. And the three of them talked and talked of their own things, while I listened distractedly.

Two years later, however, the brain metastasis was merciless to Aunt Jeni. After months of agony during which she recited English poems learned at boarding school, Aunt Jeni died. Especially for Nydia, very attached to her mother, it was a shock felt for the rest of her life.

35. The years of widowerhood

Radu survived Jeni by twenty-three years. During this period he grew even closer to his sister, my grandmother, whom he visited several times a week. On these occasions he also paid attention to me. As I grew, his unfulfilled grandfatherly soul attached itself to me, the prize-winning nephew, the pride of his sister.

Especially after my father’s death, he felt obliged to take care of me. He invited me when he had guests, took me to concerts and performances, let me watch over their house when they were on vacation. When he felt like talking, he told me memories from childhood. He never spoke to me about the fighting at the front or about politics.

He had a subscription at the Atheneum, to the weekly concerts of the Philharmonic. His seat was perfect: the left-hand sector, row 6, the first seat on the aisle. Beside him sat my dear high-school teacher, Marioara Ionescu-Baldovin. In their conversations I too had my place, as a possible suitor for the hand of one of Marioara’s nieces.

He often went to Ploiești to see Fany, Jeni’s sister, who devotedly cared for her husband, the lawyer Aurel Bostinescu, after a stroke had left him paralyzed. As a general à la suite, he was invited to all the military parades organized by the government. He had a place in the reviewing stand beside other generals, all in uniform and with a multitude of decorations on their chests. As the troops passed, the generals raised their hands to their caps and saluted the demonstrators.

36. The final years. A discreet disappearance

After my grandmother’s death, my mother bought an apartment in the Militari neighborhood, and we moved there, farther away from the cradle of my childhood and from Uncle Radu’s house. I was very busy with school, so meetings with Uncle Radu became rare. After my marriage, at which he was present at the town hall and at the restaurant, I no longer saw him. I had learned that he was ill and no longer left the house.

He died at the age of ninety-one, in his house at Pușior 41. In a way, he died in time: the following year, 1980, the house would have had to be vacated, being condemned to Ceaușescu’s demolition.

I had always heard him say that he wanted to be cremated, not buried in the family vault. That is exactly what Nydia did. I remember the ceremony at the Cenușa Crematorium: my uncle was dressed in military uniform, the anthem was played, and a platoon of soldiers paid him honors as the coffin descended into the furnace.

His ashes were placed in a niche in the pavilion dedicated to military heroes in the Ghencea Military Cemetery. There my uncle is surrounded by many of his comrades and superiors — as if, after all the detours of life, he had finally returned to his own world.

Thus ends, for me, Radu’s story: a man of an old world, forced to live in another. I did not know him from journals or history books, but through everyday acts: visits, invitations, concerts, discreet care for me. And yet, only now, writing these pages, have I understood how much of his life had remained in shadow for me and how much I discovered late, reconstructing it from memories and from the traces left behind.

Documents & images

Sources

• Monitorul Oficial, Part I, no. 115 / 23.05.1947 — Decree no. 1,035 (promotion to general of army corps).
• Monitorul Oficial, Part I, no. 10 / 13.01.1948 — Decree no. 2,305 (transfer to reserve on 01.01.1948).
• Terminological note: the post-1948 change in nomenclature (general of army corps → colonel-general).