Survivor story: Daniela ionescu
“We Were Property of the State”
Life Under Romanian Communism
Daniela, 2nd Grade, Pioneer Uniform. Daniela’s Archive.
Daniela Ionescu shared her story with YAAS of what it was really like to grow up as a young woman living throguh Romanian communism. YAAS’ mission resonated with Daniela because she noticed a troubling trend: she hears young people in Romania today saying, “Ceaușescu and Communism were good.”
Most strikingly, she shared that watching certain events unfold under the former United States administration brought back chilling memories, “I began to say, this reminds me of communism.”
By sharing her story, Daniela hopes readers will recognize the warning signs of the radical transformation that threaten to erode the freedoms we enjoy today.
Through reading, sharing, and truly understanding the testimonies of those who survived communism, we can better protect and defend the liberties that define us as Americans.
Childhood in a COMMUNISt regime
When Daniela Ionescu was a child, she believed Romania was a land of peace.
Transportation in Romania. Photo: Andrei Pandele.
She remembers playing in the sunlit parks of Constanța, a city on the Black Sea steeped in Roman and Greek heritage. Prior to becoming a Communist country, Romania thrived under a Constitutional Monarchy, a system of government where a monarch, a single individual, is the ruler, but shares power with a constitutionally organized government.
In this system, the monarch is the de facto head of state and acts as a ceremonial leader. The constitution attributes the rest of the government’s authority to the legislature and judiciary. Daniela’s father proclaimed himself to be a constitutional monarchist and loved to sing songs from his days living under the monarchy. He taught Daniela, “Monarchy was freedom.”
Her grandfather worked three days a week to provide for a family of seven. There were no issues obtaining food or clothing, and her father remembers it as a happy time in their lives. It was a “good life,” a period of time filled with warmth and family.
Queue for cooking oil in Bucharest, Bucur Obor 1986. Photo: Scott Edelman via Wikimedia Commons.
What Daniela didn’t know then was that she had caught the final glimmers of a fading freedom, which would be extinguished by Nicolae Ceaușescu and his brutal Communist regime.
Little by little, life began to deteriorate. Food became scarce, rationing began, and electricity outages and a lack of hot water were just a few of the daily struggles they faced.
Daniela’s journey is not just the story of one woman. It is the story of millions who lived through Romania’s darkest era, under a regime that enslaved its citizens with a promise of equality while delivering fear, misery, and death.
From Innocence to Indoctrination
“In kindergarten, everything changed. The indoctrination started. I was introduced to Lenin in kindergarten,” Daniela recalled. “The teachers spoke of him like he was our grandfather.” She remembered the huge poster of Vladimir Lenin in their classroom, and all her teachers spoke highly of the Communist tyrant.
Nicolae Ceaușescu. Public Domain.
It was just the beginning of the Regime’s psychological grip. When Daniela was a child in the 1970s, Romania had already been under Communist rule for two decades. The monarchy was abolished in 1947, along with property rights, political plurality, and civil liberties.
Even the smallest joys were swallowed by propaganda.
End of school year, 4th grade. Daniela’s Archive.
Daniela remembered being forced to wake up at 5 A.M. just to stand on the street for hours, cheering for the Communist Party leaders to “demonstrate their support” for the State.
The children were not allowed to leave the formation, use the bathroom, or even understand the words they were singing. The entire Downtown area would be shut down for these parades, and stores were not allowed to be open while Communist Party leaders were in town.
“We were puppets,” she said. “They robbed us of our voices before we even knew we had one.”
As time went on, middle school became increasingly frightening as she gained a deeper understanding of what was happening to her country and her family.
Propaganda on the streets of Bucharest, 1986. Daniela’s Archive.
Poster reads: “65 years since the creation of the Romanian Communist Party.” The background states, ”Ceaușescu Era, The Party, Ceaușescu, Romania.”
Around the age of ten, she quickly learned not to talk about the Regime. Her parents actively shielded her from the harsh realities of life.
Nicolae Ceaușescu’s face was printed on everything – textbooks, portraits, and walls throughout town. In school, students learned Communist songs and were taught that the United States, portrayed as a decadent society, was the eternal enemy.
“Communism took over our entire lives. I was sure I was living in a nightmare and that I would wake up at some point.”
Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Cruel Genius
Ceaușescu’s rise was not meteoric, but methodical. Born into poverty in 1918, he left school after four years and apprenticed as a shoemaker. By the age of fourteen, he had joined the Romanian Communist Party and later became a protégé of the Stalinist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. After Gheorghiu-Dej’s death in 1965, Ceaușescu seized power and quickly built a cult of personality around himself. Loyalty to the State became the currency of advancement under Communism.
Shortage of fruits and vegtables in the market. Daniela’s Archive.
“Incompetence in communism is rewarded,” Daniela said. “They lack original thought.”
Despite his lack of education, Ceaușescu’s ambition was boundless. He ordered mass arrests during collectivization campaigns, oversaw executions of dissidents, and micromanaged a surveillance state. His secret police force, the Securitate, turned citizens into spies. Under his rule, even casual conversations could become fatal. The dictator's aim was to build “Communism with a human face.”
“In Communism, it’s not enough to obey,” Daniela said. “You must believe. Or at least pretend so convincingly that they never doubt you. That’s why the radical Left today is really frightening: they are so violent and have no tolerance. They don’t have any moral boundaries—just like the Communists.”
She continued, “They talk about wealth redistribution, yet they are living off of the perks of rich people, flying around in private jets, and claiming, ‘I’m with you! I’m poor!’ Representative AOC says she’s the Socialist example, yet she’s the product of a capitalistic society. This is not Socialism.”
She details, “In the final year of the Regime, Ceaușescu began using the phrase 'Communism with a human face.’ We didn’t know then that the phrase had come from Alexander Dubček during the Prague Spring. But even if we had, it wouldn’t have mattered. To us, the idea was terrifying. After decades of repression, forced births, hunger, and all-encompassing fear, there was nothing human left in what we were living through. It felt like an insult disguised as hope.”
Living Under Surveillance: A Nation Watched and Betrayed
The Securitate, Romania’s secret police force, was omnipresent. It’s estimated that one in 30 Romanians became informants, many by coercion. Daniela herself was targeted in her early twenties.
“A friend lured me to a police station. For an entire month, I was required to stay in an empty office for hours after work and return the next day, without any explanation. Ultimately, they pressured me to become an informant, to spy on my family, co-workers, and friends. In return for betraying people I cared about, they dangled so-called ‘luxuries’ such as meat, oranges, and bananas, as if that could justify it.”
When Daniela refused, they showed her a file, implying she was already an informant, to tighten the pressure. Still, she stood her ground. “I walked out believing I would be arrested. I already considered myself dead.”
Fototeca Online. Comunismului Românesc Daciada Show at the 23 August Stadion din Capitalǎ. 9.23.1978 Photo: Scott Edelman via Wikimedia Commons.
The Cruelty Behind the Curtain: Women and the War on the Family
On October 1, 1966, Decree 770 made birth control and abortion illegal in Communist Romania. The Regime imposed a national mandate. Every family was expected to have at least four children. Teenage girls and women were subjected to unannounced, mandatory gynecological exams in schools, but mostly in factories where women dominated the workforce, under the watch of the Securitate. The purpose was to detect pregnancies and force women to carry them to term. Their bodies were no longer their own.
“It was dehumanizing,” Daniela recalled. “I was 14. There was no privacy, no dignity.”
Line for groceries. Photo: Andrei Pandele.
It is estimated that over 10,000 women died during Ceaușescu’s communist dictatorship from illegal abortions. Daniela’s cousin was one of them – she died at 23 from an infection no hospital would treat because she refused to divulge the name of the person who performed the illegal procedure. By the end of the 1980s, an estimated 100,000 children were abandoned in over 700 orphanages in Romania. Known as “Ceaușescu’s Children,” many were tied to cribs, malnourished, and neglected.
The regime touted women’s equality, yet offered no flexibility and no decent living conditions for families. Food was scarce, and harassment was rampant. Daniela was harassed by a Party official but had no recourse. “Who would believe me?” she said. “Speaking up would have destroyed me.”
At 20 years old, Daniela remembers hearing stories of co-workers who couldn’t even warm their babies’ milk in the middle of winter. Women were forced to work in schools and daycares without electricity. Children fell ill due to the harsh conditions, and mothers couldn’t afford to take days off in order to care for them. “It was a sheer nightmare for women, especially for mothers.”
In the 1980s, Ceaușescu categorically opposed blood testing for HIV/AIDS, dismissing the disease as something that belonged only to the “decadent West.” By ignoring the risks, he contributed to the virus' silent spread. Romania had the highest number of pediatric AIDS cases in Europe due to its policies.
Communist-era Gloria Materna RSR medal (Maternal Glory of the Socialist Republic of Romania).
One of Daniela's nieces was among those affected. She contracted AIDS at just six months old from a hospital blood transfusion.
"Some young Americans believe medical care is free and wonderful under communism," Daniela said. "But believe me, for the parents of a sick child, it was a nightmare. AIDS medication was scarce and outrageously expensive. My family had to bribe officials with large sums of money just to get treatment so the little girl wouldn’t die. It was a continuous struggle, year after year, to keep her alive."
To the right is a photograph from Daniela’s personal archive of a pin given to her grandmother for having seven children. This is a tactic of the regime’s pro-natalist propaganda.
Daniela recalls, “I was with her when she received the award. It happened while I was in middle school. She also received a small monthly stipend, but it was barely noticeable and made no real difference in the harsh conditions of the time. It was all for propaganda.”
Living Like Ghosts: The Collapse of Daily Life
Shortage of food in the grocery store. Daniela’s Archive.
By the 1980s, Daniela said, Romania had become a “black hole.” Electricity was available only two or three hours a day, and food lines stretched for hours. When she was in the sixth grade, she fainted while waiting in line for hours for sugar on a torrid August day. In the wintertime, her breath hung in the air from the cold inside her home and school as she completed her schoolwork.
“We did homework by candlelight,” she said. “And still they told us we were lucky, living in the ‘golden age of Communism.’”
Sometimes, in middle school, the assigned homework asked intrusive questions, such as, “What did you watch on TV?” and “What did you talk about with your parents?”
While ordinary people starved, Party elites dined in private markets. “They told us everything belonged to the people,” she said. “But it all belonged to the [Communist] Party.”
In rural areas, entire families were crushed by collectivization. Her uncle was executed in his backyard for refusing to join a collective farm. Others had their land seized and were forced to work it for a pittance. Children were subjected to forced labor for three months in the fall, fulfilling shifts of 8 hours per day as part of their responsibility to the Communist Party. They would have quotas to fill and working in scorching heat, pouring rain, and snowfall. Read Daniela’s article detailing the grueling conditions of forced labor.
Forced labor in middle school. Daniela’s Archive.
Rebellion and Revolution
“When President Reagan said, 'Tear down this wall,’ that was the moment I realized this was the beginning of the end of Communism. We were finally free,” Daniela remembered. “Our hope was always that America would come and save us. It took four decades. But it happened.”
She watched throughout 1989 as Communism in the Eastern Bloc crumbled. “Maybe we’ll be next,” she hoped.
Young people tore the communist symbol out of their national flag during the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
“We were willing to sacrifice our lives because it was not a life. Communism is a nightmare.”
In December of 1989, rebellion erupted in Timisoara, triggered by the government’s attempt to evict a dissident pastor. Daniela and her husband, Andy, had married just months before. They joined the protests, knowing full well they might be killed.
“But we weren’t really living,” she said. “We were surviving.”
On December 23, 1989, Ceaușescu and his wife were captured, tried, and executed on Christmas Day. The revolution succeeded, but real freedom came slowly. Former Communists rebranded themselves, and corruption lingered.
Still, Daniela remembers the euphoria. For the first time, Romanians felt a sense of hope. But drastic changes did not come afterward. Wanting a better life for their son, Daniela and her husband moved to the United States in 1995.
“We could speak. We could dream. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, but nothing compares to living in the United States now.”
A New Life and a New Mission
Daniela and Andy’s Wedding in communist Romania. Daniela’s Archive.
Daniela and Andy were married in September of 1989, right before the anti-Communist Revolution in December.
Later in 1997, the young couple immigrated to the US with their son. It took eleven long years to become an American citizen. The journey was long and arduous, but well worth it. She still remembers her first trip to an American supermarket: “There was so much light, I would get headaches from it, and there were so many choices. A trip to the grocery store was overwhelming,” she said.
Additionally, she couldn’t understand why strangers smiled at each other while walking down the street. In Romania’s Communist society, people avoided looking at each other because eyes could “talk” and get someone in trouble.
In America, she found not just safety, but personhood. “I became confident. I like myself today. Communism does not allow you to see opportunities or to be creative. You are just part of the ‘Red Army,’ a soldier told what to do. And yes, everyone is equal… equally poor, except for the Party’s privileged top echelon.”
At first, she was terrified and guarded, with little trust in people. But in America, she had access to opportunities. Daniela felt grateful and assertive, and she started attending college. During seminars, she shared her experiences of living under Communism through her writing.
Daniela and Andy’s new life in america
Daniela and Andy with their one year old son post-Ceaușescu Communism. Daniela’s Archive.
After the Revolution of 1989, Daniela held high hopes that Romania would move forward, break free from communism, and embrace lasting change. However, when the second tier of the Communist Party, the so-called “red mafia,” remained in power and corruption persisted, her family made the difficult decision to emigrate in search of freedom and a better future.
In the late 1990s, Daniela, her husband, and their young son immigrated to the United States. The transition was far from easy, but after eleven years of perseverance, they became U.S. citizens. For over two decades, Los Angeles was their home. In response to California’s increasingly difficult political and social climate, the family relocated to the Fort Worth–Dallas area three years ago.
Shifting from a background in accounting, Daniela returned to school to earn a Master’s degree in Art History. Today, she shares her lived experience under communism through academic work and social media. Her family remains deeply grateful for the opportunities they’ve found in the U.S., and she is committed to preserving and sharing the truth of her generation’s journey.
Daniela’s family in the USA. Daniela’s Archive.
Legacy and Warning
To young people romanticizing socialism, Daniela is blunt:
“You have no idea what you’re wishing for. America’s youth claims that we live in a dictatorship [under President Trump], but we don’t. They record all the protests, insulting the President, and even he has been censored by social media. None of that would be possible in a dictatorship. You would be arrested and vanish into thin air. No one would even know about you.
In the last five years of Communism, I didn’t have a fridge because there was no food, and I didn’t have a TV either because I didn’t want to see only the dictator.
I was asked what advice I’d give to the younger generation. For me, it’s simple: be curious. Be fearless in asking questions. Communism might sound appealing on paper, but don’t take it at face value; dig deeper. I lived through its failures. I felt its cruelty.
Ask yourself: Why did Márta and Béla Károlyi, Nadia Comaneci’s coaches, defect from Communist Romania in 1981 if life there was truly good? And why did Nadia herself, Romania’s beloved gymnast and national icon, risk everything to escape to the United States in 1989? She didn’t just leave – she escaped, under the cover of night, crossing the border in fear for her life, desperate to break free from the surveillance and suffocating control of the Regime, who watched and monitored her every move, seeking to steal any value from her successes. The entire country was a prison. You couldn’t simply leave or emigrate at will. You had to escape the ‘wonderful golden age of Communism.’”
Nadia Comaneci in the immediate aftermath after scoring the first Perfect-10. Martha Karolyi can be seen in the back row. Photo: TheMedalCount.com.
This information came from a book published in 2021 called "Nadia si Securitatea" (Nadia and the Securitate), written by historian Stejarel Olaru, who pored over thousands of pages of declassified Securitate reports.
The Securitate installed a “surveillance apparatus including not only secret agents but also a constantly updated network of informants which Olaru says spanned coaches, doctors, gymnastics federation officials and even the team's choreographer and pianist.”
Daniela, who dedicates herself to documenting her story, reminds us,
“Always remember: the ‘Red Plague’ destroyed lives, shattered nations, and left behind a legacy of fear, trauma, and silence. Never forget the souls lost to its brutal systems.
Watch the documentaries and the movies. Read the history. Talk to people like me, those who lived through it. We carry these stories as warnings carved into our memory.
Because here’s the truth, nothing in life is truly free. The worst thing that can happen is for a government to control every aspect of your life or for a single party to rule unchallenged. That’s not freedom, that’s dictatorship.
The United States is still the last true bastion of freedom. If it falls, where else will we turn? That’s why I believe we must protect it fiercely, tirelessly, and with everything we have.”Daniela’s story is filled with urgent warnings. It is the echo of millions silenced, broken, and buried under red banners. Her resilience is a testimony, and her courageous warnings are a gift.
“Freedom,” she says, “is not the right to shout down others. It’s the right to speak without fear. It’s the space to be human.”
“Communist regimes in the 20th century killed over 100 million people. They destroy minds before they destroy bodies. And once freedom is gone, you don’t just vote it back. You bleed for it.”
Her story is a reminder that history must be remembered not as ideology, but as reality. Liberty, once lost, is rarely recovered without cost. Protecting that freedom, which our Founding Fathers sacrificed to establish, is the legacy of what it means to be an American.
Stay Connected With Daniela!
IG: @onlyforfinearts
Substack: https://survivedcommunism.substack.com
Watch Daniela’s husband, Andy Ionescu’s Interview on ”The Freedom Records” Here.
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