The Pigs' Slaughter

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I wrote this book in two weeks under pressure from my dearest friend Nathan O’Neill. As a many-time guest for dinner, Nathan was always delighted with my Romanian stories and repeatedly asked me to write them down. I did, and having started I raced to the end with him at my side as a Mr. Watson of proofreading.

Without his support, this book may not have been written at all.

The truth is that I was slaughtering the pig.

When the Romanian Revolution started and people rushed to overturn Ceauşescu, or rushed to sit in front of their TV sets and watch how people were slaughtered on the streets of Timişoara, Bucharest and Sibiu, I was rushing a knife into a pig.

The previous day was Ignat’s Day, pig slaughtering day in Romania. We were one day late. My Unitra (Polish made) radio was turned on loud tuned to Radio Free Europe. Until a couple of days earlier we could only listen to it after dark, and with the volume turned down. To listen to it in the open would have meant beatings, jail time or even death.

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