When Romanians went to work on Christmas Day

Most Americans get Christmas Day off, but it wasn’t like that for embattled Romanians back in 1989. Under Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was one of the most oppressive states in the world, practically on the level of Enver Hoxha’s Albania. Ceaușescu bulldozed churches and banned the celebration of Christmas.

In the city of Timisoara, Ceaușescu’s Securitate attacked pastor Laszlo Tokes for criticizing the regime, and on December 17, 1989, the people organized an anti-government demonstration. Ceaușescu ordered his forces to fire on the crowds, killing nearly 100 protesters. Mass protests broke out across the country, and this time, the military sided with the people.

Totalitarians believe they can get away with murder, but sometimes the people prove victorious.

Ceaușescu fled in a helicopter, but the pilot forced a landing and soldiers took him into custody. Nicolae and wife Elena were swiftly tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.

On Christmas Day, an elite unit led the pair toward an outdoor toilet block in a courtyard. Nicolae sang the “Internationale” while Elena shrieked filth at a soldier, who hauled off and smashed her face. The troops then stood the pair against a wall, set their Kalashnikovs on full automatic, and opened fire. Unlike the bloody scene in Timisoara, the rifle reports came as tidings of comfort and joy.

For the first time in decades, Romanians openly celebrated Christmas, and the next year, the nation held free elections. Too bad that the vile Ceaușescu was the only Stalinist dictator who got what he deserved.

Josef Stalin, murderer of more than 20 million, died of a heart attack on March 5, 1953. According to “The Black Book of Communism,” Mao Zedong’s genocidal campaigns claimed more than 60 million victims. China’s “Great Helmsman” died peacefully on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82.

Albania’s Enver Hoxha died of complications from diabetes on April 11, 1985, at the age of 76. Erich Honecker, communist dictator of the German Democratic Republic and builder of the Berlin Wall, died of cancer in Chile on May 29, 1994, at the age of 81.

Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot, whose campaign of genocide took down nearly 2 million innocents, about 21% of the population, died in his sleep on April 15, 1998. Sado-Stalinist Fidel Castro, darling of American leftists, passed away peacefully on November 25, 2016, at the age of 90.

Totalitarians believe they can get away with murder, but sometimes the people prove victorious. As Americans celebrate in freedom, they might recall Romania’s Kalashnikov Christmas, and in the new year take a lesson from Milan Kundera in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” In all nations, at all times, the struggle against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.