?Decreteii? were the children born in ?68. In ?68 a decree was passed forbidding abortions. That was the first generation of ?decretei? (little decrees). After one year the Romanians? inventiveness solved the abortion problem. It does not matter how, but it was solved. (I. H., 29)

The oath of the ?decretei?:

?With one hand on the chamber pot/ And one hand on the feeder/ I swear to grow big and strong/ ?Spite the darkness and the cold/ Without eating anything at all/? (74)

Old, traditional districts, churches that mirrored old Bucharest were destroyed. Even a graveyard was covered with water. I know a worker in the printing section who had been informed just one day before to come and take her daughter?s bones, because the next day they were to pour concrete over the graveyard. A lake was made there. People were given apartments in blocks. They were given some compensation in money, but very little. The owners? houses were pulled down and the people would become state tenants. With the money received as compensation one could only buy a living room. (A.-I. B, 101)

I had a house on Maica Domnului street, that was pulled down. My grandparents? and my parents? houses were pulled down. They pulled down houses big time. But they didn?t throw you out in the streets. It was painful to be taken out of your own house, but they didn?t throw you in the street. After my husband?s death, I paid for the apartment where they had moved us so that I wouldn?t be a state tenant anymore. My mother built a very big house on Stefan cel Mare boulevard. The disaster came and they took her house. She moved to another house, which she bought for me, but they pulled it down, too. After that, she died with grief. (A.-I. B.,102)

Nicolae Enea, a sculptor, had a big studio where he used to live, on the headland up Piata Sudului, with a view to the Vacaresti Monastery. It was pulled down in a few days, in October ?89, because he had refused an order to build a statue of the ? Great Leader?. They built blocks all over that spot of land, but they didn?t build anything on the place where the painter?s studio had been. It had been a purely demonstrative demolition. They gave him another studio, somewhere on a sheep fold on Giurgiului street, in the middle of nowhere. The engineer who had to carry through the demolition order realized it was an act of revenge and postponed it by 4 days, so that the man could have time to move his sculptures. (I. P., 134)