In this period, an acquaintance of my father-in-law was a big director at a chemical enterprise. He knew that we were collectors, sort of speaking. He told us that if we had a truck, we could go to the Otopeni Bridge, where there are some storage houses of the Party Administration- that happened in ?85-?86- that must be liquidated. 100 gypsies were hired to hammer down everything in small pieces and then load everything in a truck and take it to the garbage pit. (I. P., 37)

I can still remember the terrible scene of pulling down the church Sf. Vineri from Unirii Square. I happened to pass by when a huge bulldozer pulled the walls of the church and an excavator lifted all the red tiles in the tipper. That was a shock to me! I couldn?t realize the seriousness of the event! I was talking to my friends thinking that they were to build a stately boulevard and that-that?s politics! I felt sorry for the beauty of the church! It had arcades with saints painted on the outside, the door of the church was made of iron. I can still remember it. Where can that door be now? (V. C., 150)

The demolitions of the monasteries Mihai-Voda and Vacaresti were terrible. First they moved the archives from Mihai-Voda. The monastery was surrounded by The Archives, a very old building-I remember that when pulling down the monastery Vacaresti, just before Christmas, there was a general mobilization; the restaurateurs came to rescue what could be rescued; they took many paintings that afterward were restored in the universities. I don?t know if anybody up there knew what was going on, but they let them do it. They were the culture activists, not the highest representatives, it?s true, but they told the bulldozers would be brought and warned people to come and take away the paintings. At Vacaresti it was winter, a terrible frost. They took out the painting using students or anybody and even if they had the bulldozers at their back, they succeeded. I saw the columns for instance in various yards belonging to sculptors; there are some at Mogosoia. At Mihai Voda it was terrible because the work lasted until Easter time. The priest entered the monastery and tolled the bell so that people would know the monastery wasn?t deserted. At Sf. Gheorghe Nou it was the same, it was in the ?84 or ?86, they wanted to pull it down in an evening, because they knew there was going to be an opposition, the militia men came in to force the priest to take out the sacred object from the table of the altar and the priest said, I shall not do this, you go in but they wouldn?t, and moved to another church behind, a smaller one. It was God?s will that they didn?t pull down the church, but it hurts me to tell all this. (C. M., 52)

The demolition of Vacaresti lasted a year and a half, almost two. As the walls were thick, different solutions were needed. The work was delayed on various grounds, documentary and aesthetic, but in fact they thought that hopefully the "Hero? would die one day, and secondly, the intention was to rescue as many frescoes, columns and sculptures as possible. I think that even now one hopes to rebuild the monastery. (I. P., 134)