Ion Caraion

Allegedly sentenced to death in 1958, he passed through the Danube–Black Sea Canal; Jilava, Gherla and Aiud prisons; and the lead mines at Cavnic and Baia Sprie.

[2] According to his prison record published by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, the original sentence in 1958 was imprisonment with hard labour for life and was handed for espionage.

[3] Freed in 1964, Caraion returned to literary activity after a break of nearly two decades, publishing Eseu in 1966 and the retrospective anthology Necunoscutul ferestrelor (1969), which won the Romanian Academy's Mihai Eminescu Prize.

[1] Caraion was working as an editor at România Literară magazine when, in the summer of 1981, he was forced to emigrate: following a series of "threats and chauvinistic attacks, launched across months on end, at the age of 58 I took the road of exile, with my wife, my child and two suitcases".

He also worked for the BBC and wrote for the publications Limite, Le Figaro, PEN Internationale, and Repères (Paris); Dialog (Dietzenbach); Săptămâna müncheneză, Contrapunct and Curentul (Munich); Jalons (Chambourg-sur-Indre); Cuvântul românesc (Sweden); Uomini e libri (Milan); Izvoare and Revista mea (Israel); Gazette de Genève and Tribune de Genève; Journal of the American Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences; Tribune-dimanche, Écriture and L’Echo sentimental (Switzerland); Le journal des poètes (Belgium); Neue Europe (Luxembourg), and Grandive (New York City).

While abroad, he wrote poetry in Romanian and French, essays, literary criticism, and anti-totalitarian social-political pamphlets (Insectele tovarășului Hitler, 1982).

In Romania, he was slandered and had invective directed at him (in Săptămîna magazine), while during the same period, his work was commented on and received praise from important contemporary poets.