Escaping Transylvanian Vampirism To The West

ESCAPING VAMPIRISM IN TRANSYLVANIA TO THE WORLD
FROM THE
ROMANIAN GULAG TO NEW
CULTURES
By
OLGA MAGDALENA LAZÍN
Copyrighted © Dr Olga Books, 2022

Lazín, p. 2
Right In the heart of Transylvania of 1963, I was born into the Communist System that called
itself the “Romanian Golden Age of Socialism,” which was in full “bloom and progress.” What
was blooming, and was overwhelmingly beautiful was socialism with a human face, an awkward
concept that few Americans will understand.
Transylvania is not only geographical space, it is mythical place steeped in Folklore governed by
Elitelore, and it is the place that gave me my roots and my way of thinking, the beauty of my soul,
even before I was born. My introduction to Elitelore would come in 1991 when I would learn to
see how the Elites always create much of the Folklore, and adapt the rest to meet their needs to
control society in the Northern Romania. The Ceausescu era I mean.
My parents Magdalena and Eugene gave birth to me in one of the most pristine,
oxygenated Romanian town, the beautiful Satu-Mare near the Hungarian border. My country was
treading toward complete industrialization, and populism was the spirit of the age, our zeitgeist in
one word.
Satu Mare was soon to undergo catastrophic transformations, as it was to forcefully

modernized. Common people in the town and the countryside already were being “enslaved” to
work in huge so-called Socialist Factories in the fields as well in the urban centers.
Yet the tiny village of Vetis, outside Satu Mare, where I spent some summers in the 1970s
and 80s, retained its fame as a lovely place of small farms set along the banks of the Somes River.
Although the farms were government -owned, they could manage their own affairs on the proviso
they give 20% of their agricultural and dairy products to the Socialist State. The small farms
enjoyed this latitude because, being on the border with Hungary, they discouraged Hungarian
migrants from entering Transyvania. Vetis farms were too small to employ foreign-field workers.
The Vetis of my ancestors on my father’s side is now a more populated and diverse
place, colorful and ever lovely. My father, Eugene was a polyglot, he spoke Hungarian better
than Romanian, and Ruthenian.
On my mother’s side, I have Ruthenian gene pools, meaning genes from 22 people
(ancestors) who were of Ukrainian complex cultures, as I explain below. The town of Bixad, also
called in Romanian OAS region, situated west of Satu Mare, is still a beautiful traditional ex-
village now a town, with houses spread far apart, not all jammed together. My mother was
ethnically Ruthenian, a blend of Romanian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian cultures.
Lazín, p. 3
I was born to a family of middle-class folks, highly-educated, Eugene and Magdalena. I
was the first child, and right after me came my brother, Alexandru in 1965. I remember
being happy having a brother. At age three, my mother Magdalena was transferred by
her employer
(The Logging Company in Viseul de Sus, Maramures County) to Sighet, in Maramures
County. Thus, my parents and I moved to the Transylvanian town of Sighet, where I grew
Lazín, p. 4
up like Alice in Wooden land, in a pristine region behind the mountain of Gutinul.
Transylvania was an ancient forest, where vampires and wolverines were lurking at the
cover of the dark and cold winter nights.
I never feared the unknown, as I was already accustomed to “strigoi,” and

vampire stories ever since I was a baby! All these weird mythological animals were part of
my mental ecosystem, so to say. They were familiar.
I grew up fearless with my brother, Alex, whom I felt I had to
constantly protect from other belligerent boys in the neighborhood of Zahana,
as it was called the cluster of houses built by in the sixties and seventies, in Hungarian style.
Sighet was surrounded by beautiful green mountains, and three rivers: Mara, Tisa and Iza.
On the one hand, I was friends with the children of intellectuals, as well as also lovely
Romanian, Hungarian, and Gipsy children to whom I taught the Romanian language as early
We were Ruthenians; that is a strong gene pool made up of Ukrainian, Romanian and Hungarian
Genes.
On the other hand, my family had a difficult life because my parents were always working until
late hours at night. My younger brother Alex and I read while waiting for mother, Magdalena,
to turn off our lights even as she continued into the wee hours her accounting work
at home. She was compounding the lengths and width of the wooden logs that were being
exported to Russia year by year.
During the day, Magdalena let us play all day long to our heart’s content. So unique,
and we felt so free exploring nature in Sighet. When I entered primary school, I learned
that Sighet was officially named Sighetu Marmației (on Romania’s northwest border facing
Ukraine’s southwestern border with Romania and Hungary).

Lazín, p. 5
Transylvania belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary (Transylvania) as part of the Austrian-

Hungarian Empire[.After World War I, in 1918 Transylvania became part of Romania again. In
1940 Northern Transylvania reverted to Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award, but
Romanian queen Maria reclaimed it after the end of World War II.i
All of Romania was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet
Union” (1944-1947), and “re-liberated” to become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR
remote control) as the Cold War was beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into to place.
The first “president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1965) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his
Sec Gen of the Communist Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second
“president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher “nationalistic Gulag” than
known in the USSR. At the end of 1994 the Russian military organized “presidential” elections
of “people’s committees” in the region.ii The end of the war occupied some formerly Romanian
northeastern territories occupied by the Soviet Union, with Red Army units stationed on
Romanian soil. In 1947 Romania forcibly became a People's Republic (1947–1965).
Lazín, p. 6
My parents in 1963: Eugen & Magda: she was pregnant with me here.
For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic situation of Transylvania
(located in northeast Romania on the Ukrainian border), nor did I understand that I would have
to escape the Gulag of Romania by the skin of my teeth.
I had to risk my life to leave my country. Generals and sports Olympians were defecting.
Nadia Comaneci has left in 1988, one year before Ceausescu was toppled.
Opposition to the regime was building up painstakingly slow, and communist idiots
wanted Ceausescu replaced. The Russian KGB school at work, soviet agents like Iliescu
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were ready to take his place. Now these were the vampires coming out like vermins to
manipulate the population into believing they were “change”.
The Front of national salvation was building up to substitute the dictator’s fascist clique.
For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a far-away place, where most people know the
werewolves and vampires have been rumored to roam & lurk in nature. In the imagination of
people everywhere, whose beliefs are soaked in mystical folklore, even today it is hardly possible
to have a rational conversation on any subject matter. Most occupying forces never understood
either the culture of the Romanian people or the distinct culture of Transylvania. The immense
diversity of the ethnicities and cultures.
Naturally I am a bi-national citizen, but without belonging to any of the two countries. My
Ruthenian roots are strong, and I rejoice every time I am remembering the pretty pristine
landscapes of Sighet and Satu Mare where I was born.
Summoning my unconsciousness to write this autobiographical piece, I need to re-accustom

myself to thinking of the distinct cultures of the region.
Once in general school I excelled in Romanian and American Languages.
I had to choose between English and Russian, and I opted for English in the 5th grade.
The population consisted of Romanians, Hungarians (particularly Székelys), Ukrainians, and
Germans. Even the Securitate, the eminence grey of Transylvania, had to learn several languages
in order to surveil people on the phones, etc. These people were educated by the Soviets in
Russian surveillance techniques and bloody procedures.
All these languages are still being spoken on the Territory of Maramures County, including
Rroma, or the Gypsy language, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Ruthenian.

Lazín, p. 8
I always liked and loved the Romanian language, so I decided to become a Professor of
Romanian Language and Literature.
As I have previously mentioned, n 1973, at age 10 as a fifth grader, I had to make a fateful
decision about my choice of foreign-language study: Russian or English. The pressure was on
us to take up Russian, this proving that we were all students loyal to the Dictator Nicole
Ceausescu’s “Socialist” Government (read Romanian Communist Government allied with
Moscow), but consciously I detested the whole Romanian system and its alliance with the
Russians.
I never liked the Russian language; even today it rings hollow to me, reminds me of the
barking of a toothless dog.
Although I wanted to learn English in my early years, I did not then know how fateful that choice
would be until 1991, when at almost 27 years of age, I met Jim Wilkie who had been advised by
his brother Richard to include my town of Sighet in his journey to assess the how Eastern Europe
was faring after the fall of the “Berlin Wall,” short for the long wall that kept
the people of Communist countries locked and unable to escape.
In the meantime, growing up in Sighet with a population of only 30,000 people, we were proud to
recognize Ely Wiesel (born 1928) as our most prominent citizen long before he won the 1986
Nobel Peace Prize. He helped us get past the terrible history of Sighet Communist Prison where
“enemies of the state” were confined until “death due to natural cause.” The Jewish population
has been decimated in Sighet in the fifties.

Lazín, p. 9
In my early years I had a hard time understanding how the green and flowered valley of Sighet
(elevation 1,000 feet, on the Tisa River at the foot of our forested Carpathian Mountains) could be
so beautiful, yet we lived under the terribly cruel eye of the Securitate to protect the wretched
Dictator Nicolae “Ceausescu,”iii is the modern spelling of the Dictator’s name; and he ruled from
1965 to his execution in 1989 as the harshest leader of all the countries behind Russia’s Wall
against Western Europe.
Oddly enough, in the Transylvania of the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, supposedly I was living
the “Golden Age of Romanian Socialism,” but even to myself as a young student; I could see that
the promised “full progress” was clearly a lie. Most adults agreed but feared to speak so bluntly.
Repetitive folk songs were praising the father and the mother of the nation, and on TV, we could
only watch the first couple running around in China, Russia, and other socialist countries to make
alliances, and keep up appearances for 40 years! In Northern Transylvania we had only one TV
Channel, and that was the norm. The Hungarian channel was completely blocked out by the
government, so that no real news reaches our ears.
In the meantime, without rarely granted permission, we were forbidden to meet and visit with
foreigners, especially those who spoke English and who wanted to hear from us about Sighet
and its nearby wooden hamlets of the Maramures Province, where I have my first memories.
The region is ethnically diverse, with a stimulating climate ranging from very hot summers and
very cold winters. Geographically, we lived in the valleys and Mountains of Gutinul through
which the rivers of Iza and Tisa flow. Geographically, the beautiful forested Tisa River is the
natural border with Southern Ukraine.
As folklore has it in the West, vampires are native to Transylvania. We had vampires,
werewolves, and wolverines, but all the mythological characters were actually members of the
Lazín, p. 1
Communist Party, which everyone had to join--except for me because with my knowledge, I was
considered a security risk!
Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my
M.A. in 1990, for my sociology classes, I decided to conduct my field research project into the
rural life of the North of Romania, recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and
passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had
used that lore to help them survive for centuries.
Further, much of my research conducted among the outlying farmers, delved deeply into
Transylvania Folklore, which prepared me well to understand Communist Party Lore.
Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project, the Elitelore project
had further prepared me, unknowingly, for my future with Jim Wilkie.
We were constantly studying the elites, and were interviewing them on everything
they were doing. Revolutionaries, Professors, civic society leaders were the best subjects
of our research.
Once I had been admitted to the Babes Bolyai University, which was called “the heart and brain
of Transylvania,” I also further expanded and deepened deep studies in American language and
literature. Also, I studied Romanian language and literature in the Department of Philology. The
Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.

Lazín, p. 10
Upon beginning my mentoring for other students, I was happy to find a sense of freedom.
Reading and writing comprehension were my forté during my four years at Cluj. I had always
dreamt of being a professor and a writer and seemed to be off to a great start.
But I soon realized that our professors opened the day by reading the mounds of new Decrees just
signed by Ceausescu. Thus, I began laughing, and other students join me in mocking the wooden
language of Central Planning’s attempt to befuddle us with words from a wooden language,
totally bent toward twisting our brains into confused submission. Professors and Securitate
officers were acting as sweaty bureaucrats trying to teach us how to sharpen our mental images.
Not one professor asked us, “What do each of you really think of all this Ceausescu propaganda
of decrees harming the educational process?”
Professors had their favorite students and made sure they pointed this out in class, stifling any
competition as they show openly their favoritism or nepotism.
When I reached the age of 22 in1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors,
especially the history professor who only knew only the History of the Romanian Communist
Party.
The Russians, via the KGB, had been directing Romanian politicians since 1945, and pressured
Romanian students to dig useless trenches as well forced women-students to shot Russian
weapons, and learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47.
Meanwhile in my University Cluj the atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Restrictions were
plentiful and absurd. Speech was not free; one couldn’t discuss issues freely in class, or make any
real analysis or debate. One had to regurgitate what the professors were telling us. Modern
economics led by and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in the communist library.
Until I escaped Romania in 1992, I learned that the so-called economics classes we took taught
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nothing about money, credit, and such terms as GDP. The Marxian economics involved only
fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as:
“We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of capitalism,” without the word
“capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets.
Even as an English major, I was not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering
one question was a crime, according to the tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime
punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Doctors performing it ended up in jail, and so did the
pregnant women. Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until
1990.
Furthermore, if my uncle from Canada visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire
family. Even today, in 2017 one has to report to the police to declare if any visitor of family
comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well, after 25 years, not
much has changed in poor Romania.
THE INFLUENCE OF RECENT ROMANIAN HISTORY
In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania,
with constant change in the emerging political map always have left “citizens” always lost
about who was really in charge.
Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the Dacia Kingdom between 82 BC until the Roman
conquest in 106 AD. The capital of Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so that a new as
Lazín, p. 12
capital would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 ADS, by which time
the Romans felt so hated that it behooved them withdraw back to Rome.
During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to
later become part of the Kingdom of Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of
Transylvania. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Principality became an Ottoman
Empire vassal state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After 1711
Transylvania was consolidated solely into the Hapsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were
replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. After 1867, Transylvania ceased to have separate
status and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.iv After World War I, Transylvania reverted in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940
Northern Transylvania again became governed by Hungary and then Germany, but Romanian
queen Maria successfully reclaimed it after the end of World War II.
The year 1940 was important for Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany
(1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated” to
become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold War was
beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into place.
At the end of World War II while the USSR and its Red Army were the occupying powers in
all Romania, in 1947 Romania forcibly and ironically became a “People’s Republic”
(1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain.

Lazín, p. 13
Secretary General of the Communist Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the
second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher Romanian
“Gulag” than known in the USSR. Thousands of Romanians have vanished overnight.
For two decades, I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of Transylvania, nor
did I yet realize that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania, even if by the “skin of my
teeth.”
For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a faraway place, where most people know
the werewolves and vampires have been “seen” to in the imagination of Transylvanians, whose
beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to have a rational
conversation with most the Transylvanian folk on any subject without recourse to try to
understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them.
The population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians.
These languages are still being spoken in Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always
liked and loved Romanian language, I decided to become a Professor of Romanian Language
and Literature. I also precociously fell in love with my English Professor, Spaczai, whom I adore
to this day.
MY BACKDROP TO THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU
I later told Jim how I had been admitted in 1982 to the Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca
at the heart of Transylvania, I focused especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found that
Lazín, p. 14
the professors, who were under the control of sweaty-stinking Securitate officers, had to read
dozens of new Decrees issued every day as they sought to control every one of our daily actions—
all in the name of protecting the Ceausescu government—which was selling the country’s food
supplies to Russia in order to pay down Roman’s official debt with exports. Those Securitate
officers ate well and ominously watched us virtually starve. They said, be calm, like your parents
in the face of their starvation. Secu’ officers were the vampires and the wolverines that I was
talking about in my first paragraph. They are surveillance officers, and this is what they do:
inform on innocent people, place all types of microphones under people’s tables and beds, and
that have fun as perverted this may sound in almost every home in Sighet, Maramures County.
They report on you, and this earns them a living.
Thus, I furiously called out in my classes that our very existence was being compromised by
Ceausescu's abandonment of the population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said,
“work, work, and work.”
To protect myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national
paradise.” But when I encouraged my classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the
wooden language of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under the heavy scrutiny of university
authorities, who were furious that I trying to expose the fact that all classes had been organized to
befuddle the student body into confused submission. Indeed, each professor had favorite students
to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle any competing analysis—the university lived
under nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual and real) by the Securitate officers, and
open bribery by the professors--choose your garden variety.

Lazín, p. 15
My 1986 Attempt To Flee The Jail Named Romania
By 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act because Ceausescu did not
want anyone (especially women of child-bearing age) to escape his plan to building his “ideal
socialist industries” on farms and ranches as well as in the cities. In June, I made my way to
the border of Yugoslavia and paid a smuggler to evade the Romanian security forces that were
preventing the “nations workers” from escaping. The smuggler, who took me across the border,
turned out to be working for Romanian Border Police. Thus, soon after crossing into
Yugoslavia, he turned his wagon around and I was again in Romania again when I realized
what had happened too late. I had been “sold” to Ceausescu’s minions for a wagonload of
salt and 20 Liters of gasoline.
Iosif Broz Tito, the Yugoslavian President, had this type of deal with Ceausescu in the 1980s.
Thousands were returned for this kind of draconian exchange.
That failed escape from Romania led me to a 10-month prison sentence in Timisoara Prison,
wherein the block cells were maintained so cold (supposedly to eliminate bacteria and viruses)
that it made all of us inmates sick with the cold and the flu. I was later pardoned, so there is no
official record of it.
Bed blankets in the were less warming than one Kleenex tissue. Moreover, there were no
pillows, and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a “back-breaker.” The lights were on 24
hours a day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every hour one was a
wakened to be counted for, and sneaking up on people, under the guise of watching out for
Lazín, p. 16
suicides. But everyone could be clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to
Lazín, p. 17
sleep-deprive inmates. There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off the
food budget to siphon money to themselves while serving inmates only baby carrots and spicy
beans.
Almost every family in Romanian civil society had at least one member who had been
imprisoned for trying to open the political system by denouncing the Ceausescu dictatorship.
These inmates were openly called “Political Prisoners,” and I was one of them.
Political Prisoners were not permitted to work outside the prison walls in the fields because
our crime had been the political decision to repudiate Ceausescu’s “vampiristic system.”
“CHANGE IN THE AIR”
Once free in 1987, I could return to my University to finally complete my M.A. in 1990.
Further in 1987, at the age of 24, I met my future husband, Valerian Pipas.
Valerian’s father, family patriarch Nicolae Pipas,v directed for the Communist government the
walled Regional Art Museum in a village orbiting Sighet, named Tisa.
Being a Professor of English, French, and Romania Languages, and one of the few university’s
highly educated persons in the region, I began to serve as interpreter/guide to visiting foreign
Ambassadors permitted to travel in Romania. They wanted to see the Museum with its
magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, and rare historical pottery and coins. Thus,
I soon found myself interpreting and translating for visiting English-Speaking Ambassadors
Lazín, p. 18
from many countries who wished to know Transylvania, especially my town Sighet, and its
Jewish cemetery.
Another locus, named Merry Cemetery is very famous worldwide for it tombstones in the form of
wood sculpture of the butcher, the baker, candlestick maker, and all professions, in vivid blue,
red, and yellow colors. It is so famous that even today loads of Japanese people come and need
interpreters in English. I enjoyed commuting a lot while interpreting and guiding people in
Maramures county.
Although my first languages were Romanian and Hungarian, I could also translate into French
and Italian. Indeed, at that time I was teaching Latin in the Rural School System of my
Maramures Province.
Ceausescu and his clique has starved us to death, and all food was rationalized.
A piece of bread for each individual, an d1 liter of oil per month, as well as salami was
distributed to the people lined up for days in front of the empty-shelved stores. And the time
for distributing food was also set arbitrarily by the communist Party.
By 1989, Ceausescu realized that his end was near, and he sought to gain support by pardoning
his political prisoners (such as myself) who had tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the
country. Hence, university students and some labor unions joined forces and quite quickly after
the fall of the Berlin Wall forced Ceausescu and his draconian wife Elena to flee. They were
caught and executed on Christmas Day, 1989, by the military that at the last moment joined the
Revolution.
Lazín, p. 19
‘As my friends and I (along with most of the population) cheered the fall of the failed, rotten
Romanian “dictatorship of the proletariat,” my dear mother acted differently. She was so
confused by the propaganda of the only “leader” she knew much about that she wept for
Ceausescu, not fully realizing that he was the one who had wrongly had be arrested and put me
in prison.
The students started a rebellion in Bucharest. People in Timisoara started the revolution via civil
disobedience. For a week and so there were bloody fights in Bucharest and Timisoara, young
People trying to get rid of Ceausescu’s regime. So finally, Iliescu another monster took over
and under the pretext of filling the vacuum of power he self-appointed himself president.
He stole the revolution with his acolytes, and over 1000 people were dead in the streets.
With Ceausescu gone, in 1990 I was able to secure a passport to ready myself to leave Romania
by gaining visas for Germany and France. The question remained, how to get there by land
without a visa to Austria—my region had no air connection to the outside world.
There was only one airport in the country, in Bucharest.
I decided to leave with Professor Jim Wilkie and Jim Platler in September 17, 1990.
Jim has filled out all the paperwork to hire me, and I gratefully accepted to work for
PROFMEX.
Lazín, p. 20
Thus, we set out on that September 18th to visit one of the most socially and economically
interesting and beautiful parts of Romania by going up thought the green forested Carpathian
Mountains via the beautiful Prislop Pass, stopping to visit small farming families in their folkloric
clothing of which they were justifiably proud to wear on a daily basis. Farther east in Romania,
on the scenic roads, we visited the monasteries of Moldova, the town of Cimpulung
Moldovenesc, Suceava, and then the Monasteries in Sucevita and Agapia. The gorgeous forested
mountain road eventually led to Lacul Rosu and the lake country. Then we took the long scenic
mountain road to Cluj Napoca to visit my prestigious University.
As I briefed Jim about Romania, he was briefing me about factors in comparing national
economies. For example, he told me about how he had reunited in Prague on September 15th with
Richard Beesen, his former UCLA student and friend, to hear about his role in London as
Manager of Deutsche Bank’s New Accounts in Russia and Eastern Europe. Richard had become
famous for inviting Banking Officials and national Treasury Ministries to deposit their financial
reserves on deposit in his bank in London. But because his clients did not understand anything
about “interest payments” on deposited funds, they did not ask for nor did they gain any interest
payments. Also, because most Western Banks were not sure that these new “capitalists” could be
“fully trusted” for correct management of their deposits, his Deutsche Bank collected large fees
(and paid no interest to keep the Eastern Europe “bank reserves safe.” This was all very eye
opening for me.
Jim and I had realized early on that we had a close affinity as we analyzed the situation of
Romania, and he said, “Call me Jim.” (In contrast I called Professor James Platler “JP.”) As we
traveled to observe the situation of the people in different parts of the country, Jim and I formed a
deep bond of observing and analyzing; thus, both of us realized this brief interlude had to
continue for the long term in order to achieve our goals.

Lazín, p. 20
NEXT STOPS, BUDAPEST, SALZBURG, MUNICH,
BORDEAUX (FOR ME), AND LOS ANGELES (FOR JIM)
As a Romanian, I had the right to enter Hungary, and we did so bypassing the miles of vehicles
waiting to cross the border for the long drive to Budapest. There Prof. James Platler finally
relaxed after the long drives and often poor hotels and hotels—he said that he finally found
unbroken civilization again.
Once we arrived in Budapest, Professor James Platler, who had told Jim privately that from the
outset of our trip that he thought that I was a “Spy” (planted on us by the Romanian Securitate to
monitor our many “foreign” inquiries during our travel through Romania’s north country),
announced that his concern about me had vanished as we realized the extent of my knowledge
and research abilities. In his mind, I had to be a Spy because I had obtained access to special
private dining rooms and quarter in some fine hotels, as well as invitations for wonderful lunches
at some Monasteries, where miraculously I made immediate friends with each Mother Superior.
But by the time we reached Budapest, he realized that at my University I had learned the Elite
skills needed to survive safely and comfortably in Eastern Europe.
My problem was to enter Austria, where I had no visa. But Jim passed his UCLA business
card through to the Consul General of Austria in Budapest, and quickly we found ourselves
whisked from the back of the long line to the front and right into a meeting with the Consul
General himself. He was pleased to hear about the research of our UCLA Team, but said that I did
have a visa. Jim then told them that I only needed a three-day transit visa to reach Germany, the
visa for which he could see in my passport.

Lazín, p. 21
With entry to Austria solved, we were on the road to the Hotel Kobentzl and Graz, which
overlook Salzburg, all the way analyzing the comparative economic and social situations of
Austria, Hungary, and Romania.
We spent most of our time down the mountain from Kobentzl to the valley, before returning to
our sweeping Hotel view of Salzburg City. Meanwhile I was deepening my questions about
capital is leveraged to undertake big private projects. As we took photos over from on high
looking down on the many bridges of Salzburg and Jim was explaining how the developed world
operated by using finances, credit, and interest to help economies grow.
Finally, we left Salzburg to enter Germany and Munich, where our quick look into Oktoberfest
found us among nasty drunken louts each of whom seemingly had hand four hands: one to chug-
a-lug beer; one to smoke foul smelling cigarettes; one to quaff horrible-bleeding-raw sausages;
and one to punch someone in the face. From what we saw, Oktoberfest was a place for nasty
males seeking to “get smashed on beer” and then smash another male to break his nose. Thus, we
fled for our lives as the brutes began to threaten anyone who looked at them.
Even though the “English-Speaking USA” had been supposedly always threatening to
invade Romania, I continued to study English language and literature. That I chose to study
English even though the act alone brought suspicion on me because all society was taught to
believe since 1945 that we were fighting off the Great USA.vi America was officially seen as
a threat to Romania and its allies under Russia’s COMECON,vii all of which I became only fully
aware as I grew older and had to buy the English Course textbooks on the risky, expensive
Black Market, in Timisoara, a 4 hours drive from Cluj.
In the meantime, without rarely granted permission, we were forbidden to meet and visit with
foreigners, especially those who spoke English and who wanted to hear from us about Sighet
Lazín, p. 22
and its nearby wooden hamlets of the Maramures Province, where I have my first memories.
The region is ethnically diverse, with a stimulating climate ranging from very hot summers
and very cold winters. Geographically, we lived in the valleys and Mountains of Gutinul
through which the rivers of Iza and Tisa flow. Geographically, the beautiful forested Tisa
River is the natural border with Southern Ukraine. Mara is another river I explored in my
Youth with my brother, Alex.
My mother Magdalena decided, when I was 3, to move from Satu-Mare to the Sighet, Maramures
county. For me this change was welcome, and I grew up in the Maramures region, where I have I
have my first memories. The region was much nicer, ethnically more diverse, better climate, and
more geographic diversity, with the Mountains of Gutinul and the rivers of Iza and Tisa, as Tisa
was the natural border with the Ukraine.
Communist Party and infamous security officers, which everyone had to join--except for me
because with my knowledge, I was considered a security risk! I actually refused to join the bloody
red party, and so did one of my girl colleagues, Michaela Pascu-Arvedson, who lives in Malmo,
Sweden now. Non-alignment meant we were the black sheep of the class.
Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University of Babes Bolyai, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my
rural life of the North of Romania, recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and
Lazín, p. 23
passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers), stories and
lore that had been used to help them survive for centuries. In the field, I did numerous recordings
and transcriptions of old songs, and poetry that can be found in my Master’s Dissertation in Baia
Mare at the Ethnological Museum. Ethnic songs samples I took were originating from the Tisa
and Visinelu Villages, in Transylvania.
Further, much of my research conducted among the outlying folks and farmers, delved deeply
into Transylvania Folklore, birth, marriage, and death customs, which prepared me well to
understand the mythical thinking of the peasants, their magic, and black magic practices, in
abundance in every home.
As a parallel reality, to the world of peasants, I also studied Communist Party Lore, and the
official justification of unjustified secret security surveillance.
Once I had been admitted to the Babes Boljay University in 1986, which was called “the heart
and brain of Transylvania,” I also further expanded and deepened deep studies in American
language and literature.
In tandem, I had deepened my studies of the Romanian language and literature in the Department
of Philology. The Bolyai University is still considered to this day the best University in
Transylvania.
Lazín, p. 24
Not one professor asked us, “What do each of you really think of all this Ceausescu propaganda
of decrees harming the educational process?”

Lazín, p. 25
When I reached the age of 22 in 1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors,
Party.
fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of
capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced
with epithets. The funniest one was dialectical socialism, completely empty of meaning.
Even as an English major, I not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering one
question was a crime, according to the tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime
1990.
Lazín, p. 26
comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well, after 25 years,
not much has changed in poor Romania.
As I said previously, my childhood was marked by fights as I had to protect my little brother
Alexandru. In high school, I was known as the student-poet, the class poet, and I won some pretty
prizes for my poems in General School, coordinated closely with Ileana Zubascu Cristescu; my
Romanian Language Professor. I am still in touch with her to this day.
I had another flashback coming to me. The academia was infested with egregious communists.
I was admitted to the University in Cluj in 1982, in the heart of Transylvania, namely the
American Language and Literature and Romanian Language And Literature Department of
Philology. The professors, started reading the mounds of new Decrees every day, which made me
laugh, and staff of the university was suspicious of me not believing their “expose” in the
classrooms. Professors were
trying to befuddle us with words from a wooden language, totally bent toward twisting our brains
into confused submission. During my college years, Professors, and Securitate officers were
acting as sweaty bureaucrats, uneducated idiots trying to tell us what to think. Not one professor
asked us, “What do you really think, all of you?” Each professor had their favorite students and
made sure they pointed it out in class, stifling any competition, and showed openly their
favoritism or nepotism.
When I reached 22 years, I started being argumentative, and started criticizing professors, esp. the
history professor. I was getting so sick at academics yelling at us, and being forced to do the
military service as a woman in the academia. After all, Americans were coming to take away our
socialist country.
We could not buy books in English, at least not the classics that we badly needed to pass the
exams in American, and I was an English major.
We couldn’t talk to foreigners, and the atmosphere was dreadful in classes.

Lazín, p. 27
Speech was not free; one couldn’t argue in class, or make any real analysis or debate. You had to
regurgitate what they were telling you, and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in
the communist library. I was an English major, but could not get the books in English necessary
for the Exams. They did not exist. Talking to foreigners in English or answering one question
was a crime, according to a stupid decree. Abortion was a crime for 20 years. Doctors performing
it ended up in jail, and so did the pregnant women. 5 years jail for an abortion. If my uncle from
Canada visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire family. Even today, in 2014 one has
to go and declare if you have family visiting from the USA or CANADA for some bizarre
security reasons. Well even after 26 years, not much has changed in poor Romania. The
Securitate is still doing surveillances of Romania’s “enemies” and even ramped up surveillance
now using NATO funds to control people in key positions of government, be it local, municipal,
or at federal level.
Now, writing this, it all came back to my mind’s eye: I was a professor of Romanian and English
in Sighetu Marmației, Maramures County, at School #2 for 6 years. Teaching English and
American languages and grammar was my favorite thing, and my goal was to move to the West.
So, I settled in Tisa with my then-husband, Valerian Pipas.
It was very exacting commuting all the time from Tisa where I lived in our private Museum
(Pipas Museum of Art) to Sighet by bus. I also taught Latin and English to people just to make
ends meet. Salaries were dismal for intellectuals. So, finally I had it, and decided to leave in 1986.
We were caught on the border and sent back in 1984. Ceausescu, the “father” of the nation
pardoned all border violations in 1983, as prisons were full with civil society activists.
The jail was so cold in Timisoara to keep the bacteria and viruses that it made everybody sick
internally with the cold and the flue. Most of civil society was imprisoned, for trying to open the
system, and denounce the Ceausescu dictatorship. The blanket was as warm as a Kleenex tissue.
Moreover, there were no pillows, and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a back-breaker.
The lights were on 24 hours a day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every
hour one was awakened to be counted. All under the guise of watching out for suicides. But
everyone could be clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to sleep-deprive inmates, as
they were doing. There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off the food bill. They
served only baby carrots, and spicy beans. Prisoners were forced to labor in the fields and sorting
out what was left of pigs to be
Lazín, p. 28
Exported, to pay off Romania’s debt to the IMF. Yes, that was Ceausescu’s dream. Famishing the
Nation, sacrificing entire generations of people, just to pay off the debt. I remember studying with
no lights, only a candle for exams, and not having eggs or meat for years. In 1984 my father sold
his house for a pig. Peasants had to give up parts of their products to the state. Taxes were paid in
food.
The saddest years of my life: 1984 to 89.
My poor mother Magdalena, was so confused by the propaganda, that she started crying when I
was freed from jail, additionally she was feeling very emotional after the death of the nation’s
father, Ceausescu. Nicolae together with Elena were shot execution style by his opponent,
socialist, KGB educated Ion Iliescu, who stole the revolution from the young people of the
University Square in Bucharest.
My endurance had limits. Fed up with all the restrictions, and full of frustrations, I hit the border
with Yugoslavia.
I have been unfairly jailed as I tried to leave the country in 1986.
I was ready to give up my life, just to escape people in an impossible country, with impossible
leadership.
It has become unlivable for many people. In 1989, Ceausescu finally pardoned everybody who
tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the country.
The first act of freedom I have performed it was to secure a passport for myself. And got married
to Valerian Pipas, a famous violinist from Virismort, Tisa in Maramures county. Otherwise the
consulate would not have given me the visas. Conditions were one had to be married, and own a
house. Truly I enjoyed being married to a musician; he played the violin and I danced tango and
Csardas in weekends.
I have been teaching English in Sighet, Tisa, and Giulesti, as well as Camara for another 10 years.
Conditions were absolutely horrific; no heating in schools, no teaching material, and constant
harassment from colleagues of being informed on.
Lazín, p. 29
I finally decided to leave Romania, when an execution squad shot Ceausescu in December 26,
1989 for Christmas. Nice gift to the deeply distrusting and hurt Romanian people.
When the regime changed in 1990, I was free to get a passport, free to organize Conferences and
Seminars at the University of Babes-Bolyai, in the heart of Transylvania.
I was mostly writing on destatification and privatization of Romanian companies. 51% of

MARA, the textiles company I focused on and researched was finally sold to the Germans.
The opening up of Romania to the world, and foreign investment has finally begun.
It was on faithful and rainy day in September 17th, in Sighet. Shortly after, I have met American
professors from UCLA, who were doing a study on the effects of the Cold War in post-socialist
countries. My observations were very valuable to Dr Wilkie who then asked me to guide the
academic group through Eastern Europe. They were traveling in a German Opel (a U.S. made
car). I took them to the Museum of my friend, D-ra Mihaly de Apsa, in my hometown, Sighet.
She was the last descendant of a fine lineage of Romanian revolutionaries fighting for the
unification of Romania in 1918; Mihaly de Apsa. James was enchanted to have met her, alive in
her pretty museum of “Pasoptisti.”
Together, we went to the Merry Cemetery, and it was dusk by the time Dr James Wilkie from the
University of Los Angeles, California, arrived in Sighet at the Marmatia Hotel. His book was
about cycles of statism in Socialist countries. He has written over 30 books on economic
development in Mexico and Latin America.
I’ll start by explaining the places I went in 1991, on one of the most beautiful part of Romania,
through Pasul Prislop. We went Around Romania, visited the monasteries of Moldova, C-lung
Moldovenesc, Suceava, Sucevita and Agapia monasteries. Then we went to Lacul Rosu. We took
the scenic road to Cluj Napoca, where I was trying to get the plane in order to fly out to Paris, in
France. I had all the visas. But there was no flight. No airport and I was not going to go through
Bucharest, but via HUNGARY.
Nobody took credit cards, so Jim had to take out a lot of cash, so that we can travel safely.
Lazín, p. 30
Seeing how The Professor cared about me and my destiny, I took the decision to leave Romania
for good with Jim Wilkie.
James Wilkie, decided to hire me as a guide through 2 countries.
He said simply and charmingly : “call me Jim”. We finally left for Budapest after the airport visit
in Cluj Napoca.
We got through Budapest, finally, and then got out towards Austria and Germany.
Our colleague, Dr James Platler was worried that I was a spy, as we received special private
rooms, and great Hotel deals, plus good lunches at the Monastery, where I was a good friend with
Mother Superior.
I was just happy to be a guide in many countries.
Communist Party, which everyone had to join--except for me because with my knowledge, I was
considered a security risk!
Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my
rural life of the North of Romania, recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and passed
down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had used that
lore to help them survive for centuries.
Further, much of my research conducted among the outlying farmers, delved deeply into
Transylvania Folklore, which prepared me well to understand Communist Party Lore.
Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project had further prepared me,
unknowingly, for my future with Jim Wilkie.
Lazín, p. 30
Once I had been admitted to the Babes Boljay University, which was called “the heart and brain
of Transylvania,” I also further expanded and deepened deep studies in American language and
literature. Also, I studied Romanian language and literature in the Department of Philology.
The Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.
Not one professor asked us,
“What do each of you really think of all this Ceausescu propaganda of decrees harming the
educational process?”
When I reached the age of 22 in1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors,

Party.
Lazín, p. 31
fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of
capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced
with epithets.
Even as an English major, I not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering one’s
punishable for up to 5 years in prison. Doctors caught performing it ended up in jail, and so did
the pregnant women. Over 10.000 women died trying to perform abortions on themselves, or
botched it, not knowing how to escape having children that they had no means to raise in a
country rife with complete hunger.
Even today, Romania has the highest rate of orphans in the whole world.
Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990.
comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well, after 25 years, not
much has changed in poor Romania.
With Ceausescu finally gone, after 40 years of dictatorship, in 1990 I was able to secure a
passport in order to ready myself to leave Romania by gaining visas for Germany and France. I
had a lovely family in Bordeaux, namely Saint-Denise-de-Pile, who invited me over to
Bordeaux, the Godrie family, so I pursued this wonderful opportunity, and decided to visit them
in Saint-Denis-De-Pile. I spoke impeccable French. I corresponded for years with Muguette
Godrie, my beloved friend who sponsored my stay in France.
Meanwhile, the question remained, how to get there by land without a visa to Austria— as my
isolated region of Transylvania had no air connection to the outside world til late in 1990.
Lazín, p. 32
I succeeded to finally extract myself from that virtual prison, and we had to do it by car. Pumped
up and having all the visas in my passport, I took off with Jim on September 16, 1990 in an Opel,
which remains my favorite car to this day. They ended manufacturing of the Opel in 1990.
THE INFLUENCE OF RECENT ROMANIAN HISTORY
In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania, with
constant change in the emerging political map always have left “citizens” always lost about who
was really in charge.
Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the Dacia Kingdom between 82 BC until the Roman
conquest in 106 AD. The capital of Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so that a new as capital
would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 AD, by which time the Romans
felt so hated that it behooved them to withdraw back to Rome.
During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to later
become part of the Kingdom of Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of
Transylvania. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Principality became an Ottoman
Empire vassal state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After 1711 Transylvania
was consolidated solely into the Hapsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were replaced with
Habsburg imperial governors. After 1867, Transylvania ceased to have separate status and was
incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.viii After
World War I, Transylvania reverted in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940 Northern
Lazín, p. 33
Transylvania again became governed by Hungary and then Germany, but Romanian queen Maria
successfully reclaimed it after the end of World War II.
The year 1940 was important for Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany
(1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated” to become
the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold War was beginning to
freeze the Iron Curtain into place.
At the end of World War II while the USSR and its Red Army were the occupying powers in all
Romania, in 1947 Romania forcibly and ironically became a “People’s Republic” (1947–1989),
after the rise of the Iron Curtain.
Secretary General of the Communist Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the
second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher Romanian
“Gulag” than known in the USSR.
For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of Transylvania, nor did I
yet realize that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania, even if by the “skin of my teeth.”
For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a far-away place, where most people know the
werewolves and vampires have been “seen” to in the imagination of Transylvanians, whose
beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to have a rational
conversation with most the Transylvanian folk on any subject without recourse to try to
understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them.
The population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians.
These languages are still being spoken in Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always
liked and loved the Romanian language, I decided to become a Professor of Romanian Language
and Literature, as well as American Language and Civilization.
MY BACKDROP TO THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU
I later told Jim how I had been admitted in 1982 to the Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca
at the heart of Transylvania, I focused especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found
that the professors, who were under the control of sweaty-stinking Securitate officers, had to
read
Lazín, p. 34
dozens of new Decrees issued every day as they sought to control every one of our daily actions—
all in the name of protecting the Ceausescu government—which was selling the country’s food
supplies to Russia in order to pay down Roman’s official debt with exports. Those Securitate
officers ate well and ominously watched us virtually starve. They said, be calm, like your parents
in the face of their starvation.
Thus, I furiously called out in my classes that our very existence was being compromised by
Ceausescu's abandonment of the population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said,
“work, work, and work.”
To protect myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national
paradise.” But when I encouraged my classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the
wooden language of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under the heavy scrutiny of university
authorities, who were furious that I trying to expose the fact that all classes had been organized to
befuddle the student body into confused submission. Indeed, each professor had favorite students
to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle any competing analysis—the university lived
under nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual and real) by the Securitate officers, and
open bribery by the professors--choose your garden variety.
Knowing My Real Value and Having a Spine
By 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act because Ceausescu did not want
anyone (especially women of child-bearing age) to escape his plan to building his “ideal socialist
industries” on farms and ranches as well as in the cities. In June I made my way to the border of
Yugoslavia and paid a smuggler to evade the Romanian security forces that were preventing the
“nations
workers” from escaping. The smuggler, who took me across the border, turned out to be working
for Romanian Border Police. Thus, soon after crossing into Yugoslavia, he turned his wagon
around and I was again in Romania. When I realized what had happened, it was too late. I had
Lazín, p. 35
been “sold” to Ceausescu’s minions for a wagonload of salt and 20 Liters of gasoline. Thousands
were returned for this kind of draconian exchange.
That failed escape from Romania led me to a 10-month prison sentence in Timisoara Prison,
wherein the block cells were maintained so cold (supposedly to eliminate bacteria and viruses)
that it made all of us inmates sick with the cold and the flu.
Bed blankets in the were less warming than one Kleenex tissue. Moreover, there were no pillows,
and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a “back-breaker.” The lights were on 24 hours a
day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every hour one was awakened to be
counted for, and sneaking up on people, under the guise of watching out for suicides. But
everyone could be clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to sleep-deprive inmates.
There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off the food budget to siphon money to
themselves while serving inmates only baby carrots and spicy beans.
Almost every family in Romanian civil society had at least one member who had been imprisoned
for trying to open the political system by denouncing the Ceausescu dictatorship. These inmates
were openly called “Political Prisoners,” and I was one of them.
Political Prisoners were not permitted to work outside the prison walls in the fields because our
crime had been the political decision to repudiate Ceausescu’s “fantastic system.”
Lazín, p. 36
OUT OF PRISON IN 1987 TO FIND ROMANIA FACING DISASTER And FAMINE
“CHANGE IN THE AIR”
Once free in May 1987, I could return to my University to finally complete my M.A. in 1990.
Further in 1987, at the age of 24, I met the family patriarch Nicolae Pipas,ix who directed for the
Communist government the walled Regional Art Museum in a quiet part of Sighet. When he
realized that I was a Professor of the English and Romania Languages, and one of the few
university’s highly educated persons in the region, I began to serve as interpreter/guide to visiting
foreign Ambassadors permitted to travel in Romania. They wanted to see the Museum with its
magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, numismatics, and rare historical pottery and coins.
Thus, I soon found myself interpreting and translating for visiting English-Speaking Ambassadors
from many countries who wished to know Transylvania, especially my village Sighet and its
Merry Cemetery famous worldwide for it tombstones in the form of wood sculpture of the
butcher, the baker, candlestick maker, and all professions.
Although my first languages were Romanian and Hungarian, I could also translate into French
and Italian. Indeed, at that time I was teaching Latin in the Rural School System of my
Maramures Province.
Lazín, p. 37
By 1989, Ceausescu realized that his end was near, and he sought to gain support by pardoning
his political prisoners (such as myself) who had tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the
country. Hence, university students and some labor unions joined forces and quite quickly after
the fall of the Berlin Wall forced Ceausescu and his draconian wife Elena to flee. They were
caught and executed on Christmas Day, 1989, by the military that at the last moment joined the
Revolution.
‘As my friends and I (along with most of the population) cheered the fall of the failed, rotten
Romanian “dictatorship of the proletariat,” my dear mother acted differently. She was so confused
by the
propaganda of the only “leader” she knew much about that she wept for Ceausescu, not fully
realizing that he was the one who had wrongly had be arrested and put me in prison.
With Ceausescu gone, in 1990 I was able to secure a passport to ready myself to leave Romania
by gaining visas for Germany and France. The question remained, how to get there by land
without a visa to Austria—my region had no air connection to the outside world.
MY FATEFUL 1991 MEETING IN SIGHET WITH JIM WILKIE
Almost age 27 in 1991, I was in the right place at the right time when UCLA Professor Jim
Wilkie arrived in Sighet September 17th, 1990, together with Professor James Platler (his friend and
driver). They came as part of their trip to assess the impact of the 1989 Fall of Iron Curtain--
which had imprisoned all Romanians and made it a crime to try to escape from Romania. The two
Americans had already visited “East” Germany, Czechia,x and Slovakia (soon to break their
union, each becoming independent), and Poland, where English speakers could provide guidance.
In Romania the UCLA Team found itself at a loss as few of the people who they encountered
could speak English and none of them could analyze or articulate how the System of Government
and society functioned before and after 1989.
Lazín, p. 38
When we met, Jim immediately contractedxi with me to advise them as well as guide them
through Eastern Europe. They were pleased to hear my outline of Transylvanian and Romanian
history (see above), with which I explained how constant national boundary change meant that
Transylvanians and Romanians were never able to develop either honest civil government or
active civic society. Little did I know that the concepts of “Civic” and “Civil” Society were of
utmost importance to Jim? As I would find out later, Jim and I had been conducting compatible
research for years and would lead me to my Ph.D Dissertation, and two books written with Jim.
xii
All these works distinguish between the concepts of Civil Society (which represents national
and local governmental activity) and Civic Society (which involves active private citizens who
organize non-governmental initiatives to develop model projects
beyond the ability of official bureaucrats to even comprehend, including the influence needed to
monitor and expose the failures and successes of governmental activity).
But before we left in September 18, in 1991, to visit Hungary, I had to find a substitute for my new
class teaching American English and History in Sighet—I left a friend, Johnny Popescu, to
become my permanent substitute. Only then could our newly expanded Team set off under my
guidance.
Thus, we set out on that September 18th to visit one of the most socially and economically
interesting and beautiful parts of Romania by going up thought the green forested Carpathian
Mountains via the beautiful Prislop Pass, stopping to visit small farming families in their folkloric
clothing of which they were justifiably proud to wear on a daily basis. Farther east in Romania,
on the scenic roads, we visited the monasteries of Moldova, the town of Cimpulung
Moldovenesc, Suceava, and then the Monasteries in Sucevita and Agapia. The gorgeous forested
mountain road eventually led to Lacul Rosu and the lake country. Then we took the long scenic
mountain road
to Cluj Napoca to visit my prestigious University.
As I briefed Jim about Romania, he was briefing me about factors in comparing national
economies. For example, he told me about how he had reunited in Prague on September 15th with
Richard Beesen, his former UCLA student and friend, to hear about his role in London as
Manager of Deutsche Bank’s New Accounts in Russia and Eastern Europe. Richard had become
famous for inviting Banking Officials and national Treasury Ministries to deposit their financial
reserves on deposit in his bank in London. But because his clients did not understand anything
about “interest payments” on deposited funds, they did not ask for nor did they gain any interest
Lazín, p. 39
payments. Also, because most Western Banks were not sure that these new “capitalists” could be
“fully trusted” for correct management of their deposits, his Deutsche Bank collected large fees
(and paid no interest to keep the Eastern Europe “bank reserves safe.” This was all very eye
opening for me.
Jim and I had realized early on that we had a close affinity as we analyzed the situation of
Romania, and he said, “Call me Jim.” (In contrast I called Professor James Platler, or “JP.” As I
am going to call him from now on.)
As we traveled to observe the situation of the people in different parts of the country, Jim and I
formed a deep bond of observing and analyzing; thus both of us realized this brief interlude had to
continue for the long term in order to achieve our goals.
NEXT STOPS, BUDAPEST, SALZBURG, MUNICH,
BORDEAUX (FOR ME), AND LOS ANGELES (FOR JIM)
As a Romanian, I had the right to enter Hungary, and we did so bypassing the miles of vehicles
waiting to cross the border for the long drive to Budapest. There Prof. James Platler finally
relaxed after the long drives and often poor hotels and monasteries —he said that he finally found
unbroken civilization again. I was astounded to hear that. I made everything possible for them to
have the best lodging and food in Moldova and Maramures county. Obviously, my friends had
different standards than us, Romanians.
Once we arrived in Budapest, Professor James Platler, who had told Jim privately that from
the outset of our trip that he thought that I was a “Spy” (planted on us by the Romanian
Securitate to monitor our many “foreign” inquiries during our travel through Romania’s north
country), announced that his concern about me had vanished as we realized the extent of my
knowledge and research abilities. In his mind, I had to be a Spy because I had obtained access to
special private dining rooms and quarter in some fine hotels, as well as invitations for wonderful
lunches at some Monasteries, where miraculously I made immediate friends with each Mother
Superior.
Lazín, p. 40
But by the time we reached Budapest, he realized that at my University I had learned the Elite
skills needed to survive safely and comfortably in Eastern Europe.
My problem was to enter Austria, where I had no visa. But Jim passed his UCLA business card
through to the Consul General of Austria in Budapest, and quickly we found ourselves whisked
from the back of the long line to the front and right into a meeting with the Consul General
himself. He was pleased to hear about the research of our UCLA Team, but said that I did have a
visa. Jim then told them that I only needed a three-day transit visa to reach Germany, the visa for
which he could see in my passport.
With entry to Austria solved, we were on the road to the Hotel Kobentzl and Graz, which
overlook Salzburg, all the way analyzing the comparative economic and social situations of
Austria, Hungary, and Romania.
We spent most of our time down the mountain from Kobenzl to the valley, before returning to our
sweeping Hotel view of Salzburg City. Meanwhile I was deepening my questions about capital is
leveraged to undertake big private projects. As we took photos over from on high looking down
on the many bridges of Salzburg and Jim was explaining how the developed world operated by
using finances, credit, and interest to help economies grow.
Finally, we left Salzburg to enter Germany and Munich, where our quick look into Oktoberfest
found us among nasty drunken louts each of whom seemingly had hand four hands: one to chug-
a-lug beer; one to smoke foul smelling cigarettes; one to quaff horrible-bleeding-raw sausages;
and one to punch someone in the face. From what we saw, Oktoberfest was a place for nasty
males seeking to “get smashed on beer” and then smash another male to break his nose. Thus, we
fled for our lives as the brutes began to threaten anyone who looked at them.
Then on September 30th, I took the plane from Munich to Paris to take a bus to Bordeaux to meet
the French family, the daughter of which, in her visit in 1990 to the Museum in Sighet, had
invited me to obtain a French visa and move to stay with her on the lovely family farm outside
Bordeaux.
Lazín, p. 41
Jim (and JP) also left the same day for Jim to arrive in time to go from the airplane to open and
begin teaching his Fall Quarter class at UCLA. But he promised to call daily and return to join me
again in ten weeks.
In the meantime, I made a trip to Paris to request political asylum in France, but a grey-faced
judge rejected my request, saying that the petitioner must file with the help of a lawyer.
To complicate matters in Bordeaux, the French Security Agent there was investigating me, a lone
woman, as a possible spy sent by Romania to “monitor activities at the Port of Bordeaux. When
he told that, if I pleased him in unmentionable ways, he would not deport me to Romania but
arrange my legal status in France so that I could live him. I immediately told Jim on his next
telephone call.
To resolve the above problem, Jim called his Paris friend Gérard Chaliand, a former visiting
professor at UCLA, whose real job involved traveling the world for French Security to report on
his professorial travels that took him to all continents. Gérard immediately called French Security
to report on the illegal approach to me by their Agent in Bordeaux. That same day the Agent
came to apologize profusely to me in the best manner that he could muster in his pitiful condition.
He begged me not to have him fired for his proposition to me. I could see him looking at me in
truly puzzled way that implicitly said: “Who are you? How did I make such a grave mistake in
deciding that you, a lone Romanian woman, could not have any power to reach my bosses in
Paris?” I took pity on him and told him that if he minded manners and watched from affair to be
sure that I was always safe, he would not be fired.
JIM RETURNS TO EUROPE IN DECEMBER, 1991:
HIS PLAN FOR ADVISING EASTERN EUROPEAN CIVIC SOCIETY ABOUT HOW TO
GAIN GRANTS FROM U.S. FOUNDATIONS (NPPOs),xiii WHICH HOLD THE WORLD’S
LARGEST POOL OF NGO DEVELOPMENT FUNDS
Lazín, p. 42
Even though it was December 11, 1991, when Jim returned, France was in the midst what some
in America call an “Indian Fall,” warm with colorful fall leaves still on the trees. It was a
beautifully bright “fall day” when we left Bordeaux the next day to spend some days visiting the
Loire River with its many castles and incredible views.
Even during our photography of the Loire region, Jim began to outline his New Plan (now our
plan) to wit: PROFMEX Plan to Help Eastern European “Foundations.”
Therefore, some Romanian and Mexican NGOs become legally eligible to gain grants
from U.S. Tax Exempt Foundations following our advice on how to do it, best practices we could
teach other leaders about: and so The U.S. Model for Philanthropy was born.
“The U.S.-Mexico Model for Philanthropy.”
Indeed, Jim told me that recently when he had been in Mexico City, he received an invitation to
meet with Manuel Alonso Muñoz, Executive Director of Mexico’s National Lottery,xiv who, when
he heard about Jim’s U.S.-Mexico Model, invited him to meet at the Lottery’s historically famous
ornate building. After an extended briefing by Jim, Manuel told him that he had already called his
own good friend Ronald G. Hellman, Professor of Sociology in the Graduate School at the City
University of New York, to ask him for an evaluation of Jim and his Mexico-U.S. Model for
Philanthropy. Ironically, it was only then when he realized that Ron was (and is today) Jim’s
PROFMEX Vice-President for Strategic Planning. With that news and Jim’s stellar briefing, Lic.
Alonso asked if the Lottery could make a series of generous grants to PROFMEX in order to help
fund the expansion of Jim’s Model to Eastern Europe,xv putting Mexico into an innovative new
light.
Mexico And The World, I got the idea! Evrika, so the brilliant idea to bring together experts from
all the world to Mexico, to have more than a debate, a Conference, was born. The Conference I
Lazín, p. 43
was always dreaming about was beginning to shape up, and soon things all lined up for us to
organize a bi-lateral Conference in Morelia, the State of Michoacán. The Governor was more than
happy to receive us in Michoacán. So we worked together with Manuel Alonso to get people
down there, in Mexico City. The hardest part was to get the financing for it.
Manuel Alonso was appreciative of the fact that Jim, while serving as Consultant to the U.S.
Council on Foundations, had become involved since 1990 with his Model for helping Mexican
Foundations (including, for example, charities, human rights organizations, hospitals, universities,
biospheres, etc.) to help them re-write their constitution and by-laws to be compatible with the
U.S. tax requirement that they mirror U.S. Not-for-Private Profit Organizations (NPPOs).
The question of “mirroring” involved Jim’s explanation that:
As NPPOs, U.S. Foundations are legally responsible for controlling expenditure of funds granted
to organizations that do not mirror the U.S. foundations do not want to be involved in the day-to-
day activities of its grantees. Indeed, “they want to transfer expenditure responsibility” (including
misuse or illegal use of grant funds) to the recipient foundation to which they grant funds but can
only do so if the grant recipient organization is deemed to have an “equivalent” legal structure to
that of the U.S. donor foundation.
Here is the background, according to Jim: xvi “In order to facilitate the U.S. philanthropic activity
needed during the 1970s and 1980s to help speed world development, the U.S. Secretary of
Treasury and the IRS formulated provisions that resulted in changing and/or interpreting the
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) to freely permit U.S. foundations to grant funds abroad, if they meet
the following special proviso:
U.S. NPPOs can themselves make a legal “determination” that the foreign organization receiving
the U.S. grant be “determined” to be “equivalent” to an NPPO described in Section 501(c)(3)xvii
of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.”
Further, Jim pointed out that, “while this proviso has worked well for big U.S. grant-
making foundations that place costly offices and staff around the world (such as Rockefeller and
Ford Foundations), it has worked less well for foundations that have had to send their lawyers to
meet with their legal counterparts in prospective ‘equivalent organizations, the legal cost of
making such a determination often reaching $25,000 [or, by 2016, much, much more] for each
new organization to receive funds from the U.S. NPPO. If that determination is favorable, the
Lazín, p. 44
U.S. NPPO can transfer funds to the equivalent organization, just as it can to any other approved
U.S. NPPO, and along with the transfer of funds to the recipient organization goes the transfer of
responsibility over how the funds are spent.”
Transfer of ‘Expenditure Responsibility’ from the
U.S. Donor NPPO to the Foreign Recipient NPPO.
The ability of U.S. NPPOs to avoid costly expenditure responsibility, as Jim told, is one of the
factors that have helped make American grant-making foundations so important in the world.
Thus, U.S. NPPOs have been enabled to avoid becoming ensnarled in accounting processes and
audits, which are better done by the foreign organization that receives and administers the U.S.
NPPO grant of funds.
In this manner, said Jim, the U.S. NPPO is free to focus its energy on evaluating the substance of
its grant programs. The ability of grant-making foundations to transfer Expenditure Responsibility
to other NPPOs is the main reason that they generally prefer (and require) that their funds be
granted only to approved organizations rather than to individuals or to non-approved
organizations.
The above views, Jim said, do not mean that U.S. NPPOs are unable to grant funds to an
organization that is not equivalent to a U.S. NPPO (or make grants to individual scholars, artists,
or writers either at home or abroad), but to do so adds a complication to the grant-making process.
Rather than passing on the Expenditure Responsibility (as the U.S. NPPO does when it makes
grants to another NPPO or U.S. equivalent), the Expenditure Responsibility remains with the
donor NPPO when it makes a grant to an organization that is not an NPPO (or its U.S. equivalent)
or to an individual.
In the unlikely case where the donor NPPO retains Expenditure Responsibility, then, Jim
told me in my interview with him on September 17, 1991, the donor foundation has to concern
itself with costly financial oversight involved, which may problematic whether of in or outside the
USA.
Lazín, p. 45
ON TO PARIS AND THE WORLD TO MEET WITH NPPO LEADERS ABOUT

NEW FOUNDATIONS
Jim and I arrived in Paris on December 15, 1991, to meet with Jim’s contacts at the
American Embassy, who heard about our research and suggested that Jim meet also with their
counterparts at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. They agreed to help begin to our new Plan to
expand to Eastern Europe and Russia Jim’s successful Model for Tax-Free Flow of Nonprofit
Funds, the example being what he negotiated (with the U.S. Council on Foundations and the U.S.
and Mexican Treasury Departments), as analyzed above.
It is important for me to say here that George Soros and his decentralized donations to his 41
semi-autonomous “national foundations”xviii (exemplified in Romania, Hungary, and Russia) have
been built following the IRS proviso and regulations discussed above. Also, Soros’ “National
Foundations” require that national Government charter the independent role as NGOs.
In contrast, the flowering of thousands of small independent “Foundations” in Eastern

Europe since 1989 has grown from groups looking for funds from the many U.S. Foundations
that do not have the Soros/New York link with its Foundations in many nations, all of which
operate in Soros’ closed loop. Few of these new Foundations have the Soros knowledge and
financial resources to set up the By-Laws and Legal Status needed for the thousands of
Foundations desiring to tap into funding by the U.S. Foundations.xix However, since 2013, Soros’
has organized an office to work with shared Global Funds (for food, migration, etc.) outside the
non- Soros frameworks to help poor areas and countries to stave off crises. Recently, in 2013,
George Soros has been discredited by the Hungarian PM, Orban who has aggressively made anti-
Soros advertisement on buses in Hungary, claiming that the Hungarian American wanted Arabs,
and
Lazín, p. 46
Palestinians to “invade” Hungary. The anti-Soros rhetoric has become increasingly nationalistic,
and this is what FIDESZ, the ruling party is preaching
Before we left Paris on December 19, 1991, we met with Gérard Chaliand to personally thank
him for having made the Bordeaux Security agent reexamine his whole approach to his life.
Further, with Gérard, we worked out a plan to arrange for me to become a U.S. resident and
obtain U.S. citizenship nine years after my arrival in Los Angeles, October 1992. He
recommended that my case by handled in In Los Angeles by one of America’s most
knowledgeable and effective Migration Attorneys—Cynthia Juárez Lange, today Managing
Partner, Northern California, for the Fragomen Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP Legal Office
located in San Francisco. Cynthia is herself an academic and personable genius.
Meanwhile in my travels with Jim in December 1991 and from March to June 1992 we met
NPPO leaders in the European Union to better understand how foundations work under unique
laws in each county rather than in any rational manner for the whole EU, we went to Marseilles,
Nice, Villfranche-sur-Mer, Cap-Ferrat, Monaco, La Rochelle, Andorra, Sevilla, Madrid, Trujillo,
El Escorial, Avila (a magnificent fortress city), and Segovia.
On September 3. 1992, we arrived at the U.S. Consulate in Paris, where the U.S Consulate in
Mexico had arranged with Jim for my U.S. eligibility for residence to be issued. Also, the
Mexican Consulate General in Paris issued me my residence papers to enter and leave Mexico
freely, as arranged by Jim with the Mexican Consular Head Office in Mexico City.
Before we left Europe for the USA in October 1991, we returned to Sighet on September 7, 1992,
for meetings with Romanian Civic Activists. (Thus, I finally returned to Sighet after having
“escaped” with Jim to France in December 1991).
From March to June 1993, we met with NPPO leaders in Budapest, Sighet, and Varna (Bulgaria),
Bucharest, and St. Petersburg.
In Moscow (June 21-14, 1993), Jim appointed Professor Boris Koval (Director of the Latin
American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), to be PROFMEX Representative in
Russia. Koval had invited us to Moscow and introduced us to his own Security Chief to be our
translator and guide. This Security Chief was a fascinating person who had been former head of
the KGB Office in Iraq, 1979-1989.
Lazín, p. 47
Jim, who always wore his Mexican guayabera shirt with or without a suit, was seen to be
“authentically Mexican” in our meetings and discussions about NPPOs.
Some of our interviews focused on the successes of Soros Open Society Foundation--Russia
(1987-2002). Other meetings with civic society followed as we learn the details about the
problems of the Soros
Foundations--Russia since 2003, when, under reactionary Government pressure, he was phasing
out of operation active programs. According to the Soros Foundation—Russia:xx
“When on November 30, 2015, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office classified the Soros Open
Society Foundation as an “undesirable” organization, it closed the possibility of Russian
individuals and institutions from having anything to do with any Soros initiative or programs…
[Because it constituted] a threat to the foundations of Russia’s Constitutional order and national
security….
“Prosecutors [then] launched a probe into Soros Foundation
activities….xxi [and in July 2015], after Russian senators approved
the so-called “patriotic stop-list” of 12 groups that required
immediate attention over their supposed anti-Russian activities, [the
following U.S. organizations] realized that they would soon be
banned in Russia: [the U.S.] National Endowment for Democracy; the
International Republican Institute; the National Democratic
Institute; the MacArthur Foundation, and Freedom House. Now in
2017, all Eastern European countries want Soros foundations closed

Lazín, p. 48
in their countries, especially the Hungarian PM, Orban Viktor, who
went so far as to describe him as a dangerous politician mixing in his
domestic “dictatorial” affairs.
The American hedge-funds mogul George Soros issued from London the following Press
Release on November 30, 2015: xxii
“Contrary to the Russian prosecutor’s allegations, the Open Society Foundations have, for more
than a quarter-century, helped to strengthen the rule of law in Russia and protect the rights of all.
In the past, Russian officials and citizens have welcomed our efforts, and we regret the changes
that have led the government to reject our support to Russian civil society and ignore the
aspirations of the Russian people.
“Since 1987, Open Society has provided support to countless individuals and civil society
organizations, including in the fields of science, education, and public health. Open Society has
helped finance a network of internet centers in 33 universities around the country, helped Russian
scholars to travel and study abroad, developed curricula for early childhood education, and
created a network of contemporary art centers that are still in operation.
“This record speaks for itself. We are honored to have worked alongside pioneering citizens,
educators, and civil society organizations that embody Russian creativity, commitment, and hope.
“We are confident that this move is a temporary aberration; the aspirations of the Russian people
for a better future cannot be suppressed and will ultimately succeed,” said George Soros, founder
and chairman of the Open Society Foundations.) Despite all efforts made by Soros and his
organizations, he has been banned from Russia.
“Once with the reset of the Cold War, in 2012, when Putin was reelected as Russia’s President,
Putin’s first movement was to ban all Soros organizations which were impeding his expansion
onto Crimea.”
Back in Mexico City for the 1994 PROFMEX Event featuring Eastern Europeans interested in
the U.S.-Mexico Model for NPPOs, we convened, July 28-29, for our meeting on “Development
of Mexico as seen from the World,” Co-sponsored by UCLA and Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de
Ciencia y Tecnología.
Lazín, p. 49
This Conference was held at Mexico City’s María Isabel Sheraton, with 70 participants from
Mexico and the United States, and which I co-organized with Jim
The following invitees from Eastern Europe came from
Hungary Zoltan Karpati, Professor of Sociology
Romania Mihai Coman, Babes-Bolyai University Dean
Roman Romulus, Romania’s Consul General in Mexico
Alexandru Lazín, PROFMEX-- England and Romania
Lia Stan, Investor from Bristol, England.
Highlights of the event came frequently as we turned our gaze from Salón A with his all-
window view from the top floor to discuss the anti-government protest marches up and down
Reforma Avenue past the Angel Monument below.
Further, our group enjoyed the invitation of Mexico’s Attorney General, Jorge Madrazo
Cuéllar to visit him at his headquarters where we personally discussed and raised questions about
the street blockages of political protest in front of our María Isabel Sheraton Hotel.
In December 1997, we continued to invite world scholars especially interested in economic

matters, as well as in the U.S.-Mexico NPPO Model to participate with us at the:
IX PROFMEX-ANUIES Conference
Hosted by Governor Víctor Manuel Tinoco Rubí
Morelia, Michoacán, México
México y el Mundo, Or Mexico and the World, in December 8-13, 1997
With hundreds of participants and Attendees from all continents,
Special Guests were invited from Russia: Boris Koval, who recalled with excitement
the visit of Jim and I to Moscow in June 1993.

Lazín, p. 50
From China: Sengen
Zhang Hongzhu Huang
Korea: Kap-Young Jeong
Japan: Soichi Shinohara
Osamu Nishimura
Yasuoki Takagi
Indonesia: Lepi T. Tarmidi
Argentina: Eugenio O. Valenciano
Bolivia: Antonio J. Cisneros
---------
Jim and I have been involved with many academic activities, but those are beyond the scope of
my analysis here of our role in extending PROFMEX around the globe, especially to Europe and
Russia.
My courses at UCLA taken under Jim and Professors Carlos Alberto Torres, Richard Weiss,
and Ivan T. Berend led me to my M.A. in History and Latin American Studies (1996) at
University of California, Los Angeles.
Decidedly, I took my Ph.D. in History (2001) at UCLA, and completed also my Post-
Doctoral Research in the Education and Information Department which took me 8 more years in
Los Angeles, at UCLA. I completed this Fellowship in 2017.
Here is title of my first book’s author: http://www.DecentralizedGlobalization.com Published in

2017, March 10.
Lazín, p. 51
The second book, La globalización se descentraliza:Libre mercado, fundaciones, sociedad cívica

y gobierno civil en las regiones del mundo (2007) Olga Magdalena Lazín. With a Prologue by
James W. Wilkie.
My third book, co-authored with James W. Wilkie, contains images that reflect my travels
with Jim:
La globalización se amplia (2011), or Globalization Amplifies, Olga Magdalena Lazín & James
W., Preface de Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda, was published by UCLA, in 2011 in Spanish.
The 4th book is: Dr Olga’s American Dream Come True, 2017, can be ordered on Amazon.
All books are available in digital and paperback format. All my books can be read on all devices:
tablet, IPhone, computer, and Kindle.
These books, including Decentralized Globalization show how U.S. Tax Exempt Organization
(TEO) law has evolved to become the most important in the world owing to its flexibility. Where
the laws of most countries require prior legal authorization to launch in a new direction, the
United States TEO law recognizes no such limit.
Thus, U.S. TEO law, unlike most other countries, is never trying to make legal what is already
underway and working in the world. For the USA and now Mexico, both Treasury Ministries
together have signed the first collaborative agreement that stands as the blueprint for global
NPPOs.
With Professor Jim Wilkie, I know that much researching and writing awaits us in our projects
around the world…
Lazín, p. 52
Olga and Jim, Guadalajara, Mexico, International Airport, December 7, 2016 @olgalazin
Later on, Richard Beeson, who headed up Deutsche bank, London office, where he represented
all EE countries, had convinced EE countries Central banks to deposit their golden cash at
Deutsche Bank, London office. He reunited with JW in Prague, and Cracow, where the horrible
polluted air blinded him.
We even spent most of our time down Salzburg city, taking pictures, and JW was teaching me
economics, and how the world of development worked: finances, credit, interest.
We continued our journey to Munich, where we celebrated Oktoberfest with the locals in
Frankfurt.
Next, I took the plane to Paris, from Munich, to fly out to Bordeaux to meet the family, which
invited me to France. Jim had to go back to Los Angeles to teach Fall Quarter, as always. He
promised he would return for me soon.
After ten weeks in Bordeaux, Jim came to visit me.
We met in Paris, and I was refused asylum in France. The national security Bureau headed by a
Gris guy (security officer) was asking me weekly why was I keeping in touch with “The
American”, I quote.
Finally, Jim returned for me. It was a very wonderful fall, I Bordeaux, so we drove to see all the
castles along the Loire River.
The 1st trip was to and along the river of LOIRE; we left in September, and came back in
December. Then we went to Paris, and visited the Versailles, Champs Elysee, the Montmartre,
and Montparnasse. We had everything to ourselves, and then we went to Marseille, listening to
the Pastorales, and day-dreaming through the beautiful green lands of France.
Lazín, p. 53
In Marseille we stayed at the Sofitel, JW was overlooking the Bay, into the icy cold town. And we
went to the COTE Azure. We stayed at Hotel Welcome. Then rode over the serpentined Cornish
roads, overlooking the Mediterranean, Cap Ferrat, and Monaco. Then JW had to fly out to teach
again, and I flew back to Bordeaux, where I took numerous courses in European Union
Regulations for the environment, and sustainability.
In Cancún, at the tiny Iguana conservationist group
Life In Bordeaux France, 1991
Life with the nuns in Bordeaux, France, in the city of Red Wines, was finally very healing and I
was in excellent health. The mother superior took me to Toulouse Lautrec’s castle, and we swam
in the Atlantic Ocean. I cooked for myself and studied Elitelore and Folklore at University De
Michelle de Montaigne, one block away from my Doctrine Chrétien.
Lazín, p. 54
I was feeling very safe with the Nuns. Jim was calling me daily, checking up on me and my
health. Then I flew to meet Jim in NICE, in 1992.
It was now another beautiful stay at WELCOME hotel overlooking the ocean, in a stupendous
pictorial town called Beaulieu sur Mer. At the Welcome Hotel, right across from the ocean scene,
I saw the boats coming up and down to the port.
Jim came back 10 weeks later. The second time we travelled to Carcassonne, a fortified city,
through Andorra (a gambling center, in the Pyrenees’). The Principality of Andorra was rich and
ostentatious with baroque buildings. And La Rochelle, a beautiful Bay, nested in the mountains.
Then entered into Spain, toward Madrid, and stayed at Hotel Paris for a week, in the center of
Madrid.
Here we enjoyed eating the charales in the main plaza. Best snack I ever had in Spain, tiny
delicious fish would make us feel satiety in a few minutes. We found charales in Morelia later in
1995.
We visited stupendous Toledo, the town of knives, which we left behind in late September, and
then headed to the town of Trujillo. In Trujillo we went and took pictures while walking on the
red roofs of houses, perfectly lined up for me to walk. I took great that I was free and nobody
minded my business. Jim and I, we were only taking care of one another.
We went up to the Devil’s Throat (a town deep in a canyon, tucked into the mountains where a
monastery is nested) to continue up in the mountains, and then went down to a walled town of
Avila, to Trujillo, and continued to Madrid. We stayed at Paris Hotel in the heart of the capital,
and listened to the powerful bells of the Catholic church in front of us. The sounds of the Church
bell were strong, and it reverberated in my vertebrae.
Then we headed toward El Escorial, the monastery, and then JW flew out of Madrid. I took the
plane to France, and in Bordeaux I joined the nuns again, and continued my studies of Folklore at
the University of Bordeaux, where I was writing about the mythical Lilith.
Lazín, p. 55
To paint it in a picture of words, I am flashing out the pageant, of that most extraordinary
beautiful Catholic Church, as we went down from La Rochelle, along the clean river, where we
called to make reservations in a pretty tiny hotel, ahead and we found a room with a high ceiling
warm and cozy.
Out of many, Switzerland is my favorite European country; the majestic mountains and the rivers
impressed me.
Monte Rosa’s Peak and Matterhorn were absolutely fabulous, left us breathless, and the chalet
Michabell was looking down onto Italy. The view out of the window was that of Matterhorn
mountain in Zermatt, a pretty town.
We then went out to Monte Rosa, a majestic chain of snow-covered Mountain of rare beauty.
I enjoyed the lovely scenery in Luzern, and Interlaken, with the beautiful lake with little bridges
leading up to the center, all dressed up in geranium flowers. Multicolored geraniums flowers were
hanging out from each houses’ window. The beautiful trip is to go up on a chairlift (telefericul) to
wheel you up over the meadows, seeing cattle and, magnificent glorious view of the Swiss
Mountains, and the peaks. It is a very gentle and slow trip.
At the base of the Matterhorn, in July 1994 we stayed at the very top, at the Gornergrat Hotel, in a
very solitary beautiful hotel. What a trip that was; and it gave me the perspective to figure out my
future plans.
The beauty of nature and overdose of oxygen gave me clarity of mind.
I had in my mind’s eye, planned out all my life during this lovely trip. I knew I exactly what I
wanted. I envisioned myself making research and taking my Doctoral degree at UCLA, in
Los Angeles in History.
We were moving ahead with our travels and research. I decided I want to go to America with Jim.
In 1991 in summer I left France for the United States, more specifically to Los Angeles that is to
UCLA, where I wanted to get my master’s degree in History.
Lazín, p. 56
In L.A. I witnessed the 1992 riots. I was reading feverishly on how people have started burning
buses and cabs in East Los Angeles, as well as attacking and beating up white people in the
streets. The smoke and foul air was moving towards me in Marina del Rey.
We found a lovely hotel, Marina Del Rey, in Marina del Rey, where I stayed for a week, and we
looked for a place to live.
I have finally escaped from the bad world into the good world. We loved each other so deeply.
I moved into Westwood and enrolled into the UCLA’s Master program in summer 2004. I
graduated soon after in 2005, but no family was present, as my mother died of a heart attack, and
could never travel by plane.
I understood that I never had good communication with anyone.
I was sensitive and creative; and only Jim could appreciate me. These were my thoughts then
when I was 40.
Before enrolling at UCLA, I had to visit my uncle Nicholas Lazin, who has fled to Hungary in
1947, after the Wall was raised between the East and the West in Europe, and settled down in
Oshawa, Canada. He invited me many times to visit, Oshawa, in Toronto, Canada. This trip I took
Lazín, p. 57
in 1993, it was wintertime in Canada, and it was a harsh experience staying there and getting
accustomed again to cold weather. Coming out of cold winters I spent in Transylvania, I
was filled with rheumatism and arthritis.
Cold weather just does not work with me, it was as simple as that. I decided I never leave Los
Angeles ever again. My precious warm, sunny Los Angeles I have fallen in love with.
Discovering new Places And Peoples
It was a good feeling escaping Ceausescu’s tyranny and discovering the hidden side of the word. I
realized how we lived in the dark and isolation from the world, and that there was better climate
in Mexico than in Romania; and one does not be the prisoner of their own thoughts and limited
spirit of the others, living the same nightmare, as I did back in Romania.
I know the nuns in Bordeaux were free spirits and happy women, with a great sense of humor
especially the Mother Superior. We even visited Toulouse Lautrec’s castle, and spent time on the
beach where the Atlantic Ocean met the Pacific Ocean. I had spent unforgettable moments of
discovery, and fraternization with the nuns.
Because I have entered the Mexican state, in order to see the pyramids first, I tried to find a place
to live also in Mexico, and I have selected a place called El Bosque del Secreto, but it did not
work out. The air is too polluted in Teotihuacan, and around Mexico D.F. that I only visited the
Pyramid of the Sun, and the pyramid of the Moon, and hurried to find a nice place. When I finally
found the house surrounded by beautiful red bougambillas, I realized it was too isolated from
town, without a car, far from the market, in one word, I felt it was not really feasible.
As all ironies were happening in a row, when I arrived to L.A., the riots were in progress.
I was settling in marina del Rey. Then I left again to Toronto to see my uncle Nicholas, and
cousin Caroline Lazin. I started teaching History pretty soon, when I returned to UCLA.
Lazín, p. 58
After 2 years in the Doctoral Program in History at UCLA, I graduated in 2001, in January. After
graduation I have published my Doctoral thesis, and a second book on the bright and dark sides of
Globalization with Dr James W Wilkie, Professor at UCLA. Our books are widely read around
the world and are used to teach Courses at College and University levels.
After 9/11 the whole world has changed. And this will be the topic for another book. A book in
which I will investigate what has changed exactly in these 22 years in Los Angeles, and how
change has impacted our lives and psychic.
Why are we missing those good things of the past? If you have liked my book, you can read the
rest of my articles here:
http://www.profmex.org
OR
http://www.olgalazin.com
which I will investigate what has changed exactly in these 22 years, and how.
There are many American-Romanian organizations where I enjoy engaging with my compatriots,
especially in storing the old customs, and traditional clothes from Maramures county,
Why are we missing those things, customs of the region of Transylvania?
The past and the collective memory I cherish most, is still very much alive in my memory.
Lazín, p. 59
At UCLA, with my students in History, 2014
Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/203836679/Escaping-From-Transylvania-30-
FebTRANSYL?post_id=2538457_10103066199638166#_=_
March 15, 2014, A Crucial Day And Year for My Career
After 2 years in the Doctoral Program in History at UCLA, I graduated in 2001, in January. After
graduation I have published my Doctoral thesis, and a second book on the bright and dark sides
of Globalization with Dr James W Wilkie, Professor at UCLA. Our books are widely read around
the world and are used to teach Courses at College and University levels. To get the books we
have written together with James Wilkie, download them form:
which I will investigate what has changed exactly in these 22 years in Los Angeles, and how
change has impacted us. Why are we missing those good things of the past, as a collective. That is
the collective memory.
Lazín, p. 60
Doing Yoga, in Cancun.
I have volunteered 200 hours with MADD in 2015.
After volunteering at MADD, for 200 hours, I started working with Edward Olmos (film-director
in Hollywood).
The Russians, having been directing Romanian politicians since 1945, pressured the
Romanians to dig useless trenches as well as learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47! The
atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Restrictions were plentiful and absurd. Speech was not free;
one couldn’t discuss issues freely in class, or make any real analysis or debate. One had to
regurgitate what the professors were telling us. Modern economics led by and read whatever was
there in the old books stacked in the communist library. Until I escaped Romania in 1992, I
learned that the so-called economics classes we took taught nothing about money, credit, and such
terms as GDP. The Marxist economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We
Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever
being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets
Even as an English major, I could not speak with to foreigners in English --answering one
1990. Furthermore if my uncle from Canada visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire
Lazín, p. 61
comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well after 25 years, not much
has changed in poor Romania. The influence of recent Romanian history.
In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania, with
constant change in the emerging political map always have left “citizens” always lost about who
was really in charge. Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the Dacia Kingdom between 82
BC until the Roman conquest in 106 AD. The capital of Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so
that a new capital would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 AD, by
which time the Romans felt so hated that it behooved them withdraw back to Rome. During the
late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to later become
part of the Kingdom of Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of Transylvania.
During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Principality became an Ottoman Empire vassal
state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After 1711 Transylvania was
consolidated solely into the Habsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were replaced with
Habsburg imperial governors.
After 1867, Transylvania ceased to have separate status and was incorporated into the Kingdom
of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.6 After World War I, Transylvania reverted
in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania again became governed by
Hungary and then Germany, but Romanian queen Maria successfully reclaimed it after the end of
World War II. The year 1940 was important for Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi
Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated”
to become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold War was
beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into place. At the end of World War II while the USSR and
its Red Army were the occupying powers in all Romania, in 1947 Romania forcibly and
ironically became a “People’s Republic” (1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain. The first
“president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1947) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his Secretary
General of the Communist Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second
“president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher Romanian “Gulag” than
known in the USSR. For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of
Transylvania, did I understand that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania by the “skin of
my teeth.” For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a far away place, where most
Lazín, p. 62
people know the werewolves and vampires have been “seen” to in the imagination of
Transylvanians, whose beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to
have a rational conversation with most the Transylvanian folk on any subject without recourse to
try to understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them.
The population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians. These
languages are still being spoken in Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always liked
and loved the Romanian language, I decided to become a Professor of Romanian Language and
Literature. My backdrop to the fall of CEAUSESCU I later told Jim how I had been admitted in
1982 to the Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca at the heart of Transylvania, I focused
especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found that the professors, who were under the
control of sweaty Securitate officers, had to read dozens of new Decrees issued every day as they
sought to control every one of our daily actions—all in the name of protecting the Ceausescu
government—which was selling the country’s food supplies to Russia in order to pay down
Roman’s official debt at our experts. Those Securitate officers ate well and ominously watched us
virtually starve.
They said, be calm like your parents in the face of starvation. Thus, I furiously called out in my
classes that our very existence was being compromised by Ceausescu's abandonment of the
population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said, “work, work, and work.” To protect
myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national paradise.” But
when I encouraged my classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the wooden language
of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under the heavy scrutiny of university authorities, who
were furious that I trying to expose the that all classes had been organized to befuddle the student
body into confused submission.
Indeed, each professor had favorite students to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle any
competing analysis—the university lived under nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual
and real) by the Securitate officers, and open bribery--choose your garden variety. My 1986 flight
from Romania backfires by 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act
because Ceausescu did not want anyone (especially women of childbearing age) to escape his
plan to building his “ideal socialist industries” on farms and ranches as well as in the cities.
Lazín, p. 63
The population was actually and literally held hostage. No traveling was allowed for the
Common folk.
My book cover conceived in 1991. Always caring for the environment.
HELP COMES FROM THE FRENCH GERARD CHALIAND
There is a memorable scene I will never forget: before we left Paris on December 19, 1991, we
met with Gérard Chaliand to personally thank him for having made the Bordeaux Security agent
reexamine his whole approach to his life. Further, with Gérard, we worked out a plan to arrange
for me to become a U.S. resident and obtain U.S. citizenship nine years after my arrival in Los
Angeles, October 1992. He recommended that my case by handled in In Los Angeles by one of
America’s most knowledgeable and effective Migration Attorneys—Cynthia Juárez Lange, today
Managing Partner, Northern California, for the Fragomen Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP Legal
Office located in San Francisco. Cynthia is a personable genius. In our travels in December 1991
and from March to June 1992 we met NPPO leaders in the European Union to better understand
how foundations work under unique laws in each county rather than in any rational manner for
the whole EU, we went to Marseilles, Nice, Villfranche-sur-Mer, Cap-Ferrat, Monaco, La
Lazín, p. 64
Rochelle, Andorra, Sevilla, Madrid, Trujillo, El Escorial, Avila, Navarro, and Segovia. On
September 3. 1992, we arrived at the U.S. Consulate in Paris, where the U.S Consulate in Mexico
had arranged with Jim for my U.S. eligibility for residence to be issued. Also, the Mexican
Consulate General in Paris issued me my residence papers to enter and leave Mexico freely, as
arranged by Jim with the Mexican Consular Office in Mexico City. his profits ($13 billon) for
their activities, his personal wealth in 2016 estimated to be $25 billion. See
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/expenditures Also, for the details of Soros $930.7
million dollar Open Society Foundations 2016 Budget, which can be found by searching online
for this title.
By September 7, 1992, we were in Romania for meetings with Civic Activists in Sighet (where I
finally returned after “escaped” with Jim in December 1991). At the Famous Communist Prison,
now a UN masterpiece, we met Ana Blandiana, the leader of the civil society in Romania, and we
had fruitful discussions and crafted projects to publish books on the horrendous impact that
communism and its vampiristic ideology had upon the Romanian citizenry.
We organized a conference on the Opening of the Cold War in 1947 in Romania.
From March to June 1993, we met with NPPO leaders in Budapest, Sighet, and Varna (Bulgaria),
Bucharest, and St. Petersburg. In Moscow (June 21-14, 1993), Jim appointed Professor Boris
Koval (Director of the Latin American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), to be
PROFMEX Representative in Russia. Koval had invited us to Moscow and introduced us to his
own Security Chief to be our translator and guide. Thus, the freaking Security Chief was a
fascinating person who had been former head of the KGB Office in Iran, 1979-1989. Jim, who
always wore his Mexican guayabera shirt with or without a suit, was seen to be “authentically
Mexican”.
Starting in 2012, Putin has reset the Cold War with the United States. Now I am finally enjoying
some distancing from Eastern Europe and realize freedom was worth all the risks I took, to
establish myself and live in the United States, where I have found safety.
Our Books and work has shown how U.S. Tax Exempt Organization (TEO) Iaw has evolved to
become the most important in the world owing
to its flexibility. Where the laws of most countries require prior legal authorization to launch in a
new direction, U.S. TEO law recognizes no such limit. Thus, U.S. TEO law, unlike most other
countries, is never trying to make legal what is already underway in the world.
Lazín, p. 65
In developing a way to translate the U.S. legal framework in a standard way for this era of
Globalization, I hope that this work offers a basis for others to advance their own analysis of the
issues presented here.
The work is organized to examine the traditional U.S. Centralized Model as developed for world
philanthropy by the Rockefeller foundation early this century. The most important variation is the
Decentralized Model established under U.S. Tax lax by the Hungarian-born George Soros, who
has set up National Boards to direct their own destiny in 31 countries.
Recently three new models have surfaced, and they are examined briefly in the other book, in this
series: Dr Olgas American Dream Come True.
P.S. Vampirism continues unabashed in Maramures County. Good Romanians are trying to root
out corruption every day. The same scenario is going on here in the United States with Trumpism;
the voyage continues.
i More on diversity of cultures in Transylvania:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transylvania
ii from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history_of_M aramure%C5%9F#Antiquity
I finally had the chance to leave the country when an execution squad shot Nicolae C. in 1989.
Obtaining visas to western countries was extremely hard in 1990, right after Ceausescu was
shot. I convinced my then-husband Valerian Pipas to come with me to Bucharest and arrange
for visas for France. I also needed transit visas through Austria
iii “Ceaușescu” is the correct spelling of the name.

Lazín, p. 66
iv This Empire existed between 1867 and 1918.
As in the case of Oceania always being threatened by eternal war
alternating between Eurasia or East Asia,
Portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984.Cf. my article “Orwell’s 1984 and the
Case Studies of Stalin and Ceausescu
” in Elitelore Varieties (Edited by James Wilkie et al.):
http://elitelore.org/Capitulos/cap16_elitelore.pdf
vii COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) dates from the January
1949 communiqué agreed upon in Moscow by the USSR to lead the CMEA.
viii This Empire existed between 1867 and 1918.
ix Upon Ceausescu’s death, the Patriarch Pipas mysteriously became the Museum’s “owner”
and then transferred title to his son Valerian Pipas. The family died out in 2016 of alcoholism.
x “Czechia” is rarely used in English because native English speakers too often
do not know intuitively know how to pronounce
it. The name Czechia has arisen as the short name for the Czech Republic, which
emerged with the breakup of “Czechoslovakia” in 1992.
xi Jim soon arranged for the contract to be paid from his grant funds from U.S.
foundations deposited for his projects at UCLA.

Lazín, p. 67
xii See (A) my 2001 Decentralized Globalization: Free Markets, U.S. Foundations, and the Rise
of Civil and Civic Society from Rockefeller’s Rise in Latin America
Eastern Europe (Los Angeles: UCLA Classic Doctoral
Thesis) at
http://www.profmex.org/webjournal_listedbyvoldat.html
(B) Olga Magdalena Lazín, La Globalización Se Descentraliza: Libre Mercado, Fundaciones,
Sociedad Cívica y Gobierno Civil en las Regiones del Mundo, Prologue
or James W. Wilkie (Guadalajara y Los Ángeles: Universidad de Guadalajara, UCLA Program on
Mexico, PROFMEX/World, Casa Juan Pablos Centro Cultural, 2007).
James W. Wilkie y Olga Magdalena Lazín, La globalización Se Amplia: Claroscuros de los Nexos
Globales (Guadalajara, Los Ángeles, México:Guadalajara,
UCLA Program on Mexico, PROFMEX/World, Casa Juan Pablos Centro Cultural, 2011:
http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume17/2spring2012/Laglobalizacionseamplia.
pdf
xiii Readers should be aware of a key acronym used when this paper
reaches the 1990s: NPPO stands for Not-for-Private Profit Organization
(usually a Foundation) which differs from the more familiar (Non-Profit
Organization (NPO). Outside the United States, the latter term tends to
be wrongly understood to mean no profit be accumulated and the NPO must
show a zero balance at year end. The former term (NPPO) is developed
here to stress that profits may be accumulated and invested to fund

Lazín, p. 68
future activities, as long as expenditures do not benefit private parties

Lazín, p. 69
(except for salaries, travel, and other justified expenses as provided in,
say, a Foundation’s by-laws.) See:
http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume12/1winter07/prologoporjameswilkieOLbo
ok.html
xiv Mexico’s National Lottery is a Government-run Public Charity and
funder of new research.
xv The Lottery grants to PROFMEX totaled $100,000 dollars.
xvi Jim Wilkie’s statement here is quoted from my formal Interview with him, September 17,
1992, in Transylvania, based upon his experience as Consultant to the U.S. Council on Foundations.
See:
Olga Magdalena Lazín, Decentralized Globalization: Free Markets,
U.S. Foundations and the Rise of Civil and Civic Society From Rockefeller’s Latin America
To Soros’ Eastern Europe (Los Angeles: UCLA, Classic PHD thesis, 2001), pp. 122-125. This
book was published in 2016 by PROFMEX, and it can be read freely at
http://www.profmex.org/webjournal_listedbyvoldat.html
“Equivalent,” , means that the foreign NPPO meets (A) the test of funding at least one of the
following goals” for types of projects supported Health-Education-Welfare-Human Rights-
Science and Religion-Economy-Environment-Ecology-Publication-Literature-Charity; and (B)
meets the test that no part of the foreign NPPOs expenditures benefit private persons-- except for
payment of reasonable expenses to cover salaries, services, and goods needed by the NPPO to
legitimately conduct the operations chartered in its Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws.
xviiiAdministered by NGO Civic Activists in each country but reporting to
Soros Foundation/New York City to justify each yearly budget.
xix The Soros Open Society Foundations in 44 countries benefit from the fact that Soros himself
has lived up to his commitment since1986 (to 2016 and ongoing) to donate half of his profits
Lazín, p. 70
($13
Lazín, p. 71
billon) for their activities, his personal wealth in 2016 estimated to be $25 billion. See
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/expenditures
xx See https://www.rt.com/politics/323919-soros-foundation-recognized-as-
undesirable/
Ibid. Also, for the details of Soros $930.7 million dollar Open Society Foundations
2016 Budget, which can be found by searching online for this title.
xxii See: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-releases/russia-
cracks-down-open-society

Escaping Transylvanian Vampirism To The West

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ESCAPING VAMPIRISM IN TRANSYLVANIA TO THE WORLD

ROMANIAN GULAG TO NEW

OLGA MAGDALENA LAZÍN

Copyrighted © Dr Olga Books, 2022

Satu Mare was soon to undergo catastrophic transformations, as it was to forcefully

(The Logging Company in Viseul de Sus, Maramures County) to Sighet, in Maramures

cover of the dark and cold winter nights.

I never feared the unknown, as I was already accustomed to “strigoi,” and

my mental ecosystem, so to say. They were familiar.

I grew up fearless with my brother, Alex, whom I felt I had to

constantly protect from other belligerent boys in the neighborhood of Zahana,

exported to Russia year by year.

Ukraine’s southwestern border with Romania and Hungary).

Transylvania belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary (Transylvania) as part of the Austrian-

manipulate the population into believing they were “change”.

diversity of the ethnicities and cultures.

landscapes of Sighet and Satu Mare where I was born.

Summoning my unconsciousness to write this autobiographical piece, I need to re-accustom

Once in general school I excelled in Romanian and American Languages.

The population consisted of Romanians, Hungarians (particularly Székelys), Ukrainians, and

Russian surveillance techniques and bloody procedures.

Rroma, or the Gypsy language, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Ruthenian.

Romanian Language and Literature.

Ceausescu’s “Socialist” Government (read Romanian Communist Government allied with

barking of a toothless dog.

the people of Communist countries locked and unable to escape.

has been decimated in Sighet in the fifties.

against Western Europe.

government, so that no real news reaches our ears.

natural border with Southern Ukraine.

considered a security risk!

used that lore to help them survive for centuries.

Transylvania Folklore, which prepared me well to understand Communist Party Lore.

Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.

of decrees harming the educational process?”

competition as they show openly their favoritism or nepotism.

When I reached the age of 22 in1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors,

weapons, and learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47.

fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as:

much has changed in poor Romania.

THE INFLUENCE OF RECENT ROMANIAN HISTORY

In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania,

about who was really in charge.

(1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated” to

beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into place.

(1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain.

understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them.

MY BACKDROP TO THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU

They report on you, and this earns them a living.

“work, work, and work.”

open bribery by the professors--choose your garden variety.

My 1986 Attempt To Flee The Jail Named Romania

salt and 20 Liters of gasoline.

Thousands were returned for this kind of draconian exchange.

official record of it.

“CHANGE IN THE AIR”

walled Regional Art Museum in a village orbiting Sighet, named Tisa.

There was only one airport in the country, in Bucharest.

mountain road to Cluj Napoca to visit my prestigious University.

opening for me.

continue for the long term in order to achieve our goals.

NEXT STOPS, BUDAPEST, SALZBURG, MUNICH,

BORDEAUX (FOR ME), AND LOS ANGELES (FOR JIM)