Generation Next: Romania's day hospice Casa Sperantei

Radio documentary by Karin Wells and David Gutnick

Ward room at Hospice Casa Sperantei in Brasov, Romania. (CBC/David Gutnick)

Hospice Casa Sperantei in Brasov, Romania is a day centre for people who suffer from incurable diseases. Patients either live at the centre or are picked up by the hospice bus every day and driven in for treatment and care. The Hospice also offers home care.There are dozens of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations like the Hospitc Casa Sperantei working to improve the lives of Romanian children. David Gutnick toured the childrens ward at the Hospice Casa Sperantei with Malina Dumitrescu, the foundation's director.This is an interview transcript from the CBC Radio Sunday Edition documentary "Generation Next: Young Minds, Bodies and Souls after Communism. From Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary"

Transcript

Ilana is 17 and Raluca and Denisa are her two infant daughters. The [children] are here because they both suffer from Cystic Fibrosis. Because they are very small they always come together with their mom. Their living conditions at home are not at all comparable. We try to admit them as often as we can because here they get much better food, much better care, and we are also helping the mother to cope with the disease of both girls.

This hospice where we are now was set up in 1992 — so very shortly after the 1989 Revolution — and as a pioneering hospice in Romania we were hoping that we would change the world.

It did not happen.

What does that tell you about priorities in your country now and how Communism scarred the Romanian soul?

That is probably the question that we ask ourselves. What happens to this system that cannot see the priority for such a vulnerable group as children suffering and parents being together as we see here a mother of seventeen with two children. It is probably a trace of communism when you think that the disabled are not those who come back to work for the country and wealth of the country as they were saying in the communist times. Everybody was encouraged to work for your mother country, or Patria. And if you were not able to recover and come back to work it was not really something that the society would want to look after. And if you think that so little is being done now for these children of for adults suffering and not returning to work, then definitely we have to admit it is something going back to the old thinking.

I am thinking of the girl that we just saw with the two children, I mean it is breaking your heart to see that the system sends away a child saying "well we do not have to look after them because they just have a couple of weeks to live."

In the early days, one of the famous politicians was saying that recovering from communism for this country would take definitely more than twenty years and everybody was laughing at him and ah making jokes but apparently now looking a back after 20 years we are getting to his words and it is a bitter taste that we have when we see that very little of our hopes have become a reality.

About the radio documentary

Stone cold: statue of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin looks into a democratic future for Ukraine. (CBC/Karin Wells)

On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was smashed. That marked the beginning of the end of a dream — for communists. For many people who lived under Soviet domination, it signaled the end of a nightmare.

Almost overnight, capitalism bloomed. Whole economies were redesigned. Free speech flourished. Unemployment soared. So did interest in organized religion. Billionaires popped up. Social safety nets were shredded. Neighbours found out who had been spying on whom. Real elections were held. Here was democracy, or something like it.

Now, from the ashes of the old — still warm, still combustible — the young are building new worlds in Eastern Europe. Theirs is the first post-Soviet generation. They carry the weight of the past, its secrets and lies. And like the young everywhere, they dream about a different future.

This is the second of three CBC Radio Sunday Edition documentaries that bring us the sounds, experiences, ideas and dreams of a special generation in a series called "Generation Next: Young Minds, Bodies and Souls after Communism, from Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary" produced by Karin Wells and David Gutnick.

LISTEN to Part 2 (51:20)