When the People’s House Becomes a Palace of Power

When the People’s House Becomes a Palace of Power

I remember walking through Bucharest with my mother one afternoon when I was a child. The air smelled of dust and diesel. Streets once shaded by gardens and lined with gracious villas now lay flattened, erased, as if history itself had been bulldozed. My mother’s voice trembled as she pointed to where neighbors’ homes had once stood, where lilacs used to bloom, where laughter used to spill from courtyards. All of it gone. Nicolae Ceaușescu had d…