In case you were wondering
what it takes to have the world "defiant" appear in the headline of
your obituary, I present Elisabeta Rizea. There
is much work to do.
Elisabeta
Rizea, 91, a Defiant Romanian, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BUCHAREST,
Romania, Oct. 9 (AP) — Elisabeta
Rizea, an anti-Communist
resistance fighter whose defiance made her symbol in the battle against
tyranny, died on Monday. She was 91.
Ms. Rizea died in Pitesti,
in the south, said Constantin
Ticu Dumitrescu, another well-known anti-Communist.
After the Communists came
to power in 1945, Ms. Rizea joined a resistance group in the Fagaras
mountains, providing its members with food
and money. Captured
by the Romanian militia in the summer of 1949, she was sentenced to seven years
in prison for "aiding criminals."
After the arrest of the
anti-Communist leader Gheorghe
Arsenescu in 1961, Ms. Rizea was sentenced to an additional 25 years, but
she was pardoned
three years later under a general amnesty.
After Communism faded in
1989, details of her story emerged in Romanian
newspapers and films.
"When these wretched
Communists came to power, they took everything from us, the land, the wooden
carts — the hair off our heads," she said to reporters in 2001 during
a visit to her home by Michael, the former king of Romania. "Still, what
they could not take was our soul."
Copyright
2003 New York Times Company
8:08:30 AM 
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