Work has now started on the interior of Hannah’s building in Radauti - this is an exciting development, as it has been being used only as a storage and distribution centre for a long time now, whereas there’ll be many additional possibilities once it is shipshape again.

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Unfortunately, it immediately became evident that there had been water ingress through the leaky roof over a long period, and so the work will be more difficult than hoped.  

However, there are always interesting spinoffs to such setbacks.  Taking everything back to the plaster, they uncovered some Cyrillic writing on the walls, stating that “every soldier should be healthy, clean, well dressed, with everything in order”.  

This was a surprise, to say the least, but a bit of research revealed that the Soviet army had advanced into Radauti in 1944, and taken over the important buildings -  the Hannah Centre had been used as the Commander’s office.  After 1945 the Soviets withdrew to the current border separating Northern and Southern Bucovina, just a few miles to the North.

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Northern Bucovina has ever since been part of Ukraine, and it’s a sobering thought that if the Soviets hadn’t withdrawn by those few miles, we would never have met Misu and Livia, and Hannah wouldn’t exist.  Of course, Southern Bucovina still spent several decades in the Soviet sphere of influence, until 1989, and in fact beyond.

Bordering Romania on the East is the tiny Republic of Moldova, which like Northern Bucovina, found itself transferred from Romania into the Soviet Union after the War.  The history is interesting, if rather complicated - I’ll happily provide a summary if anyone’s interested !  

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The Republic of Moldova is one of several former Soviet States in negotiations with the EU, hoping to eventually join.  They have just held Parliamentary elections, which came out strongly in favour of the EU, as is their current President.  This in spite of significant alleged subterfuge from Russia, and the continued presence (since 1991) of Russian troops on its soil.  But this is a happy day for Moldova - and for Romania, as the alternative would have been for a Russian-orientated state along the length of its Eastern frontier.

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One of the aspects of our work which excited me personally the most, was the conferences we used to hold for our Romanian students.  We can’t hold these anymore, since Covid, and then the passing of Misu - but we wouldn’t have been able to hold them at all if the Soviet Army had not withdrawn those few miles North out of Radauti.  And although we no longer hold in-person conferences, we are still in touch with some of those same students :  it’s a great joy and privilege to still hold mini-conferences with a handful of them on Zoom, and to be in frequent contact over WhatsApp.  We’ll be “seeing” them this week, and again in November.

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