Spy, Artist, Prisoner: My Life in Romania under Fascist and Communist Rule by George Tomaziu

Abstract

Reviewed by: Spy, Artist, Prisoner: My Life in Romania under Fascist and Communist Rule by George Tomaziu Dennis Deletant Tomaziu, George. Spy, Artist, Prisoner: My Life in Romania under Fascist and Communist Rule. Edited and translated by Jane Reid. Envelope Books, London, 2022. 220 pp. Notes. Appendices. £12.99 (paperback). Jane Reid deserves praise on a number of counts for her enterprise in restoring to history George Tomaziu. First, she persuaded him to write an account of his life. Second, in doing so she highlights the courage of a small group of Romanian, French and British figures who served the Allied cause in Romania during the country's alliance with Nazi Germany in the years 1940 to 1944 by providing intelligence to MI6. Third, she draws attention to the fact that most of the Romanians who did so were arrested by the Romanian Communist authorities under the direction of Moscow in 1950, tried on a charge of 'high treason', and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Tomaziu was born in the northern Moldavian town of Dorohoi on 4 April 1915. Here he spent his childhood and youth, his artist's eye remaining permanently focused on the gentle rolling Moldavian landscape as his memoir recounts. His mother, Lucreţia, was a first cousin of the composer George Enescu, who frequently spent days on end in the family home. Tomaziu was also Enescu's godson and his long discussions with his godfather instilled in [End Page 783] him a passion for music. He even began to study the violin, but his vocation as a painter took priority — he painted his first self-portrait at the age of four. He was in fact, as he admits, a soul-mate of Enescu's illegitimate daughter, Didica, who later became wardrobe mistress at the Bucharest Opera and whom Enescu often came surreptitiously to see. Throughout Tomaziu's youth, his bond with his godfather grew ever closer. The artist was ever-present at the musical evenings at Enescu's imposing house on Bucharest's elegant Calea Victoriei, evenings whose charm is evoked in one of Tomaziu's paintings purchased by the Enescu museum. When Enescu's foreign tours separated them they wrote to each other. Between 1934 and 1936, Tomaziu made study trips to Vienna, Munich and Dresden where, behind dealers' counters he discovered 'decadent art', the work of the major German Expressionist painters. He attended regularly the Salzburg festival, writing music reviews. In 1935, he had his first exhibition in the Sala Mozart in Bucharest, and after taking his diploma in Fine Arts two years later, he was taken to Paris by Enescu. The latter introduced him to the French sculptor and painter, André Lhote (1885–1962), with whom he worked from 1938 to 1939. A fierce critic of German National Socialism, which he regarded as pure evil and whose face he had seen during his visits to Germany between 1934 and 1936, Tomaziu was one of the few Romanians who translated his convictions into deeds. He spent the period from autumn 1938 until April 1939 in Germany when he returned to Romania and lodged with his friend, the artist Dinu Albulescu. In autumn 1940 he met Mihnea Gheorghiu, a fervent opponent of the Iron Guard, whom Tomaziu sheltered during the Iron Guard rebellion in January 1941. At this same time, a former fellow student at the Academy of Fine Arts, Irina Olszewski, told him that she was in touch with a supporter of General de Gaulle, and that the latter believed that Tomaziu could be useful in the fight against the Germans. Tomaziu agreed to meet this person who turned out to be Alexander Eck. Eck asked Tomaziu to deliver a letter to Marcel Fontaine, director of the French Institute in Craiova, and to bring back the reply, and gave him money for the rail fare. Tomaziu carried out the task and Eck then told him that he was interested in information of any kind about the German positions in Romania and their troop movements. The preferred method for obtaining these details was personal observation. Tomaziu was instructed on how to identify German units by the colour of officers' epaulettes or collar-tabs...