But like many who live in the area, Mr. Zaharie sees the dirt as part of life, much like other miseries common to the Ceausescu era.

And in another remarkable segment, the anchorman on the news during much of the Ceausescu era told his audience that he had been forced to lie for years.

Later, in the Ceausescu era, the same blood trade resumed, with an additional twist: the commerce was extended to ethnic Germans.

But in a society that was trained to be silent in the Ceausescu era, the recent flowering of radio talk shows has been surprising.

Not that anyone is already looking back on the Ceausescu era as the good old days.

Instead, the children are left as they were during the Ceausescu era, prisoners in their cribs.

So he was not surprised when in the early days after the December revolution, orders came from Bucharest to throw out textbooks glorifying the Ceausescu era.

The council is a group of former Communist Party members who practiced varying degrees of dissidence in the Ceausescu era, some university students, military officers and intellectuals.

In the Ceausescu era, abortions and birth control devices were illegal and, as a result, thousands of unwanted children were born.

In the political climate of the Ceausescu era, the doctors' findings were trouble.