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The exhibition entitled "Common Denominator: Death"

The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, the National History Museum of Transylvania – Cluj-Napoca, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Romanian Peasant’s Museum, supported by Projects Abroad and the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives, are presenting the exhibition entitled Common Denominator: Death. The event is organised as a result of the ten field campaigns undertaken in order to exhume the remains of the opponents of the communist regime who were swiftly executed by the Securitate in the interval 1948-1952.

These actions were initiated as a result of the petitions sent to the IICCR by the opponents’ descendants and took place in the interval 2007-2009. The cases presented within the exhibition refer to 17 persons who were executed (most often shot to death). Their remains were traced and exhumed by means of archaeological methods in Hălmăsău, Nepos (Bistriţa-Năsăud County), Glodghileşti, Băieşti (Hunedoara County), Odoreu (Satu Mare County), Teregova (Caraş-Severin County), Muşca, Sălciua, Câmpeni (Alba County), Sântejude Vale (Cluj County).  In the foregoing locations the victims were buried either in individual graves (Glodghileşti, Satu Mare, Băieşti, Sălciua, Câmpeni, Sântejude Vale) or in mass graves of two victims (Hălmăsău / location 2, Teregova), three victims (Nepos) or four victims (Hălmăsău / location 1).

The exhibition includes objects discovered with the deceased, photographs from the archives of the former Securitate, old family photographs, snapshots and video captures taken during the exhumation campaigns, interviews with the successors or with those who had known the ones who were executed.

The exhibition addresses mostly high-school and university students for they usually know little about the major events of the past. The more mature public is not overlooked either, as older people lived through the communist period but have few information on the direct victims of the Securitate.