Notes from the Other Side of Night: From Communism to a Fragile Freedom (Curations) - Softcover

Pilon, Juliana Geran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1967613265 ISBN 13: 9781967613267

Publisher: Creed & Culture, 2026

Synopsis

A lyrical memoir of living under, and escaping from, anti-Semitism and the tyranny of communism.

“There are scenes in this book that the reader will never forget.”—Mircea Eliade

With a new Afterword by the author and a new Introduction by bestselling historian Wilfred M. McClay

In Notes from the Other Side of Night, Juliana Geran Pilon provides a beautiful memoir of a return to her native Romania in 1975, which she left with her family when she was just fourteen. Poetically weaving together hard-won adult insights with her childhood perceptions, Pilon tells the haunting stories of her parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. She recounts the chilling realities of anti-Semitism, political imprisonment, and judicial execution under Romania’s ruthless communist authorities. And she remembers those few who managed to retain their humanity despite the horrors that surrounded them.

Told with detached melancholy, the result is a book full of political and spiritual wisdom. At a time when the totalitarian crimes of the last century are being minimized, if not entirely ignored, Pilon’s meditation on evil, hope, and love is profoundly moving.

About this title

About the Authors

Juliana Geran Pilon is a Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, where she has directed AHI’s Washington Program on National Security since 2016. Her books include: An Idea Betrayed: Jews, Liberalism, and the American Left; The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom; The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World; Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve; the anthology Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace; Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice; the anthology Every Vote Counts: The Role of Elections in Building Democracy, which she co-edited with Richard Soudriette; and The Bloody Flag: Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe—Spotlight on Romania. The author of over two hundred fifty articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy, she has made frequent appearances on radio and television. Her writings have recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Law & Liberty, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Academic Questions, the American Mind, and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, among other places. 

Mircea Eliade (1907–86), a native of Romania, was a celebrated religious historian, philosopher, and novelist. A longtime professor at the University of Chicago, Eliade’s best-known books include A History of Religious Ideas and The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History.

Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair of Classical History and Western Civilization. He is the author several award-winning books, including The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story, and the bestselling Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Floating above the clouds . . . we could land anywhere. The galaxies don’t require passports: round, inscrutable celestial mythology. Each revolution a question: Where does the heart beat? What makes the comet smoke? The puffs of cloud tease the traveler; familiar as breath, they are the testimony of eternity. I try to take them seriously but can’t just now; eternity is so irrelevant from this perspective.

Going home, the archetypal attempt. The clouds are a pretext—my mind is infested with fragments of memory, swept together in bits and pieces, not even trying to make sense. A patchwork of impressions. Will they fit any of what’s left?

I sip my coffee to pretend this is an ordinary trip, from one corner of smug civilization to another. We pass through a dense night, much like the usual but for the proximity of clouds and the curtain of noise. Slowly, light would come, as if to reclaim us. It must be the same sun, the same night. We won’t drop into timelessness; I know the signs of voyage. The stewardess smiles, tired. She longs for her hotel bed and a cigarette in peace. Around me, the trappings of reality.

But still a dream: to have returned, after adulthood, to that familiar language—the grammar of fear, the semantics of ideology. No, it’s not the same sun, not the same night. How do we spell the new words? They mean what we want them to mean.

Suspended, movement is no longer: instruments are all we have. I search for signs of distance but I find just stars, and they are still. The thick surrounding darkness, the texture of illusion, tempts me to be bold and wonder if our voyage might be taking us to the bowels of the earth, to Dante’s ghosts. The stewardess would lead us out like friendly cattle and would name the highlights: “On your left, ladies and gentlemen, is the First Circle. The sinners with some hope.” That would be fine, for I would know we had arrived where I had left: among sinners barely aware that desire does not stop with dawn. My compatriots, my old comrades, had not yet mastered their new catechism sufficiently well to forget the distinctions between night and night, blood and wine. Unequipped for the requirements of new salvation, they lay awake with grief, dreaming. A terrible curse, enough to condemn anyone to hope eternal. A kind of drunken folly made them risk their lives on a mere note of sarcasm, a refusal, a demand to leave.

No, this is obviously no ordinary sky: thicker, more ominous, a permanent reminder that seat belts are to be kept on to protect our livers against a tremor within. I close my eyes to listen to the engine covering up the real sounds of night: a hiss of premonitions, the grinding bark of remorse, that murmur of a lust we know as need. The engine seems to laugh at us, monotonous and efficient to soothe as it denies fancy. And it is just as well: my mind should stay clean of mirage if it is to peel off the years gently, accurately.

“Coffee?” the stewardess demands, half-polite, half-resentful. She must think herself too pretty to be stuck in a place like this small old plane with too many seats. I take it she didn’t think I was sleeping, or didn’t care—her job is to make sure the coffee pot gets emptied. I hand her my cup and thank her but she doesn’t seem to hear—perhaps not expecting it, not really believing I need her potion, or just unable to pretend that I am welcome. No hard feelings; I’m tempted to tell her everybody is too pretty to be stuck anywhere, but I don’t think she would find that very heartening. I lean back collecting whatever is left of my thoughts.

My coffee tastes bitter. A bit like espresso, a bit like that hellish liquor we prepared on our trip to the West, our unlikely journey into exile.

 

The train was probing through the mountains, the wine-colored autumn trees, muttering its old song: clickety-clack, you’ll come back, clickety clack-clack don’t come back, come back, come back. . . . Our few pieces of luggage nestled on the racks were hopping to the rhythmic noise, as if amused. Most of our belongings had been packed away in a trunk, not to be opened till after we had crossed the mighty ocean. A government list had been issued to remind us of what we could expect to need, though in effect impressing upon us what we must do without.

The Romanian mountains were lavish with foliage, festive for autumn. They made it seem as if we were leaving before a holiday and all the fun was to start after we’d gone. But we knew better.

We watched the scenery, paying no attention to the road-signs—there would be no need to remember. Soon we’d have to learn to spell other, more exotic geographical landmarks. Each foreign word is a lot like the name of a new town: mysterious at first, symbolic of a whole galaxy of relations, it intimidates then becomes as familiar as the inhabitants themselves, friendly and so evident that no other group of sounds seems quite as appropriate.

While passing through the Transylvanian countryside, my mother cried silently, thinking about home, unable still to accept the nomadic turn. No one said anything; we didn’t comfort her. Or blame her. Maybe we didn’t have the courage to take her pain seriously—each of us had his own terror to confront. Silence seemed better than confusion, even if its price was loneliness—a gamble we were willing to make. Huddled together, we felt less sorry for one another than for ourselves. This was it: the road. And each one of us was convinced he was the least equipped to comprehend it, the most vulnerable.

My sister’s small hands were holding mine tightly, as if to make sure I’d stay. She had just lost her small friend: a tiny gold elephant she had been wearing around her neck for years as a charm. My mother had noticed, soon after the train had left the Bucharest station, that my sister was nervously playing with her elephant, teasing it with her tongue. We had forgotton all about it: a small detail with possibly disastrous consequences. Though she could not help turning pale, my mother controlled herself enough to consider the feelings of her eight-year-old and asked very gently to please give her the charm. My sister had obeyed, but a look of alarm indicated that she knew something was not right. “They don’t allow these things,” my mother explained, almost too quietly to be heard, as much to justify the action to herself as to appease my sister who seemed ready to demand an explanation. But no question was asked, not even when my mother opened the window to toss out the small elephant. The operation done and the window closed, she didn’t dare look at my sister. No one quite knew whether the little girl had been upset by her loss—quite likely she too had become numbed by the last three weeks when everything had been sold, given away, or simply thrown out, to accomplish the goal set for us by law: to leave for our journey penniless and unencumbered by material possessions, in true proletarian style.

We were all wearing new clothes, bought in haste with the little money earned from the furniture, lamps, and books we had somehow managed to sell. These clothes were better than what we had been used to, though not by much; at least they were new, and we were hoping to make as good an impression as possible on the people we were to meet “abroad.” Headed first for Paris, we had to look presentable. My shoes were a pretty blue, so pretty that I tried to ignore the poor fit (as it was, the salesman put away this pair for me only after we had lined his pockets with a good-sized tip). I kept telling myself they would start to feel better after a bit of walking . . .

We had no one in Paris, only a few distant friends of my parents who had left Transylvania before the war. These Jews, for no obvious reason, had felt safer in Western Europe. We did not have their telephone numbers, but we knew their names and we were sure they lived in Paris. We did not expect them to be well off, and, anyway, we wanted no financial support; but we thought perhaps they would give my father a lead for a temporary job: he spoke French well, and had an aristocratic demeanor—which, we were convinced, would have to help. After we had saved a little money in Paris, somehow, and obtained our U.S. visa, we would join our relatives in Detroit.

These thoughts flashed across my mind repeatedly, like a refrain, yet without the force of reality. We could not absorb it all: only three weeks ago we had no idea that we would leave, at once, allowed at last to cross over to the other side of night. After seventeen years, my parents had become used to the yearly ritual of attempted emigration. They had almost forgotten its eventual purpose, aware only of the need to try again, in a Sisyphean dance with dangerous, taciturn partners who could have ended the charade at any time, no questions asked, no reasons given. A rational end was almost unlikely, under the circumstances; and at first, my parents had refused to believe the little yellow postcard, the famous summons to the police indicating that we could obtain a passport. “A joke, to test our will,” they thought, “another cruel stunt.”

Their sense of humor sharpened through the years, so long as the border had not yet been crossed my parents were fully prepared for the punch-line. But this state of alert was beginning to wear them out and I could tell that my mother was now watching the copper-colored maples, thinking mostly about autumn. The paradox was slowly paralyzing her usually nimble, practical brain, with its agonizing dialectic: “Do I really wish to leave all this? My familiar train stations; people whose gestures I understand and whose habits speak of regional idiosyncrasies I love to recognize, many of which I share; the hills I climbed as a child, whose forests were my habitat and companion—a kind of green furniture of my memory. . . .” At least I assumed this was what my mother thought about as she quietly cried without making a sound or moving a muscle of her young, tired face. She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.

By evening we had reached customs. The wait was hours long, and it seemed like days as we all tried to keep very still, so as not to look nervous when our turn came to be searched. The operation had been started at the other end of the train, so by the time the two young officials came to us they were almost as exhausted as we, which meant—we hoped—that our ordeal would be soon over. One of them was much more aggressive; he turned our clothes upside down thoroughly, expertly, like a surgeon trained to cut quickly to the bone. His “assistant” was more reticent, and looked a bit embarrassed by this superfluous last exercise in harassment. I thought he blushed when our underclothes were being inspected—though it may have been only a reflection of my expectations. It occurred to me as I was watching him that he was probably not much older than I—perhaps eighteen, his moustache so shy one couldn’t say whether he was desperately trying to grow it or had not yet started the grownup chore of shaving. Could it be that his seeming reluctance to use his shameful power was beautifying him a bit—enough for my adolescent imagination to be startled to a brief urge for a kind encounter? I wished to tell him it was all right, we didn’t mind him anymore, we had become used to it, and it would be all forgotten in a few minutes, we would never see him again. At that moment he turned around and, meeting my eyes which did not look away, he stopped his cursory search as if to read me. It may have been a very short glance but I fancied he recognized my friendly intentions. I was not smiling, yet he must have seen that I was not angry with him, that I knew how young and strong he was under his shabby clothes, that I couldn’t blame him or anyone at a time like this when we were approaching the long night of dangerous freedom ahead. His look was either gentle or embarrassed, I wasn’t sure; he watched me, I thought, with some surprise. “What kind of weasel is it,” he must have wondered, “to leave like this, with so little shame in her eyes, so little fear.” Uniforms sometimes make one look brave, depending on their symbol. His outfit, however, seemed to camouflage rather than enhance a native wiry wildness. Or so I thought, and I must have shown it. He blushed again and wished to leave. He urged his companion to hurry. After all, our suitcases had been thoroughly ravaged, like a patient after autopsy. Before closing the door behind him, he glanced at me once more, as if to ask forgiveness for an intrusion which had pained him and which was, in any case, beyond his comprehension.

It wasn’t long before the train jerked, signaling the long-awaited departure. Without knowing why, I jumped from my seat and went out into the hall, opened the window, and looked outside. Did I want to say good-bye to someone, anyone? To breathe some fresh air before jumping into the tunnel of our journey West, ready to confront that darkness with all the zeal of my ignorance? Or was it merely a subconscious wish to see the young customs official again, to ask him who he was, why he had such a job, or to embrace him—a last seemingly friendly soul from my lovely, ravished home. The train had already started. And as we were leaving, headed toward Hungary, I saw him: standing on the platform, he was watching our train. I was the only person at any window; the other emigrants were obviously obeying the last unwritten law, to give no reason for offense before the flight. As I waved at him, he saw me immediately and smiled. It was a clear, broad, easy smile. A kind of message.

At last the night had begun. I went back in and sat down next to my sister. She was almost asleep. My parents were trying to pack everything back in the suitcases while attempting to figure out the most comfortable way to spend the night on the wooden benches. I closed my eyes and let them take care of these details, which mercifully distracted them from the event they preferred not to think about. I knew that it was my unassigned but implied duty to think, for all of us: the border. We are crossing the border.

The benches turned out to be very hard indeed. This was the same sort of train we always used to take to grandma’s house. But we discovered that sleeping on them was more difficult than we had anticipated. Grandma and Uncle Bandi (my mother’s mother and brother) were in adjacent sleeping cars. We were unable to afford sleeping cars for ourselves, but for them it was a necessity: grandma was nearly seventy and Bandi’s paralysis too painful. Actually, as we found out the following morning, they had not been able to rest very much either. Not that anyone complained. The noise, the smell, the constant shaking had conspired to create a romance of transition, as infectious as it was inebriating. After a while, lack of sleep made us all feel drugged or drunk or slightly mad, so that at times the trip became a sort of hallucination, an uninvited illusion.

My father was probably closest to reality, or in any case seemed most lucid. He was preoccupied, or tried to be, and relieved too, after signing so many papers, after bribing right and left—making sure the amount was appropriate, sufficiently surreptitious, and undisclosed, so as to prevent a last selfish or envious political stabbing. He must have been concerned about me and my sister, suspecting secret fear in our excitement, though sensing as well a healthy residue of courage not tested so rudely before. We could tell he was proud of his two little daughters and that made things easier because it somehow gave us a sense of responsibility. But in fact we worried a bit too, not knowing whether his pride was really justified. By way of reassurance, we pretended to be calm.

And tried to eat. We had brought salami and chocolate, for calorie content and also because my father thought we might be able to sell part of it to have a little cash when we arrived in Paris. We needed it for a taxi to take us to some hotel, especially since Uncle Bandi couldn’t walk. During our short stop in Vienna, my father proceeded to put his plan to work. He took me along, not so much to help him as to give me the opportunity to see the City of Waltz. Every chance to provide me with an education had to be taken—it was the Jewish way. The plan was carried out: there we were, he with three large salamis on his back, me with my squeaky new blue shoes, getting an education.

The square in front of the station was spotlessly clean, though almost empty of people, it being Sunday. Somehow I had expected fanfare and the commotion of capitalist confusion, so I was rather disappointed. My father, busy with his plan, spotted a coffee house and went in. His excellent German came in handy; the polite waitress understood, nodded, then pointed outside. He thanked her, and seemingly pleased with himself went out in the direction she had indicated. I barely had a minute to wonder at the small wooden tables with neat table-cloths, the two elderly gentlemen engrossed in a deep conversation, and the colorful cakes that reminded me of what genuine hunger was all about.

Still thinking about the cakes, I was quickly taken into a second store, this one far busier. I remember only my concern that I not lose sight of my father, as I had done once in Bucharest when a mere toddler. (Fortunately, at that time I was able to tell a policeman what my address was; now, of course, I had no address.) We were out again within a few minutes, my father two salamis lighter. He had been unable to sell the third one, nor the chocolates. He said, calmly, that he really had not expected to sell them because “the Austrians have excellent chocolates.” All the same, he had wanted to try—just in case. “Now we can have mineral water for grandma,” he said, meaning that we could go to the train’s restaurant like the little old Austrian lady who had just joined our compartment; she regularly brought in sandwiches and delicacies we were too exhausted to envy but hungry enough to speculate about.

As we returned to the train I realized that we must have been gone for nearly two hours, though it seemed like barely ten minutes. My mother said that while the two of us had been away on our commercial spree a young man who spoke Yiddish had come to let everyone know that help was available for Jews like ourselves. He could arrange for us to go to Israel directly from Vienna. We didn’t have to travel any further. My mother explained to him that we had a passport for the U.S.A., where her father and several siblings had lived for the past forty years. The young man then told her about HIAS, a Jewish organization in Paris that helps people who are going to America; he wrote down the address. My father looked at it and said: “Now besides money for a taxi we have a place to take a taxi to!” His eyes flickered: not only was there new hope, but he had just made a clever transaction. He was always very satisfied with a clever little idea—in truth, even more than with a clever big idea.

As the train started again, Austria began to reveal its quiet beauty, as if to encourage us further, to help us along our tiring transition. The mountains were less cluttered with leafy beauty than the Carpathians we had just left behind; valleys were broader, homes clean and further apart. Small houses everywhere displayed their fresh laundry innocently, invitingly, drying in the breeze. Just think, an individual family could have a lovely house like that all to itself! The serenity of these immaculate dwellings contrasted sharply with the lurking anxiety ticking like a persistent bomb inside each of us. Why didn’t we just stop right here, at the next small village? After all, Austria looked like a free enough country. And then we wouldn’t have to go so far, so very far!

The little old Austrian lady got off at Salzburg. She was going to visit her son. Politely, she wished us a good journey. As if we too were on a visit, with a clean bed and a cup of coffee at the other end. Alone again in the compartment, we took out our espresso coffee pot and made enough coffee to boost our energies for about a week. I’ll never forget its taste. Bitter and rudely strong, it seemed to shake us from the somnolence of limbo: ready to be careful, ready to think up those clever little ideas that would eventually help us land on our feet, feline and subtle, in a new corner of the Diaspora.

 

I sip my coffee again. It’s cold. I notice the stewardess’s polite impatience—she must clear the tables before landing. With apologies for my distraction, I hand her the cup and adjust my seat belt. Still pretending, I don’t look out the window. It had been easier to come to believe, through the years, that home is where your toothbrush rests, a metaphor at best. And yet, as the plane confronts the ground with the familiar jolt, I awaken: this is my first country, the Socialist Republic of Romania.

Edition details

• Publisher: Creed & Culture
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1967613265
• ISBN 13: 9781967613267
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160