Sergiu Dan

Sergiu Dan (born Isidor Rotman or Rottman; December 29, 1903 – March 13, 1976) was a Romanian novelist, journalist, Holocaust survivor and political prisoner of the communist regime.

Dan, the friend and collaborator of Romulus Dianu, was noted during the interwar period as a contributor to Romania's avant-garde and modernist scene, collaborating with poet Ion Vinea on Contimporanul review and Facla newspaper.

He was also affiliated with the rival literary club, Sburătorul, and noted for criticizing the communist sympathies of other avant-garde writers.

In the late 1920s, Sergiu Dan and his friend Romulus Dianu were in Bucharest.

It was there that Dan joined the literary circle of novelist Camil Petrescu, and took part in the regular literary disputes at Casa Capșa and Corso restaurants.

His first steps in cultural journalism happened before 1926, when he was affiliated with the newspaper Cugetul Românesc; his earliest poems were published in cultural magazines such as Chemarea and Flacăra, and a debut novella, Iudita și Holofern ("Judith and Holofernes"), saw print in 1927.

Sergiu Dan's brother, Mihail Dan, was also a journalist, known for his translations from Soviet author Vladimir Mayakovsky.

By 1928, he had fallen out with Petrescu: ridiculing the "noocratic" philosophical project outlined by Petrescu, and calling its author "insane" and "poltroonish".

He later expressed regret for the incident, noting that he had been especially amused by Petrescu's eccentric decision to store his philosophical manuscript in the Vatican Library.

Dan and Dianu were also co-opted by Ion Vinea on his various journalistic ventures, beginning with the left-wing and modernist literary review Contimporanul, where they published avant-garde prose and poetry with a political subtext.

His texts were featured in various other venues: Vremea, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Universul Literar (the literary supplement of Universul daily) and Bilete de Papagal (the satirical newspaper of poet Tudor Arghezi).

During the period, Dan underwent formal training in Economics, graduating from the Bucharest Commercial School.

With Dianu (who was also making his debut), Dan co-authored a romanticized biography of the 19th century poet-storyteller Anton Pann: Viața minunată a lui Anton Pann ("The Wonderful Life of Anton Pann"; Editura Cultura Națională, 1929)—this collaborative fiction piece was reissued in 1935 as Nastratin și timpul său ("Nasreddin and His Time").

In this context, Dan also joined the Sburătorul club, formed around the eponymous magazine of literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu, as one of the Jewish writers whom Lovinescu welcomed into his movement.

During his period at Contimporanul, Dan embarked on a conflict with the Surrealist and far leftist group at unu, the magazine of poet Sașa Pană.

This controversy reflected the major discrepancies between Contimporanul and other avant-garde venues.

His main works of the 1930s include contributions to the psychological novel, thriller and political novel genres, received with critical acclaim.

Of Jewish Romanian origin, Sergiu Dan was the subject of antisemitic defamation, and, during World War II, was deported to Transnistria.

After his return home, Dan spoke about his experiences in the book Unde începe noaptea ("Where Night Begins"), which endures one of the few Romanian contributions to Holocaust literature, and has for long been censored by dictatorial regimes.

By 1930, Sergiu's brother Mihail Dan had left Bilete de Papagal and had become involved with unu, of which he was later editor in chief.

Also in 1930, shortly after the forceful return of Romanian King Carol II to the throne, Sergiu Dan was working, as political editor, on the staff of Dreptatea, the platform of the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ).

According to the later account of communist journalist Petre Pandrea, Dan and Vinea together stole the original draft of an article by PNȚ economist Virgil Madgearu, and forged it in such manner as to make it seem that Madgearu was an anti-Carlist; they then sold a copy to Madgearu's rival, the corporatist theorist Mihail Manoilescu.

Manoilescu took a copy of this document to Carol, discrediting himself when the forgery was exposed.

Pandrea claimed that, between them, Dan and Vinea made off with 150,000 lei from the affair, whereas their victim Manoilescu fell into permanent disfavor.

Sergiu Dan's actual editorial debut came in 1931, when Editura Cugetarea published his novel Dragoste și moarte în provincie ("Love and Death in the Provinces").

In 1932, Dan and dramatist George Mihail Zamfirescu shared the annual prize of the Romanian Writers' Society, of which they both became members.

In 1932, Sergiu Dan joined the staff of Vinea's gazette Facla, with novelist Ion Călugăru, poet N. Davidescu, writer-director Sandu Eliad, and professional journalists Nicolae Carandino and Henric Streitman.

Dan resumed his writing career with Arsenic, published by Cultura Națională in 1934, and Surorile Veniamin ("The Veniamin Sisters", Editura Vatra, 1935).

The former volume received another cultural prize, granted by literary critics at the Eforie festival of 1934.

During 1934, Dan was one of 46 intellectuals who signed an appeal in favor of normalizing relations between Romania and its communist enemy to the east, the Soviet Union—the basis for a cultural and political association, Amicii URSS, which was secretly maneuvered by the outlawed Romanian Communist Party.

Sergiu Dan became a victim of antisemitic repression during the early stages of World War II, when authoritarian and fascist regimes took over (see Romania during World War II).

Initially, he was expelled from the Writers' Society.

In July 1940, writing for Universul Literar, fascist author Ladmiss Andreescu proposed a boycott of Dan's work, and an overall ban on Jewish literature.

Under the National Legionary State, some authors sympathetic to the ruling Iron Guard celebrated its enforcement of censorship as a revolution against modernist literature.

The writer's political stance also clashed with the post-1948 communist establishment, and, during the 1950s, he was interned at Aiud prison.

Dan was eventually forced to adapt his writing style to the aesthetic requirements of Romanian Socialist realism, and spent the final decades of his life in relative obscurity.

His work was rediscovered and reassessed following the 1989 Revolution.

The future writer was born in the town of Piatra Neamț, in Moldavia region, the son of Simon Rotman.

However, documents first made public in 2008 show that he was secretly an informant for the Kingdom of Romania's intelligence agency, Siguranța Statului, with a mission to supervise unu's ongoing flirtations with communism.

He had for long been suspected of this by the literary society at Sburătorul.