User:Boddyban/Virgil Solomon

Virgil Solomon (n. 27 august 1894 – d. 4 august 1972) was a Romanian physician and politician who served as the deputy general secretary of the National Peasants' Party in 1941-1944 and as Minister of Public Works, from November 4th, 1944 to the 6th of March 1945.

Family, studies and professional activity
Born on 27th August 1894 in Drăguș commune, Făgăraș County, to an old boyar family mentioned in local documents as early as the 15th century. His father, Leon Solomon, was a public notary and the owner of 15 hectares of land and of a manor house in Voila. His mother, Ana, was from the Vasu family in Arpaș, also mentioned in documents since the 16th century.

At 17, Virgil Solomon applied to the Medical School in Cluj and continued his medical studies in Budapest, Vienna and back again to Cluj.

In 1916, he married Erna Nick. They had a son, Gheorghe Virgil Francisc Solomon, a future diplomat.

Drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, he participated in the First World War as part of the reserve force, working in medical institutions around Vienna. After the war, he worked as a social insurance doctor in Sighisoara and as chief doctor of the Târnava-Mare County.

Political career
He became politically active during his student days. On 1st December 1918, he attended the National Assembly in Alba Iulia, where, as a delegate of the "Young Romania" Academic Society of Romanian students in Vienna, he expressed his support for the unification of Transylvania with Romania. .

In 1924, according to an investigation of the State Security, he sent a memo to the leadership of the National Peasants' Party (P.N.Ț.), explaining that the party branch in Odorhei County needed reshuffling, because the local organisation had dissolved after the departure of the leaders. Iuliu Maniu then entrusted him with the task of rebuilding the Odorhei party branch.

From 1926 onwards, he ran in parliamentary elections and two years later won his first parliamentary mandate (from Odorhei). He was re-elected in Odorhei in 1932; after the dissolution of Parliament and the new elections in 1933, he became a substitute deputy and, in 1935, an active deputy for Some  ș after the main candidate withdrew. It was during this term that Solomon was assaulted in Parliament by representatives of Octavian Goga's pro-Fascist party. Corneliu Coposu recalled the moment in an article: "Why was the Peasants' Party leader slaughtered? Because Hitler's mercenaries, illiterate in politics and parliamentary manners, are incapable of civilised combat, of serious discussion, of human reasoning. And their ideological erudition culminates in... a fight... Because the so-called "right-wing" party is diligently striving to lower parliamentary dignity, to compromise the democratically elected regime, to bring down the institution that has promoted civilisation and uplifted peoples, to torpedo the system that thwarts dictatorship. Dictatorship and adventurous attempts, the sorry values in which these would-be pioneers of Christianity believe. And, finally, because Virgil Solomon is a fearless soldier of the truth, a leader of the Maniu line of action – that these good-for-nothing gangs so much... "adore", – a feared debater, undefeated in the real parliamentary battle, who never once lets himself be intimidated by the terror of parade nationalism."

In 1937 he again won a seat, but Parliament was dissolved before it even assembled. During the Second World War, he was appointed deputy secretary general of the P.N.Ț. for Transylvanian affairs.

In the run-up to the events of 23rd August 1944, Dr. Virgil Solomon, an intimate of Iuliu Maniu, was part of the team that collaborated with King Michael to get Romania out of the alliance with Nazi Germany and to continue the war alongside the Allies, with the immediate objective of liberating Transylvania. In an interview with the Associated Press in 1945, Corneliu Coposu reported: "Among the Nationalist leaders who played a leading role, giving unlimited support to (party) Chairman Maniu, I must include the names of Messrs. Ion Mihalache, Ghiță Pop, Ion Hudiță, Virgil Solomon..." , and then added other 22 names. Alongside Hudiță, Solomon was the liaison to the liberal party.

After the 23rd of August 1944, as the Allies decided that the political forces should collaborate with the communists, P.N.Ț. became part of the ensuing coalition governments. Virgil Solomon was appointed Minister of Public Works and Reconstruction and served in the governments led by Sănătescu (II) and Rădescu, from the 4th of November 1944 to the 6th of March 1945.

Afterwards, he resumed his party duties, as chief of the Odorhei branch as well as a member of the P.N.Ț. representative body, from September 1945 to the day he was arrested, on May 5th, 1947.

In communist detention
Dr. Virgil Solomon was among the first Peasants' Party members to be arrested. The initiative, he recalled, had belonged to communist Vasile Luca, who was heard saying that ”Solomon must be immobilized”  because of his intransigent position before the 1946 Romanian general elections.

With no arrest warrant to his name until 1954 and without trial, Solomon has held from 1947 to 1955 as a political prisoner in Jilava, Pitești, Aiud, Ocnele Mari and, finally, Sighet, where he was brought in a an ambulance.

After July 5th, 1955, he was placed into forced residence in the plains of Bărăgan, first in the village of Măzăreni (1955-1960), then in Rubla (1960-1964). In total, he served 17 years of detention and restrictions based on mere administrative decision, without ever being brought to trial.

The final years
In March 1964, all his restrictions were finally lifted and he was allowed to move to Bucharest. He lived another 8 years, until the 4th of August 1972, spending most of his time either working on his memoirs, which he had started writing in 1956, reading or meeting former political friends, but avoiding any discussion of politics.