Vasile Posteucă
Vasile Posteucă was a Romanian poet and a member of the Iron Guard.
In Romania
Posteucă was born in Unterstanestie, Bukovina. He completed his high school studies in Siret, followed by a degree in literature at the University of Cernăuți.Posteucă began to publish poetry whilst still a university student, making his literary debut in Junimea Literară, a literary magazine based in Cernăuți and edited by Ion I. Nistor. He also became involved in student politics, participating in the "Aboroasa" student union and later serving as vice-president of the Student Centre of Cernăuți, which was organised primarily around ultranationalist politics. He helped to organize the first Congress of Bukovinian Students. He was closely involved in organising the fascist Legionary Movement in Bukovina, serving as "commandant" of Hotin County. In the 1937 Romanian general elections, he ran as a candidate for the Iron Guard in Hotin.
During the interwar period he collaborated with a number of far-right, nationalist, and literary publications, amongst them Iconar, Însemnări Sociologice, Buna Vestire, Falanga, Glasul Bucovinei, Convorbiri literare, and Cuvântul.
Following the Legionnaires' Rebellion in January 1941, Posteucă and other Iron Guard members fled Romania to Germany. He was initially held in a camp in Rostock, later being interned in Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1944 he was recruited by Horia Sima to a propaganda commission as part of the Romanian government-in-exile sponsored by the NSDAP and based in Vienna.
In exile
Posteucă immigrated to Canada, where he completed a Master of Arts in 1953 and his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto in 1962. He continued his associations with other exiled Iron Guard members, meeting with Canadian government officials and co-founding a Romanian Orthodox church in Toronto, and participating in Legionary gatherings in Detroit. He also contributed to a number of Romanian exile journals, including Destin, Luceafărul, Dacia, Arc, Libertatea, Cuvântul în exil, and Revista Scriitorilor Români. He co-founded the journal Drum with Nicolae Petra.In November 1966, he began working as a professor of language arts at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Posteucă was friends and kept correspondence with Mircea Eliade.
Later life and death
Posteucă spent several years suffering from cancer, during which he was cared for by another former Iron Guardist, Dr. Alexander Ronnett.Posteucă led a highly publicised campaign to be naturalised as a United States citizen and for his daughter, Doina Vircol, to be allowed by the communist Romanian government to travel from Bucharest to Chicago, in order to meet her before his death. Doina, who had seen her father only once since 1941, succeeded in visiting him in November 1972. Vasile Posteucă died shortly thereafter, on 6 December 1972, at the age of 60. He was buried in Jackson, Michigan.
Publications
Carte de cântece românești Poeme fără țară În marea și'n mormintele din noi Poeme din închisori Desgroparea Căpitanului- ''Icoane de dor. Poeme''