United After 18 Years

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31052, 6 May 1966, Page 1

United After 18 Years

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 5. Long years of hardship and separation from his family have ended for a Rumanian, Mr Pavel Popa. Yesterday Mr Popa arrived at Wellington by air from Rumania, to be welcomed by his wife whom he had not seen since the Communists took over Rumania in 1948. and his 18-year-old daughter whom he saw for the first tjjne.

His daughter, Marina, told i how’ during the fighting Mr Popa became separated from I his wife and when she was born he was a prisoner in a political camp. She said he was imprisoned because he' was the nephew of the former Patriarch and Regent of Rumania, Miron Christea. “After the war I thought my husband was dead,” said Mrs Popa. She left for New Zealand in 1951 to start a new life. For half her life Marina thought her father was dead. New hope came to Mrs ;Popa nine years and a half

ago, when relatives in RuI mania advised her husband iwas alive and free in the sense he was out of the political camp. Mrs Popa immediately approached the authorities but J. Communists would not let ™ leave the country. Howeased restrictions reI Mr Popa to II come to New Zealand. M*ith his daughter as in- ‘ Popa «id I* day that he was h and grateful to the New Zealand authorities, specially the Minister of Immigration, who tgok a personal interest.”