Carp, Mircea

He comes from an old Moldovan family, his father, Constantin Carp, a military man by profession, originally from Iasi, and his mother, Catherine (b. Catargi), comes from the family of well-known statesmen and diplomats. He was born in the city of Gherla because, at that time, his father was the commander of a cavalry unit in the city. When Mircea had just turned two, his father was moved to Chisinau.

In the book of memoirs Mircea Carp here, let us hear only good!, the author remembers his life, mentioning both the places through which, thanks to the father's profession, he passed in the years of childhood and youth, and, above all, the people he met and who left him beautiful memories.

Because he wanted to embrace the career of weapons, he would attend, from the summer of 1936, the Military High School "General George Macarovici" in Iasi. He continued with the "Nicolae Filipescu" Military High School at Dealu Monastery. In 1942, when he finished high school and took his baccalaureate exam, Romania was at war as an ally of Germany. Taking advantage of the agreement between the two countries that Romanian students could be admitted to German military schools, the young Carp decides to attend the Military School in Berlin. In March 1943, he received the rank of corporal from the school and was sent to the front, but the following summer he was allowed to return to the country as a graduate of the German Tank School.

After the war, purges began, and he was fired in 1946. He managed to leave the country in 1948. During his asylum in Austria, he served for three and a half years in the United States Army, stationed in Salzburg, a city that was in the American area of influence. He emigrated (1951) to the United States via a special visa, becoming a journalist. He was head of the Romanian language department and correspondent for Europe for the Voice of America radio. He has conducted numerous reports and interviews with representatives of the Romanian diaspora in America, being known by the pseudonym Dan Mircescu or Mihai Soimu. During his exile he visited Romania thirteen times, accompanying two American presidents in 1969, Richard Nixon and, in 1975, Gerald Ford. After the death of his first wife, he settled in Munich, continuing to serve the radio station Voice of America. In Europe he met Gabriela, his second wife, a Romanian refugee in Munich, whom he married on 6 February 1976. He became editor of the Political department and then deputy director of the radio station Free Europe.

The Mircea Carp donation to the Central University Library "Lucian Blaga" contains, among other things, correspondence between Mircea Carp and King Mihai I, interviews with Romanian personalities from exile, personal documents, autobiographies, photocopies, press reactions, as well as audio cassettes with recordings of radio broadcasts Voice of America and Free Europe, as well as many other documents covering aspects of reality in communist Romania, with real research potential for the history of the press and radio during the Cold War.

For all the work he did in favour of the country, both in Voice of America and in Free Europe, Mircea Carp was decorated by President Emil Constantinescu, on 1 December 2000, with the order "Star of Romania", in the rank of Commander.