Vasile and Rozi Bilt’s Escape From Romania: A Thrilling True Story

It was called the “bloodiest border in Europe” for a reason.

Thousands of people died escaping Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime of 1974-1989—no one knows exactly how many. People from all across Eastern Europe risked everything to flee south through Romania into Yugoslavia and freedom. This border was heavily patrolled and covered in tripwires and barbed-wire fences.

The great Danube River offered an alternate route, but if spotted, escapees could be arrested, shot, or set upon by a boat with shards underneath. Thousands of bodies washed out of the Danube during Romania’s communist years.

Yet people kept trying.

The stories of the brave, lucky survivors are truly astonishing, but only a few have become public.

Here is the never-before-told true story of Vasile and Rozi Bilt.

Vasile and Rozi Bilt

Like every young man in Romania, Vasile was required to serve two years in the armed forces. Most men were then released, but those who displayed potential were chosen to continue. Vasile was kept on and trained up in the special forces.

While in the army, Vasile met and married the love of his life, Rozi. Together they built a home and began a young family. Compared with the country around them, they were well established and life was looking tolerably good.

By the 1980s, the Romanian standard of living had plummeted.

Electricity, gas and food rations were imposed and life became increasingly difficult. Being communist, nothing people owned was truly their own, not even themselves. Many Romanians wanted to flee, but most thought the risk too high. When people did try to escape, their loved ones left behind rarely learned the outcome.

They were left to wonder, Did they make it? Were they killed?

In the special forces, Vasile had to do things he could not reconcile with his Christian faith. His role was to hunt down people who escaped from the army and special forces and hand them over to the intelligence department.

From the public’s perspective, these people simply vanished.

Often they were placed in solitary confinement; some were awarded the gas chamber. Vasile would have known some of the men he had to hunt down. In fact he would have agreed with the reason they were running away. But it was too risky to show sympathy. If even a whisper got out of where his real allegiance lay, he would be the next in the gas chamber.

How could he keep doing such wrong things? But how could he leave?

He belonged to the government.

They never just granted documents to leave—especially for someone in the special forces. The only option was to escape, but capture meant certain death.

One day, when he and Rozi only had one child, Vasile put it to her:

“Why don’t I try to escape? I could leave and we could build a better life elsewhere.”

Incredulously, Rozi responded, “No way! You’d be leaving me here in this Communist country with our daughter to grow old and die without you!”

So years passed. Three more children were born to Vasile and Rozi. Then one day in October 1981, government officials knocked at their door.

“We’re acquiring your house to demolish it and put in new apartment blocks. You need to be out by February.” Vasile and Rozi were paid a mere 89,000 leu, and in February they moved into a government rental house at what was then 57 Karl Marx Street, Arad.

Now Vasile implored Rozi once more. “Look, life is harder now than before! They’ve taken everything from us, all our work and savings. We have to rebuild from scratch anyway. Why not do it somewhere we’ll be free, where our children will have a future?”

“Ok, I’ll let you go,” she agreed this time. “But I don’t want you to swim the border, and be careful, because if they catch you I won’t see you again.”

The Decision to Escape

Vasile gathered four other men who were interested in escape, and together they laid plans.

The strategy was simple.

Along the border were stationed guard towers, and every so often, the guards switched posts. Why their system allowed for this we will never know, but there was a small period between one guard leaving for the next tower and the new guard arriving—a period when there would be no one at the tower.

They would have about two or three minutes to make a dash for it. Then even if they were spotted, hopefully they would be far enough away that shooting would be difficult guesswork.

The cover story was that the men were going to buy a car, but they didn’t have a licence, so Vasile was going to drive them.

On the 15th of September 1982 the five men stocked their little hatchback and set off for the border town of Jimbolia. Parking at an out-of-the way rest stop, the men left the vehicle to examine the border and confirm the time between the changing of the guards.

As they were returning to the car, they saw through the trees all four doors wide open and policemen rummaging through the vehicle. The men stopped dead in their tracks as they took in this ghastly development.

Then the police spotted them.

Instantly, the five men split up and fled. Three ran one direction and Vasile and a friend ran the other. The police pursued but did not catch any of them in the chase, and the group of three eventually made their way back home and gave up trying to escape.

Vasile and his friend travelled north, keeping to the bushland. Meanwhile, back at the car, the police discovered the men’s identification documents. Border patrols were notified of the fugitives and sniffer dogs were deployed on their scent.

Soon morning began to dawn.

At 6am on the 16th of September the police came to Rozi’s house. They rang at the gate and demanded, “Where is your husband?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sticking to the cover story. “He went with his friends to pick up a car.”

“Then what was he doing at Jimbolia, the town where people cross the border?”

“I don’t know.” From then on Rozi was scared, because she didn’t know what had happened. Shortly she noticed an ominous black squad car park across the street and just sit there.

Meanwhile, further south and still in the restricted border zone, Vasile and his friend were trekking through the country when they were accosted by two heavily armed border patrolmen.

The patrolmen demanded, “Where are you going?”

“I work for a nearby hot water company,” said Vasile’s friend truthfully. “We’re going there because our car’s broken down and we need petrol.” Vasile’s friend did indeed work for this company, and because his work occasionally required him to enter the border zone, he’d been issued a pass.

Digging into his pocket, he produced the valid card. Suitably persuaded, the patrolmen let them continue. Vasile and his friend hitchhiked into Arad. From a public phone booth within sight of his own house, he rang Rozi.

At 7am the phone rang. Rozi snatched up the receiver. Vasile didn’t tell her where he was or what had happened, only that the plan had failed.

“You can’t come back here!” Rozi exclaimed. “They’re watching the house. I know! Stay at the Boths’ place nearby.”

The men used what little money they had and caught a train to the Boths’ house—less than six miles from where they’d set off the day before. It was barely 24 hours since they had departed, but now they’d lost their car and ID. Their plan had failed, three men had given up, their escape was known, their family was watched and they were wanted.

But it was about to get worse.

Rozi's Interrogation

When the police discovered the car they came across Vasile’s identification papers. Locating Rozi they required her to come in for interrogation every second day. They’d fire the same questions: “Where is your husband? What do you know? What were your plans?”

Rozi simply replied, “He went to get a car and I don’t know anything else!” The interrogators tried countless psychological methods of getting her to talk including threatening to kill her in the gas chamber.

Week after week this continued.

When anyone crossed the border into a neighbouring country, its immigration department would call the office in Romania and say, “We’ve got these immigrants. They crossed from Romania.” Vasile had not been aware of this. If his plan of crossing had succeeded, they would have called, discovered who he was, and sent him back, where he would have been executed.

As devastating as it seemed at the time, the failure of his plan saved his life.

Since the Romanian authorities hadn’t received a call informing of Vasile’s crossing, it meant he’d either crossed into a country unbeknownst to them, or he was still in Romania. Since crossing was exceptionally difficult, he was probably in Romania, and if he was, it was likely his wife would know of his whereabouts.

One day, Rozi sat at an interrogation table with three men in the room. One man had the recording machine, and another had his strong black Romanian coffee on the table.

The first asked, “How long are you going to keep saying you know nothing?”

“I don’t know! Until I know something, I don’t know!”

Another sneered, “We’ve found his body dead on the border being eaten by crows.”

That was the final straw. She was sick of the games—mad at them, mad at this whole system! She knew they were just messing with her head, trying to get her to confess. Without thinking, she just slammed her fist down on the desk—so hard the coffee spilt.

The moment she slammed her fist, she could see from their reaction that they switched from invoking fear to almost having fear in their own eyes.

Enraged, she demanded, “If you know something, you must tell me. I’m his wife! I have a right to know what has happened to him!” No one talked to them like that! At that moment the interrogators seriously began to believe, She really doesn’t know.

Hurling another curveball, the third man asked, “If your husband is dead, why don’t you file for divorce? Marry someone else, so they can raise your children!” (Back then, you could divorce someone who had died.)

Looking around at the three of them, she asked rhetorically, “Well, of the three of you men, is any of you going to marry me and raise my children?”

They just looked from one to the other.

The Mystery Helper

Rozi would occasionally make the six-mile trip to the Both’s to visit Vasile and give him photos of the children. Leaving the children with her mother-in-law, Rozi went with the baby in her arms to visit Vasile.

One day, boarding the tram, she looked around.

There was that black squad car.

As the tram moved, the car kept pace. When the tram stopped, it would stop to see if she’d get off. Rozi got off at her destination and took back alleys to the Both’s place. As she walked down the alley to enter the house, she noticed that squad car stationed at the end watching her.

She thought, Uh, oh. He’s waiting for me.

Maybe if I go in, they’ll catch me and find my husband! So carrying the baby, she walked straight past, got back on the tram and went home.

Every night, after Rozi came home from work, she would put the children to bed, but she wouldn’t sleep until after midnight. She’d lie awake crying and praying. She prayed, “Lord, someone can help us. Send them, please.”

One day there was a ring at the gate. There stood a strange man.

“Hello, you have a problem you can’t resolve,” he said. “I want to help you.”

“I don’t have any problem! You can go.” She daren’t admit to a stranger that she needed help. He might have been sent by the police as another method of extracting information.

A week later, the man returned. “I told you before, I don’t need any help!” Rozi said, and slammed the gate.

Again the man returned. Rozi was exasperated. “Why have you come again? Why?”

“Listen,” the man said. “God told me to come to this address. After last time, He said, ‘Come again.’”

Rozi was about to shut him down, when she felt prompted in her spirit just to ask, “How can you help?”

“I help get Christians across the border.”

To Freedom—Almost

So, on 5th November 1982, under cover of darkness, Vasile and his friend crossed through cornfields into Yugoslavia and freedom––safely across Europe’s bloodiest border. But the freedom was short-lived. Barely across the other side, they were accosted by Yugoslavian authorities.

Vasile’s friend ran, but Vasile was caught and put in prison in Belgrade.

Vasile was locked in a cell with eighteen other foreigners. Every day one man would be taken out of the cell and sent back to his home country, but that wasn’t an option for Vasile.

If he returned, he’d be killed!

One day, he was gazing longingly out the window, thinking of his wife and children, when it began snowing. “Oh, look, it’s snowing. How we loved playing in the snow,” he remembered. “Now my kids don’t have someone to play with them.”

Later that day, as he read his Bible, he felt God speak to his heart, and he told his cellmates, “No one from this cell will ever be sent back to their country again.” They laughed and said, “If that happens, we’ll become Christian like you!”

Sure enough no one was taken that day, or the next.

Then on the third day a muscular guard entered the cell and menacingly eyed them all. Everyone was afraid of this man. “Boys!” he yelled. “Pack your things. Tomorrow morning you’re moving to an immigration camp.”

The next day they were all taken out and released!

Suddenly, they were all free men standing on the snowy streets of Yugoslavia.

We cannot imagine how that phone call went—the call when Yugoslavia rang up Romania. There would have been that ghastly moment of recognition. Then the call could have gone one of two ways. They could have buttered up and said, “We wish him all the best.” Or (why this didn’t occur we will never know and can only attribute to the miraculous intervention of God), they could have said, “We know that man! He’s one of our spies. You must send him back.” However it transpired, Yugoslavia was convinced of Vasile’s identity, and Romania knew they couldn’t get him back.

Finally, Rozi stopped being interrogated, and the surveillance car was withdrawn.

Australia—The Country of Freedom

Visiting an American consul, Vasile asked, “How quickly can I immigrate to the USA?”

“One year, maybe more,” they replied.

“Thanks.” Then he headed to the Australian consul. “How quickly can I immigrate to Australia?”

“It will take a maximum of three months.”

Australia it was!

On April Fools day, Vasile received news: “You have a ticket to fly to Australia.” When he called Rozi she laughed. “This is a joke! I don’t think you’re going, but we’ll see!” It was true.

On the 2nd of April 1983, Vasile landed safely in Australia—the country of freedom.

Vasile’s friend, who escaped with him, had a wife and son in Romania. When the wife didn’t know what had become of her husband, she went right away and got remarried! She urged Rozi: “Leave Vasile and marry someone else! You’re a nice woman––you could find someone to raise your kids!”

“I don’t want someone to raise my kids!” said Rozi, “I just want to be together.”

Now Rozi’s prayer changed. “Lord,” she said, “Thank you for helping my husband, but now I want to join him. Somebody can help us. Do not let them have rest until they help our cause.” Whatever she was doing, she continually prayed, “Don’t let them have sleep…”

One day, there was a ring at the gate. When she opened, there stood a tall man in a long coat and hat, and his wife—a startlingly gorgeous woman with beautifully styled hair. They each held a brown paper bag stuffed with all kinds of delicacies—meats, salami, and fruits that were only available to government officials and police.

“Can we come in?” the man asked.

“Of course. Would you like a coffee?”

“No. Save the coffee for other visitors.” (Coffee was expensive.) She made them a coffee anyway and quietly said to her mother-in-law, “Take the children out–I need to talk with these people.”

Once they were settled, the first thing the strangers did was ask about her husband. Now that he was out of the country, she could tell the whole truth.

“Remember when you slammed your fist on the table and the coffee spilled?” the man asked.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I was one of the men there. I don’t know what’s happened, but I can’t sleep at night. I keep thinking about your situation, and a voice keeps saying to me, ‘You have to help this family.’”

Tears filled Rozi’s eyes. “It’s my fault that you can’t sleep,” she said. “I’ve been praying that God would send help.”

“I can’t convert now—in the police. But I promise you, when I go on pension, I’ll come under your religion. Now listen. I can authorise your documents…”

True to his word, he returned a month later, passport in hand, and before long Rozi held the visa.

Rozi and her children arrived in Australia on the 22nd of November 1983—only seven months after Vasile. As Rozi’s foot touched Australian soil, she breathed, Thank you God! When the children saw Vasile, they jumped on him, hugging and crying.

They hadn’t seen their Daddy in over a year.