RĂZBOIUL DIN DEPĂRTĂRI: VIAȚA COTIDIANĂ LA FACULTATEA DE FILOSOFIE ȘI LITERE A UNIVERSITĂȚII DIN BUCUREȘTI (IUNIE 1941 – MARTIE 1944)
THE WAR FROM AFAR: EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY AND LETTERS, UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST (JUNE 1941 – MARCH 1944)

Summary/Abstract: This article presents the everyday life of students and professors from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Bucharest during the Second World War between June 1941, the date of Romania՚s entry into the war, and the beginning of 1944, before the bombing of Bucharest. The paper analyzes how Romania's participation in the war, throughout the time when the front was far from Bucharest, affected the daily life of this community. Although there are numerous studies dedicated to the history of Romanian higher education or to the University of Bucharest in particular, the everyday life of the students and professors of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters during the Second World War has not been presented in detail before. For this reason, the purpose of the article is to reveal another side of the war, the one experienced on a daily basis by students and professors, in a European capital still spared from bombing or other destructive effects of the war. The article presents how classes and exams occurred, the material difficulties of the faculty, the relationships between professors and, finally yet importantly, how the academic community spent its summer vacations. Regarding the primary sources, the research uses mainly the archive files of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, especially those from 1942 and 1943, and the diaries or memoirs of some students or professors, among which “The Political Journal” of Ioan Hudiță, professor and important member of the National Peasants՚ Party, stand out. The paper proves that the everyday life of the academic community felt the country՚s participation in the war not so much directly, but mostly indirectly, through the material difficulties, the political discussions of the professors, the war work during the summer and the loss of fathers and brothers of some students on the Eastern Front. Despite these realities, until the beginning of 1944, Bucharest՚s distance from the front allowed the faculty to keep its doors open and to preserve some elements of normality, such as the possibility of holding courses and exams or the professors and students chance of spending summer vacations on the seaside and in mountain resorts.

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