The Victor Frunză Collection began to be devised and organised by the collector after his emigration to Denmark in 1980. It consists of documents concerning the organisation and activity of the Romanian exile community during the communist period in Romania. In this respect, the writer's collection includes materials about Romanians' organisations abroad and activities carried out by them for: the presentation of the situation in Romania under the communist regime to political decision-makers and Western public opinion in order to determine political changes and eventually remove the communist dictatorship in that country; the observance of fundamental human rights in Romania; the supporting of Romanian dissidents. The materials in this collection thus represent an important historical source for the history of the Romanian exile community.
In particular, this archive illustrates the intellectual evolution of Victor Frunză, a Romanian writer and journalist who became known after his exile started in 1980. He was actively involved in the activities of the Romanian exile community, especially in those realating to the observance of human rights in communist Romania. In this regard, he wrote a series of articles which were published in papers and journals of the exile community, as well as a book titled For Human Rights in Romania. He also corresponded with a number of Romanians abroad who campaigned for the observance of human rights and for family reunification.
The Victor Frunză Collection consists of two categories of documents. The first is represented by the correspondence of Victor Frunză with personalities from the exile community in 1978 in the context of his travel as a tourist in France. As regards these documents, Victor Frunză either memorised and then rewrote them, or asked the people concerned for copies after he settled in Denmark in 1980. The collection also includes the writer's correspondence with Romanians in exile after his emigration and until the collapse of the communist regime. Essentially, these letters refer to the violation of human rights in Romania and the personality cult of Nicolae Ceaușescu. At the same time, among the documents that Victor Frunză collected there are exile publications, either incomplete or cuttings. The newspapers and exile journals help one create a profile of these publications as well as of the Romanians abroad who published in their pages. The importance of these publications also derives from the analyses focusing on Romania's domestic political, economic, cultural and social situation under the communist dictatorship. These analyses are necessary to achieve a better image of the period.
The second category of documents consists of materials that did not originally belong to Victor Frunză, but to two other personalities of the exile community: Pamfil Şeicaru and Vasile C. Dumitrescu, with whom Victor Frunză was in friendly relations. Pamfil Şeicaru was a Romanian journalist, the director of the newspaper Curentul, which during the interwar and the Second World War periods was one of the most combative and popular newspapers in the country. He was a deputy in the Parliament and in 1944 he was sent abroad to contribute diplomatically to Romania's withdrawal from the war and to ensure propaganda in favour of the national interest. He spent 30 years in Madrid, Spain where he published a quarterly edition of the newspaper Curentul and, for a while, the newspaper Liberty and Justice. He spent the last years of his life in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), where he died in 1980. Vasile C. Dumitrescu was a Romanian legal advisor and journalist who left Romania in 1944. After the establishment of the communist regime in the country he was involved in some actions of the Romanian exile community, especially those concerned with presenting the situation in Romania under the totalitarian regime and fighting communist propaganda. After he met Pamfil Şeicaru, he became editor of the newspaper Curentul, which re-emerged in the FRG between 1978 and 1992. He died in 1992 in Munich. In exile, Victor Frunză collaborated with Pamfil Şeicaru and Vasile C. Dumitrescu. He published articles in the newspaper Curentul about the violation of human rights in Romania and about the personality cult of Nicolae Ceausescu. In this context, they became friends. After Șeicaru and Dumitrescu passed away, their families donated to Victor Frunză a series of documents that are now in the Victor Frunză Collection. The materials belonging to Pamfil Şeicaru and Vasile C. Dumitrescu reflect, like those in Victor Frunză's personal archive, the organisation and the way of action of the Romanian exile community.
