The Steaua Rosie (Red Star) Museum of Communism in Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania, will be officially inaugurated on 21 October, with former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu among the guests attending the ceremony, local authorities announced on Saturday.

Other guests will include human rights activist Gabriel Andreescu, historian Madalin Hodor, vice-president of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), and Kelemen Hunor, president of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).

The Red Star Museum has been established in the former tobacco warehouse of the Sfantu Gheorghe Cigarette Factory, as part of a project worth nearly EUR 12 million, co-financed through Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

Covering approximately 3,000 square metres, the exhibition is dedicated to the communist period in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Romania's history and events at both national and local level. It aims to preserve the memory of the victims of communism and contribute to a better understanding of the consequences of the regime.

The collection includes numerous documents and objects dating from 1948 to 1989, most of them donated. Among the more unusual exhibits are a surveillance device concealed inside a cigarette packet and a crate of tinned food produced in 1987, with the tins still unopened.

'You will be fascinated. I can tell you that it is something absolutely unique in Romania,' Mayor Antal Arpad told AGERPRES.

The official inauguration will take place on Wednesday at 17:00 as a closed event. The museum will open to the public in the following days. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Oana Malina Negrea; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)

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