Special Report: Young & Rubicam - Curtain Call

Peter Georgescu was attending grade school in Bucharest and his father, a Standard Oil executive, was with his mother on a business trip in New York when young Peter’s world fell apart. It was 1947 and the Iron Curtain was descending on Romania. The Communist authorities put 8-year-old Peter and his 13-year-old brother, Constantin, to work in the labor camps and would not allow their parents to return. For seven years, the boys stayed with their grandmother and spent their days digging up potatoes, cleaning sewers and doing other menial tasks.
Freedom came in 1954, when President Eisenhower helped win the boys’ release and the family enjoyed a reunion in the U.S.