The totalitarian Communist regime of the Rumanian dictator Nicolae communist Ceauçescu did not tolerate any opposition nor political prisoners. The worker Vasile Paraschiv was an anti-communist who tried to resist Ceauçescu's regime. The Rumanian Hero sketches a picture of a man who offered up his life and his family in a fight for human rights. The way he turned against the state in 1968 by openly resigning from the Communist Party and how he was arrested four months later by the feared Rumanian secret police, the Securitate, and forced to be treated in a mental hospital. After his release, he continued to fight: he founded the first Rumanian trade union in 1971 and was the only man who tried to take the Securitate to court.
