Elena Arnăuțoiu is one of the longest lived survivors of communist repression. Born in Nucșoara,  Muscel, today's Argeș County,  she was arrested in 1958 and sentenced to five years in prison for failure to denounce the resistance group headed by her brothers.

She was imprisoned in Pitești, among other prisons. Her entire family was arrested – mother Laurenția, father Iancu, and brothers Toma and Petre, the leaders of Muscel Outlaws resistance group. Her mother and father died during detention, and her brothers were executed in 1959 in Jilava Prison.

Her husband was fired from his job as a teacher, and her son barely managed to finish his higher education, given his family's 'unhealthy origins'. She was harassed and kept under surveillance by the Securitate until 1989, and was forced to pay rent in her own home for decades, while sharing the house with Securitate informants. In 2016 she was decorated with the National Order of Faithful Service in Rank of Knight by the Romanian Presidency for her opposition to the communist regime.