> it states that Izidor was not an unwanted child

Where does it say that? I might have missed it. Abandoning a child for having a leg deformity doesn't strike me as if he was wanted much.

Anyway, the poor conditions in the orphanages and children hospitals were a result of overcrowding and this happened due to Ceaușescu's policies that turned Romania into a baby factory. And there was also the issue that children with disabilities were incompatible with communism's "new man" ideal, so the orphanages for children with disabilities were genuine horrors.

That is what the birth parents told him, it's near the end of the article. Hard to know if they were telling the truth, but he was not abandoned at birth.

Maybe not the case here, but I heard of a similar story from another country. As a baby he got his arm badly burned and the parents left him at the hospital because they couldn't pay for treatment.

The accident cost him his hand _and_ his parents.