The Christmas of 1948, in Suceava

The merciful and devout Christian people of Suceava and the surrounding villages had a beautiful custom: on Saturdays and major feast days, they would come to the prison gates bringing food, clothing, and other provisions for the inmates. From the very first Saturday—after the arrests of May 15, when the prison began to fill with us—these pious Christians appeared at the gates with baskets of food.

On the feast of St. John the New of Suceava, the city overflowed with believers from the surrounding countryside, even from as far as Maramureș. Many of them attempted to bring food to the prisoners.

But the servants of Satan, intent on starving us, drove the people away with whips and oxen, overturning their baskets of food, cursing them, and even beating them. The faithful Christians, undeterred, gathered afterward in the cattle market field where their wagons were kept. From there, they made gestures toward the prison, showing us how the guards had thrown down their offerings. The scene was visible both to those standing near the prison gates and to the inmates peering from the windows of the first floor. Many women broke into tears at the cruelty they endured.

By the end of December 1948, most of the interrogations had concluded. Those of us who had survived the torture tried to gather our thoughts and prepare our spirits for the great feast of Christ’s Nativity.

I will never forget those moments of sweetness and spiritual exaltation when, from sunset until nightfall, voices rose one by one from each women’s cell. The prisoners took turns approaching the barred windows and singing. Never in my life have I heard songs so pure, so tender, so full of heavenly yearning, as the voices of those nightingales locked behind bars. What moved us most—what brought every prisoner to tears—were the lullabies sung by mothers whose children no longer knew them.

From the basement where I was kept, we could not see beyond the prison walls, but those held upstairs said that after nightfall small groups of townspeople gathered outside, listening in silence to the songs rising from within.

Never has a Christmas carol seemed nearer to heaven, more heartfelt, more full of divine beauty, than those sung from behind the iron bars by the women imprisoned in Suceava.

We spent Christmas and New Year in bitter cold, hunger, and sadness. It was then that the most despicable of institutions, the Securitate, was born. For us, that marked the beginning of our ordeal—the long and crushing years of imprisonment to which we were condemned.

(Dumitru Bordeianu – Confessions from the Swamp of Despair)