Academician Motaș Constantin, defender of truth, justice and honour
The academician Constantin Motaș, director of the Grigore Antipa Museum in Bucharest, was one of the leaders of Social Democracy who did not leave Titel Petrescu, as did Stefan Voitec, Lotar Rădăceanu, Tudor Ionescu, also known as the Plastographer, and others. […]
[…] Motaș Constantin told us with much humour about his meeting with Ana Pauker, Stalin’s most trusted person and number one in the RCP’s Political Bureau, who offered him an ambassadorship in exchange for betraying Social Democracy. But the professor, deeply offended by her filthy offer, insulted her in the harshest terms and left the room. “You will pay dearly for this!” Comrade Ana shouted. “You’ll die in prison!”
If his threat turned into seven years in prison, only justice was in the hands of the communists, the wish never to see the light of day again did not come true. God wanted Professor Motaș Constantin, the worthy descendant of Emil Racoviță, to escape alive from the communist prisons, the last of which was that of Sighet. He was released in 1956. I visited him the following year, after a long search for his address. He remained the same great character, defender of truth, justice and honour.
In 1991, many years after his death, the Romanian Academy commemorated the 100th anniversary of his birth. He was one of its distinguished members. I regretted that I could not accept the invitation to attend this commemoration, as I was at the Inter-Parliamentary Conference in Santiago (Chile). If I could not tell his former colleagues and students then that their teacher and ours, those of us in prison, were an example of courage and dignity, I will do so now. And I would also have told them that, despite the miserable conditions in which we lived, the Master never for a moment interrupted his teaching. He continued his zoology and speleology lessons in the Jilava Dungeon, as he called the dreaded underground prison. “If I regret anything,” Professor Motaș told us, “it is that I left unfinished a work that was also treated by a Japanese who, in this way, will have the precedence of its publication”. And how many scientists and scholars did not leave their unfinished works on their desks because they were imprisoned for being good Romanians and defenders of democracy? The communists trampled over our traditions, customs and culture.
(Sabin Ivan – In Search of the Truth, 2nd edition, Ex Ponto Publishing House, Constanta, 1996, pp. 23-24)