“After being released he gave his life, soul and work to God with a force that frightens and shakes us”
Gheorghe was an intelligent young man with an extraordinary memory. In re-education, after the “revolutionary shock” and the call to become an activist, everyone was looking for the most acceptable compromise. Gheorghe couldn’t become a murderer or an informer.
He was too intelligent and believed in God to accept “restructuring”, but he had to play the role of “restructured”.
Țurcanu found in his memory a kind of mechanical brain that he needed in the immense shorthand and clichés of re-education. So he kept it with him and used it as a “memory” of what was going on in re-education. It was too complicated to sift through the masses of statements or denunciations, which Gheorghe did faithfully. In this way, he was satisfied that he was not contributing to the chaos there. It was a mechanical operation, but he kept his freedom of mind.
In this way he experienced a constant moral deduction: the memory given to Țurcanu and the soul given to God. He played a central role. Everyone was afraid of him, and he could not confide his secret to anyone, for he would be lost. And he had the misfortune to remain in the re-education centre for years. It cannot be said that he prayed, in the ordinary sense of the word, but he was in constant communication with God with an extraordinary intensity. Then he not only understood what re-education was, with all its ideological underpinnings, but he also entered into the deepest Christian spirituality. He decided to dedicate his life to Christ if he had any days left.
When Țurcanu’s trial was set up, he was also implicated and accused by the Securitate. On the door of the cell in the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, where he was being investigated, you can read, carefully carved into the wood: “I die innocent”. And he was resigned. But despite all the efforts of the Securitate to implicate him, he remained only a witness for the prosecution. He is one of the people who can testify to things never before known about Țurcanu.
After his release, he gave his life, his soul and his work to God with a force that frightens and shakes us, for the dimensions of this tragedy of conscience are enormous.
(Ioan Ianolide – Return to Christ. Document for a new world)