Aiud

He was tried and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. He was taken to Aiud with the other convicted legionaries. At that time, Aiud was an ordinary prison, with cells closed only at night. From the beginning, the prisoners were divided into three groups.

The first group were those who wanted a political solution at all costs and wanted to know everything that was happening in the country. A second, smaller group were those who were narrow-minded and willing to compromise in order to get out of prison. And the third, smaller group were the “mystics”, those who understood that they were there because of their sins and the sins of the people they loved, and that they had a duty to repent, to pray and to do the works of the Gospel as best they could. Among this latter group, there were several names that became true symbols of the martyrdom of the prisons under the communist regime, such as Valeriu Gafencu, called by many “the Saint of the prisons”, Anghel Papacioc, who became a monk after the liberation (in 1948) under the name of Arsenie and became one of the country’s greatest confessors, Virgil Maxim, Marin Naidim, the priest Vasile Serghie from Bîrlad, their confessor, and other lovers of Christ, including Constantin Dumitru, nicknamed “the fakir”. From here they were taken on several occasions to various agricultural jobs in order to support themselves, their situation made worse by the economic hardships of the country (especially in the famine years of 1946 and 1947), which was spending its resources on the war.

Father skipped the early years of imprisonment, which were not without their miracles. We know that he shared a cell with Dr. Uță, a prisoner who was held in high esteem by both his fellow prisoners and the prison administration.

For this reason, after his medical interventions in some delicate situations, the prison warden, as a token of gratitude, sent the doctor some eggs, a food that was difficult to find in those years. Constantine was putting the eggs on bread to share with his cellmates when another prisoner came through the door to call the doctor. Then Constantine quickly covered the slices of bread with roe using a box lid he had at hand. After the newcomer had left with Doctor Uță, one of the prisoners jumped up and shouted:

“This is Pharisaism! You’re hiding it in order to make people think we’re fasting!”

Constantine made no reply, being very silent in his own way. When only the two of them remained, he said to him gently and wisely, giving him an example of true moderation:

“Sandule, what do you think he would have said to all of us if he had seen us with our eggs on the table? That we eat roe at every meal, while they starve with their daily juice”.

Moving on to 43-45, Father continued: “The first time I went to Galda, to the vineyard. The second year I went to Vioara (Unirea). The third year I went to Ciugudel, where I worked in the vineyard and in the cloth. I was in the team that could do everything in the field. There was Nicu Mazăre, Virgil Maxim and a number of other young people, former pupils and students, who could work in the fields, together with some older people who knew what had to be done. In Galda we had to harvest wheat. I hadn’t harvested since I was a child, when I cut off my little finger. I enjoyed working so much: I was as if in love! And when I worked with skill, everyone stopped to look at me”.

There were also hard times for those in Aiud, as the situation in the country was very unstable and their regime uncertain. Although the prison doctor, Uță, also a legionary prisoner, was much appreciated by the prison director, who did him a few favours in time, smuggling him out of the prison to meditate his children, the regime was still quite harsh and they had to make do with what they had. In such conditions it happened that young Constantine, considered by all to be a man of iron, fainted at the sight of the pain of others, as he himself told me:

“I fainted when they made me hold an infected hand so that Dr. Uță could operate on it with a scalpel, without anaesthetic”.

Aiud was a very special place in those years. The prison administration had gained so much trust in the legionaries that, after 23 August 1944, when they had to evacuate Aiud and take them to Alba Iulia, they let the inmates walk alone, unaccompanied, from one prison to another. And especially in Alba Iulia, when the Russian army arrived, notorious for its robberies and rapes, the prison administration and the guards brought their wives and daughters to the prison so that they would not be mocked by the brave soldiers of the Red Army. This is no exaggeration: the monument to the Soviet soldier in Berlin was dubbed by the Germans “The Soviet Rapist Monument”. After the autumn of 1944, things calmed down, the political prisoners returned to Aiud and a few more years of peace followed for everyone.

(Fr. Marcu Dumitru – Confession of a Christian. Father Marcu de la Sihăstria, edited by monk Filoteu Bălan, Petru Vodă Publishing House, 2007, pp. 41-47)