Alexandru Ghica – A knight-fighter

The second knight I want to talk about was Prince Alexandru Ghica. He was a legionary, head of the legionary security. He freed the lawyer Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, with this reasoning: “I am a right-wing fighter, I don’t want to persecute a left-wing fighter”. I had sent my mother-in-law a card, in French, reminding her of the knight Bayard, sanspeur et sansreproche.

We were schoolmates. He was accused of this after the January 1941 uprising, during his trial, where he was sentenced to 25 years for having links with the Komintern!

Why did he release the Communist leader? He let him go out of chivalry. Then he saw Lucrețiu. He hadn’t seen me since high school. At his trial in March 1954, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, who was sentenced to death and executed, was accused of having links with the Legionaries. In a gesture of chivalry, he buried them both.

In 1953, Alex Ghica was in the basement of Uranus, in a cell with Duiliu Vinogradski, and told him about the investigation. I had also seen him in Aiud and we discussed dialectics. The imbecile investigator tried to extract a statement from Ghica saying that he had released Pătrășcanu on condition that he became his informer in the workers’ movement. Alex Ghica was outraged. Would he look me in the eye again? Wouldn’t he spit in the mirror? How could it have occurred to a chevalier to force another chevalier, in need and in his clutches, to humiliate him and serve as his tool? The suspicion choked the prince.

Ghica’s lecherous lust stretched him as well. He will be released! He will see his wife and children after 13 years of imprisonment. It was all in vain. The prince was inflexible. A knight does not harm a man, let alone a fighter, even if he is on the other side of the barricade.

Vinogradski’s and my testimonies make a statue of Alexander Ghica and Lucrețiu D. Pătrășcanu. From this chivalrous gesture of Prince Ghica, in October 1940, the death of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu was traced in March 1954. The gesture was twisted and used as a pretext to favour and pact with two class enemies. If I had been called or allowed to be a lawyer, I would have destroyed the trial.

(Petre Pandrea – The Sun of Melancholy. Memoirs)