Alexandru Ghica (en)

The Communists did not bend him: Prince Alexander Ghyka, Director General of Police

Alexandru Ghyka is a model of struggle. The great-grandson of Grigore Ghica V (1807-1857), ruler of Moldavia between 1849-1853 and 1854-1856, he was director-general of the police (1940-1941). He was to suffer for a long time, imprisoned in dungeons for almost a quarter of a century, from 1941 to 1964. Orthodox, cultured, upright, patriotic, a Romanian of rare dignity, he resisted all the attacks of re-education. He spent a total of 24 years in prison. He was detained in the prisons of Jilava, Pitești, Văcărești, Aiud, Alba, Sibiu, Brașov, Ploiești, Ghencea, Galați, Giurgiu, Suceava, Gherla and was under Securitate surveillance […]

“He went in and out of prison clean as a whistle”

I cannot write about this man, a titan of suffering, without a false excuse, but I will try to introduce him to you: He joined the Legionaries, not when the tide turned against them, but before. I am not justified to write about his culture.

Prince Alexandru Ghica, “monument of human dignity”

If a monument to human dignity were to be erected, it would undoubtedly represent Prince Alexandru Ghica as I knew him in Aiud. Tall, dry, with a face illuminated by an intense inner life, Prince Alexandru Ghica looked like an ascetic whose spirit had penetrated his tissues. Modest without ostentation, humble without boastfulness, firm without the slightest trace of rigidity, he behaved like a true prince in all circumstances. Of course, in the prisons I have passed through, I have met other prisoners who, consciously accepting suffering as a duty of life, have managed to transcend the mundane and live […]

Alecu Ghica, “the most perfect comrade in suffering”

After a week of living together, one morning my brother was taken away, only to be sent half an hour later to another cell, an ordinary one, without sheets and in a terrible mess. I recognised the Zarca. (…) The next morning I was taken to the police station, into a cell with Professor Vasile Stoian, Eugen Rațiu and Prince Alecu Ghica. The re-education clubs were organised in this section. We exchanged impressions and information, a little excited, except for Alecu Ghica, who was always perfectly in control. […] Notice the feverish activity in the corridor of the “section”. We […]

Alexandru Ghica – The gentle and entreating prince

With the shackles at my feet, I arrived in the so-called TBC ward, in the same corridor, a few rooms further from the exit [the action takes place in Jilava prison n.n.]. There were four rows of beds, three on top of each other, on only one side of the wall. The room was much bigger, with more light, fresh air and slightly better food. I had the honour and good fortune to have Prince Alexander Ghika as my bedmate and Mihai Timaru on my left. Different lives, different people, different novels! Prince Alexandru Ghika, a member of the Legionary […]

Prince Ghica, “the fearless Job of the modern age”

Prince Alexandru Ghica, a former legionary commander, former head of the Romanian police and a man who spent 24 years in political prison, was not consecrated by Romanian history as a reference figure, like his ancestor, the ruler of Moldavia. But those of us who knew him in prison know who Prince Ghyka was, a model of dignity and anti-communist resistance, of exemplary fairness and an unimaginable strength to suffer for his ideals. Nothing could defeat him. He remained a prince to the end. The trials he faced were not few. The history of the last century, so fragmented, so […]

“He did not compromise, he had a princely dignity. And he was also very faithful”

– Apart from Oprișan, who influenced you in prison? – Prince Ghica, from whom I learned good manners. I met him in Jilava. Prince Ghica was a big and very polite man. He would greet you first. Even though we were younger, he would come first and say “Good morning”. He would ask you: “May I sweep the cell for you today?” How could I? How to tell him: “Yes, sir, sweep!”… But he would insist: “Please, please!” And you were ashamed to refuse him in the end. Or if someone was sick or weak, the Prince would get up […]

Alexandru Ghica, “a case in which social nobility coincides with moral nobility”

I’m back at Cellular. During the time I was at the station, Aiud was overcrowded. In 1958, a huge wave of arrests swept through Romania. Those arrested then, after a spell in the Securitate and military courts, came to Aiud like an uncontrollable avalanche. There are no longer cells of four, only six or eight. In the large Aiud prison, the ordeal of overcrowding began. I ended up in a cell on the southern shortcut, on the west side. The first big surprise: in the cell was Prince Alexandru Ghica, arrested since 1941. […] Knowing Prince Alexandru Ghica, I thought […]

Prince Alecu Ghica – Fearless advocate of the Romanian people

Here was Prince Alecu Ghica, former head of state security under the Legionaries, a magistrate with ten ancestors who had sat on the thrones of Wallachia and Moldavia. He was from Iași, a handsome figure, well groomed, with a dignified demeanour, serene and gentle, not at all distant, had been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment. […] After a long farewell, I met Prince Alecu Ghica again. He had wandered through many places, especially Jilava and the interior of Bucharest. He had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labour. When the sentence imposed by Antonescu was reduced by a quarter, […]

Alexandru Ghica – the confessing voice of a humiliated nation

One of the following days the cell doors were opened and all the prisoners were led out over the railings. On the second floor was Major Muntean, in the middle of a group of gendarmes with automatic weapons pointed at us. He was wearing a magistrate’s uniform with his hands in his cape. He began contemptuously: “Look at yourselves, look at how you look, and you wanted to rule Romania! Look at the state you’ve ended up in! Ask for forgiveness until there are more who are willing to give it! From now on, I’ll make sure that Aiud is […]

Testimony of a Saint – Alexandru Ghica

One Sunday morning – the church bells were ringing in the town – they took us all out, they brought us in from the cells, from the wards, from the factory, about 2000 people. In the “Bomb”, where we had been sorted out in 1959, benches were set up, and on a higher planked platform, the presidium table, at which, when the hall was full, at Christmas, two very elegant civilians, officers and the infallible “Rodica”, the secretary, took their seats. The Zarca were brought in and placed in the front rows. A few shadows, among which Prince Ghica and […]

Alexandru Ghica – “Prince both literally and figuratively”

The winter of 1963-1964 was the hardest period of my imprisonment. I spent a total of 65 days in solitary confinement, and the only one who surpassed me in terms of punishment was Prince Alexandru Ghica, who spent more than 70 days in solitary confinement. I do not want to make any comparison between this outstanding personality of the Romanian nation and those who were imprisoned for an idea in the service of such a great and sacred ideal, but I am obliged to point this out. As far as I know, Prince Ghica did not write and publish his […]

The man who for love of the enemy gave up his own freedom

Prince Alexandru Ghika, former chief of the capital’s police during the brief period of Legionary rule in 1940-41, sentenced to hard labour for life after the fall of the regime and sent to Aiud for penance, found himself taken from prison one day in 1951 and taken to the basement of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs in Bucharest. From there, one night, he was taken out of his cell and taken to an office where he found himself face to face with Minister Drăghici himself, who made him a proposal: – Mr. Ghika, I know what you were, when […]

He was ready to follow in the footsteps of the martyr Constantin Brâncoveanu

Returning to the period of re-education or “self-analysis”, as the Minister of the Internal Affairs called it, and which Petre Pandrea had the audacity to describe in the most “luminous colours”, “with the lamp of eternity on the table” (which he did), in exchange for a more generous regime of penance, it cannot be said that all the inmates of Aiud succumbed to oppression. Not all of them had analysed themselves, despite the great temptations of which liberation was the most important. Not a few had become victims. A month, or even half a year, after decades of investigation and […]

Prince Ghica, “the man who never knelt before the communist scoundrels”

Under heavy arrest with Prince Ghica Prince Ghica, sentenced to hard labour for life, had to serve 40 days of hard labour. I, a poor peasant, had to serve only 29 days of hard labour. We watched carefully to see how many doors opened in the prison, to know how many punishment cells there were. Then how many cups of water were distributed in each cell. When we did the maths, we found that more than 20 people were serving their sentences at any one time. After I had received the cup of hot salted water, the Prince said to […]

The blessing of Prince Ghica

I remember that on 5 August 1948 a first group of students was sent to Pitești prison. A few weeks later, another group of students, including myself, was sent to Târgșor prison. There are two moments that I would like to tell you about: After collecting our luggage from the storeroom, we were allowed to go from cell to cell to say goodbye. I was coming out of my cell when General Petrovicescu called me from downstairs. He invited me into his cell and said that he could not contact all those who were leaving, but through me he wanted […]

Alexandru Ghica – “a man of imposing presence and attitude, born as if to stand above others”

Some time later[1] Professor Alexandru Mironescu was taken out of his cell and replaced by Prince Alexandru Ghica. A man in his sixties, with the presence of a real prince, he told us how he had been arrested in a commune in Bărăgan, where he had been assigned to a compulsory residence[2] and where he had been assigned to a maternity home for sows, who had to be supervised during farrowing so as not to eat their piglets. He told us how he kept watch all night and nursed the piglets. He, Prince Ghica, descended from the ruling family of […]

“Prince Ghica was extraordinarily delicate”

I was most impressed by those who, in those difficult situations, did not compromise, did not pay attention to principles, to mysticism, to anyone or anything, but, out of an elementary honour, did not want to compromise, for example, to make a pact with the enemy. Prince Ghica, with whom I was in Suceava, belongs to this category. I was transferred there for disciplinary reasons for two years. Prince Ghica was extremely sensitive: kind, patient and cheerful, a sweetheart, if you like. But he never gave up the Legionary Movement, never. (Interview given to Vasile Turtureanu – Aiudule… Aiudule…, edited […]

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 […]

A true prince and knight of Romanian humanity

In the summer of 1961, we were in the same cell at Aiud. For three months I had the opportunity to be inspired by everything I saw in this “true prince and knight of Romanian humanity”. He has always been my model of how a legionnaire should be and behave. He was modest in his cell life. He never allowed me to do the cleaning or the services in this cell in his place. I was young and felt the need to do my duty to those most affected by the many years of penance. From Prince Ghica I took […]