Alexandru Mironescu – a great, patient and deeply faithful soul

After about a month’s stay, I was taken with my luggage to the gate[1]. Here I was led into a hall where there were more than a hundred people with their luggage, none of whom I knew. I looked closely at each of them, hoping to find someone I knew, but in vain. (…)

– Lord, my God, I believe in You, don’t leave me alone, be with me and bring peace to my life! I asked this and I was heard. Out of the crowd that was in that hall, God put a special man, the desired man, on my path. An intellectual-looking man, gentle, withdrawn, meditative as if in prayer, who, in the midst of all the excitement, sat withdrawn against a wall, showing signs of weariness. When I saw him, I told myself that this was the man I was looking for. I looked at him for a while, then took off the coat I was wearing, folded it and laid it down in front of him.

– Sir, I said, I can see you’re exhausted, please sit on this coat!

He looked at me in amazement.

– Sir, who are you? Why are you doing this, putting your coat down in such a mess?!

– I’m a castaway who washed up on this island, just like you. I’m tired too, but perhaps not as tired as you. Please sit down on my coat, for in the situation we find ourselves in, it is worth no more than life, which we must protect as best we can.

– But who are you, sir? he asked me a second time.

– I am George Ungureanu, from Bukovina’s Câmpulung, sentenced to hard labour for life.

– Yes, you’re from Bukovina’s Câmpulung? There is a hermitage nearby, on Mount Rarău, do you know it, have you ever been there?

– Yes, I know both the mountain and the hermitage!

– I had a good friend in that hermitage, he was the abbot, his name was Daniel!

– Daniel!… Abbot Daniel, was he a friend?… He was my friend! This time I answered him as a friend.

At that moment he stretched out his hand and embraced me:

– From now on you are my friend. My name is Alexandru Mironescu, I was a professor of atomic physics at the military academy in Bucharest. I have a twenty-year sentence and I belong to a group with Father Daniel, a group called “The Burning Bush” by the Securitate forces.

It was in this situation that I met the university professor Alexandru Mironescu, 59 years old at the time. A great soul, patient and benevolent, rich in knowledge, deeply faithful, noble character, descendant of the family of Michael the Brave. The Mironescu family, who founded the village of Mironești, near Bucharest. A man of great culture who carried with him a wealth of knowledge that enriched many of those who lived with him in his cells.

Father Daniel, abbot of the Rarău Hermitage, our common friend, whose name before becoming a monk was Alexandru Teodorescu, (…) was the leader of a group of great intellectuals, priests and laymen, sentenced to many years in prison for their faith. Among the laymen was Professor Alexandru Mironescu, together with his son, a philologist, about whom his father said: “My son surpasses me in knowledge, I am small compared to him”. Those who were lucky enough to share the cell with the son spoke of him in superlatives.

After a few hours together in that room, both Professor Alexandru Mironescu and I were chained to our feet, a sign that we were being transferred elsewhere. That is what happened that day. We were all loaded into prison vans for transfer via the C.F.R. to Aiud Prison. (…)

The van to Aiud was packed with people. As soon as we arrived at our destination, we were all put in a large room. (…) After about a week in this room, we were assigned to the cell block, where, to my great luck, I was put in the same cell as Professor Alexandru Mironescu. (…)

We entered our assigned cell and each of us chose a bed partner. There were eight of us in four beds, and we had to sleep two to a bed. Professor Alexandru Mironescu took the bottom right bed and chose me as his partner. He slept on the edge, with his head towards the door, and I slept on the wall, with my head towards the window, both of us lying like fish. (…)

When you spend years with the same people, in the same confined space, without any information about what goes on behind bars, you have to listen to each other’s life stories, with all their ups and downs. For some it was a bottomless bag, for others it was a fitted bag or a small bag with a few love affairs from their youth.

Those with a bottomless sack were the lucky ones. Young people who came into contact with them became rich in spirit. Among the bottomless sacks were people of great culture who took great pleasure in passing on as much of their knowledge as possible to others. In cell 197, the bottomless sack of knowledge was the university professor Alexandru Mironescu. He was a kind, good-natured man, willing to talk day and night about the various problems we put to him: physics, mathematics, literature, foreign languages, travels through the great cities of the West, the riches of the great museums, the figures of personalities, etc., etc. Author of two novels: “The People of Nobody” and “Destrămare”, this man, when asked to talk about something, was able to talk to us for twenty-four hours without interruption. He was a man who contributed greatly to the morale of those in the cell. Like him, there must have been others who contributed to enlighten the spirit, to strengthen the hope of salvation, to open the way of faith to God. (…)

Of all the members of our cell, Professor Alexandru Mironescu was the one who guided us through the universal culture all day long. He was an encyclopaedia for us, everything we were interested in we found in him. Among the many things he told us, I remember one detail of his family life during his arrest:

– When the Securitate came to take me away, my wife fell on her knees and kissed my hand! I have an ideal wife, who was my student, then my assistant and my colleague. I married her and we lived a very harmonious life. She gave birth to two children, a boy and a girl, and she knew how to maintain the harmony of the family home, which I don’t think many wives do. Not everyone understands life as we do, so not everyone knows how to appreciate it and squanders it to their detriment through wrong attitudes. In most families, the husband wants to have the last word, to impose himself, and this spoils the harmony of the family. In our case, neither spouse claimed more rights than the other. We understood and were understood, and in this way we each contributed our share of love to family harmony. We loved life and family, and we always sought God…

While I was with this man, I never heard him speak of his acquaintances except in a good way, there was only good in his soul.

One day he was taken out of his cell and brought before a committee which asked him some questions about the prisoners in Aiud prison. What he would do with them if he were released and asked to become Minister of the Internal Affairs.

– In twenty-four hours I will release all the prisoners, he replied.

– How…! Would you do that to these legionary bandits?

– Yes, I would! These “legionary bandits” are not a danger to the country. They are far more peaceful than others and deserve to live in freedom,” was his reply.

The other day, when the Fifteen Wonders were being taken out for a breath of fresh air, the overzealous guard on duty, trained in the school of crime, started to kick him for no reason at all: “Move, you fool!” he shouted while he was kicking him.

(George Ungureanu – Camera zero, Alexandru Bogza Cultural Foundation Publishing House, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, 2009, pages 141-143, 145-146, 150-151)

[1] The action takes place in Jilava prison on 6 July 1960, according to George Ungureanu’s criminal record.