An example of morality and determination
Long before I met Grigore Caraza, I had heard about him as a special person: a man of surprising resistance to all the sufferings and temptations of prison life, a kind of living legend, especially after it became known that he had refused to leave prison on completing his time.
I could say without exaggeration that Grigore had become more than a person, he had become a true concept of tenacity in the face of the system of communist repression exercised in prisons.
Of course, this stubbornness was expressed not only against physical and verbal violence, but also against temptation, because, as I said, our prison was not free of such temptations.
The Securitate cunningly made use of all kinds of persuasion, promises, our sensitivity and our sentimentality, which was often exacerbated by imprisonment. There were promises of freedom, family reunions, speculations of paternal sentiment telling us of the softness of our children, or that the family was sad because we refused re-education to go to them instead, a whole and well-organised string in the system to work on our souls and undermine our refusal to compromise.
In the spiritual history of our souls, some have succumbed under various pressures. People who have raised the morale of others in violence have fallen under the weight of promises that have struck at their weak points. These temptations became effective from the moment when the Déj’s government, under pressure from the international bodies it wanted to join and be accepted by, began to compromise everyone and, even more daringly, the personalities in the prisons.
The most serious blow came when the Securitate, having obtained statements of renunciation from some of them, even released them. So it seemed that this time the promise had been fulfilled, which was a deception, because through compromise or refusal, everyone had to get out of prison eventually. But the security authorities were free to postpone the release of the most stubborn until the promised European deadline for the abolition of political imprisonment.
Some of the strongest fell; many of the weakest held out. Only God knows the limits of the human soul’s endurance. The resistance of materials to various tensile, compressive or torsional forces is well known and specified; the human soul defies calculation and prediction.
Grigore Caraza uncompromisingly resisted violence, betrayal, promises and the temptation of sentimentality. Nothing moved him, nothing bent him, nothing broke him. His book sometimes seems to be a simple series of events told in a direct style, without literary effects, without symbolic subtleties, as if he were telling himself an unbelievable but real story. He has no legend. He has only a factual, raw history, punctuated by moments of rage against injustice and tender feelings. But for the most part, Gregory was a kind of guardian of the untruth, a sword of the dignity of truth, striking mercilessly at untruth, bestiality and cowardice. Sometimes too ruthlessly.
Life was not too kind to him after his release from prison or his emigration to the United States. But he never forgot that it was his duty not to stop fighting against those who invented the hell of bestiality in Pitești, the hell of temptation in Aiud or Gherla, the hell of suspicion after the general amnesty decree, the hell of misery after the events of 1989, and all the hells that eat away at our souls, in every way, until we reach the edge of the pit. For a hell, once installed, will change like a chameleon until the Archangel of Justice destroys its forces and foundations with his fiery sword.
Among so many memoirs of life in chains, Grigore Caraza’s book (Bloody Aiud) has a special place. It does not have the mystical foundation of Dumitru Bordeianu’s book, nor the factuality of Dumitru Bacu’s book, which are always reference books on the subject, but it has the value of a testimony that remains unshaken over the years. It is like a stone tower for a lighthouse: no matter how dim the light, it shines, no matter how thick the fog, no matter how furious the waves and storms, it does not waver, no matter how much moss or ice covers it, it speaks.
(Pr. Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, “Un exemplu de moralitate e dârzenie” in Grigore Caraza, Aiud însângerat, edited by Adrian Alui Gheorghe, 5th edition, Tipo Moldova Publishing House, Iași, 2013, pp. 311-312)