“An intellectual of great class”
As I walk nervously from one end of the cell to the other, the Jilava Isolatory, with cells 9-12, comes back to me with the same clarity.
Professor Petru Manoliu, Doctor Tavernier, lawyer Caleia and architect Ursescu were part of the “Alice Voinescu” group. She was a university professor at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and I knew her well, having spent an elementary summer with my mother. In the summer, during her holidays, she often came to our country house.
A great intellectual, she had been dismissed from her professorship and had nothing to live on, so she gave philosophical lectures wherever she was invited. She gave several lectures in the house of the architect Ursescu, alternating subjects with Professor Petru Manoliu.
Alice Voinescu was also in Jilava, in the women’s section, and as there were few “politicians”, they were mixed up with pickpockets, mostly gypsies!
In the short time I was free, I saw Alice, who told me – with great amusement – many stories about her life as a prisoner. She made friends with the gypsies, who told her how they stole. Alice was talking to one of them:
– Mario, if we meet on the tram, I hope you won’t steal from me?
– Oh dear me, Mrs. Alice, how could I?, we were colleagues!
(Ion Pantazi – I Went Through Hell, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2003, pp. 82-83)