Ana Simion, a different Elisabeta Rizea

Ana Simion was born in 1920 in the village of Slatina, Nucșoara, into a peasant family whose parents had always worked hard on their piece of land. A seemingly simple girl who, like so many before her, was destined to fulfil the familiar destiny of rural life – working in the fields and raising animals in the summer, domestic activities such as weaving and knitting in the winter, and, in the ancestral order of things, early marriage and raising children, then grandchildren…

A life that fits the Romanian rural typology, not so different in its main aspects from that of parents, grandparents or great-grandparents. But what more could Ana, or any other inhabitant of Nucșoara, have wished for than to be trapped in this routine pattern and live like so many others before them in these mountain foothills? During their childhood years in the East, events were taking place that would change their destiny and that of the Nucsorors, as well as that of all Romanians. The idea of a new world based on class struggle was brewing in the Bolshevik kneading machine, the export of the proletarian revolution was being thought and theorised, abandoned and brought back to the forefront of Stalin’s grand objectives.

I met Ana Simion on a February day in hospital in Domnești, at the age of 90. Bronchial asthma brought her month after month to a hospital room where she was cared for by her favourite doctor, Mrs. Floarea. Of course, she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, especially now that she is suffering, but through the aid of the same admirable doctor I had the chance to talk with her. This gentle little woman is living history for me. She sits quietly on her bed and watches me, neither too curious nor too fascinated, she has seen too much in her life and resignedly waits to be ”examined” by another. From the beginning she tells me that many people have come to her and asked her all kinds of questions, some of them great gentlemen from Bucharest, others more local. She warns me with a short story about an ”important person” who, as soon as she arrived at her house, didn’t even say goodbye and started asking questions, just like in the old investigations! She would have thrown him out of the house, but he seemed to be a “cultured man” and… she was ashamed. I breathed a sigh of relief, just said hello, introduced myself, explained why I had come, and was in no hurry, I didn’t even expect the questionnaire to be answered strictly and to the point. These minimum conditions having been met, I awkwardly prepare to start the tape recorder, having asked for permission to use it. The stage is set, the main actor is waiting patiently for the gong to sound, and the audience… Well, it’s only natural that there should be an audience, isn’t it? Four ladies, patients and fellow patients, as I would later discover, are waiting with obvious interest to hear or rehearse Ana Simion’s story. Out of habit, or perhaps because they don’t want to waste time, two of them are busy crocheting. Concentrating on the subject, I didn’t notice their divided attention at first, listening with such tension that any artist would have wanted them in the audience, while at the same time the Andres were doing their duty, knitting little things for their grandchildren. Later I would realise that they were drinking in every word, sighing, suffering as with Aunt Anne, and at times reacting with whispered indignation like an ancient Greek chorus when the old woman’s tormented youth was revealed to them in such tragic and painful detail.

However, since I want to be a serious researcher, at least to myself, I start the interview with tried and tested questions that are part of the Civic Academy Foundation’s standard oral history questionnaire. It didn’t take much experience for me to realise that this tool would only be of limited use, as memories come in waves and do not follow the guidelines of the questionnaire, nor the chronological ones. Since I am familiar with the subject, I will try to have a discussion. The first questions elicit short answers relating to identification data, parents, school, marriage. As I expected, he looks back on his childhood and family with nostalgia and great affection. Her parents were homemakers who minded their own business and raised her to be a worthy woman who would settle down at her appointed time. “Even dead I am thankful to them, Mum,” says Aunt Anna. There is still a regret in her voice that she didn’t go to school more. She studied with the intellectual and moral leader of the village, the teacher Ion Arnăuțoiu, father of Toma and Petre. She was even a classmate of Toma, who was very clever, there was no other way… She has words of appreciation for her first teacher – “a teacher of millions, but I knew him and I was afraid, you trembled” when he entered the classroom. His role didn’t end when he left the school gates, it continued, it was transformed – “we used to go to them, we didn’t have a doctor then and we used to ask them, he was clever, he was also Arnăuțoiu as a doctor, he was a cultured man in our commune, you had no one else to ask!

Like most country girls, she married young, she doesn’t remember the year, but her husband was a good boy, although he was “a bit of a drinker”, lured (how else?) by his friends. He was very frightened when his wife was arrested and ran away from home after the event, looked for her when she got out of prison and then disappeared again. She died, but she doesn’t like to talk about it, she was widowed at a very young age.

She remembers better the beginnings of the anti-communist resistance movement, in which, as she admits, she was more or less reluctantly involved by her sister Marinica Chirca. In the spring of 1949, when the organisation was being set up and people were being recruited from the villages at the foot of the mountains, her sister and brother-in-law brought the partisans to their parents’ house one night. Several people came – “7, 8, 10 to fill the house” – including Colonel Arsenescu, whose name he later learned. He pretended to be a doctor, and when he left, he asked the young hostess to swear not to mention anything about their meeting – “You put your hand on the cross, you are young and you tell us! Of course she obeyed, because “I couldn’t stand it any longer, I said after him! Thus began the most difficult period of her life and that of hundreds of other inhabitants of Nucșoara, Corbilor and Domneștilor. On many occasions, he helped the boys in the mountains and was one of their most precious helpers, especially as his house was on the edge of the village, away from prying eyes. He would make them cooked food and take it to a pre-arranged place, often giving them maize in sacks of 50-60 kilos which he carried on his horses. But there were also occasions when the partisans, driven by hunger, threw caution to the wind and went down to the host’s house. Ana’s sister, Marinica, would feed them in the cellar of the house so that no one would see them.

From the old woman’s story, I can see that her steadfast and unshakeable faith in God and its direct consequence – Christian mercy – was the main driving force that made her overcome all fears and help them with devotion. This, and the deep respect she had for the Arnăuțoiu family, other teachers and priests, made her ignore her instinct for self-preservation and walk a path full of tears and thorns. I know that this is no place to fight against the red ideology.

As in so many other cases, Anna Simion’s downfall was a betrayal. Judas walked through the gardens of Nucșoara without hiding. One day, while she was in the field, one of Chirca’s boys, the one nicknamed the Deserter, waved his hand at her, and she went to him, frightened, thinking that something serious had happened, perhaps to one of her parents. But when she reached him, she was seized by some secretaries and beaten with a stick to reveal where she had hidden a fugitive, a certain Gheorghe Mămăligă. He had indeed been hiding in the hayloft, not with her, but with her sister, but she could not admit anything, she did not want to bring Marinica into the hands of those executioners. Her confession about this first contact with the secret police is shocking: “They tortured me to say something and I said nothing, mother. He took me to the forest, almost there, he beat me with his hair… to tell me where he was, Gheorghe Mămăliga, that he had shot Chirca. As you said, if I say one, he’ll say them all and kill them all because of me. I’ll die alone and say nothing! But I wasn’t guilty, the way they tortured me, no …” They took her to the Securitate Headquarters, probably in Câmpulung, where the ordeal continued – ”They tortured me in an unspeakable way, dear, lying on the table, with rubber batons, like these cops had; four people, two sat and ate and two came, they wouldn’t let go of me, my hips now are broken, they can’t give me injections. [God helped me if I didn’t snitched on anyone. They tried to lure me with money, dear, with work, they beat me until I fell on the cement and took me to a doctor”. Probably fearing that they had crossed the line with the beating and found nothing, they took her to a civilian doctor and lied to him that they had found her fallen in the street. But the prisoner, ”on the ground, numb”, told him in a whisper and without strength that she was under investigation, which caused a wave of revolt on her part: ”You pigs, you asses, what have you done to her! And to their reply that she had not said anything about what she had done against the state, the doctor continued bravely: ”Well, she did well, she would have condemned those otherwise. She then gave her some pills which helped her. The investigation continued and she was taken not to a cell because there was no room, but to the toilet! The investigators had information that she was harbouring a partisan. “So this fugitive is with me, God, they tortured me for this, where is Gheorghe, where is Gheorghe? And how could you say that he was with my sister in the attic, she had three children. And I didn’t say anything, dear! They’ve been torturing me, dear, even now my back hurts from all the beating I’ve taken with the rubber. Four men! Two of them went to eat, they wouldn’t let me rest at all. I wonder where they are now. I didn’t say a word to them, I didn’t care!”

After almost two weeks in which the investigation made no progress and Aunt Ana gave them no information, they changed the procedure. The four torturers disappeared, and in their place appeared one night around 12 o’clock a colonel “from Bucharest, a tall man”, who invited her to sit on the chair and deplored the prisoner’s condition. He took two pills from his pocket and offered her one to help her recover. But Aunt Ana realised that there was something wrong with the pill and could make her admit something: “I wasn’t stupid either, dear”. So she held it under her tongue and waited for the right moment to throw it away, but the Colonel was “watching me as I am watching you now”. Finally he spat it out and told her he couldn’t swallow it because he hadn’t eaten or drunk for two weeks. The investigator then pulled out a wad of cash and put it on the table, promising to get her a job in Bucharest, but he couldn’t shake her from her initial statements that she knew nothing and she was innocent. She was released and asked to report back as soon as he heard anything about the partisans. Once at home, she was followed step by step. She certainly didn’t follow their instructions, because after a while she was arrested again and investigated in Câmpulung Muscel. The conditions of her imprisonment were inhuman – “There was water in the cellar and darkness, I alone wondered where I was, water up to my knees and darkness, either you kept your eyes open or… and a lock, so it was as if I had killed all the people in our village. I was alone in the cellar and I still didn’t eat anything. The militiaman who took her to the investigation and then to the cell was originating from Nucșoara, and he kept saying to her: “Say what they want to hear, they know you know, just admit it to get away, they’ll kill you! In the tormented woman’s mind, the idea took root that he was being persuaded by the investigators themselves. But she held her nerve until the end, two hard weeks, at the end of which she was released and escorted to her sister in the city. Aunt Anne was unyielding because “from the beginning I said I would die alone. That they were offering me a great deal of money, provided I would snitch, but what would have I done with all that money? I was going to God with my soul, and my soul alone!

Her faith and conviction that she was doing the right and Christian thing sustained her throughout the ordeal. She also has an unshakeable belief that sooner or later God will repay everyone for the good or bad they have done. She sees now that Ion Chirca, the one who betrayed her, “has been in bed for years, only as long as they tortured me for him”. Aunt Ana is serene, waiting for the implacable divine justice to be carried out. She has seen a lot in her long life and believes that God has somehow given her these years to see the wicked get their comeuppance. As for those who brutalised her, she characterises them in a dry and meaningful way: “They’re a mess, dear, beating people and taking money, you couldn’t find another job!? Among them were Captain Enache, Captain Cârnu and a certain Ploșcaru. “I mean, I, a woman, suffered, my hips and my head were broken, if Captain Cârnu hadn’t hit me 30 times on the stove, I lost track of things, I felt like a prophet because God kept me there while they tormented me! As in the case of Elisabeta Rizea, the investigators were unable to make her talk. “Well, it’s better for me to suffer than to put someone else through it, to know that some was beaten because of me, I thought. [I cried in the cell, I think blood came out of my eyes, when I saw myself alone in the cell for so many days, he didn’t give me a mattress or anything, so I layed on the iron frame, naked, he came and gave me some food, sometimes I took some, sometimes I didn’t. But I’m thankful in my heart that no one took a slap in the face for me, with their money and their job, so that I could live with a clear conscience! But they couldn’t find any other work than beating and… killing people?

After escaping from those two weeks of terror in Câmpulung, she was taken to her sister who lived in the city and stayed there for a while because she could hardly recover from the inhuman treatment she had endured. “They have tormented us like Christ, if we had killed the whole country and they wouldn’t have tortured us like this!”

Shortly afterwards, however, she was arrested again, and this time she was put on trial, probably in 1950, when the Securitates found clear evidence of the partisan support activities in which she had been involved. Her sister had sent her with a note to Colonel Arsenescu’s aunt in Câmpulung, who gave her a small bag of medicines to take to Nucșoara. In fact, there were some small pistols and cartridges in the bag, but Aunt Ana told me with humour that she didn’t know what was in it, she didn’t even look, because it was too carefully packed. When the colonel’s aunt was arrested, she also betrayed her and said who had transported the guns and ammunition. In fact, the note had taken her to Câmpulung to transport the weapons. From there, five years of torture followed, in prisons such as Pitești, Jilava and Mislea. She spent a year in Jilava, and longer in Mislea. With sadness in her voice, she recalls the conditions in Jilava, the huge cell in which a hundred condemned women lived: “Can you imagine, so many people, a hundred, what a stench, we’re going to die and that’s it! She speaks of the food with disgust – “beans with horse’s hooves, donkey’s hooves […] all the dirt, entrails of all kinds…”. When I see her sitting on the edge of her bed, a hieratic creature who I don’t think weighs 40 kilos, it’s easier to imagine how she could give up this uneaten food so many times. In the cell he met other prisoners like Elisabeta Rizea, Laurenția Arnăuțoiu, mother of Toma and Petre, Victoria Arnăuțoiu, Petre’s wife, Ecaterina Năstase, Mrs. Marinescu, wife of the teacher Virgil Marinescu. She doesn’t remember much about the others, but they were also very special ladies, “cultured women”, as she calls them. She tells me with a bitter laugh: “Yes, there were about 300 people, I calmed down when I saw them. We may have been stupid, a team from Nucșoara, but when I saw 300 people there, teachers, doctors, pilots, 5-6 of us were from the country side!” A short pause, and memories come back from places where they have been hidden for more than half a century – “And students, little girls, shouted at the school that they didn’t want this regime, and it took them all away. And they were beating them, poor things, oh dear, beating them on the cement, which I could see from the window. They dragged them to the window and beat the poor students, they didn’t do anything except that they didn’t like the regime. They destroyed them, put them in hospital! Of all the prison staff, she remembers one torturer of extraordinary malice. Also related to him, a rare event that she does not want to insist on or judge, has as protagonist Victoria Arnăuțoiu, Petre’s wife. One day the militiaman asked them to go out to clean, but Aunt Ana didn’t want to go because she didn’t have to, and he took her and locked her in the toilet. Victoria went with him and, he must have talked to her, he must have drunk with her, I didn’t see, to tell the truth… he came and caught her and arrested him too, why did he talk to her that she was arrested, the punishment was turned on him”. He was so desperate and frightened that he shouted: “Let’s say he only gave her a piece of bread.” These last episodes probably happened in Mislea, because in Jilava the regime was much stricter and they were not allowed to work.

The move to Mislea took place overnight, and in this prison, a former nunnery, life was a little easier. Perhaps because she had the opportunity to work – “I stayed there for so many years and worked there, dear, on those Persian carpets you put on the floor and in the tailor’s shop. They had a daily routine to follow, but she, who was used to working at home, managed to do it, and she also managed to help the “ladies”. She remembers with a smile the time she couldn’t finish her shift because her machine had broken down and hadn’t been repaired. A guard came and asked who Ana Simion was and took her to the detention centre. “Let’s do it, I’ve never done it before!” At the prison he brought her a piece of bread and a cup of hot water, but she cheekily told him: “I’m not eating, I’m not hungry, if I haven’t done my quote, why should I eat? The weasel went away with them in his hand! But she quickly returned because all the prisoners at the table refused to eat because she had been locked up in solitary confinement through no fault of her own – “It’s like you baited them, none of them will eat without you and I can’t punish them all!”. It was an impressive display of solidarity on the part of the inmates, which can only show that Ana Simion was not an ordinary person, but one who deserved to risk even a common fate for her. She was certainly a woman who, by her way of being and behaving, by the help she gave, was able to sow the seeds of revolt in the masses of political prisoners who were unhappy at being unjustly punished.

Another memory, another fright and humiliation: “Oh dear, once she woke us up in the middle of the night. And we were on the third floor, because I was younger –  <<Stand up!>> but with our hands up to take nothing, how was it to get out of the iron bed, what happened to me until I got out! He cornered us and ,<<then follow me>>, took us into a room, there was nothing, the room was empty.<<Look at the wall over there>>. When he came, he told us to undress, it was like 4 militiamen, and there were also students, cultured girls. He stripped us… down to our underwear. <<Down, your panties>> he told us. We put the smaller ones between the beds. There was one big fat Russian girl left! <<“Drop your panties, if you’re not ashamed…” Something happened and the guard ran away, we went back alone! Aunt Ana burst out laughing, as did the hospital staff, whose presence I hadn’t felt until then. An event that could have had terrible consequences ended in a general roar of laughter. Moreover, it seems that these militiamen had been dismissed from their posts as guards, as a “schoolgirl, cultured, came out to report and told the headmistress that <<something like this had never happened>>” and asked her to take action against the culprits. Whether they were sacked or not is debatable, but the fact remains that they were nowhere near the inmates, more likely disciplined. So it seems there was a line they could not cross without suffering the rigours of rule-breaking.

Another story from Mislea shows how heartless the prison management could be and how they could mock any trace of human decency of the inmates and especially their faith. Passion Friday was chosen to humiliate them further, a day when, exceptionally, soup and roast meat were prepared for them in the kitchen. Aunt Anne, who was younger, went to the kitchen with another prisoner to bring the food. In the morning, as tea was being served, she noticed what was being prepared for lunch – “hearts and cows lungs”. She was ordered not to say a word about the “menu” and didn’t have the courage to say what she saw. After “we put the table on the girls and ran away”, the warden came and asked them mockingly, “What are we doing here, if you pray to God, why doesn’t He let you out of prison? What are you doing, are you praying? I didn’t say anything, what was I going to say, and then with a shy voice – we’re sitting in front of the cross, what are we going to do, we’re not hurting anyone. All the prisoners who ate the meat meal that Friday fell ill and went to hospital. The epilogue to this story could not have been better chosen by the one who lived it: ”we went through fire and water… murderers, dear!

In Mislea he also remembers being with Elisabeta Rizea and Elena Lemnaru, the sister-in-law of his sister Marinica. Elisabeta also worked, but only knotting wires, because she was older and had poor eyesight.

She was released, as far as I can tell as she doesn’t remember exactly, in 1955 after serving her full 5 year sentence. We can only imagine how she got home and how she felt after her experiences in captivity. That’s why she didn’t want to hear anything about the partisans in the mountains. The first meeting with them she did not want at all – “He came into the house and I didn’t want to talk to them, I climbed into bed, I pulled the blanket over me, you don’t know where I come from, I’ve been in prison for 5 years, you’re going to put me in prison again! Toma tried to calm her down by telling her that they were being flown in from abroad and didn’t need her help any more. All they wanted was news of their mother, Laurenția, who was still in prison.

The thread of memories was interrupted by the entrance of the doctor, who wanted to know if the patient was still able to talk and advised her, if she was tired, to interrupt the conversation and meet another time. Aunt Ana, with her deep, warm voice, reassures her that she is not tired and that she enjoys talking to me. After the doctor left, she told me, with a voice full of affection, that “she’s nice and smart, but you have to know how to behave, because she’ll throw you out of sight, you can’t stop her”. She has a special way of judging people and fitting them into certain patterns. She does this when it comes to fellow prisoners, guards or militiamen, fellow citizens who were active in the resistance movement and those who were against it or partisans. He is not afraid to put labels on people, and with a calm voice he puts some down, lifts others up, mocks them bitingly or laments them compassionately. Gheorghe Arsenescu inspired great respect in him and he speaks of him with admiration: “What a man he was! For her, the brothers Toma and Petre are different beings, Toma, whom she calls Tomiță, as in her childhood, is “with a lot of heart and soul, ambitious and tough”, while Petre – “was simpler”. “He led a hard life, I’m sorry he didn’t escape, if he had escaped he wouldn’t have been one of them, he was Arnăuțoiu’s villains, that is, cold-blooded, he would have killed all those who betrayed him and were against him! Petre, however, cannot forgive the fact that on the morning of the betrayal, he immediately agreed to take the secretaries to the Râpele cu Brazi and urged them, Maria Plop and Constantin Jubleanu, to come down and surrender, as they had fallen. Aunt Ana knows the story, as others have told it to her, but she cannot give Petre any mitigating circumstances. Even now, after all this time, she is still angry with them and blames them for the murder of Ion Marinescu, a fighter like them, called by Arnăuțoiu to fight together in the mountains. Her strong faith prevents her from finding any justification for someone who takes the life of a fellow human being. I feel that even today there is an irreconcilable struggle in her soul between her love, respect and attachment to the partisans who made her support them for so long and not betray them, even though she was subjected to torture, and the accusation of having broken God’s command not to kill. She has warm feelings for Maria Plop, as human as if he were sitting next to her in a hospital bed. He had known her for a long time, since she was a maid in the family of the teacher Arnăuțoiu, she knew her as a good, beautiful and sensitive girl. She still believes that she didn’t belong in the mountains, alone among men. They took her with them from the beginning, because they were afraid that if the Securitate forces arrested her, she might reveal things that would lead to their arrest. Later, as time passed, she stayed with the group. Aunt Ana remembers her best because Maria would sometimes come out at night with her baby, who was only a few months old, to look for food. “She was a good-hearted girl, what a poor thing to carry a child on her back, without food; the child was crying with hunger, she had nothing to give him! This episode came to her mind several times during the interview, and each time her voice choked with tears. Fifty years have passed, but this big-hearted woman still relives the pain of her mother running up the mountain in a hoarse voice, trying to stifle her daughter’s cries of hunger. What source stirs her heart and mind, a source so often trampled by the regime’s newcomers, that returns to give her the strength to feel and think clearly that her parents gave her as a child? What was broken in others, in so many others, and how was it possible for Ana Simion to remain upright, unwavering, as she appears to me today, at the age of 90?

She also knew the Jubleanu family well, and was deeply moved by their tragedy. “What a handsome boy that Titu Jubleanu was! And his mother! In a valley, she was washing the child’s clothes, there they shot her; what a woman she was, beautiful, mother, and look at Tomiță, what a beautiful, delicate man, take his life! The poor lived badly, they went from good to bad, look at your fate, what did they need, they were all poor? And again with an obloquy about the secretaries who ruined her life: “They were the dogs of the world, other shows, killing a man with sticks, taking money for a beating! Valuable men, teachers and priests; but these priests were not at all to blame, they gave them food, they took pity on them, and so did our people in Nucșoara”.

Aunt Ana began to help the partisans after her release from prison, as did her sister and brother-in-law, of whom she says that “she and her husband died after them”. In the last years before the fighters were captured, they hid near Poenărei, in Râpele cu Brazi. She remembers that once, when she came to the area to help a girl gather hay, she showed her a place where the Arnauts were supposed to live. Otherwise he never went there because ”you had to let them know because they were shooting […] which, she trusted, they were shooting at us!” Food reached the refugees either when they took the risk of going to the sisters’ houses or through the priests to whom they left it. She also remembers once sending a sister with one of her children to a place in the Vâlsan Valley to leave them some food, “and we waited there by the stream for Arnăuțoiu’s people to come, and we cried with the poor child, but nobody came! Finally, they picked mushrooms and returned home late at night, exhausted.

 

Slowly, with our discussion and reminiscences, we came to a more delicate matter. I explained to her what I had read in Mr. Grigore Constantinescu’s book about the infiltration in Slatina in 1957 of a Securitate officer who was supposed to play the role of a shopkeeper and approach the two sisters, win their trust and find out where they were hiding and who was supplying the partisans. According to my information, he managed to trick them and even became a good friend of Ana Simion, putting the question of a possible marriage on the table. Aunt Ana was very firm from the start, telling me that she knew who this person was, that she had been told by the council that he was from the Securitate, that he had two children, and that “he was known by his way of life, that he had the walk of a colonel, not of a manager”. Well, I’ve been doing this for so many years, I didn’t know who he was? In fact, she had been asked to prepare the food for him and two other people, and she was paid for it. At first the guard wanted to be near Marinica, but she had a child with a broken leg in bed, so he sent him to her sister’s house to help prepare the food. On several occasions, this Vasile Linie brought up the subject of the partisans, saying that if he knew where they were, he would go and join them in the fight against the regime. As he was suspicious, he was not given any information about the Arnautsoyu group. When I asked him if he had gone on a trip with them to Transylvania, where they were arrested on the train on the pretext of transporting alcohol, and then investigated by the Securitate forces, he replied: ”It’s not true, mother, it’s not true, on my word of honour I would tell you what happened, that it’s all over now; he lied, so as not to make a fool of himself, that I tricked him, that as soon as he came he left, that he came to earn something in the commune, he didn’t earn anything”. A few months after this attempt to infiltrate the agent, Ana and Marinica fled Nucșoara, realising that they were being watched and that sooner or later they would be arrested. They set off in broad daylight for Câmpulung, but there they encountered a militia roadblock and, fearing they would be recognised, they returned to Corbi, in the Doamnei Valley. Here they were hosted by Ion Florea, Marinica’s godson, in a stable loft for almost 5 years, with a few interruptions. Ana did not stay permanently in Corbi as she looked for other hosts – ,,… I stayed in the hermitage in Slănic, I told the monks that my husband had beaten me and wouldn’t take me home any more, that if he said I had run away he would take them too, but if he caught me they would stay, that I was guilty, that I had lied to them and they had taken me in out of pity, that’s what I said, and they would get away with it, they would take them all”. She stayed at the convent for a while, but when a nearby logging operation began in a forest where workers who knew her were working, she had to leave this hidden place out of sight, because she would end up getting people into trouble, they would have been tortured for nothing. Her life as a fugitive continued with many difficulties – “I went around the village at night, to some girls, I was very drunk, dear, no one would take you in because they were afraid of taking them too; but these girls were nicer, they kept us in a stable’s attic, they brought us food there”. They were finally caught in 1963, and how else but by betrayal – they were betrayed by a forester or brigadier called Ungureanu, who had close links with the Securitate. Aunt Ana never forgets to invoke divine justice, which after a while also took effect in his case, because “he died before he died”. “And he died and I am left, a thief! At his trial he received another 10 years in prison, but fortunately the following year came the decree of amnesty for political prisoners and she escaped many hard years in prison. Coming home was no great joy, however, because everything he had was confiscated and he had to fight the local authorities from the start. At home there were all gypsies, three or four rows of gypsies with children. After a while, when her house was returned to her, she was called to the town hall on the night of the Resurrection and the accountant told her that she was only entitled to the house, not the yard or the garden – “to walk like this, to enter by the path only in the house.” These words aroused Ana’s fury and she cursed him to die stuck on the chair, for she had served her sentence in full: “And so he died, stuck on the chair at the council, as I told him, so he died! But life must go on – “And I take it from the spoon again, there was nothing! And with bitter humour, at the end of the road – “And then I collected them, and now what do I do with them? I give them to the water, to the clothes, who wears them anymore? For the first few weeks he had nothing to eat, but he didn’t go begging in the village. He picked raspberries and gave them to a respectable woman in exchange for two loaves of bread. She was looked upon with contempt and malice, and considered a bandit by many in the village. She was an enemy of us, because we had been in prison, we were against her, because there were many communists, all the bitterness was communist, there were no people of value to say that there was a man who joined them”. Aunt Anne didn’t ask them anything, but she saw that they looked at her as if she were a prisoner; she had little courage because when it was decided to interrupt the execution of the sentence, they were told that “you are free men, no one can say anything to you”.

After 1989 it was much quieter, it was normal, because “time has passed, they are no longer so nervous”. Indeed, times have changed, slowly but surely the stories of the boys from the mountains and their supporters are coming to light, and only earthly justice is delaying the rehabilitation of the victims of the regime. That is why I am sure that in years to come some clever student will ask me: “Professor, were they bandits or heroes? Aunt Ana received a ‘pension’ during the period of Emil Constantinescu’s presidency and was able to live her life more peacefully, despite her hardships and illnesses. She talked and told stories when asked, but that was all and nothing more. That is her nature, and that is why, when I ask her about Elisabeta Rizea, she gives me an answer from which I can tell that she does not fully understand and appreciate her attitude after the fall of the communist regime. Her husband Gheorghe was “kind, sincere”. Her dissatisfaction with Elisabeta stems from the fact that “she said she ran Nucșoara, she did everything, the others just looked at her! I asked Elisabeta Rizea if she really managed to get the authorities to asphalt a part of Nucșoara, and her answer is correct – ”she did a little, she made a strip of road, what is right is right”. At that time, important people came to Nucșoara, even King Mihai or President Emil Constantinescu. It was the right moment to ask for a solution to a problem related to the delay of the pension, but the note with the request for help reached the President without a positive answer. Aunt Ana also blames him for the broken promise – ‘he was not that experienced’. Instead, a deputy from Pitești solved the problem immediately, he just came back from the city and the pension came, although “I didn’t give him anything, not even a glass of water”.

I ask her about her relationship with her sister Marinica, which has had its ups and downs, hard times and arguments. Her selflessness and love for her sister, for whom she sacrificed herself to save her from prison, is evident in her simple words and clear judgements. She had three children and was better off in prison than her sister, even though her sister had helped the partisans more than she had – “she was more guilty, dear! Marinica eventually went to prison too, but late, in 1963. The great pain was that when she was released from prison she never found her parents alive and she can’t forgive herself or her sister that her poor parents died because of her, she knows very well that “…they cried themselves to death when they took me away”. Today, things have calmed down, but sometimes the past comes between them. “I have suffered unspeakably and on top of that I was left without land and without parents. 

I told her that I had read in an interview with Mrs. Ioana Voicu Arnăuțoiu that she and her sister were the most loved women in Nucșoara. There was a moment of silence and then a heartfelt answer with obvious joy – “And aren’t we? What do you say? If we aren’t, I’ll beat you up, just like they beat me up!” The last meeting with Mrs. Voicu – Arnăuțoiu took place recently, probably last year, in the garden of Mrs. Ana Simion’s house, and it was full of emotions, recalling the events that had left such deep traces in her soul. Surprised by the arrival of guests, film crews and cameras, Ana Simion needed some time to come to her senses. She was fascinated by the gentleman with whom her “little girl” arrived, but she doesn’t remember his name – “he must have said something, but I don’t remember because I was so scared, they were all around me, I had just escaped from them and he came at me again, only he didn’t have any weapons. But he had a lot of cameras, he filled the garden! I was nervous at first because I didn’t even know this one, I didn’t know Arnăuțoiu’s, I knew her in the bag. She investigated us the first time, and then her husband […] She’s also a good soul, you see that Tase was… a cultured boy, it’s not an exaggeration to say that she… didn’t get anything out of her.”The interview, the discussion about the guerrillas, after the many days of beatings and intimidation in the past, remained an investigation for Ana Simion forever!

As we approached the end, Aunt Ana wanted to know what I was going to do with her ”words”. I try to explain to her why it is necessary for children to know what happened in the recent past around their village, that she is now telling me about her life, but in a way it no longer belongs to her, it has become history, a history that we could be proud of if we had enough courage. She doesn’t seem too convinced, she just knows what children are like nowadays, and she doesn’t think much of teachers who “sit in the coffee shop” and leave them unsupervised at break time! I have to jump in to support my profession and admit that I drink coffee at break too! He remembers his sister and her children, good and smart, who have made it in life without any help, by their own efforts. Sometimes he has expressions that, in their suggestive power, do more than all my carefully chosen words.

The conversation slips easily and without my noticing it until it is too late into… my person. Aunt Ana wants to know more about me, how I came to talk to her, who told me about her past. I realise it’s time to stop here and after all this ”investigation” I prepare myself to answer the questions. Immediately, the colleagues who are currently suffering appear on the scene, listening calmly and attentively, the best audience a teacher could wish for! I was surprised to learn that they were all familiar with the stories of the partisans and their supporters, that they even had relatives who had suffered during that period. In particular, Mrs Molea Irina, after I had explained to her that I was not the son of Doru Arnăuțoiu, i.e. the grandson of Petre, whom she thought I resembled, told me an interesting fact from her childhood. Around 1956 or 1957 he was helping the wife of the teacher Mica Ionel with the housework, and one day he saw a girl with a small child in his house, whom he was told was a relative of theirs, a student who had been embarrassed into making a child out of flowers and who was going to live with them for a while. The young mother stayed with the child for almost a month and then disappeared without a trace. Irina, a bright and curious teenager, made the connection between this event and the arrest of Maria Plop and her little girl in the spring of 1958. She told me that when she heard about these events, she was sure that the Mica family had sheltered the two runaway souls. Moreover, it was to be expected that Maria would try to take her child to a human home to be better cared for and protected, even though it was very risky. Maternal love can overcome the instinct of self-preservation. I learned similar information from Mr. Grigore Constantinescu, son of the priest Ioan Constantinescu, who knew from his sister, Iuliana Preduț-Constantinescu, that her parents had also taken in Maria and her little girl for a few weeks in Poenărei. The risks were enormous, but from 1951 the Constantinescu family provided the partisans with material and moral support. The priest in Poenărei secretly baptised Ioana, and this Christian act was one of the charges in the trial that led to her death sentence.

Another element revealed to me by Mrs. Irina Molea shows the daily tragedy experienced by the local population after the capture of the partisans. Not only those who were arrested, more than a hundred people, suffered, but also those who were left at home and had to fight for survival every day. The teacher’s wife Mica, widowed at a young age, had to raise nine fatherless children alone – four of her own, two of Petre Arnăuțoiu’s and three of another relative in prison. The abject poverty in which these ten souls lived cannot be easily described. They all slept in one room, side by side, and mother Teodora prepared food for them, mostly from potatoes boiled in a large vat, as Aunt Irina remembers. That was the staple diet. Marginalised, bypassed, ridiculed, these were the children of partisans who wanted more freedom and found it in Jilava’s Peach Valley.

I end my visit to Domnești, at the suffering bed of this woman from another time, with the words that have been her creed and support all her life: “Everything is with God, you do evil, God gives you evil. Only if you think badly, it’s useless to work, God doesn’t help you!”

(Prof. Cătălin Nedelcu – Sighet Memorial)