Anonymous denunciation of Nicu Steinhardt’s “suspicious” activity (10 December 1972)

10 December 1972.
Anonymous denunciation[1] of the “suspicious” activities of Nicu Steinhardt.

Connection with Nicu Steinhardt Stan

(Dir. I. Vatamaniuc and Popescu)

[Resolution:] Comrade Colonel…
I request verification measures
10.12.1972

Commander

I, a patriotic citizen, bring to your attention the following facts concerning a Romanised Jew who is particularly dangerous. I believe he has been convicted before for gold and political dealings and I see that he has not learned his lesson.

It is also known that he has never been married and lives with several young boys, which is known to everyone in the block. Commander, it’s Nicu Steinhardt, he lives in Bucharest, Ion Ghica Street No. 3, he lives upstairs in a very well furnished apartment to attract young people.

He has hidden old icons in his house and wants to escape with them abroad, where he sells them through his relatives.

He also seems to have some money, collected from his foreign friends who often visit him as tourists, which he plans to use to flee the country. He is a very dangerous man for the society and the people around him as he is involved in all kinds of dirty deeds and dirty business. He stays locked up with 7 padlocks and only allows in his own people who know him and are like him.

I say that if you search his apartment you will find interesting things and you will discover things that are important for the Securitate and the militia. He is a hard man and a scoundrel; if you were to gather information, everyone would tell you the same things I have. That he is friends with many people in the block who visit him all day and all night. Neighbours say he also has guns brought by his tourist friends, which he doses at home and gives to enemies of the country. I won’t give you my name because he is a dangerous man and I am afraid of him. But if you go to his house, you’ll find interesting things.

Yours sincerely, an anonymous

(ACNSAS, Information Fund, file no. 207, volume 4, p. 276; document reproduced in Nicu Steinhardt in the Securitate files (1959-1989), edited by Clara Cosmineanu, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, pp. 152-153)

[1] The anonymous denunciation, of a ridiculousness typical of communist stupidity, is in fact a set-up by the Securitate. Here is the reason for this embarrassing trick: In 1971, Father Nicolae Steinhardt finished the first version of the “Diary of Happiness” and made several typed copies, which he gave to some friends to read. One of them (the informer “Arthur”, probably Ion Caraion) took the copy he received directly to the Securitate. Thus, on 30 October 1972, the Securitate took possession of the diary. Suspecting that there were several copies of the diary, and worried about the prospect of its publication across the border, the Securitate made this anonymous denunciation to justify its search and seizure of all copies, since any publication of the diary in the free world would have seriously damaged the image of “popular democracy”. The Securitate’s intention is specified by Lieutenant Ciucă Ion in a summary note dated 28 November 1972 concerning the work “The Diary of Happiness”: “Since our bodies became aware of the existence of this material at the end of October this year, it is imperative that we urgently check whether the work has been smuggled out of the country. To this end, we are planning to carry out a secret or legendary search (as a pretext: an anonymous report on the possession of currency, weapons, etc.), during which we will detain this work if it has not been removed from the country in the meantime (we would like to point out that Directorate I has data on the existence of this work since May 1972)”.

Faced with this “anonymous” statement, Father Nicolae accepted the search of his house on 14 December 1972, during which the only remaining copy of the diary was confiscated.