Arrest and conviction

I did not write these memories when I was in the throes of suffering in prison, nor a few years after my release, but after twenty-five years, when my thoughts were freed from the passion of emotion. They are pure thoughts that portray the sufferings of prison in the light of truth, and the perpetrators in their cruel behaviour. And so let them condemn themselves for the cruel tortures to which they enslaved their parents, brothers and sisters who belonged to the same Romanian country; they humiliated and degraded those who were the forefathers of the nation; they mocked the Christian faith; they crushed and trampled on the very values of life on which the country had flourished generation after generation!

They have crucified and spat on the ancestors of the Romanian people, on the parents, brothers, sisters and youth of a people who were guilty only of defending the “altar of Romanian spirituality”, as Archimandrite Haralambie, our brother who died in Gherla prison, so aptly called it. […]

In 1959, when the persecution of monks in monasteries and hermitages was unleashed, more than 300 monks and nuns were expelled without trial from the Metropolitanate of Moldavia alone.

After four years of intense spiritual activity and restoration of the Antim Monastery in Bucharest, we were sent to the monasteries and hermitages of Moldavia and Maramures, after which we became abbot of the Pocrov Hermitage in the Neamț region, the poorest and most ruined hermitage on a mountain peak, which for ten years we restored and embellished both spiritually and materially, so that it became a point of great attraction for pilgrims from all over the country. Together with Father Archimandrite Haralambie, I was removed from the Pocrov Hermitage and sent to my paternal family, without the right to wear monk’s robes and insignia, without the right to serve as a priest.

And so, from 26 May 1959, we were in my parents’ house in the commune of Vutcani, Fălciu County. The only consolation was to be together with our old father and brothers. We were in our parents’ nest, but dark clouds and birds of prey were always circling. The only peace we found was in writing the holy books. I was busy finishing a translation of the Bible, and Father Haralambie was working on several volumes of Romanian spirituality. Even in the most difficult moments of our lives, we tried not to hide the talent we had received from God.

Thus the three-month summer passed like a day before God, and we entered the month of September with rich spiritual fruits for the souls of all good Christians everywhere. As the Holy Cross raised its arms to the autumn sky, a turning point came not only for nature, but also for human life, and especially for us. The date of 14 September 1959, the feast of Christ’s return to Jerusalem after being captured by the Persians, marked for us the beginning of the crucifixion, a fall into heavy and long years of imprisonment. We had no other holy hope than the holy arms of the Cross of Christ to raise us from the hell and fire of many sufferings.

On the very day of the Ascension of the Holy Cross, the night of 14 September 1959, Gheorghiu Dej himself appeared to me in a dream, stretched out his arm to me and disappeared without a word. The next day, when I was having tea with Brother Haralambie, the last of this earthly life, I saw through the window the garden of the house full of strangers (15 in all). They entered the house and, as they themselves had indicated, they were all guards from Bacău and Huși, who had arrived at the gate in two cars. They had also brought with them members of the Vuțcani village council and the militia. From that moment they declared me and Brother Haralambie to be under arrest.

The same goes for Fr. Haralambie at the trial, the accusers of Protos. Polycarp Filaret Dutcovici and the seminarian Purcariu whom I had apprenticed at the Pocrov Hermitage and whom I sent to the Seminary and permanently helped, all of them saying, that I received from their former Prior, the book printed in the Neamț Monastery “The Altar of Romanian Spirituality”.

They began a general search of the house, turning over everything in the rooms on the floor and on the beds, confiscating my 20 volumes of manuscripts, headed by the 2000 page Life of Jesus. They didn’t take the manuscript of the Bible translation I was working on, but they threw it away and trampled it underfoot. They also confiscated and took away Father Haralmbie’s 15 manuscript volumes, starting with a work of great theological value, The Mystery of the Holy Communion, on which they had worked for years. He also confiscated the little money we had and ordered the equipment for our departure.

Father Haralambie said to his grandchildren, who were less than ten years old: “Look at me, from now on you will never see me again”. It was an indication of the depth of his being. It was hard to say goodbye to our old father, who had mourned his two sons who had died at the front and his wife before them. He was now 77 years old and I kissed his hand and said to him: “Stay with God”, and Father Haralambie asked Father for his blessing for the road of suffering. We both left the house with tears in our eyes and were escorted to the gate as prisoners and put into one of the cars.

As soon as the cars were moving, they put the black metal goggles over our eyes. And so they took us out of the village, passing through several towns, until in the middle of the night the car stopped at the security station in Bacău, as the prisoners told us, after we had been locked up. […]

On Easter Day 1960, while we were in the prison stables in Bacău, at dawn on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, we sang with Brother Haralambie “Christ is Risen”! and we prayed for all the prisoners and for all humanity. It was before the hour of awakening. Hearing this song of victory over suffering and death, all eighty prisoners in the cell awoke to a heavenly atmosphere where Christ the Lord was with each one of them. A joy of the world beyond came to them and to all of us, from the One who, after the Resurrection, said: “… And so the One who can do all things was with us in the splendour of his victory and power! […]

As for us, the investigator Ciobanu and the comrade of the investigation told us what Opațchi – the accountant of the Neamț monastery – wrote, that “we listened to the radio Voice of America” and that “the last time we listened to it was on 20 June 1959, in the Neamț monastery”. I told them that the accusation was true.

I told them that the accusation was completely false because I had been removed from the monastery and from the Procov hermitage and from Neamț monastery since April 1959. And that I had left Neamț Monastery for good on 25 May 1959. For one month I had been in the commune of Vutcani, Fălciu County, near the Prut River. The village was 300 km away from Neamț Monastery. And the proof that I was in Vutcani can be found in the People’s Council of this commune, where my brother and I had been registered since 26 May 1959. “How can you imagine, Your Lordships, that I travelled 300 km at night to listen to the radio in the Neamț monastery, as Mr. Opațchi writes?

“Shut up,” the interrogator shouted at me, “or I’ll smash your head in with this inkwell” that he had on his desk.

Another accusation made against me was that of Archimandrite Victor Ojog, that at the Neamț Monastery I had spoken with Protosynghellos Petru Pogonat, the former university professor at the Faculty of Law in Iași and former dean of the Iasi Bar Association, who had now become a monk at the Neamț Monastery, as well as with Princess Olga Sturza. When he appeared in court on this charge, I asked him: “Can you tell us what we talked about?”

He replied that he didn’t know what we were talking about because he hadn’t taken part in these conversations, but since you were all persecuted by the communist regime, you were certainly talking against it…

They also accused us of speaking against communism in our sermons, to which the villager from Pipirig replied that he did not understand this because the sermons were at a high level, but the president of the jury asked him, “But didn’t they understand that communism is not good? The villager shrugged his shoulders at the interrogator, who said that in the sermons on the Feast of the Hermitage I had spoken against communism. I replied that it was not true because I did not make politics in my sermons. Please look in the manuscripts you took from me where the sermon you accuse me of is. Then he shouts at me: “Shut up, for you have written and spoken.” Then I ask him, “How does he know this? Were you present at my sermons with the manuscript in your hand? He rushed at me and said: “You bandit, you’re investigating me”?

But even with these, you could see that in all the confiscated manuscripts they found nothing written that would be incriminating evidence at the trial. And yet I could not find the twenty volumes of my manuscripts and fifteen of Father Haralambie’s, they disappeared, they must have been set on fire.

All the accusations, as shown above, were mere cobwebs that could not be the basis of a legal conviction. There were also written statements from the archimandrite Vladimir Musca and the professor of the seminary (A), who said that when they visited the Pocrov Hermitage, they “saw among the books I had there and my books, which were forbidden”. However, they did not appear at the trial.

Father Haralambie and myself, Fr. Nifon C. and a teacher from Olt, who was forced to stay in the Neamț monastery. In reality, we were in the Pocrov hermitage, 6 km away. (through the forest) and the other two were at Neamț Monastery. At the Pocrov Hermitage we had no electric light and no radio. And while we were there for 10 years, Fr. Haralambie never went down to Neamtu Monastery, and the other two never went up to the Hermitage. So the judges themselves saw that everything in the accusation was fictitious, and they found us guilty of the organised conspiracy and sentenced us, me to 8 years in prison, Father Haralambie to 7 years, Protosynghellos N.C. to 6 years and the teacher to 5 years, as well as confiscating our property and depriving us of our civil rights for 10 years. […]

Sentenced by the military tribunal of Iași, which tried us in Bacău, we were chosen to be sent to other prisons. Soon, a few days later, six guards came with batons in their hands, took my brother and me out of the cell and escorted us to another room where the barber was waiting to cut our hair. They thought we would resist, but we, who were led “like sheep to be sheared and stabbed”, obeyed those who disobeyed God’s ordinances, which we had followed for 25 years. […]

In the mystery of our souls, however, they could not come down and break the promises we had made to God. Into the great mysteries of life they could not descend with the force of their batons! The Saviour himself said to his disciples: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless^[f] as doves” (Matthew 10:16). With this divine hope, we submitted to being sheared like sheep to be slaughtered. This was just one of the humiliating experiences, nothing compared to the other beatings and tortures inflicted on us directly, not to mention the crimes committed, as happened to my brother Haralambie.

(Archbishop Dr. Vasile Vasilache – Another World. Memories from Communist Prisons, manuscript, pp. 4-5, 8-11, 13-15, 17)