Aurelian State – a true hero

Among the many good people with whom I was destined to live in that cursed Zarca, an old prison from the time of Maria Theresa, I had many colleagues, to whom I will refer in turn, according to the extent of the psychological effect left on me.

I will begin with Professor Aurelian State. He was born in the county of Câmpulung-Muscel. He was a graduate of the teacher training college. He went to military school and reached the rank of second lieutenant in the reserves. The beginning of the war found him concentrated and he went to the front. He went through all the stages of the war, from the Nistru to the Caucasus, fighting without fear, totally committed to the most difficult actions. The enemy often posed serious problems and nests of resistance that were difficult to destroy by conventional means.

In these situations, volunteers were called up. State was always at the head of the list, with the bravest NCOs and soldiers lining up behind him. After a thorough reconnaissance of the enemy’s position, they would launch a surprise attack, crippling the enemy and capturing key positions. Their greatest acts of heroism took place around Sevastopol. With the help of a group of volunteers led by Aurelian State, he managed to capture the fortress of Sevastopol. This victory earned State the highest decoration of the Romanian army, “Mihai Viteazul”. After the conquest of Sevastopol, State’s unit continued its advance towards the Caucasus. Here State was given a very risky mission. Fighting with partisans, which was very difficult, the uniformed troops fought according to all the rules of war. But the partisans offered no chance of defence. The partisans were indistinguishable from the civilian population; they attacked by surprise and were hidden by the locals. Sometimes even the locals fell under the partisans’ bullets, suspected of collaborating with the enemy. Reserve Lieutenant Aurelian State found it very difficult to organise an intelligence service among the locals, not all of whom were sympathetic to the partisans and feared the return of the Soviet armies. Lieutenant State’s accounts were very gripping and left you breathless. He also had a faithful memory and was a very talented storyteller and analyst of the situation in which he was involved. In the meantime, the Russians had taken over after the disaster of Stalingrad, where the terrible frost demoralised the Romanian-German armies, the engines of the planes and armoured vehicles would not start. On top of this came the betrayal of Japan, which had signed the non-aggression pact with Russia, allowing the Russians to withdraw their 100 divisions from Manchuria and throw them into the battle at Stalingrad, thus encircling the German-Romanian troops, who could no longer hold out due to frost, lack of supplies and fatigue, and Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army, surrendered. Few escaped the encirclement, many soldiers were frozen and sick. The stories of Aurelian State continue with the retreat from the Soviet offensive. The Romanian troops in the Crimea retreated to the port of Sevastopol, where they waited for numerous ships to embark them for their return home. This took place in the spring of 1944. To ensure that the troops could embark, a machine gun crew was needed to keep the Russians in place and out of the harbour. This operation required sacrificial men, volunteers. And this time the reserve officer Aurelian State volunteered, along with several brave men, knowing that they would eventually be killed in action or, at best, taken prisoner. After setting up with machine guns in strategic positions, they opened fire on the Russian positions, preventing them from penetrating the harbour roadstead until all the troops had embarked and were out to sea. Having accomplished their mission, the State volunteers ceased firing and surrendered to the Russians. Taken prisoner, they were loaded onto a freight train and travelled for almost two weeks to reach the Oranki camp in Siberia. Here, after much investigation, he was found to have fought against partisans. He was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour. After the trial he was sent to another camp to serve his sentence. In this camp, most of the prisoners were Germans, officers of higher rank. This move did him good. Here, among the Germans, he began to converse, deepening his linguistic and literary knowledge. At the same time, he was endowed with a taste for culture and shared with the Germans the culture of the Romanian people. Professor State, as the Germans called him, spent ten years in this camp until 1955, when the prisoners from the Russian camps were released. After Konrad Adenauer’s visit to Moscow, State could have chosen Germany, but he returned home to see his mother and the country for which he had sacrificed so much. Little did he know what awaited him in his beloved country. He settled in Bucharest, continued his German studies and became a German teacher. But being a fearless fighter by nature, he came into contact with certain resistance fighters and prisoners. Constantly followed by the Securitate, who also had a file on him from Russia, he was arrested in 1958 and taken to the Ministry of the Interior. There he was subjected to terrible torture in order to reveal his activities against the state and his accomplices. He endured several weeks of torture, but realised that one day he would not be able to bear it any longer. Not wanting to denounce his comrades, he devised a plan.

When they took him for examination, he would pass through a corridor where there was a window without bars; this window led into a courtyard. He looked at it carefully and calculated his movements so that he could jump when it was opened. The opportunity soon presented itself, and like the athlete he was, he jumped from the sixth floor into the void. When he hit the ground, his body was shattered in several places, his forehead and chin were broken, his nose was broken, his hand was broken in several places, his pelvis was broken, and his leg was broken in several places. As shattered as he was, he lost consciousness after hitting the ground and was taken to the Central Hospital.

A team of doctors went to work and managed to save him. After several months, the fractures healed thanks to medical care. In the end, one of his legs was seven centimetres shorter, as was one of his hands. He had a scar on his chin, a scar on his pelvis, a scar on his forehead, and his nose still needed surgery to make it look like a nose. He had two crutches so he could move around. Despite the horror of the accident, his morale was enviable. Instead of taking him to the prison hospital, Colonel Crăciun took him to the Zarca extermination centre. My stay in State’s cell was a pleasure. He was very eloquent and a master storyteller. He had an extraordinary memory. After a few months we parted with many regrets. A real friendship had developed between us. After we parted, I tried to find out more about him, but it was impossible. Three years later, in 1964, we met again on the train home, I in Brașov and he in Bucharest. In freedom we never saw each other again. I learnt from other suffering brothers that he had been a German teacher in Bucharest and then, through “Free Europe”, had got into trouble with Ceaușescu’s Securitate, who arrested and killed him in their cellars. I was deeply saddened by the disappearance of this true hero.

(Alexandru Salcă – In a Zealot Among Saints. Memories II, Transilvania Expres Publishing House, Brașov, 2000, pp. 189-192)