Dan Mihăilescu – a young martyr who shone in virtues

The shocking end, in madness, of the doctor Costin Cazacu was joined in my conscience by another tragic end, also in Aiud, on 15 February 1956: that of my friend Dan Mihail N. Mihăilescu, an outstanding graduate of the Faculty of Architecture, former honorary prize-winner of the “Spiru Haret” High School – Bucharest, in his sixth year of imprisonment after having been sentenced to 20 years of hard labour for “the crime of conspiracy against the social order”, the order of communism, which destroys human values.

Shortly after my release from prison – Iași, 26 December 1955 – on the eve of Epiphany 1956, I went to Dan Mihăilescu’s parents to tell them the news about him: it was not the first time I had been in their house, as we had studied together at high school. The lady had been a Romanian language teacher and my friend’s father an engineer.

He was their only child, and they had given him a good upbringing, which added brilliance to his natural gifts. Good, hardworking, industrious and faithful, he had proved himself “out there” and a storyteller with a prodigious memory, a veritable living library.

At a time when political prisoners and their families were cut off from each other for years, the only news came from those who were released and who, despite the pledge they had signed on leaving prison not to tell anyone what they had seen, kept their word to their friends who remained behind bars. What could we tell them? That at the beginning of the summer, when I had been sent from Gherla to Iași – via Jilava – for the retrial, their only son was healthy, in room 100 on the third floor, with whom we, those of us in room 101, communicated daily, especially “after hours”, in the evenings.

As bad news travels faster than good ones, they had learned that Dan was ill in Aiud, as someone had told them on the phone…

We learned late, in the autumn, that Dan Mihăilescu, the young man so loved by those we knew – loved for his intelligence, his culture and the Christian spirit that inspired him – had passed beyond the borders of this world.

The memory of him and of the other martyrs of our nation – may God rest them all in peace! – compels me to bear witness. […]

(Gheorghe Stănescu – Jurnal din prigoană, Venus Publishing House, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 8-10)