Doctor Lefa Aristide, a man of rare modesty
I met Dr Lefa Aristide in Tg. Ocna, in full professional activity. Working freely as a surgeon, he was also in great demand by the people on the ward, especially on the ground floor, where most of them had open fistulas of a TB nature and needed more careful care. Personally, I didn’t have much to do with him except when I returned from Tg. Ocna, where I had been operated on for appendicitis, and on the way to the hospital was taken in a smelly cart, my incision had opened despite the surgeon’s stitches. Then he dressed me once or twice.
In 1998, by a happy coincidence, his book “Blessed are those who mourn” appeared, after a stay of more than seven years at the Eminescu publishing house. I think I was the first to buy it, and when I started reading it that evening, I didn’t put it down until it was light. I published an article about it in Viața medicală, but what could an article, limited to the space given in print, do when the contents of the book were a veritable archive of prison information?
Like many of the students who passed through Pitești, Dr Aristide Lefa did not escape the terrible scourge of re-education. But luck was on his side when he was sent to the Tg. Ocna sanatorium with 45 other students. […]
To return to the work of Dr Lefa Aristide, who was in perfect health, it is surprising that he didn’t catch TB himself, in a ward where another prisoner died every day or two. Later, this enormous work was shared with the doctor Mihai Lungeanu, who became a priest after his release. These wonderful doctors, Floricel Nicolae, Ion Ghițulescu, Lefa Aristide, Victor Grapan, Georgescu George, Lungeanu Mihai, Cepi Stere, should be given monuments for the enormous work they did to save their fellow sufferers. Parallel to their work. We were also greatly helped by the official prison doctor, Margareta Danielescu, who was with us in the most difficult moments. Many times this kind-hearted doctor went to Bucharest, either to get food and clothing parcels or to get antibiotics for us. […]
But what happened in Tg. Ocna, you could write a novel and it still wouldn’t be enough. The doctors’ fight against a scourge well maintained by a criminal communist system was more than superhuman. The very thought of how the doctors who cared for the sick were disciplined should give pause to today’s superficial historians. The case of Dr Aristide Lefa is not unique; he was followed by many other doctors who braved isolation to provide medical care to their fellow sufferers. Of those who went to Tg. Ocna, few are still alive, as the mortality rate there was over 50%. Coming back to Dr Lefa, a man of rare modesty, I must confess that I often envied him for his dedication, which I mostly lacked.
(Gheorghe Penciu, Doctors in seclusion, Vremea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 201-207)