Father Dimitrie Balaur in the communist dungeon
More than two decades after the fall of communism in Europe, we are witnessing numerous attempts to rewrite recent history, often documented in the archives of the former organs of repression. At other times, such attempts are either exaggerated, understated or even legitimise identity reconstructions designed to exploit a geopolitics that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The case of Bessarabia is eloquent: we are accepting the Romanian past, emphasising the Russian stamp and constructing a different ethnic and religious identity.
It is almost impossible to understand how a Romanian past can be accepted in Bessarabia, which is resistant to the Russian imprint imposed by the tsarist occupation and, above all, the dissolution under Soviet rule, just to legitimise a construction of identity. This strategy has its origins in the Tsarist era, continued during the Soviet period and updated after 1990. But a landmark of the recent Romanian past, with Bessarabian roots, is the case of Father Dimitrie Balaur, born on 4 September 1903 in the family of the intellectual Isidor Balaur, from Rezeni, Lăpușna County, the birthplace of the great fighters for union with the motherland, Ion Pelivan and Ion Inculeț.
After primary school, young Dimitrie entered the seminary in Chisinau in 1910 and, after the unification of 1918, the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1928. Four years later he graduated from the Faculty of Geography with the same distinction.
The young Balaur’s patriotism was already evident at university, when he collected folklore, and in 1929 he published an article entitled “From the Popular Literature of Bessarabia”. After his studies, he was appointed cultural advisor to the Hotin Diocese, a position in which he distinguished himself as a tireless researcher of the Romanian ecclesiastical past in this area, publishing the work “Churches in Eastern Moldavia” in 1934. Three years later, at Easter, he was ordained a priest and served in the Episcopal Cathedral of Bălți, built by Visarion Puiu.
Knowing only too well the horrors of Bolshevism, especially against the Church, he fled with his family on 28 June 1940, first to Iași and then to Bucharest. In the capital, he was assigned to the parish of Oborul Nou, alongside the priest Alexandru Popescu. On the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in 1941, the tireless Bessarabian priest experienced the joy of returning to his homeland, to the Diocese of Bălți. He saw the horrors of the “Red Year” in Bessarabia and was motivated to discover the blessings of communist heaven as editor of the magazine “The Bessarabian Church”. His return did not last long, for on 21 March 1944 he was forced to flee again, this time to Caransebeș, where the property of the Diocese of Bălți had been transferred. Shortly afterwards, he moved with his family to Bucharest, where he was appointed spiritual director of the “Nifon Mitropolitul” seminary. Since the seminary was abolished in 1948, Father Dimitrie Balaur was given the post of pastor at the “Parcul Domeniilor” or Cașin Monastery in Bucharest, starting on 1 September. He was a chosen and beloved pastor by the faithful, who entrusted him with their pastoral care. But the repressive organs were always aware of his activities, especially when he had meetings with his colleagues from his homeland, such as Vlad Burjeveanu from the “Bariera Vergului” church, Vasile Prisecaru from the “Malaxa” church, Silvestru Vatrici from the “Bradului” church or Professor Constantin N. Tomescu.
The Communist authorities considered such meetings to be a conspiracy against the regime. Father Balaur was arrested on 4 April 1959 and taken from the altar door of the church in Kashin. Almost two weeks earlier, the parish priest of Kashin Church, Father Dumitru Apostol, had been arrested on suspicion of “conspiring against the regime”, along with other potential “enemies of the people”.
On his 56th birthday, Father Dimitrie Balaur was tried by the military court in Bucharest and sentenced on the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God to 12 years’ “hard labour” for “intensive activity against the working class” for inter-war publicity, and to 15 years’ “hard labour” for “conspiracy against the social order”, the latter sentence being enforceable.
He experienced the concentration camps of Jilava (September 1959 and May 1964), Gherla (August 1960 and May 1964), Periprava (from July 1962) and Giurgeni (from April 1963), in the last two of which he was subjected to forced labour. He was released from Gherla prison on 30 July 1964 and returned to his family and then to the altar.
(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Lumina Newspaper)