Father Dumitru Mihăilescu, martyr for Christ

He was born into the family of the priest Atanasie and Steliana Mihăilescu. His family moved to Dobrogea in 1926, his father having obtained a priest’s post in the parish of Ciocârlia, Constanța County. He attended the theological seminary in Buzău and then the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest. For a time he was cantor at the parish where his father served, as we learn from a declaration of 16 December 1939, in which he “applied” to join the Front of National Revival, the single party founded by King Carol II.[1] While still a student, married, he was ordained by Bishop Gherontie Nicolau and appointed priest at the parish of Andolina, Ialomița County. Subsequently, with a request to the Under-Secretary of State for Religious Affairs, dated 27 September 1940, Father Mihăilescu tried to be transferred to the parish of Ciocârlia, in place of his father, who wanted to retire. He did not succeed, but only in an honorary post, starting on 5 December 1940[2]. He had four children.

In 1946, Father Mihăilescu was listed as the parish priest of the same church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, under construction, with 425 families, i.e. 2125 souls, assisted at the altar by his retired father, Atanasie Mihăilescu[3].

In December 1938, Dumitru Mihăilescu was brought to court for having tutored a fellow student from Bucharest, whose father was suspected of legionary activity. He was accused of “the crime of participation in a prohibited political organisation, provided for and punished by articles 13, 23, paragraph II, 30 and 42 of the Law for the Defence of State Order”, but was acquitted by sentence no. 789 of 20 December 1938 by the Military Tribunal of the 2nd Army Corps[4].

According to his testimony during the Securitate investigation, in May 1949 Father Mihăilescu became involved in the resistance movement active in Dobrogea under the leadership of Gogu Puiu. “When I went to Ferdinand, to the priest Tasi,” says Father Mihăilescu, “I met Gogu Puiu in the courtyard of the German church – through Enache Puiu. In Cobadin I had contact with Gheorghe Filiu, in Basarabi with Dr Apostol Paul and in Constanța with Popescu Scărișoreanu. I am in contact with Gheorghe Filiu: Ceaturi Gheorghe from Viile Noi; with Jamea Dumitru from Constanța, with Zelca Gheorghe from Viile Noi; with priest Georgescu from Potârnichea. In Cobadin, they met Iancu Beca and Hașoti Nicolae, bandits brought from the forest by Gogu Puiu; Sterie Timu from Cobadin, Costică Ghiță-Cobadin, Olimpia, – Gogu Puiu’s concubine”[5].

The priest was therefore a serious link for Gogu Puiu. In other words, he was a courier who delivered money collected in the parish, food and other things that the resistance group lacked. At the same time, at Gogu Puiu’s request, Father Mihăilescu organised various meetings, according to another statement dated 9 August 1949: “My activity, from the moment I joined the gang led by Gogu Puiu, was to put Gogu Puiu in contact with the people in the communes of our region; to organise in my commune and to go to Constanța to make contact with the elements in the city known to the bandit Gogu Puiu, in order to form a steering committee to direct the funds that he and his bandits were to raise”. Between 10 and 15 June 1949, he organised a meeting in Cobadin, at the house of Gheorghe Filiu, attended by Gogu Puiu and others, at which it was decided “to proceed with the organisation of the villages in this region of southern Dobrogea”. Another meeting was held in Ciocârlia de Jos, at night, in a vineyard, where the people were informed by the priest Mihăilescu, and where it was decided “to collect money, food and clothes”. Another was in Cobadin, in the house of the Macedonian Iancu Sterie Caragea, from 25 to 27 June 1949, in which Gogu Puiu also took part. It was decided to “go from commune to commune to collect money and food and to set up a steering committee”. Another meeting was held in Constanta, at the home of Popescu Scarișoreanu, on 8 and 9 July, attended by members but without Gogu Puiu, where they again discussed the need to set up a steering committee. The last meeting was on 11 July 1949, attended by Gogu Puiu, where it was decided to intimidate the State Bank of Constanța and the Securitate and party organs by means of telegrams[6].

In July 1949, the Securitate carried out several arrests among the members of the resistance group in southern Dobrogea. Thus, on 17 July 1949, Father Mihăilescu was arrested by the Securitate because “he was identified as the leader of the subversive group in southern Dobrogea”[7].

We have the testimony of his eldest son, Aristide Mihăilescu: ‘In the autumn of 1949, the Securitate came to the house of a relative where we were staying, because we had a house under construction, at about 10.30 pm. We were in the house with an ethnic Turkish woman (myself and three sisters aged 5, 3 and 1). At that time we were woken up by automatic gunfire. If we weren’t in bed, we would be shot. Then we heard the rifle bed banging on the door, they opened the door and we were beaten up, cursed at and asked where the priest was. I told them he was in Cobadin. All the people who had beaten us and smelled of alcohol went to Cobadin. On the way they stopped at my grandfather’s house, beat him up and dragged him around the house by his beard, asking him where his son (our father) was. (In the morning I found hair from his head, beard and blood in my grandfather’s house).

Then they went to Cobadin and waited for my parents at the mill. They caught them, swore at them and beat them. My father was hit in the mouth with a rifle butt and his teeth were broken. My mother was picked up by the driver of the car and taken to the field so that no one could see what was happening. My father, who didn’t object to the arrest, was brutally tortured by these drunken bastards.

They took my mother home crying. That’s when the ordeal began: we were left without food, without money, without being allowed to go to school. As the eldest, I started working for the CFR, pulling grass from the railway tracks to support the family, for a daily wage of 325 lei a month. I went days without food. I wasn’t allowed into the lecture hall or the library, I was mocked and chased away”[8].

At the Securitate in Constanța, Father Mihăilescu was subjected to the harshest interrogations, and it was not until 9 August 1949 that the investigators managed to get him to make a statement. According to the criminal file, on 9 August alone the priest gave four statements, many passages of which were obviously dictated by the investigators[9].

Because of his important role and his closeness to Gogu Puiu, the investigators will consider him to be the organiser and leader of the resistance group in southern Dobrogea, even a direct subordinate. At the same time, they will also label him as a legionnaire-fascist, although there were testimonies from other accused in which it was made very clear that legionnaires, shopkeepers, expropriated people, PNȚ-ists, etc.[10] were called to participate in this resistance movement.

According to the final report of the investigation, dated 1 September 1949, Father Dumitru Mihăilescu “had been part of the Legionary movement since 1937 and coordinated the leadership committee of the subversive gangs in the south of the county. Constanța, giving them the task of recruiting elements from the ranks of former legionnaires and those hostile to the regime, especially the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry”, with the aim of merging the gangs in southern Dobrogea with those in the north and in Constanța County. Tulcea. Thus, Father Mihăilescu would become the leader of a subversive gang, in a group formed by the Securitate of 25 defendants[11].

The defendants, led by Father Mihăilescu, were charged with “the crime of conspiracy against the internal security of the RPR”, an offence provided for and punished by Article 3 of Law No. 16/13 January 194912, for “initiating, organising and forming subversive terrorist groups of a fascist paramilitary nature, conspiring against the internal security of the State”.

On 21 October 1949, Father Dumitru Mihăilescu was sentenced by the Military Court of Constanța to life imprisonment at hard labour and 10 years’ civil servitude in “Lot 2 of the subversive terrorist gangs in Dobrogea”.

 

Shortly after his sentencing, Father Dumitru Mihăilescu died. The circumstances of his death are still disputed. In the supplement of the magazine “Renașterea” of the Archdiocese of Cluj, published in 1995, we learn that the priest was killed in February/March 1950 by the Timișoara Securitate14, contrary to Constantin Ionașcu, who claims in his work that he was “executed” on the night of 9/10 March 1950 in the “Aiud-Timișoara death train”15. Cicerone Ionițoiu also stops at this last hypothesis, stating: “A special case occurred in April 1950, when, among the 83 political prisoners, the priest Dumitru Mihăilescu, from Ciocârlia commune, Constanța county (he had been tried with the Babadag partisans and transported to Timișoara on the basis of the famous regulation 10.007 of March 1950, issued by Nicolschi), was taken out of prison. He died before the firing squad on 4 April 1950 and his death was registered after 7 years”16.

Vasile Manea, in his work on imprisoned clergymen, takes a completely different view, stating that Father Mihăilescu “was killed in the Pitesti prison”[17].

However, in the criminal records I consulted, I found a simple certificate issued by the People’s Council of Pitești, certifying the death of Father Dumitru Mihăilescu, aged 35, on 23 March 1950, from “nephritis”[18].

It is therefore impossible that he died in the Timișoara Securitate Police Station or on the “death train”. The death of the father in April 1950 is also ruled out, since it was already recorded in the civil status register of the Pitești Municipal Council. Therefore, according to the above-mentioned certificate, Father Dumitru Mihăilescu died in Pitești Prison on 23 March 1950[19]. As for the cause of death, at first glance one could say “nephritis”, but here there may be doubts, as these diagnoses were often fictitious.

(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Martyrs for Christ in Romania during the Communist Regime, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 475-479)

[1] “I, the undersigned Dumitru Mihăilescu, singer, resident in the commune Ciocârlia de Jos, Constanța County, have applied to join the National Revival Front by signing a collective list, which was made available to me from the beginning, at the Town Hall of this commune. At the same time, I declare that I applied to join the National Guard of the FRN by means of an application registered under the number … [vacancy]. I sincerely share the higher ideals of the FRN and have not done anything contrary to the ideology of the FRN” (AMIC, Ministry of Culture and the Arts, file 102/1940, f. 177). The above text shows Mihăilescu’s enthusiasm for the cause promoted by Carol II’s party.

[2] Ibidem, file 49/1938, f. 74; Ibidem, file 60/1939, f. 86; Ibidem, file 98/1940, f. 239; “Tomis”, year XVII (1940), no. 6-7, p. 7; Ibidem, year XVIII (1941), no. 6-7, p. 13.

[3] AMJDIM, Criminal fonds, file 20978, vol. 2, f. 148, 156-157v; file 64451, f. 97; Calendar of the Diocese of Constanța-1946, p. 61-62. According to his son, Aristide Mihăilescu, we learn that Father Mihăilescu also graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy.

[4] AMJDIM, Criminal Fund, file 20978, vol. 2, f. 86, 104. 122, 130-133.

[5] Ibidem, file 64451, f. 97. It should be noted that Gogu Puiu did not have a concubine, but a fiancée, as the Securitate wanted to highlight the negative sides of the members of the resistance in all circumstances, even when they dictated the statements that the accused wrote.

[6] Ibidem, f. 98-99; ACNSAS. Criminal fonds, file 173, f. 19-20. According to Father Constantin Voicescu, Dumitru Mihăilescu, together with Gheorghe Filiu and the writer Alexandru Scărișoreanu, initiated, in 1946, “a committee for the organization of the anti-communist struggle”, which later affiliated itself to the group led by Gogu Puiu, a fact that does not appear in the criminal records I have consulted (Constantin Voicescu, Churchmen in the anti-communist resistance in the mountains and counties of Romania, in “Analele Sighet”, voi. 2, Bucharest, Civic Academy Foundation, 1995, p. 284).

[7] AMJD/M, Criminal Fund, file 20978, vol. 2, f. 149 (address of the Constanta Securitate to the Bucharest headquarters, dated 27 August 1949, in which it is also stated that “he is currently under investigation at the DRSP Constanța”). Constantin Voicescu, loc. cit., states the date of 18 July 1949, information which was taken up in The Imprisoned Church, p. 257 and in Orthodox Priests, p. 166.

[8] Testimony given by Aristide Mihăilescu and transmitted by the Archdiocese of Tomis. This brutality is also briefly described by Father Constantin Voicescu, loc. cit. p

[9] AMJDIM, Criminal fonds, file 64451, f. 97-102.

[10]ACNSAS, Criminal fonds, file 173, fol. 1, f. 12-13.

[11] AMJDIM, Criminal file, file 64451, f. 77-79.

[12] Ibidem, f. 25-26

[13] Ibidem, file 64451, f. 1 -2.

[14] Confessions from behind bars, p. 50. At first glance, the information seems to have been taken from “Memoria”, no. 12, 1994, p. 135.

[15] Constantin Ionașcu, Anti-Communist Resistance in Dobrogea, Constanța, Ex Ponto Publishing House, 2000, p. 361.

[16] The Golden Book, p. 366.

[17] Orthodox priests, loc. cit.

[18] AMJDIM, Criminal fonds, file 20978, vol. 2, f. 270.

[19] Dumitru Bordeianu, Confessions from the Swamp of despair, Bucharest, Scara Publishing House, p. 427; Adrian Nicolae Petcu, Un preot între “haiducii Dobrogei”, in “Rost”, year IV, no. 39, April 2006, p. 40; Marius Oprea, Banalitatea răului. O istorie a Securității în documente, 1949-1989, Polirom, 2002, p. 331, where Father Mihăilescu appears as executed by the Securitate, without any further specification. As an additional argument, there are also the data in the list of those who died in detention, drawn up by the Securitate at the end of the 1960s (ACNSAS, Documentary fund, file 73, voi. 1, f. 39, published in List of deceased persons, p. 207), where the place of death is indicated as Pitești.