“Father Șerban was sympathised by the whole colony”

… I must say that I had worked the night shift and was in my bedroom when I was awakened by a gunshot, along with the other prisoners who were asleep at the time. We went outside to see what had happened. Before we came out, we heard another gunshot. Although the guard on duty, Gheorghițǎ, who had come out of the kitchen, shouted to the guard on duty to stop shooting, he fired again, killing him on the spot. Father Șerban was ill and asked that he not be sent to the mine, as he could not work in the conditions underground.

The political officer Alexandru, in order to set an example and teach a lesson so that no other prisoner would dare to refuse to go to the mine, had Father Șerban collect the stones from the yard and around the barracks. While Gheorghițǎ Milițianu was being taken to the kitchen, the guard in the watchtower saw that the priest was alone and shot him.

When we all went to see, Father Șerban was dead, seven or eight metres from the four-metre high fence.

Everything had been arranged by the political officer Alexandru, with the lieutenant commander of the guard unit of the security forces and with the soldier in the security station who shot Father Serban (…).

The whole colony sympathised with Father Șerban. No one came for lunch. There was a wave of grief in the colony. What upset the political officer Alexander the most was the fact that at a general meeting of the prisoners, at which the colony’s military staff was also present, Father Șerban had announced, and everyone had heard, that according to the Geneva Convention political prisoners could not be made to do forced labour, especially in the mines. The policeman didn’t like this, and to take revenge he arranged with the commander of the guard platoon to shoot the priest as soon as he approached the colony’s fence. As I said, the colony was surrounded by a four-foot high fence, reinforced by another four feet of barbed wire, and it was ten o’clock in the morning, a sunny day. Even if you’d had a ladder, you couldn’t have tried to escape, as the political officer Alexandru lied about Father Șerban.

(George Sarry – My Life. Memories of Prison and Freedom, Dépôt légal – Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Canada, 2010, pp. 70-71)