Fr. Filaret Gămălău (en)

I discovered in my archive an old video from 1992, an interview with Father Filaret Gămălău, from Moșuni, Mureș County, who was Nichifor Crainic’s cellmate for four years in Aiud Prison in the 1950s. Filaret Gămălău was also the “external memory” of Nichifor Crainic, a religious poet, teacher and Minister of National Propaganda in the Gigurtu and Antonescu governments. From 1947 to 1962, Nichifor Crainic was imprisoned (he was taken from Cerghid, where he was staying with Father Sămărghițan!) and spent most of his time in Aiud. During the time they shared a cell, Nichifor Crainic dictated the poems he […]

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We were introduced[1] to a priest who had not yet been cut and dressed in the prison outfit. We could not believe our eyes. We were all overcome with emotion. A priest in priestly garb in the cell. The priest was not very tall, with a thick beard and ringlets of hair covering his thin shoulders. He looked like a creature from another world. In a low voice he told us that he was from the Securitate, that his name was Florin Gămălău – Filaret and that he was the abbot of the Durău monastery. To the young men in […]

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The monk Florea Gămălău, of the Durău hermitage, was the youngest monk I met in the prisons I visited. He was 27 years old. He was a gentle and kind man, a graduate of the monastic seminary of Neamț Monastery. He went to prison with one of the batches of the “Black Sumans” organisation from the Obcinele of Bukovina, with which the monks from Durău also had links. He worked hard to catch up with the norm. He had lost a lot of weight and walked slowly down the main avenue of the factory with the composure of a sick […]

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For several days in a row, during the night, cars arrived at the Piatra Neamț prison with other prisoners from the Bistrita Valley, from Buhalnița, Crucea, Borca, Farcașa, Poiana Teiului, Galu, as well as from Pipirig and Târgu Neamț. The first to enter the cell was the monk Filaret Gămălău, from the commune of Crucea, former abbot of the Rarău Monastery. This priest, with a great spiritual life, had been sold by his brother-in-law, I. Rosu, from Poiana Teiului, as well as by D. Irimescu. (Grigore Caraza, Aiud însângerat, edited by Adrian Alui Gheorghe, 5th edition, Tipo Moldova Publishing House, […]

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