Four years of armed resistance in the Apuseni Mountains

…When I say armed resistance, I don’t want the reader to think that I carried this weapon for four years and shot down who knows how many enemies with it. But I have always been close to these weapons through the people I knew who really carried them and were ready to die with them, more precisely with the last shot.

But first let me say a few words about myself, so that the reader can get to know me. I come from a peasant family that settled on the Romanian-Hungarian border, in the village of Scărișoara Nouă, a village that today belongs to Satu Mare County; in fact, the village is now part of the commune Pișcolt.

The colony of Scărișoara Nouă was founded by Moors from the Apuseni Mountains, in particular from Scărișoara, Gârda, Săcătura and others. When colonisation took place, my parents’ brothers and sisters stayed in Scărișoara-Alba. There, my mother’s sister Samfira married a forester who had a piece of land at the source of Someș Cald, at a place called Ponor, near the outlet of the Ponor stream into the Somes. My aunt’s husband’s name was Nicolae Jurj and he had a son, Mihai, from his first marriage. But my aunt did not have any children. I lived with my parents in Scărișoara Nouă, but immediately after the Viennese dictatorship, one night the whole village was surrounded by Hortist soldiers and expelled to Romania. The whole village. Where did we go? Obviously we went to some of our relatives in Romania. That’s where we stayed until Transylvania was liberated from the Hortists. Separated from each other, the family members didn’t see each other very often. Around 1947, when the political situation seemed to return to normal, my mother, who had not seen her relatives for a long time, planned to visit them in Scărișoara-Alba. She took me with her.

The visit to Aunt Samfira’s house in Ponor decided my fate in a way, because it was there that I met my future husband, Michael, Aunt Samfira’s stepson. He had just finished his military service and had been hired as a forest ranger in the Ponor area, taking over from his father, Nicolae Jurj. As soon as we met, we liked each other and when he asked me to marry him, I accepted. Of course, my aunt also offered us a piece of her land where we could also start a farm.

Things seemed to be going well. It’s true that I was far away from my parents and brothers, but I hoped we could visit each other regularly. This happened soon enough, because in 1948 I was visited by my brothers Joseph and Peter, and I even planned to go with Michael, my husband, to visit my parents in Scarișoara – Satu Mare on New Year’s Eve 1949.

It is true that my childhood was spent on the plain and I was not used to the mountains, but I quickly learned the life of a mountain farmer, especially since my husband was a very worthy man: a good, strong, handsome man, and the household began to have everything, in the sense that there was no lack of things necessary for a farmer, among which I remember with great pleasure the food so prized in this area, smoked trout.

Of course, I kept hearing about all the mischief the communists were doing to our peasants. Not a day went by when we didn’t hear about some crime we had never heard of before. We also heard about the involvement of some of the peasants in some of the actions, and there was talk that many of them had gone into the mountains and the forest. I never imagined that I would soon come into contact with these people, but that is how it happened.

My husband, Mihai Jurj, was contacted in 1948, along with other young people, by the partisan group led by Teodor Shusman from the commune of Răchitele de sub munte to fight in the Câmpeni region. He was 22 and I was 20. In addition, my father-in-law’s and my husband’s family were in contact with another group of partisans, led by Leon Șușman, a lawyer from Ocna Murșs, and his brother Gheorghe Șușman, whom they hid until they left for the Arieș Valley, where they operated around the villages of Sălcia, Poșaga and Cocolis, managing to survive until 1957, when they were betrayed; Leon Shusman died in battle with other partisans, his brother Gheorghe was captured with others and they were all sentenced to death.

My husband’s partisan activity continued until 1950, when he was betrayed by someone near Câmpeni.

One evening in August 1950, after dark, we met the head of the Beliș forestry office, Alexandru Ripan, accompanied by some secretaries. Ripan asked my husband for his gun. Mihai had a gun because he had taken over the job of forester from his father, Nicolae Jurj. Mihai told him he would get it; in the next room, which had a window overlooking the forest, there were more guns. My husband took them all and the ammunition, jumped out and left. He realised that he had been betrayed and went to the partisan group, which was not far away.

When the secret police saw that Michael was no longer there with his weapons, they searched the whole house and alerted the guards outside, but they didn’t venture into the forest. Then they arrested me and my father-in-law and took us to the Security Service headquarters in Câmpeni, where they interrogated us for two days about my husband’s activities and the Șușman group. After two days they released us and told me not to leave my house in the commune of Răchitele, where I lived with my in-laws. Although I knew that they had released us so that they could follow us and get the whole group, as soon as I got home I went with food and necessities to my husband’s house in the forest, where I knew the Șușman group was hiding.

I continued to provide food for the whole group for two months because I was the only one in the family who knew where they were. I would go into the forest at night, where the militiamen could not enter. At first our surveillance was well hidden, but as time went on it became more intense and I realised that I would soon be arrested. So, after two months, I joined the group made up of Teodor Șușman, his sons Teodor and Avisalon, Nutu Bartoș, Gheorghe Mihut, Roman Oneț, all from Răchitele, Ioan Ciota from Calata, and my husband Mihai Jurj. I was the only woman; the others were unmarried, except for old Șușman. In the commune of Răchitele, this Teodor Șușman was a prominent man, he had a great influence on the population of the commune and its surroundings, he was elected mayor of the commune for many years. He was a wealthy householder, he had a shop and he managed to send his children to school: his sons Teodor and Avisalon graduated from high school. People like Teodor Șușman could be found in all the villages and communes of Romania, in all of them, without exception. They were cultured peasants, the most enlightened elements, in their houses there were books, agricultural and other magazines, radios; they were the light of the Romanian villages, and not, as the communists called them, the “chiaburi”, the village sloths. The communists could not work with such elements, these hostile elements had to disappear. The old man was in the way of the communist authorities and, in order to avoid being arrested, Teodor Șușman and his two older sons decided to go to the mountains where they would organise armed resistance, leaving his wife and two younger children, a boy and a girl, at home.

Once the three had left for the mountains, a real terror was unleashed on the family, followed by the arrest of the two minor children, the confiscation of their property and the death of Teodor Șușman’s wife after her treatment. The terror then spread to the entire population of the area.

Since 1950, when I took the forest road and joined the group, none of us had slept in a bed, only in the huts, on the bridges of the stables or even on the snow. We were glad when we could sleep in mountain huts until we were discovered, and that was four full years for me and six years for others.

A very hard time in the mountains was when we were surrounded for a week and ate nothing but corn, spruce slime and water. I could feel my heart pounding inside me. I slept on snow, on wax, but I didn’t catch a cold for four years. I made a hut of snow, with snow walls, like an Eskimo. It was always hard for us in the mountains, both in autumn and winter, when it rained and snowed and we were always wet.

One autumn, in 1953, we went to Beiuș, a man saw us in the forest and called the police. We retreated to a commune, to Boldești; it was evening and we saw the militia coming with trucks. We realised that we had no choice but to cross the water, and we crossed the Criș with water up to our armpits, holding our guns above our heads so that they wouldn’t get wet.

I had a rifle too, but I didn’t fire it; if I’d had to, I would have. Our people only fired if we were attacked, to defend ourselves, not to kill.

Then, after crossing the water, we made a camp fire and dried ourselves because we had no change.

I was the only woman in the group, but I didn’t lose hope. My husband still complained, sometimes he got desperate, but I didn’t let him. I was very optimistic.

In these conditions we were constantly harassed by the Security Service, who were always on our trail, forcing us to run away and hide in other places. When they discovered us and we couldn’t avoid a confrontation, an armed struggle broke out.

The pressure of the Security Service increased; if at first there were only a few troops, in the summer of 1952 they swarmed over the mountains; they were so numerous that they managed to surround us. We tried to break out of the encirclement, but we could not avoid the armed struggle in which we lost Gheorghe Mihuț, Ioan Ciotea and Nuțu Bortoș. The other six of us managed to hide in a small cave and were not discovered. After the troops left, we came out, and when we saw that a third of us had died, Toader Șușman’s group broke up, the Șușman family went to Răchitele, and I, with my husband and Roman Oneț – my husband’s mother’s brother – crossed the mountains to Bihor.

Until 1952, the fighting and the pursuit took place in the Somes, Bătrânei and Ponorului valleys, below Padiș, but after the aforementioned battle, our resistance force diminished, we were only three. In order to lose our way, we crossed the slopes of Bihor and through the villages under the mountains, until we reached Beiuș. But it wasn’t long before we were discovered by the Security Service and the Militia, and another wave of persecution and harassment began, until we were finally sold in 1954 by our last host in the commune of Sudrigiu. We had left our things in the shed there and then went to the mountains. The host knew roughly when we would return to restock for a while, so he informed the Security Service, who waited for us for two weeks. When we returned, we made sure we weren’t being watched, not suspecting that the Security Service were in the bunkhouse.

After we entered the house, the hostess went outside, then came back and offered to show us the shed. I had no suspicions, so when I opened the door to the shed I was hit on the head with a pistol and knocked unconscious; I woke up with handcuffs on my hands. My husband was shot in the head and I think he died a short time later. When I came to, he said a few words to me, then two secretaries came and took him away and I haven’t heard from him since.

Roman Oneț and I were arrested and put on trial. The trial was held in Oradea in 1955. My husband’s brother and others were present. We were accused of crimes against state security. It didn’t take long, two hearings, if that, and then we were convicted. I couldn’t speak to the lawyer, nobody spoke to me to ask me what I had done. Then they took us to prison and they gave us the sentence there, not in court: I was sentenced to life imprisonment and my brother-in-law was sentenced to death. And they executed him immediately after the verdict, in 1955. He was 24 or 26 years old and he had a family, a wife and a son. My husband was 28 years old.

In order to find out news about my husband, I made a request from prison to the Security Service authorities in Beiuș, and I also declared a hunger strike in the prison in Oradea, so that they would inform me about my husband’s situation, but they gave me no answer and did not issue a death certificate.

They did not give me any medical treatment for the head wound I received during my arrest, except the change of the bandage.

After the events in Hungary (1956) I was transferred to Mislea, and in 1958 I was taken from Miercurea Ciuc to Cluj as a witness in the trial of the Greek Catholic priest Ieronim Șușman and his brother Gheorghe Șușman, who was a partisan.

In 1959, in Miercurea Ciuc, I developed a serious lung abscess and was taken to the prison hospital in Văcărești.

Each time I was transferred to a different prison, I passed through Jilava until I arrived back in Oradea, from where I was released in 1964.

After my release, while I was in hospital for TB treatment, I met a boy, Grigore Costescu, who was sick like me and who became my second husband. He was an electrician and we lived together for 22 years.

After my recovery, thanks to Dr. Nicolae Mladin, I was employed as a seamstress in the “Someșul” knitwear factory, where I worked for 19 years until I retired.

In the meantime, the situation of the Șușman family became tragic. Teodor Șușman, the old man, after leaving us, returned to Răchitele and, deeply moved and pained by the suffering of his fellow villagers, who were terrorised because of him, shot himself in a shed. His two sons, Teodor and Avisalon, tried to go into hiding and managed to do so until 1958, when they were betrayed by a trader named Dumitru Târau from the village of Hodin, who also died in a cowshed in the village of Brăișor.

This was the end of the group called Șușman from Răchitele.

While I was in prison, my husband’s parents and my aunt were found dead at the top of the mountain, near a tree, frozen in winter, with an axe beside them.

The Șușman group from the commune of Răchitele, Jud. Cluj, in the area of the Apuseni Mountains, in the valley of Aries, in the heart of the mountains, near Răchitele, Sălciua, Poșaga, Ocoliș.

The Teodor family

Lucretia Jurj (Giurgiu)-Costescu (born Lazea), together with her husband, Mihai Jurj, was also active in the Șușman Group.

Teodor Șușman-senior

Teodor Șușman-junior

Traian Șușman

Emilian Sușman

Romilica Șușman

Gheorghe Family and Victoria Șușman

Gheorghe Șușman

Victoria Șușman

Ieronim Șușman

Gheorghe Șușman

Leon Șușman

Iuliu Șușman

Vasile Șușman

Silvia Șușman

(Lucreția Jurj-Costescu – Memory. Journal of Arrested Thought, no. 26, 1999, pp. 100-107)