Fr. Gheorghe Calciu – “warm and kind soul, with a great vibration of pain at the suffering of others”

Among the students who went to Pitești for the famous re-education, the only one I stayed with was Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa; we stayed for two or three weeks, just the two of us.

Short, dark-haired, bright-eyed, well dressed, I liked him enough, especially for the news he told me. He was intelligent and had one of the best memories I’ve discovered in prisoners. He had an overview of things without neglecting the details.

I don’t remember discussing at length with him what had happened in Pitești because of the “fire”, which he had also experienced, but only in passing. But I did discuss with him the consequences of Pitești, the devastation: 64 dead and 250 students tuberculised.

I heard that in Târgu Ocna, where the TB patients were taken and where re-education continued for a while, some of the recovered students were not given medicine to cure them. They were asked to give information so that they would not die, but they refused. Mother or father were brought in to persuade them to give information, but they refused their parents’ pleas and preferred to die.

So some died under the grief-stricken eyes of their mother, father or both parents.

To be a young student, legionnaire or not, facing life and death, life by a dirty compromise and death by refusing to compromise, and to choose death against the wishes and pleas of one’s parents, requires extraordinary moral strength.

Well! There are not a few who have demonstrated this moral strength. They died as martyrs, holy and serene, with their minds and hearts turned towards heaven, purified and sanctified by the great sufferings and pains they went through.

New saints may appear in the Christian calendar, harvested from the Romanian field of martyrdom: Pitești – Târgu Ocna – Gherla – Aiud.

But all the more guilty are Nicolski, who prepared Pitești, and all those who supported him, and those who, after making the students ill, refused to give them the medicine that would have saved them unless they paid the money for the betrayal.

Calciu told me that Costache Oprișan, the head of the legionary fedecist students, had died in his arms. I had known Costache Oprișan since 1940 and was interested in his career.

In 1941, as a high school graduate, Oprișan fled to Germany. He was particularly interested in philosophy and literature. As a result, some of the most highly educated people in these disciplines were keen to cultivate him. By 1946 he was in constant training and had acquired a remarkable knowledge of philosophy.

In 1946, Oprișan came to Romania and was active for a while in the legionary line. Then his activity was interrupted by the convention of the Legionaries with the Communists, so that the Legionaries would not activate and the Communists would leave them alone. But after the convention was broken up by the communists, Oprișan was arrested and sentenced. Taken to Pitești, Țurcanu’s anger turned against him. Strong-willed and well-built, his physical endurance was broken by repeated beatings, and tuberculosis wore him down and slowly killed him under Calciu’s attentive care.

Oprișan intended to write an epic of the spirit in 12,000 verses with this very title: Epic of the Spirit in Three Songs. It would have taken about 10 years to complete. The whole plan was conceived in the poet’s imagination.

The spirit appears in the world as an innocent child, serene and thirsty for knowledge, eager for light, but in need of a guide. And Don Quixote is needed to guide the spirit through space and through the epochs of history.

Don Quixote represents the disinterested and pure character, unattached to material interests: the author was supposed to begin the epic with the androgynous myth, in which man was a fully realised man and woman, the sexes not yet separated. But this was to be a deep antiquity.

Then it went on to Democritus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the great ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. It went step by step through the whole evolution of the spirit, through all ages of history, up to the present. Obviously, Christian spiritualism comes into it.

Philosophical rationalism, cold and dry, was to be called: The Stone Mountain. The great literary productions should be included in the chapter or chapters: The Literary Tavern.

The spirit, now grown up, should part with the good old wisdom that had guided him as a minor. From now on he would travel the world alone.

But he would not let him go alone without giving him a few talismans, which he could use in case of great need. And in the author’s vision, one day the great need came: the spirit reached a high mountain that he could not climb. So he took out the two talismans: The Holy Cross and the Prayer. He sat down on his knees, placed the Holy Cross in front of him and began to pray fervently. Tears flowed from his eyes, but not of despair, but of hope and joy.

An angel came down from heaven, kissed him, took him on his wings and flew with him over the mountain.

The author had already written about 200 stanzas of the epic, which were like milestones in the three songs that Calciu knew by heart and recited to me. To try his hand at poetry, Oprișan tried out about 10 poems dedicated to his fiancée. Calciu recited them all. They were very beautiful. Some were love poems. I concluded that Oprișan had a great talent.

He was a poet who had found his own way. He wasn’t a tributary of Eminescu, Goga, Arghezi, Coșbuc or other poets. He appeared as an original poet. But only the embodiment of his complete work could show us the extent of the value of the work and of the poet. Calciu may have preserved and written the 200 stanzas of the epic and the 10 poems of Oprișan. In that case, all is not lost.

That’s all I can say: Calciu spoke with great admiration of Oprișan and his philosophical and literary qualities. We don’t know, but with Costache Oprișan’s death, Romania and the world may have lost a genius who, who knows when, may appear again.

The description of Costache Oprișan’s martyrdom moved me deeply. He melted day after day after the terrible beatings he endured, with no hope of help, without asking for it, scorned by the “officials”, knowing that he would not get it.

Calciu’s mourning hands closed his eyes. The short time I spent with Calciu was pleasant and very useful for me. I found in him a warm and kind soul, with a great sensitivity to the suffering of others, especially those who were dying in his arms.

I remember him fondly and consider him a great soul. The development of Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa after his release from prison, his great faith, his heroism and his special moral strength, which raised him to a very high level and above others, strongly confirm my opinion about him during the prison.

(Fr. Nicolae Ghebenea – Memories from the Darkness)