Fragments of memories from the hero Spiru Blănaru’s outlawry

I met Spiru Blănaru in a sunny spring, with trees in blossom. The war was over, the German armies were retreating from our front, the Russian armies were advancing.

A world had been turned upside down, everything that had been built up in the spiritual and material world had been torn down. Nothing corresponded to what our parents had taught us: school, religion. Spiru had been wounded on the Russian front. After his recovery he was sent to an officers’ school in Lugoj. It was there that the end of the war caught up with him. From there he joined the paratroopers in Germany with others to resist the Russian troops, which never occurred because everything happened so fast. Our men were few in number, and a divided Germany could not help them.

They were on the run for a while. After a few weeks there was an amnesty and they were able to resume their normal lives. During this time he finished his law studies in Iași and then married my sister.

The period of peace was short-lived – only an apparent peace – because behind the scenes the surveillance never stopped. A year later, all of them were wanted by the Security Service. They managed to evade arrest. They stayed in hiding for a while.

The number of those wanted by the Security Service forces multiplied in all the surrounding villages; that’s how they formed a group, smaller at first. Then they fled to the mountains. But the winter in the mountains made life difficult in every way, especially in terms of food. They tried to find shelter in villages, in people’s houses. That didn’t last long and the Security Service forces, who were always in the area, found another way to arrest those they suspected of being “host-takers”. […]

One night Spiru was at home with his uncle Ghiță, who accompanied him everywhere. In the middle of the night, Spiru woke up restless and went to sleep at the “căzănie”, a little further up the water. This was where we had the boiling cauldron. It was a shed with many large tubs for the borhot (fruit or cereal mashed mix resulted from the distillery process). You could hide there and run away, because it was on the edge of the village. After Spiru left, we didn’t even get a good night’s sleep when we woke up to a lot of soldiers in the room, all over the house and in the yard. We never understood how they got in, the doors were all locked. We woke up with them in the room at about half past three, it was barely dawn. […]

In their excitement I very quietly took my clothes and asked the soldier I had left in the room to guard us to let me go into the next room to get dressed. I left the room in the courtyard and slipped out through the garden at the back of the house, where there was another exit. I managed to run to the cemetery on the hill; there, not far away, was a garden where Spiru had set up an empty hay rack. We crawled in on foot. When we reached the empty space in the hayloft, we covered the entrance with the hay we had at hand. I still don’t know how we did it, because the house was guarded by 20-30 soldiers. Maybe they didn’t really want to arrest me. In the meantime, Spiru had been informed. He had slept at the stakeout that night. He came into the garden to the hayloft. He told me to get out and leave the village as soon as possible. But I left barefoot and in my nightgown. Luckily, at that hour, so early in the morning, I didn’t meet anyone.

Our concern was to get out of the village as quickly as possible. We took paths less trodden by the villagers, but the thorns bothered me a lot. With my feet wrapped in Spiru’s handkerchiefs, I reached the priestess’s hut, where I could rest until I received clothes from home. […] Thus began our life as refugees, partisans, as the villagers liked to call us.

That summer passed without much happening, because the units that had been sent after us left us alone. […]

The summer was almost over and nowhere was a brighter path in sight. The people had gotten used to life in the mountains. The battle was approaching, and it was surprising with how little the man was being content only for him to keep his freedom.

An unfortunate incident occurred. When Spiru left for Domașna, he learned that the group that had gone to Teregova to gather information had encountered one of the security service spies in the middle of the night and shot him. Spiru regretted that he had not been there to stop the killing. […]

At the beginning of March a heavy snow had fallen. We were attacked by the security service forces. There was fighting. There were deaths on both sides. Our hiding place on the banks of the Timiș River was discovered and we had to split up into smaller groups to make it easier to sneak in. […]

We crossed the Timiș with great fear of meeting the patrols. We spent the night not knowing where to stop. We arrived above Rusca, on a hill, where we found a hut abandoned for the winter. We stayed here with my dad, uncle Ion and Petre Berzescu from Teregova. Spiru and Caraiman tried to reach Feneș, where Caraiman was from, to get in touch with one of our people. The contact man told them to come without fear. As they approached, they were summoned to surrender. Spiru and Caraiman tried to defend themselves, but Spiru was shot in the leg and Caraiman was fatally wounded.

(Ana Horăscu Olteanu – The Tear of Persecution)