From the outlaw Ciolacu to Father Nectarios
Resistance in Dobrogea began in 1948 under the leadership of the brothers Nicolae and Dumitru Fudulea (northern Dobrogea) and Gogu Puiu (southern Dobrogea). They were joined by Fr. Nicolae Ciolacu, who led the movement in central Dobrogea. The resistance group was called the Dobrogean Outlaws.
Who were these Outlaws? They were the people for whom communism had brought nothing but years in prison, the confiscation of their animals, the confiscation of their land, and the cutting off of virtually all means of subsistence. The leaders of the outlaws, and the vast majority of them, were legionnaires. But they were joined by peasants or people with no interest in politics.
Together they literally fought against the communists, trying to avoid arrest, which at the time was tantamount to death. Always in hiding from the communists, they managed to create a network of over 2000 partisans – active fighters and hosts. Most of them died in the fighting or were captured under torture by the Security Service.
Some of them are known to have been killed when/where/who. Most are in the category of ‘disappeared without trace’.
Among the dozens of Haiducii, some shocking figures stand out: Gogu Puiu, who preferred to take his own life rather than lose his dignity; the Fundulea brothers, initiators of the resistance movement; and Nicolae Ciolacu, the only survivor of the Dobrogean Outlaws…
Short biography
Nicolae Ciolacu was born in 1910 in Lojene, Macedonia. His family later moved to the Rodnei Mountains.
In 1926, about 40 Armenian families were repatriated from Bulgaria and settled in the commune of Cociular. Among them was the Ciolacu family. Each family was given ten hectares of arable land and began to plough it.
Imprisoned, tortured and starved since the Antonescu regime
Young Ciolacu, like most young Aromanian men, joined the legionary movement. After the conflict between the Legionaries and Antonescu, and the fall of the National Legionary State, Ciolacu went into hiding for fear of being arrested by the Antonescu regime until 1942, when he fell prey to the Security Service following an internal betrayal.
He was put in several prisons: Bacău, Galați, Ploiești, Vaslui, Brașov. In Brașov, Ciolacu was imprisoned for several months.
In Brașov prison, the method of torture was starvation. Nicolae Ciolacu remembers: “The bread ration was 280 grams in the office, but by the time it reached the cell it was halved. In the morning we were given tea sprinkled with salt. Shortly before 12 o’clock the prison wagon would pass all the shopkeepers and with a shovel they would pick up the rubbish thrown out by the shopkeepers and put it in the wagon.
At the prison, the boiling kettle was ready. All the mouldy and rotten greens were thrown into the cauldron and the food was ready. We wished they had given us more, but the ration was one 500-gram scoop. And then they gave us a ladle of sour cabbage to eat. Hunger began to torture us.
In spite of being a grown up man, I was about to cry of hunger, I was dizzy and was seeing black before my eyes. Day and night I thought of nothing but bread. I thought, will I ever hold bread in my hand again?
He was transferred to Aiud, Alba Iulia, Aiud again, Ocnele Mari, Văcărești, Tulcea, until 15 May 1945, when the liberation took place.
In 1948, he set out on the road to becoming an outlaw.
In the meantime the Russians had taken over the whole country and in May 1948 massive arrests were made. All opponents of the communist regime and, of course, the legionaries were targeted.
Together with Puiu and the Fundulea brothers, Ciolacu took the path of banditry, forming the armed resistance group “Haiducii Dobrogei”. He took an active part in all the battles between the Haiduci and the security forces. He left Gogu Puiu and the Fundulea brothers before Easter 1949, which they had decided to spend with their families.
He would never see his comrades again. From then on, he began to organise the rest of the partisans left after the assassination of Gogu Puiu and the massive arrests made in the immediate vicinity of the Fundulea brothers.
The communist prisons
Nicolae Ciolacu managed to remain in hiding until October 1951, when he was surrounded and forced to surrender to save the lives of his family. With hair over his shoulders, a beard down to his chest and a large, bushy moustache, his appearance frightened the Security Service.
They put him in a car and drove him to Constanța and from there to Bucharest. Due to the unprecedented number of arrests between 1948 and 1951, and because the prisons had become uninhabitable, many administrative buildings were turned into prisons, including the National Bank. There he was subjected to terrible torture:
“A torturer had in his hand a kind of device with two cords, at the end of which was a metal bracelet. One started: Bandit, tell me about other weapons and other harbourers. I said: Other weapons and other harbourers I don’t have, but those I have already said. Sit down. The one with the device took my hands and put them in the cuffs of the two ropes.
The machine had a crank, and one of the torturers said to another: “Turn it up to 150 volts to kill him, cause he is not saying anything. When he turned the crank, it produced a current so strong that it shook my whole body. I jumped from the seat to the ground, screaming in agony, and the torturer kept turning the crank.
They brought in a crowbar, then made me roll up like a pretzel and tied my hands to my ankles between my arms and made a space between my knees, through this space they inserted the iron crowbar, caught them all by the ends of the crowbar, hoisted me up and put one end of the crowbar on one desk and the other end of the crowbar on the other desk.
I was left hanging from the crowbar with my head down and the bottoms and soles of my feet up. In the perfect position to be beaten and kicked.
They began the operation with a single rubber whip, which they used one at a time, three or four strokes at a time, less on the bottom, more on the soles. Up to twenty strokes I was patient, not screaming at all.
But the pain got the better of me and I started to scream in pain, but they didn’t care, they just kept on hitting and hitting, and the radio was playing as loud as it could so that the screaming wouldn’t be heard in the street. I thought of what St. Paul said: From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. (II Corinthians 11:24).
Now I calculated how many blows I had received from the four Jews. When the chief of the torturers saw me fainting on the crowbar, he stopped the beating. They took me down, untied me and said: “You see, bandit, what are you looking for if you don’t want to talk about other weapons and harbourers? I was taken to the cell.
25 years of hard labour
In April 1952, the Dobrogea outlaws were put on trial and Ciolacu, along with other outlaws and their accomplices, ended up in the Tataia prison in Constanța. There he was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour and humiliation for incitement against the security of the Romanian People’s Republic.
From Tataia he took the road to Jilava and from there was taken to Gherla. Here he worked in the prison’s furniture factory and, due to the extremely hard work and the lack of food, he contracted tuberculosis.
In the autumn of 1955, the legionaries were transferred to Aiud prison. Here, too, there were sections for carpenters, blacksmiths, mechanics, etc. As he was ill, he was not allowed to work and was imprisoned in Zarca – a cell that had a harsh regime for the extermination of prisoners: little bread – 200 grams, little food, little heat, little air to breathe, two people in an iron bed, too narrow for one person.
The re-education introduced in Aiud in 1960-1961 found him in the wilderness, refusing to compromise and debunking.
On 1 July 1964, all the prisoners in the barracks, about two hundred of them, were taken to the section rooms. On 1 August 1964, in the evening, they were given their release papers. They were taken to the Bucharest railway station. From there, each former political prisoner went home.
When he was released, his children had children
After decades of imprisonment, Ciolacu arrives home and finds an old woman in his wife Piha’s room, whom he hesitates to greet because he does not know her. The old stranger was Piha, the wife he had left at home, young and strong. His children, who were under 10 when he last saw them, now had children of their own.
As soon as he was released, he was taken in by the Security Service and regularly called to the militia in Tuzla municipality, where he was investigated by the security major Zaharia Ion. After fifteen years in Tuzla, he moved to Constanța with my family. Here he was regularly summoned to the Security Service and investigated by Major Cazan and Colonel Vișinoiu.
In 1982 he went to the USA with Piha and wrote a very valuable book called “The Dobrogea Outlaws”. After the fall of communism, he returned to the country as a monk, at the Brâncoveanu monastery in Sâmbăta de Sus. Here, under the name of Father Nectarie, the outlaw Ciolacu spent the last years of his life for Christ. His tomb is in the courtyard of the monastery.
Names of the Dobrogean Outlaws shot by the communist Security Service:
- Nicolae Fudulea
- Dumitru Fudulea
- Gogu Puiu
- Gica Perifan
- Gheorghe Cresu
- Gheorghe Gulea
- Priest Mihailescu
- Stila Timu
- Platoon Cenuse
- Stere Stercu
- Avanti
- Nicu Marin
- Vasile Baciu
- Dodica
- Toma Vasile
- Gheorghe Arau
- Stere Grasu
- Ion Cotan
- Stere Alexe
- Iancu Ghiuvia
- Iancu Cusu
- Iancu Bica
- Nicolae Hasoti
- Stere Hapa
Harbourers of the dead outlaws in the communist prisons – incomplete list:
- Dumitru Grasu
- Tascu Sifiringa
- Gheorghe Bratianu
- Gheorghe Enache
- Tanase G. Vlahbei
- Nicolae Samara
- Nicolae Burecu
- Vasile Papazica
- Gheorghe Puinava
- Teniu Bancu
- Gheorghe Alexe
- Iancu Nirlu
- Dimciu Garofil
(Cezarina Bărzoi and Ionuț Baiaș – Hotnews)