George Manu (en)

A few months before [the start of the re-education process n.n.], Professor George Manu closed his eyes forever in the prison infirmary, scornfully refusing to negotiate with the nation’s schizophrenics. Professor George Manu was one of the most important figures in Aiud prison, and there were probably not many like him in the whole country. For months, he had been persistently asked to take on the role of mediator between the prisoners and the administration in order to pave the way for re-education in the world of prisoners. At the cost of his own life, he did not betray his […]

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I met Professor Manu in a van that took us from Aiud to Gherla. We had taken part in the hunger strike in Aiud in the spring of 1957. As a result of that strike, a large proportion of the prisoners from the Zarca were sent to Gherla for disciplinary reasons. I had heard about this a year before, when I was taken to Zarca. When Professor Manu’s name was mentioned, all those who knew him personally or by hearsay felt the need to lean back and listen respectfully. I have often wondered what this immense respect was for? He […]

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I am among Your Lordships on the 40th anniversary of George Manu’s death because I had the privilege of living for some time with the commemorated man, some seven decades ago, as a member of the same university department. In 1935 we joined almost simultaneously the Department of Acoustics and Optics of the Faculty of Science in Bucharest, which had recently been occupied by Professor Eugen Bădărău, who had been called from Chernivtsi. Manu had obtained his doctorate in physics in Paris under the supervision of Professor Marie Curie (1867-1934), a Nobel Prize winner (Physics 1903 and Chemistry 1911). His […]

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I ended up in the cell with George Manu after a period of cruel isolation. Four months earlier, about eighty of us had been isolated – selected according to criteria known only to the Securitate. We were not put in the cells with the other prisoners. In the large Aiud prison, which had three buildings reserved for prisoners, but only in a smaller one called Zarca, a Hungarian word that means prison, so a prison within a prison. It is good to describe how I entered the Zarca because the treatment was the same for everyone there. We had come […]

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Few have passed through the prisons of Aiud without having heard of “Professor George Manu”, the man with the prodigious memory who seemed destined to be a teacher. This vocation paid for itself with many weeks of solitary confinement and starvation, sometimes bringing him to the brink of physical collapse. But each time he was returned to his “pupils”, who were us of all ages and intellectual backgrounds, he was reborn within days and filled the Zarca with his wax plates.

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One day I will be transferred somewhere else. Eugen Dragomir is with me. I don’t know anyone in the new cell, but Eugen Dragomir is overjoyed when he meets someone. The two of them hugged when they saw each other. Immediately Eugen Dragomir took me by the hand and introduced me to the person he had hugged. It was Professor George Manu. We shook hands spontaneously and for a long time, expressing our satisfaction at being together. We had both heard about each other. We are now in the same cell. Once the momentary excitement had passed, the eight of […]

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Coming from an old family of patriotic intellectuals (he was the grandson of General George Manu – 1838 – 1911 – who distinguished himself in the War of Independence and served several times as a minister), Professor George Manu was arrested in 1948, implicated with other leading Romanian political intellectuals in the Great Trial of National Treason, and sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour. At the time of his arrest, he was a professor of nuclear physics at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and, along with Professor Horia Hulubei, was considered one of the country’s great atomists. It is said […]

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Good thing I have the jacket, because lo and behold, a series of isolations are triggered. They must have orders from every cell to isolate. Specific methods of intimidation. In our cell, the fate of Aristide Puiu and myself was decided. For what reasons? Various: Aristide Puiu because he sang, me because I spoke too loudly, and so on. […] We talked all day. We discuss various subjects (religious, political, etc.) and share memories. […] Our cell on the ground floor corresponds to one of the isolation cells in the basement. One day Professor George Manu, one of the great […]

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The admirable man who supported and maintained knowledge in Zarca was the university professor of atomic physics Gheorghe Manu, grandson of the nationalist general Gheorghe Manu of 1848. He was like a treasure from which everyone benefited. He was fluent in English, French and German and gave lessons in these languages to everyone who came near him. He knew the history of the world and of Romania like a specialist, although his PhD was in atomic physics. He worked and studied in Paris at the Curie Institute and witnessed Werner Heisenberg’s discovery of the theory of indeterminacy in 1927, which […]

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George Manu had ganglion tuberculosis… The medical officer could only prescribe treatment on the advice of the prison commander and the political officer. The day after his diagnosis, George Manu was summoned by the prison commander, Colonel Crăciun, who asked him for a statement of dissociation. George Manu answered the colonel’s request in the negative and was then taken back to the barracks. I have the account of this episode directly from George Manu, with whom I communicated every day while I was above the cell in which he was isolated. Two or three months later, the same doctor… diagnosed […]

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I was on the same floor as George Manu in Aiud, but I did not know him personally. In ’43 he rejected the compromise proposed by the Soviets, effectively signing his own death sentence. There, in Zarca, Professor Manu wrote all sorts of things, which he passed on to us in the cells, and which helped us a lot in our spiritual growth, but also in keeping our minds busy so as not to go mad. Everything there was spiritual activity, even his scientific knowledge helped us. He wrote very beautifully and was a faithful and very dignified man. (Fr. […]

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The nuclear physicist Georges Manu, Madame Curie’s pupil, a neighbour at his bedside, was in agony; 15 patients who had undergone surgery, his patients waiting for surgery, responded to the colonel with agility, caught up in fever or the conspiratorial law of silence. Manu even died, to the utter despair of the good doctor (Balea) who came twice a day, including Sundays, and gave him all sorts of transfusions and injections. Manu recognised me when I arrived, one minute, friendly, and went into agony. He always recognised the doctor, stood up politely, his head resting on his dusty bones, and […]

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I often looked at him with admiration and studied him secretly, Ion Dima tells us… George Manu was fifty-four years old at the time. He wore glasses with very thick lenses, was not very tall and seemed very modest, too modest for what he was… He had none of the recklessness of the revolutionary fighter, none of the hiding places or cynicism of the politician. He was the calm professor, master of his knowledge and ready to pass it on to others. After the outbreak of the so-called non-violent re-education in Aiud, pressure was put on him to renounce his […]

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On the occasion of the separate distribution of Balș, Gheorghiu and Chioreanu, further changes were made to our arrangement[1] so that Manu was placed in the room to my right. I regretted the proximity of Admiral Măcelaru, but I enjoyed that of my colleague, Professor of Nuclear Physics at the University of Bucharest, who introduced me to the mysteries of the structure of the atom through the common hole in the chimney of his stove and mine. We talked for hours, sharing our knowledge. I, in turn, introduced him to the mysteries of psychology. Manu’s father, an adviser to the […]

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A man of culture and a highly respected specialist in atomic physics. A man of integrity. He was offered freedom on condition that he serve the atheist state, but he refused. “Refuse and you will die,” he was told, and he did. He died hungry, sick, uncared for, in the squalor of Aiud. (Ioan Ianolide – Return to Christ. Document for a New World, Bonifaciu Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, p. 310)

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