George Manu was one of the tongues of fire that descended on the prison as on the apostles

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 in a van, about twenty people. They let us out in front of the building called Zarca. We were taken upstairs where a number of militiamen were waiting for us, each with a club in his hand. When I was in front of one of them, he said to me:

– Undress!

Obviously familiar with prison discipline, I undressed and he searched me with great thoroughness, first my clothes and then my body. It is hard to imagine what he could find on my naked body, but it was done, not with his hand, but with a stick, a wooden stick, he searched my ears, as if I had something in my ears, he searched my mouth, my gums, as if I had something hidden in my mouth or under my tongue. He also searched my anus with his cane.

I understood that the same militiaman treated all the others in a similar way, using the same stick to search all parts of the body, including the mouth. I say this not as an episode from my biography, but as an episode from the biography of George Manu, because he was also subjected to the same treatment.

George Manu, like me, went to an empty cell where there was absolutely nothing. No bed, no mat, no mattress, no blanket, no chair, no table, nothing, and I was naked. It was November. The cold was beginning to set in and it was getting down to our bones. After a while, a pair of underpants, a short-sleeved shirt, a blouse with the elbows torn and gnawed, and a pair of trousers from the reforms of other prisons, or brought to this state of wear by those who had worn them in Aiud, were thrown at me with a contempt that was meant to be destructive. I had hoped to be given at least a mat, at least a blanket. Nothing of the sort. After a few hours, the militiaman came back and put a tin can in my cell, a ceramic object with a capacity of about four litres, which I had to use for my physiological needs.

The day passed without him giving us anything to eat. Of course, I didn’t even try to sleep, because I couldn’t sleep without anything on the floor. And we hoped that eventually we would be given mattresses, blankets or beds. That didn’t happen. At noon, however, we got what is called porridge – we Ardelenians call it cir of polenta – and we got what is called cabbage soup, in which there were two sheets of cabbage, each the size of a matchbox, with a slightly salty taste. In the evening we got tea made from burnt bread crusts.

That was our diet there. But it wasn’t just the first day, it was the same for the next few days. Eventually our food was enriched in the sense that we were given a broth made from arpacaș. The arpacaș soup contained a maximum of fourteen arpacaș kernels. But there could only be three. No chicken could survive on fourteen kernels of barley a day. Another improvement came when we were given a new food, rich in itself, valuable in itself, but not in the bowl, because we counted a maximum of nine beans. It could have been three, but there were also empty bean pods.

A few weeks passed and I heard a knock on the wall. I noticed that I entered the cell barefoot, I was given a pair of boots, worn, scuffed, without laces, without socks. This made the cold feel even worse on my peeling skin. George Manu, of course, received the same treatment. The knock on the wall identified me by voice as Professor Petre Tomescu, former Minister of Health under Antonescu. His main guilt was that he had been a minister during Antonescu’s time and was therefore guilty of the country’s disaster, because as Minister of Health he could not have failed to kill Communists, could not have failed to kill Soviets – that was the Securitate’s argument. Professor Tomescu told me:

– You are young and you must survive. You must know that we are here to be exterminated. The only way to fight the extermination is to walk. You walk from morning to morning, and if you don’t walk, you die. This is the plan of the Securitate and we cannot cooperate in the plan to kill ourselves by indolence, by laziness to move. Be resourceful and keep moving.

I forgot to mention that the total absence of furniture was complemented by the total absence of shutters. The only thing standing in the way of the cold were the shutters.

We stayed like this for about four months. Unbelievable, biologically, medically, physiologically, that anyone could walk for four months. Unbelievable, that’s why I didn’t even write, because what I would have written would have been dismissed as a joke by everyone, no one would have accepted that a man could walk for four months without stopping. But tose who did not walk died.

We walked for four months, four months with the diet I have described to you, in the frost – for December, January, February, March came – it was a bitter winter, at the end of which, of the eighty of us who entered, thirty remained alive.

I have described my situation to you because it is the same for all those who entered Zarqa. And by talking about what I went through, you can understand what happened to George Manu, with whom I was not there at the time, because I was alone in the cell. But everything that has been said about me applies, letter for letter, to George Manu, to Radu Gyr, to Radu Mironovici, … in short, to all those who were there.

At the end of those four months, at the end of the winter, the wisdom of the Party decided to take us out of the cruel isolation in which we found ourselves and to group more of us together in the cell. I was put in cell number three on the floor of the barracks. I was the last to enter the cell.

In front of me were figures disfigured by hunger, skeletal, so exhausted and depleted of substance that through the skin of their heads, through the skin of their foreheads, you could see the sutures of their cranial bones. Especially on the forehead and temples, the sutures of the bones were clearly visible. The cell in which I was placed was not dominated by a person, because I was not impressed by the person, but by a pair of glasses. In the darkness, in the semi-darkness of the cell, a pair of glasses shone. It wasn’t the gleam of the cracked lenses that made them stand out, but the gleam of the gaze behind them. Later I realised that it was not the gleam of the gaze reflected as if by a mirror, but the gleam of intelligence: this intelligence that shone beyond the lenses, beyond any gaze, was the intelligence of George Manu.

The last person to get up and embrace me was Dr. Ilie Niculescu. A doctor not of medicine, but of economics. He was also young, barely over thirty – thirty-five. He had an inspiring face, which expressed purity, sincerity and firmness at the same time. Radu Mironovici, Dan Bratianu, Prince Mavrocordat, General Iacobici and Professor George Manu were also there. They all received me with the warmest welcome imaginable. This warmth was all the more eloquent in comparison with the bestiality of those who had introduced me. I was young, the youngest among them, but even the elders felt obliged, out of love, to stand up and welcome me. I arrived among them with the timidity of a novice, with the timidity that the presence of such recognised personalities inspires in one.

What was there to notice in this cell? Highly intellectual discussions. I, who had studied philology, was particularly impressed by the subtle knowledge of English of those present. That George Manu, given his family and upbringing, was naturally fluent in English did not surprise me. That Nicolae Mavrocordat would naturally speak perfect French and English, given his upbringing, but that Ilie Niculescu would rival them in perfect English, amazed me. And for weeks I witnessed discussions on the nuances of expression and intonation, on the content of English words, which were disputed by those present, from different schools – either Cambridge or Oxford.

It was in this linguistic dispute – in which I was merely a spectator, with no role to play – that George Manu excelled. To his knowledge of the intricacies of the English language he added an absolutely astonishing erudition. I am not referring to his knowledge of the exact sciences, but to his knowledge of political history, philosophy, literature, from all of which he drew informative material for his philological demonstrations.

Like no one else, he talked to me about Freemasonry, Leninism and the danger posed to us by the presence of this huge Asian block, Soviet Russia, on the Romanian coast. Although Russia is considered a territory inhabited by Slavic peoples, it is not demography that counts, but ideology. This whole mass of Slavic peoples was ideologically demonised by the Marxist, atheist and criminal education they received. That’s why, from that moment on, I was afraid of the massiveness of this block on the coast of Romania, which at any moment could break its fart and spill over into Europe. George Manu had warned us.

– We won’t get out of here, but you will,” he told me. You will see what I am about to tell you come true. The Russians are going to take us more and more, and just as in the past Europe was ravaged by barbarian invasions, today we are going to see a new outbreak, though not with tanks, because the war is over, but there will be an outbreak of communism and atheism from Moscow.

He was a middle-aged man… What can I say? Five foot seven. To say he was thin would be an understatement. I said you could see his frontal bones at the suture line between them. It was as if, through the thin skin of his forehead, I could see the ridges where the bones joined. Once, when he was talking to us about Dante and reading us the verse on the frontispiece of the Inferno, a militiaman came into the cell.

– What are you talking about, Big Eyes?

They called Professor Manu Big Eyes because he wore glasses that couldn’t help but attract attention. Glasses that had been crushed, trampled on, and now, with his extremely meticulous, extremely pedantic hand, he had so painstakingly repaired his glasses and tied them up with string… With what string? The string from the blankets and the shirt. We unravelled the shirt, twisted the thread that we managed to get out of the shirt, and with this twisted thread he made the frame of his glasses, tied the arms of his glasses, tied the frame of his glasses. On one of the lenses, the thread had to cross over the lens, otherwise the shards would fall out. No matter how chipped the lens was, the sparkle in his eyes shone through it, matching the sparkle in his smile.

He had thin lips that were always smiling. It was as if he had been born smiling. And now, in prison, when he talks to the interrogators, when he faces the militiamen, he seems to smile. He didn’t do it out of defiance, he didn’t pretend to be good and friendly, kind, no, that was his face, always ready to smile.

He spoke, he looked at you. He was probably used to talking with his chin on his chest, looking at us over his glasses. So much so that the full glow of his eyes could be seen beyond the frames of his glasses, helping to imprint the words he was communicating. What was  like outside? He was more corpulent, of course. But in prison I can’t describe his weakness whcih was different than that of others, in spite of all being skeletal.

What set him apart was the feverish activity of his hands. For he sewed, wrote, tied knots, drew – where did he draw? On the sole of his boot, on the wall. In order not to get lice, we were given D.D.T. He smeared the bottom of the scale or the sole of the boot with soap emulsion, on which he sprinkled D.D.T., and on this teaching material, with the tip of a splinter, he made a sketch and drew portraits of each of us. He had a gift for capturing the essence of everyone’s physiognomy. It’s a pity that these extraordinary sketches have not been preserved. They would be worthy of a museum.

He typed in the Morse code. With his feverish hands, he had an amazing typing speed that the rest of us couldn’t match. He typed in the Morse code using the prison alphabet. Each line was two strokes and each dot was one stroke. And he typed like no one else. Every now and then he would stop typing to savour the effect of the cadence in which he was typing, turn to us and smile, as if to say: was it good? He himself was delighted with his performance as the wielder of this prison-adapted Morse code instrument.

In the cell he was particularly warm, particularly gentle, particularly smug, particularly understanding of my ignorance, even of the General’s ignorance, because none of us could compare with him in culture, intelligence and depth of knowledge. I remember an absolutely dramatic moment when George Manu spoke to us with the frankness of a youth, as if he were confessing a purity that no one would have suspected at his age; he spoke then of the reality of the miracles of Christ.

– I am not speaking to you as a theologian, but as a scientist. And all the miracles of Christ can be approached with all the rigour of science, without pretending to exhaust the mystery. But as much as the wonders and the supernatural of Christ’s teaching are accessible to our minds, we have a duty to exhaust them. And I, as a Christian intellectual, cannot but invest all my intellectual capacity in the knowledge of Christ.

Was this man a fruitless man of science? Was he a physicist bent over a microscope and arithmetic calculations? Of course he was. But beyond that, he was what you would not expect, a believer.

He was a believer of a deep fervour, not bigoted, not manifested in gestures. He never told us that he had ever been on a pilgrimage, he never told us that he had ever had any spiritual formation, but with his nature of research and thirst for knowledge, I am convinced that he had gone through a whole patristic literature, because he often alluded to or quoted from the Holy Fathers of the Church.

I was surprised, but of course my surprise was misplaced. How could this man have accumulated knowledge of theology, because his life was not one in theology, in the Church. It was one in the laboratory, it was one in the family, he was a social man. When did he study theology? When did he read theology? It’s a miracle for us. It was quite normal for him. Because it was his intellectual strength to assimilate everything and to be able to transmit faithfully everything he had assimilated.

Knowing that I was a Catholic, he did not avoid Catholic sources, and few people have spoken to me with such competence about the scientific thought of St. Thomas Aquinas:

– He was not only a theologian, my boy, he was a scientist. His whole thought underlies science today. Mark my words: Thomas Aquinas was a perfectly scientific thinker applied to the theological field.

Of course, I had read some of the spiritual literature of Christianity up to that time, but I could not have made such judgments and assessments of a person as George Manu did.

I remember how he used to talk to us about Dante – he could quote whole chants from Dante, from Baudelaire no less, from Paul Claudel from Goethe. He would recite and interpret for us the verse inscribed on the frontispiece of the entrance to Hell: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate – abandon all hope, you who have entered:

– It is not true, old Dante – said George Manu – we leave no hope outside, we enter hell with hope, because there is a Christ in heaven.

The physicist spoke of a Christ in heaven as he entered hell. He spoke calmly, with conviction, with force, but calmly, about the communist doctrine, about the consequences of communism in the society of tomorrow, in Romania and in Europe:

– Stalin is not to be blamed for communism. Don’t believe them – he says to me – don’t blame Stalin, he’s not guilty, it’s Satan. Because Satan inspired Marx, Satan inspired Lenin and Satan manifested his violence through Stalin, that is where the origin of evil must be sought, where a revolt against God’s love took place, in Heaven. So Archangel Michael cast Satan out with flames of fire because he dared to be meek before the greatness of God. Remember what I’m telling you, little colt, you won’t hear these things when you get out. The whole world, the whole Romanian society will be afraid to talk about what he experienced. But you remember and you write. You will get out, we won’t get out, and if you don’t write, you know that the communists didn’t kill us, you killed us, who don’t say what we experienced here.

We were in the same cell for about six months. In addition to the prayers we said together and separately, we each told something. Of course, I said the least, except when I had to say the fifteen minutes of prayer together, but the others, who had a rich experience of life, spoke. General Iacobici had travelled the world, Prince Mavrocordat had travelled the world. Radu Mironovici was a quiet man, he didn’t talk much either, but Ilie Niculescu and George Manu talked a lot.

George Manu, in particular, took us through all the literature, all the philosophy and all the political doctrines. I was most impressed by his lectures on the communist danger and his lectures on the danger of Freemasonry, because it was a lesser known area to me.

All these lectures he gave from a Christian point of view. Sometimes we would ask him to speak to us on scientific subjects.

– You will hear science outside, because the library is full of science books. You won’t hear about Christ, you won’t hear about how to live with Christ in suffering, because there are books of that kind outside. And you will only hear the lies that the Party says about Christ and spiritual life.

That is why he tried to inform us and to pass on his spiritual experience as a man of science. Of course, the credibility that George Manu enjoyed in our eyes was different from that of a theologian, a priest. Because anyone could have been credited with making a pro domo plea, with doing his job. George Manu did not do his job by talking about Christ, but by confessing his conscience.

He knew that Romanian society could only be saved by faith, not by science:

– We live in the age of science and we believe that everything is solved by science. I tell you, a man who has seen the world through a microscope: not through science, not through the laboratory, but through faith.

George Manu was one of the tongues of fire that descended on the prison as on the apostles, speaking to us in the language of science to understand what no one could understand except in the light of the Holy Spirit.

(Testimony given by Monsignor Tertullian Langa to the monk Moses in June 2006; published in the volume George Manu. Monografie, edited by Gheorghe Jijie, Babel Publishing House, Bacău, 2010, pp. 332-340)