Gheorghe Jimboiu “acted like a saint among us, a saint of the prisons and of our turmoil in Brașov”

“All that the Church of Christ, the history of the Romanians and the Legionary Movement have given us, we, the prisoners who suffer for the preservation of these values, must relive in enlarged form, not only to fill our time, but to use as a tonic for the further struggle and resistance that we will resist from the depths of our prisons”. These were the words of the student Jimboiu Gheorghe.

It was one afternoon in September when we met him in one of the cells, together with some Brothers of the Cross.

Time had dug a cavity in one of Jimboiu’s lungs, and it was getting worse. He had suffered in Aiud during Antonescu’s government. Jimboiu was afraid that we, the brothers of the cross, would lose our way in the face of the temptations and pressures to come.

Now, as he stands there from eternity, I can hear him speaking to us in that desolate cell…

Do you remember him, you who are still, with what spirit he sustained our inner burning? (…)

Gheorghe Jimboiu, [is] the one who, in an exemplary way, with his prestige, showed us, younger than himself, the meaning of education in the brotherhood of the cross. For me, he remained the living embodiment of the Legionary student, capable of heroic struggle, led to a state of asceticism and supreme sacrifice.

At the same time, Jimboiu reminded me that in everything I had to do as a legionary trained in suffering, I should follow the example of the fallen like Moța and Marin, like Victor Silaghi, and not be hasty or late in acting. To adopt the right attitude, I should always rely on the most reliable information and examples of legionary perfection.

I cannot believe that Jimboiu is no more!

It was through him that I learnt what asceticism was, the measure of all things in the life of a legionnaire.

He inspired us with his example of how to pose the problem of legionary life, and he enlightened us well on certain obscure points, such as the multitude of temptations to which we must find a solution by fighting with ourselves, wherever we are in life. (…)

The first condition for becoming a legionnaire is to believe in God and in one’s nation, and to practise the teachings of the Church and Christian morality. And there is something else: to look at things from a historical point of view, through the knowledge of the truth of our struggle. To control yourself well in everything you do and say, and not to defy the obvious for the sake of form and self-assertion.

I often saw Jimboiu in the church in the centre of Brașov, but I never had the chance to talk to him. I am happy that I am left with these words of grace and the memory of his gestures, of what he said to us in that brief moment in the cell where we met. In this way he opened our hearts with his exhortation to constancy, to the preservation of character, to harmony in the life we lead in the cell, to the cultivation of Christian and Romanian essences, known from the minute of friendship in the meetings on the Warthe and on the Tâmpa.

He, Jimboiu Gheorghe, comrade and friend of the Brotherhood of the Cross! He acted like a saint among us, a saint of the prisons and of our difficulties in Brașov.

Those of us who listened to Jimboiu speak to us in the sadness of his cell realised his good moral and intellectual formation, his high spiritual life. What he shared with us was a spiritual nourishment that we did not expect in this place full of urgencies and spiritual constraints.

He behaved in such a way in his penance that we, the Brothers of the Cross, took him as an example to fill our days with the face of a man, a superior creature, in whom we could see the image of the perfection of the Romanian people. A day of joy that we will not be able to see because we feel that we will be killed. He was for us a living legionary book and a torch in the communist darkness. (…)

He drew our attention to a civilisation that cannot be stimulated only by materialistic dreams and fantasies and by goals of temporary or immediate happiness.

One of the students who had been expelled from the Legion said to him shortly before his arrest, after a large communist demonstration in Brașov: “Let’s put on red shirts and shout with them in the streets, because we’ll still be Legionnaires after the Russians have left the country, in disguise we’ll be better able to preserve ourselves for tomorrow. Don’t let the communists arrest us! Let’s take state positions!

– But why should we become such caricatures, shouldn’t we be behave with dignity in any situation?” replied Jimboiu. We will continue to enlighten the people with the light of the Legionary Movement (…) The class struggle, with the shouting in the streets, is nothing but a diphony brought by the Russians, added the Legionary student Jomboiu. At this moment in our history, it only offers hatred and national division. It is a harmful element in the structure of our soul. It is nourished by the anti-Christian spirit of Bolshevism. We have walked and are walking the path of Christian humanity, respecting the universal order and social progress (…).

I am reminded of Jimboiu’s words about respect between people, more precisely about good manners and Romanian common sense: “You must address everyone with ‘Sir’, the big as well as the small, the weak as well as the strong! Jimboiu’s poor lungs could no longer bear the suffering between the cold walls. 

The barbarity of the dungeon was somehow multiplied for him. He had been ill since his previous conviction in Aiud, during the Antonescu’s regime.

(Luca Călvărăsan – History in tears. Episode Târgșor and others, vol. II, Bucura Publishing House, Sibiu, 1998, pp. 58, 63-67)