Gheorghe Tarcea – a very active priest
How many years have you lived in Bărăgan?
– Three years. I worked in the rice mill and on the state farms.
– In which years were you forced to live there?
– Between 1956 and 1958. We were all in a village abandoned by the Bărăgan. We were all ex-convicts who had been released from prison. They didn’t let any of us go home, but sent us to work under guard on a state farm. It was a very powerful state farm, plus the rice mill. It had several thousand acres. It was in Bărăgan, near the Giurgeni bridge, at Vadul Oii-Giurgeni, leading to Constanța.
– I heard you built a church there?
– No, I found it done. That’s where the Banat people were deported. They stayed there for five years.
-The wives of the condemned went there to visit their husbands?
– Yes, but with the permission of the Ministry, of course. Even with their children. But the convicts weren’t allowed to leave the place. Even as far as Fetești or Vadu Oii they needed permission. (…)
– Were you allowed to worship?
– When I arrived there, I found a church built by the Banat people, because they were not only Germans, but also Romanians. (…)
I found a very active priest. However, after being deported from place to place, he died in Aiud, very ill. He built a church there, in the Bărăgan colony, like a sort of hut, made of earthen bags and a reed roof. The ceiling was also made of clay tiles, without painting. Small, about ten metres high.
We Orthodox were not many. In the beginning, in a village of 700 houses, there were only five Romanians. Then they started coming and we reached two or three hundred. They all came to church. First we went to the militia to register, then we all went to church. There was a priest there, Fr. Tarcea, who had been deported. He died in Aiud. He had been deported with a group of Romanians, Bessarabians and Bukovinians. About 20 families. They built this church.
We found this priest, but he had no one to serve with him, because the Germans from Banat were released. The Romanians also left.
(Fr. Dimitrie Bejan – The joys of suffering. Evocations from the Past. Volume II)