Gioga – modest and generous, always smiling
Gioga is a small, solid, energetic and always smiling Aromanian student. He is a very good comrade, modest and generous. I can’t find the best words to describe him. What more can I say about his heart and character than what Ion Ioanid said in Our Everyday Prison? Gioga? – “a boy with a heart of gold”! Gioga is one of the young Romanians who had the tragic fate of going through the hell of Pitești.
The word “hell” may seem exaggerated to some. But I have checked that it is true. And yet in a shocking way.
A few days after my arrival in the same barracks as Gioga, one night, while the guards were sleeping the deep sleep of those exhausted by their work underground, in the silence broken only by the distant shouts of the guards on duty, we heard a scream, a loud and prolonged roar, as if someone had been stabbed. We awoke suddenly, startled, our hearts pounding with excitement.
– What is it? What’s happening?
The elders reassure us:
– It’s nothing! Gioga was dreaming!
Gioga dreamed again and let out a terrible cry. My God, what this man and those like him have been through! This cry came from the depths of the nightmare that persisted in the dreams of those tortured at Pitești. It was a cry from hell, in the truest sense of the word! Later, I will hear Gelu Gheorghiu’s stories about Pitești and Virgil Maxim’s stories about Gherla, everything that happened in these factories of torture and death. They will tell me of their hellish experiences. But Gioga’s cries were the most eloquent testimony. They showed the extent to which young Christians in Romania were subjected to torture and extermination.
(Pr. Liviu Brânzaș – Ray from the Catacomb)