Grigore Caraza (en)

For me, the teacher Grigore Caraza is the Hero-Martyr, the type of teacher we are missing today

I can hardly contain my emotions as I briefly write a few lines in memory of a true patriot and hero who was martyred for his unshakeable faith in Orthodox Christianity and his love for his nation. I am from the Ardeal region, therefore a “papist”, as the Orthodox brothers call us, and between me and Grigorenco, as we used to call him, there was in some cases an inherent difference of form, not of substance. But I have never forgotten, and I cannot compare my 6 years with Grigorego’s 21 years in prison, plus 2 years of compulsory residence. […]

An example of morality and determination

Long before I met Grigore Caraza, I had heard about him as a special person: a man of surprising resistance to all the sufferings and temptations of prison life, a kind of living legend, especially after it became known that he had refused to leave prison on completing his time. I could say without exaggeration that Grigore had become more than a person, he had become a true concept of tenacity in the face of the system of communist repression exercised in prisons. Of course, this stubbornness was expressed not only against physical and verbal violence, but also against temptation, […]

Grigore Caraza – “rather than a day out free under the communist regime, better in prison”

I would like to briefly recount the life of another colleague from Aiud who worked in the light carpentry, a young man like me at the time, Grigore Caraza. He was born in the land described by Creangă in his memories. As a young teacher in his twenties, caught up in the whirlwind of the painful times the country was going through after the Soviet occupation, he was part of an anti-communist organisation set up in the valley of Bistrița and Ozana. (…) In August 1949, the entire organisation to which Caraza belonged was arrested and investigated by the Piatra […]

“A destiny cut into the living flesh of the most unworthy of ages…”

Grigore Caraza was born on 1 February 1929 in Călugăreni – Poiana Teiului, Neamt County, the fifth of six sons of the family of Ioana and Vasile Caraza. He had a high and clear Romanian conscience, he was a witness of an exceptional generation that knew how to die and be reborn on all the crosses of history, itself a crushed history, but never defeated, with its destiny cut into the living flesh of the most humble of ages. Because he was a man of the right, with a firm national and Christian stance, Grigore Caraza passed in the eyes […]

Grigore Caraza – The young man with the longest detention

“Grigore was a kind of guardian of the truth, a sword of the dignity of truth, which hit mercilessly into untruth, bestiality and cowardice. Sometimes with too much ruthlessness”. Priest Gheorghe Calciu Grigore Caraza was only 20 years old when he set off on the road to Calvary, leaving five other brothers and his parents at home in tears. He was a support at home, helping his father with the farm work, but he did not neglect his beloved job of looking after the children of his village, Poiana Teiului, at the foot of Ceahlău. It was the end of […]

“He lived heroically to the end” but with “no understanding of either the limitations or the inadequacies of others”

I know Grigore Caraza very well. In fact, he is a friend of mine. A dear friend for whom I have the highest regard. He was one of the strongest opponents of the atrocities committed in the prisons, as well as the dehumanisation and mockery of human beings during the Aiud re-education. In the more than 20 years he spent in the dungeons, he never made the slightest compromise. He lived heroically to the end, as if he had no self-preservation. But (because there is a gift in his case) Grigore Caraza came out of prison with a crippled soul […]