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 Neamț Security Service police. Caraza was sentenced to eight years’ hard labour. (…)
Caraza passed through Galata, Iași, Văcărești, Jilava and ended up in Aiud during the famine of 1949-1950. He worked in a factory in Aiud, contracted tuberculosis, was released and sent to Răchitoasa with a delegate, like the priest Bejan. From here his life story is similar to that of the priest. He was a member of the group of eleven, with Father Bejan as its leader and Colonel Doicaru as its creator. Under the same pretexts, he was sent to the Constanta court, which sentenced him to twenty-three years’ imprisonment. He was then sent in chains to Aiud, in Zarcă, where he also refused to undergo re-education. In 1964 he was released from Zarca and from his chains. The odyssey continued in March 1970, when he spent only three months under investigation and was sentenced by the military tribunal in Iași to ten years’ imprisonment and sent to Piatra Neamț. He was accused of having spoken about the existence of God as conceived by philosophers such as Descartes and Kant during his evening biology classes. Caraza again took the prisoner’s route in his own country, ending up again in Aiud and then in Zarcă in June 1970. Before his release, he declared that he would refuse to leave prison.
This statement attracted the attention of the M.I.A. leadership, who knew that a similar case had occurred in the history of Aiud in August 1964, when a legionnaire imprisoned for many years refused to leave the prison, declaring to the guards and the Crăciun that “rather than spend a day free in the communist regime, it would be better to spend the same time in prison”. He was forcibly removed from his cell, forcibly dressed by the guards and forcibly released from prison.
The M.I.A. took his testimony seriously and sent a commission headed by General Vasile Ioan, who personally investigated the reasons for his refusal, but above all wanted to know what such a man looked like. Caraza explained the conditions that awaited him as a free man.
When he was released in 1977, he was forcibly removed from Aiud by the prison guards (…) The Piatra Neamț Security Service was informed of the alternative he had chosen, which was either a passport to self-exile in the free world, or he would set himself on fire in front of the “Ceahlăul” hotel in Piatra Neamț, which was full of foreign tourists. He immediately got a passport and now lives far away from the country, in New York, USA, and I enjoy his friendship.
In front of these people who have been in prison for many years, in front of this harsh and intransigent attitude, in front of these sacrificed lives, I, only thirteen and a half years old, feel small. Not everyone sees their path as one of permanent resistance, sometimes leading to martyrdom, as a result of such exemplary attitudes. (…)
Grigore Caraza, by refusing to leave prison and the chance of unfree freedom, forces us to reconsider a vital equation, especially today: how free are the Romanian people in their individual and historical mentality and choices?
(Aurel Sergiu Marinescu – Prisoner in his own country, Vol. II, Du Style Publishing House, 1998, pp. 285-287)