He was sent to Aiud
On the evening of 9 December 1942, we arrived at the South Railway Station in a convoy of about forty ordinary prisoners, chained by the legs in pairs, escorted by guards and soldiers. The cold was biting. Though the day had been warm, the snow now lay glassy underfoot.
We swayed from side to side; the rusty chain bracelets caused acute pain and soreness. The station was crowded: soldiers headed for the front, Romanian and German patrols, and all kinds of people, some anonymous, others with faces masked in shadows, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust. The camouflage heightened the fear, casting long penumbras like the cynical work of an unseen Rembrandt.
We advanced along the platform as a group. Curses and punches to the ribs kept us moving, though at one point the convoy dispersed, split by the flight of a few thugs.
— Wait! Wait, I’ll shoot! — a voice rang out somewhere in the darkness.
People screamed, some fell into the crowd. A gunshot cracked the night. The convoy broke up, but guards and soldiers swarmed through the crowd, rounding up the stragglers. Marin and I could not escape the lines, blocked by workers carrying sleepers and tools. With difficulty, we climbed to the platform edge between the second and third lines. In the darkness, we searched for a guard or soldier’s uniform. Marin limped and moaned.
— What are we going to do, Marine?
— What about you, Virgile?
— Marine, if we stay here too long, it’ll look like we’re trying to escape. Let’s tell the station police what happened.
— Virgile, — a guard said — the CF van is parked on the seventh line.
— But how do we get there? We’ll have to wait for the first train to leave.
— We’ll go under it!
I suspected the van was isolated on the track, but I recognized it by its small, well-slanted window. No one was on the platform. The convoy had been taken over, the soldiers and guards gone. Arguing and swearing came from inside the van. I tried to knock on the door, but an officer and a guard came panting toward it, followed by two more guards. One was the head of the escort.
— Where have you been? — they cursed us.
— We got lost, sir. We just got out of line.
A soldier knocked on the van door with the butt of his rifle. The transporter chief appeared:
— Have you found them, you fools, or shall I add you to the list?
The head of the escort and the van master began to accuse and insult each other. In the end, we were cursed again and shoved into the van:
— I’ve seen fools before, but I’ve never seen anything like you two! I’m telling you straight!
Our folly was that we did not flee from suffering. We deliberately surrendered so as not to miss the altar of expiation for our sins and those of our nation.
The commoners were put in cells; the legionaries in the common room. When the brothers saw us, they breathed a sigh of relief. We also made acquaintances, for the van was full of Legionnaires who had worked in a colony in Isalnița during the summer. The order was clear: all legionnaires, regardless of experience or convictions, were to be concentrated in Aiud, forming batches to be sent to the front and kept in line until they were physically destroyed.
At night, we crossed the snowy expanse of the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Plateau, tied to a passenger train. Towards morning, we were given a pittance: about 200–250 grams of cornmeal, a piece of salted bacon, and a cup of water.
In life, there are separations like the uprooting of roots, like the collapse of a building after a catastrophe. You cannot cry, speak, or even look at what is happening around you; you cannot hear the sounds of the world. Everything overtakes you, cancels you out. Only one sense remains awake in your inner being — the sense that tells you that you exist, even when the meaning of being, the finality of existence, seems unrelated to creation, of which you no longer feel a part. This sense projects your identity into the person of the Godhead. You are in the One who is. Then your being becomes still, like water without ripples, reflecting only light; a reconciliation with all.
I lived this state in the womb of the van, awakened only from time to time by the rattling of chains — a signal of another reality, unreal to me.
(Virgil Maxim, Hymn to the Cross Bearer. Abecedar duhovnicesc pentru un frate de cruce, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 71-72)