“I do not do business using treachery!” – Cicerone Ionițoiu’s creed in the communist prisons

During this period [at Canal n.n.] I had the pleasure of meeting Cicerone Ionianițoiu from Craiova, a former schoolmate. He was a history teacher and, during the elections of 19 November 1946, the leader of the National Peasant Youth at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bucharest.

Ioanițoiu was one of the organisers of the “student protests” in the spring of 1944, calling on Marshal Antonescu to take immediate measures to put an end to the atrocities committed by the Hungarians against the Transylvanian Romanians and to launch the struggle for the liberation of subjugated Transylvania.

Ioanițoiu told me that in 1945 Soviet troops had kidnapped him in Craiova with the intention of assassinating him.

But he managed to throw some notes out of the room where he was being held, asking those who found them to inform Professors Ilie Ion and Mihail Paulian, leaders of the National Peasant Party in Dolj County, where he was being held.

The notes ended up in good hands, the two professors intervened and my colleague was rescued.

Cicerone Ioanițoiu had a dignified attitude at the canal, he conducted himself, so to speak, according to the words of Rostand: “I do not do business using treachery!”

(Remus Radina – Testament from the Morgue, 2nd edition, Criterion Publishing, Bucharest, 2010, pp. 80-81)