In Aiud, cell mate with the martyr Florea Mureșan

We no longer wear leg chains. They were taken off when we arrived in Aiud. The ten days of quarantine gave us time to recover a little, but above all to collect our thoughts, to take stock of our suffering […].

Once in our new “cell” on the first floor, we were astonished to find, after a brief identification, that all of us, absolutely all of us, were either former legionnaires or had been convicted of some connection with the Iron Guard. […]

One day my sleeping neighbour, my bedmate (we slept on the same dirty, torn mat), a man taller than me, with a gentle, bright face and the look of a mucus carrier, his body almost completely exhausted, my age was 47, he was at least ten years older, maybe more than six decades, he tried to start a conversation with me, to get to know each other better. I heard him say to me:

– It’s a paradox, it’s as if we’re not together, we’re afraid of each other, we’re closed off, we’re suspicious of each other, we avoid talking, it’s strange…

– Where do you come from? I asked him, rather passively.

– From Cluj.

– You mean you’ve never been to Jilava? Don’t you know Jilava?!

– I haven’t had the “luck”… I hear there’s a lot of mourning…

– Most of the people here probably know Jilava, Maromet and Ivănică, Geamănă and lately “Lieutenant” Ștefan, and that’s why they are shy, avoid discussions, are cautious… and that’s nothing strange.

Our conversation ended there. It was only later, out of curiosity to find out some news from Cluj (I had been to the Securitate in the Transylvanian capital in the autumn of 1953), that I tried to resume the conversation.

– You know that I was also investigated in Cluj.

– You must have known the chief investigator, “Comrade Aurel”.

– I knew him… he’s from Bukovina, before ’44 he was a shop boy, a salesman, probably for his father, in Gura – Humorului, a Jew…

I soon made friends with my “bed” (mat) neighbour and during the two weeks we stayed together we unburdened our hearts, telling each other in detail some episodes from the novel of our lives.

In the dictionary of the modern Romanian language, the meaning of the noun novel is given, among others, as follows “a series of events with many episodes that seem improbable”. The Stalinist prisons, after the two “storms” of the “liquidation of the forces of repression” in 1948 and 1958, contained within their walls the silent and terrible tragedies of many hundreds of thousands of people, with the interweaving of events in many episodes that seem improbable. Unfortunately for the victims and to the shame of the Romanian people, the tragedies heard and experienced in the state prisons are stories that seem improbable, but they are more true than all the truths in the world.

There is nothing implausible about my neighbour’s story, told over several sessions in two. In the following pages I will tell it, digging in my memory box, trying to come as close as possible to the truth of what happened, as a pious tribute to my former bedfellow.

My neighbour’s name was Florea Mureșan. He had worked for many years as a professor at the Faculty of Theology in the capital, Ardeal, and as the protopope of Cluj. He was married with two children, a girl and a boy. Having met Ionel Moța, then Corneliu Codreanu, in the university town of Cluj, and later as a priest, he realised that the Legionary Movement was the only political organisation in the country that sought a spiritual rapprochement between the politician and the divinity, through the Church, and he joined it to fight against the godless, church-breaking ones; He did so not as a politician, but as a servant of the altar: “I considered it my duty as a priest to be the defender of the Church of Christ”…

He married Eugenia Adam, a teacher with a passion for writing, and his children were born and grew up. Lucian Blaga became a friend of the family, an “admirer of the young writer, perhaps even a lover (Lulu was very lovable). The young and seductive writer appeared in the literary press of the time. We meet her in the pages of Gândirii, signing Eugenia Adam – Mureșanu will also write plays; Lulu will read them and say that “Genia” is a “Romanian Shakespeare”. Only Blaga knew if it was true. From the confessions of the priest from Cluj, I learned that the Mureșanu family had the “Great Anonymous” as a “guest” almost every day: “He had a piece of cake – the “cake” was my wife – the narrator remarked. I had no reason to be embarrassed, only the great poets and the great philosophers have the right to be silly sometimes, and then it was nothing to have Blaga as a permanent guest, a man who at that time – the storm was coming – had parted with most of his old friends…”.

And the storm came: the purges began, Lucian Blaga was banned from teaching, publishing and writing textbooks. His name became taboo, he was attacked in the communist press as a “fascist”, a “legionary ideologist”, for the irrationalism of his mystical, anti-populist, chauvinist works. The politicians of the past are imprisoned: peasants, liberals, legionnaires, even the top of the communist elite are put on trial, they are sentenced to astronomical sentences: Iuliu Maniu is sentenced to life imprisonment (m.s.v.), the horror grips the whole of Romania, people are only now realising what a communist travesty is. The great thinker from Lancrăm is in despair. You can be colossal, fear spares no one, it is shared equally by all – that is the nature of things. To each his own nature, if nature can also mean courage, then, in order to preserve his nature, the author of Manole the Master and the Myoritic Space continues to enter the house of the protopope, until one day…

One night in May 1950, disaster strikes:

“The black Securitate van” stopped at the gate. The three secretaries climbed the stairs, rang the bell, the door opened, but the children were not at home. The door was opened by the priest, who had his bag ready, he couldn’t stay outside when the whole world was bleeding. The “cops of comrade Aurei” made an exemplary search of the house, confiscated manuscripts, books, letters, Blaga’s books, autographed, the last one (the narrator couldn’t remember which one) had the autograph written in green ink, “for Genia” – a historic capture! – confirms everything that can constitute a corpus delicti and… surprise:

– Eugenia Adam – Mureșanu, says one of the searchers solemnly, darkly, in the name of the law… (did she want to say the legal formula? “In the name of the law, you are under arrest”, but at the last second (not good to cause panic) he refrained by saying: “You have to come to us… a simple formality, a small declaration and you’ll be home… on our word of honour… in an hour at the most you’ll be home…”).

The “hour” was investigated by the Securitate in Cluj for two years and two months.

In 1940, the arrest of Eugenia Adam-Mureșanu, leader of an anti-communist group, seemed to have a legal basis. Then they tried to arrest Lucian Blaga.

Summer of 1952. The writer returns from internment. The first question she asks her husband is: “Has Blaga been here before?” “I didn’t answer him – he went round us… he was afraid he’d come too…” “He’s a coward!… He has no place in our house…” Eugenia’s sentence.

Eugenia Adam – Mureșanu did not know, or did not want to know, that cowardice is a face, not the most horrible of all the great human tragedies, and that the Romanian intelligentsia of that time would succeed in throwing not only cowards but also monsters into the political arena of the Marxist cataclysm.

– About three weeks after my wife’s release – Father Mureșan continues – I came up with a well-thought-out plan. I revealed it to my wife and asked for her consent. What did I ask her? To leave this sinful world and enter the monastery together. I said: ‘My removal from teaching and your arrest are signs of great danger. Let’s avoid it. The children we have are settled. Being young, they will adapt more easily to the new conditions of life, so that from this point of view we dare to say that we have done our duty. We will enter a monastery, perhaps in Vladimirești, where we will find silence and worship God for our sins, for the happiness of our children and for the salvation of our nation…”.

My wife looked at me for a long time, and when I saw her, she shook her head and faced me like a down-to-earth woman: “Man, man! You haven’t learned anything… don’t you know that in such a diabolical regime we can’t even hide in a snake pit? Silence in the monastery now under atheist rule? Don’t you know that in Stalin’s Russia the people in the monasteries and churches suffered the most… can you find peace in a monastery today? Perhaps you will soon see what is coming…”

She told me what would follow: churches would be demolished, monasteries would be closed or, if not turned into museums, in order to call them “historical monuments”, priests, monks, nuns would be imprisoned… It will be the same here as in Russia.

I didn’t take her seriously. I said to myself: she’s scared and sees everything in black and white…

They won’t have time, the revolution will come and we’ll escape… People are still waiting for the Americans to come… I didn’t choose anything from the whole discussion with my wife, except that in the end she gave me permission to go the monastic way alone, without her. “If you think,” she said to me, “that it’s good, I won’t stop you… but I’ll stay with the children… I won’t run away… I’ll stay to face all the dangers, but you know, man, that’s where you’ll end up, and whoever loses hope will drown in the swamp of despair…

After putting my affairs in order, I set out on my own. I was sad, I was worried… I thought that what I was doing was desertion…

And I reached Vladimirești…”

Towards the end of the reign of Charles III, in the midst of the Legionary tragedy of 1938-1939, by God’s mercy – the chronicler will say – and by the faith and courage of some people of great ability, a convent of nuns was built, The soul of this monastery, of this great Christian work, was a child of this commune, Vasilica Barbu – Gurău, later called Mother Veronica, who was the abbess of this holy place.

Many young virgins, some of them university graduates, gathered here to serve God, as I read in a confession: “A garden of young flowers, daughters of our nation, daughters of our people, who will pray for the whole Romanian nation…”.

Among these daughters of our nation, I met two: Marieta Iordache, graduate of the A.N.E.F., courageous leader of the students in Bucharest in 1938-1939, sister of Iordache Nicoară, killed in Miercurea – Ciuc in 1939, and the poet Zorica Lațcu, collaborator of “Gândirea”. Maria Iordache is called Mother Mihaela and is the treasurer of the convent, the right arm of the abbess; Zorica Lațcu is called Mother Theodosia.

From the very beginning, the Vladimirești Monastery (by this name it would be known throughout the country) had as parish priest Father Ioan, a young theologian from Ardeal, Silviu Iovan, son of the priest Gavril Iovan, parish priest of a church in a commune near Oradea, and in 1953, after almost ten years of atheist regime, thanks to the nuns led by Veronica, Theodosia and Mihaela, but especially to the preaching of Fr. Ioan, the Vladimirești Monastery became a holy place of worship and consolation for the Orthodox of the R. P.P.R, but also a dangerous fortress of Romanianism for the godless communist order.

At that time, the former university professor and protopope of Cluj, Florea Mureșanu, came to Vladimirești to find shelter and peace, a peace that lasted only a short time, because two years later, in 1955, the communist state leadership, without the opposition of the high ecclesiastical heads of Roman, Iași and Bucharest, found it appropriate to close down the monastery. The reason was quickly found: Vladimirești Monastery had become a legionary citadel, a threat to the socialist state. The Minister of Religious Affairs at the time was C. Constantinescu-Iași, a former professor at the Faculty of Theology in Chișinău.

Arrests, vandalism and looting followed. In the same year, on 5, 6 and 7 December 1955, the military tribunal of Galați tried the “Vladimirești lot”. In the dock: Maria Iordache (Mother Mihaela), the leader of the group, Vasilica Barbu (Abbess Veronica), Zorica Lațcu (Mother Theodosia), the priest Silviu Lovan (Father Loan), the two fugitives Ghiță Păiș and the engineer Teodosiade, and others. The punishment was merciless: the abbess received the shortest sentence of 15 years, which was reduced to 8 years on appeal. The other judges were sentenced to between 20 and 25 years’ imprisonment. Mother Mihaela was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour. During the trial and in prison she behaved like a true heroine, and in November 1959 she was transferred from Mislea to Miercurea Ciuc, where she died some time later. I met Father Ioan in Aiud in 1960.

I found him in the room on the first floor of the Cellular, where I began my story.

“Man, man! – I think I can hear my wife saying – you haven’t learned anything… don’t you know that in a regime like this devilish one, we can’t even hide in a snake pit… you’ll end up there too, and whoever loses hope will drown in the swamp of despair…”. Now I’ve learned everything, I know… my wife was right… In Cluj I heard that my wife, who was arrested again in 1959, was in Mislea. She probably met the Vladimirești girls there…”

I asked the narrator when he was last in Cluj and what for.

He replied:

– I came from Cluj last week, I had a confrontation with Lucian Blaga at the Securitate.

– What happened? Was Blaga arrested?

I think so, otherwise what was the point of the confrontation, and then what was the point of bringing him into the interrogation room with his coat over his head? I was asked to explain that Lucian Blaga was a legionnaire and what I had done with him. I told the pure truth: I had no subversive activity with Professor Lucian Blaga, not only no subversive activity, but not even any political discussion. What’s more, I told the investigators about the discussion with “Genia” when he returned from prison in 1952 and her “sentence” not to set foot in his house, considering him a coward because he had avoided us in her absence, afraid to visit us…

– What did Blaga look like?

– Extremely frightened, weakened, with a face more dishevelled than mine, which had been in prison for several years and had undergone a “scientific” examination. His hands were shaking and he didn’t even have the courage to look at me. It was clear that he was in the midst of draconian interrogations, perhaps even in the famous torture chamber of “Comrade Aurel”. It’s a strange thing, I always think about him, how it is possible that a thinker that was a master of ideas, “even of the Socratic idea”, that of not losing one’s temper in the face of the enemy, how it is possible that a creator of moral and philosophical concepts – and we know that philosophy is above human pettiness – can become unrecognisable, more pitiful than the last common mortal who passed through the caudine forks.

– The system, Father, has only itself to blame. We live in such terrible times that even Saints would shudder at the sight of such sophisticated instruments and practices of torture…

– Socrates… why did the Athenian philosopher face death with serenity?

– This is only one way of looking at it: the executioners of Socrates are far from being comparable to the communist torturers of the 20th century, the henchmen of Gheorghe Gheorghiu – Dej. If Blaga had lived then and Socrates now, we would say: “Blaga accepted death with serenity, Socrates is a coward…”. That’s the truth…

There was only one confrontation, I don’t know what happened after that. I was sent back to Aiud and I’m here now. I understand from the inquest that my wife, who was brought from Mislea, had to answer the same questions about whether Blaga was a legionnaire and what he was doing with him. Her answer was probably no different from mine. Then silence…

So far, Father Muresanu’s novel is a tapestry of plausible events. Nothing sensational, extraordinary, unbelievable, not even the confrontation with the “Great Anonymous” or Vladimirești’s vandalism.

But as every dramatic novel has an epilogue, and epilogues in the socialist world are often tragic, the story of the former protopope of Cluj will also have an incredibly strange ending, in the Aiud of “Colonels Crăciun, Iacob and Colier”.

Like all dramas lived by people, by real Romanians.

Our removal from the prison and our imprisonment in cells took place in an oppressive silence. The separation from the Bishop of Cluj saddened me as much as the separation from Lixandru Latiș, from Motaș, from Manoilescu, from General Vasile Mitrea. The same as the separation from Noica, from the unfortunate Sebi Popescu. I regretted that I would no longer have the opportunity to meet young people (may they be a model of encouragement and self-control), brave and dignified young people like the student Constantin Bucescu and his brother Sandu Bucescu, like the tough Niculae Ruse, like the always resigned Octavian Tripa and Victor Oprescu (also always with a smile on his lips), like the student Nicu Bardac, like the taciturn and wise Aurel Pastramagiu, or like Noica’s favourites: Mișu Dumitrescu and Vasile Afilie, like the modest son of Suceava, the publicist Dumitru Oniga, or like the veterans of Aiud: Constantin Aurel Dragodan (“the poet of Aiud” – says Noica) and Tavi Popa (who measured the years with his giant steps), and like the other Aiud prisoners and Jilava prisoners with whom I had bound my heart in the desire to be free as soon as possible. We didn’t meet outside. The rascal took us by surprise and in a hurry in the communist prisons, and that was a way of torturing people. The separation from the illustrious protopope of Cluj made me very sad. When I came out of the cell, I did not hear what he wished me, only a fragment of a sentence spoken in a whisper: “Blessed are you…” (perhaps the road to freedom, or…).

The following year, towards the end of 1961, the sad news of Lucian Blaga’s disappearance was transmitted to the entire cell block via the Morse alphabet, which was beaten into the pipes of the radiators. Those who brought the news, who had just arrived with a consignment from Cluj, could not tell us whether the philosopher had died in prison or in the arms of his family.

As far as I could, I tried to keep in touch with Father Mureșanu, who was imprisoned on the same side of the T. I would learn that the news of Blaga’s death affected him greatly. Later I did not see him going for walks, probably – I thought – he was one of those prisoners who could not walk from the cell to the exercise yard, but one day, many days later, a prisoner who had been brought to our cell from the cell of the professor – the theologian – solved the mystery for me: Father Mureșanu was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. After numerous attempts to get him examined by a doctor, some of which were accompanied by loud knocking on the door; one of those who intervened found himself isolated in the madhouse (one of the punishments applied to unruly prisoners in Aiud), the sick man was taken on a stretcher to the infirmary. But at that time the prison hospital had neither medicines nor specialist doctors (the doctors – prisoners – had been sent to the cells), so they only succeeded in prolonging his agony. There was no harm in one more “bandit” dying, it was in the interest of the Party that they all died.

In the spring of 1964, when I was taken out of Zarca from solitary confinement for re-education (the amnesty decree of that year was being prepared), in my contacts with the “re-educated” I was interested first of all in the fate of four people in prison: my brothers Grigore and Gheorghe, Father Mureșanu and Lixandru Latis. I also learnt that my brothers had been sent to work somewhere near Braila and that my brother Grigore was working in the same team as Noica’s Mișu Dumitrescu (“the clever one”) and Bucescu Constantin, but that there was no information about Lucian Blaga’s friend. It was not until a week later, during a meeting with the student Marcel Petrișor, that I heard: “Hey, boy, Father Florea Mureșanu has been resting at ‘Trei plopi’ for a year now”…

The end of Lixandru Latiș came almost a year before the “slobodna” of 1964. In the same year, around the beginning of the summer, the respected priest Fiorea Mureșanu also found his “death” on the ground floor of the Cellular, in the cell where Mircea Vulcănescu died. The peace he had sought ten years ago in Vladimirești, he found in the cemetery of Aiud of the three poplars…

I will never forget the stories he told me about Blaga, about his school days during the teenage years of Filon Lauric, about Genia…

“It is with regret that I say that I was not able to receive news of the way in which he died, but then, with tears in my eyes, I condescended to utter only one sentence, which I said in prayer: “Blessed be his path to freedom […], martyr of the nation, university professor – the protopope of Cluj, Florea Mureșanu”.

***

30 May 1986. I listened to the programme “Actualitatea românească” of the radio station “Europa liberă”. Perhaps to commemorate the death of the priest Fiorea Muresanu 23 years ago, the writer Virgil Ierunca introduced the exiled writer Eugenia Adam-Mureșanu to the country’s listeners.

She will tell us what we didn’t know, the wife of the martyred priest Fiorea Mureșanu, who knew the Stalinist prisons, about the death of her husband, and perhaps also about the death of Lucian Blaga, Mother Mihaela and the other daughters of the Romanian nation who fell on the altar of the homeland, and so the “short-sighted servants of the West” will also learn what the terror of “socialist humanism” meant in the Romania of Ana Pauker and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.

In exile, Eugenia Adam-Mureșanu wrote ‘Song of Psalms’, a work that Virgil Ierunca describes as ‘a work of great importance in Romanian literature’. We are waiting for the memoirs of the “genius”, we will listen to them or perhaps read them with the emotion of all the moments of separation lived in the dungeons and camps of the communist holocaust.

And these memoirs will also be, for many, incredible stories…

(Vasile Blănaru Flamură – Mercenaries of Hell. The curse of the files. Incredible Stories from the Romanian Gulags, Elisavaros Publishing House, 1999, pp. 248-260)