Ion Flueraș – an atheist who won and confessed Christ in prison

Old Flueraș, a carpenter from Arad, former member of the Socialist International Committee and former secretary of Titel Petrescu’s Social Democratic Party, did not join the Communist Party with Lothar Rădăceanu (Wurtzelbaum), but remained faithful to Titel Petrescu’s Social Democratic Party. Arrested with the latter, he behaved like an honest man of great common sense. I met him in Gherla under the following circumstances:

At the end of spring 1952, I did not go to work because I was ill; I was taken out of my cell by the guard to sweep the prison yard and, together with other prisoners in my situation, to fetch drinking water from the yard with tongs. Juberian and Rek were in charge of the organisation office.

One day, when I was taken to the yard to sweep, Engineer Cristescu, a war invalid in charge of cleaning the yard, sent me to fetch a broom from the central building of the prison. This was on the south side, opposite the kitchen, where the chapel was; the icons and all the furniture from the church on the north ground floor of the large building had been brought there.

I was amazed to see an old man kneeling with his hands folded. He was praying before an icon.

At the sound of my footsteps he turned his head and, seeing that I was a prisoner like himself, beckoned me to come closer. I approached reluctantly and knelt. Then the old man whispered to me that he was the socialist Flueraș.

After he had finished his prayer, I asked him in astonishment how it was that he, who was supposed to be an atheist, still prayed to God. The old man told me, in a voice that warmed my heart, that this was in his youth, that it was all a lie, and that now he prayed to God to forgive him.

At that time my madness was quite advanced and my attempts to pray had little effect because my prayers were uttered with my lips and not felt with my heart. As we parted, I whispered to the old man to be careful, for there were many informers and some villain might be found to denounce him. But he replied that he was no longer afraid, and so I gave him peace. He could come to the chapel and pray, because he and other old and sick people cleaned the prison yard and the kitchen.

My meetings with Flueraș in the chapel were repeated several times. He would always call me to his side to stand shoulder to shoulder and pray. Once he asked me if I was Orthodox and if I believed in God. I answered in the affirmative. Because of the limited time, I didn’t have a chance to tell him what was on my mind after all I had been through.

God is felt with the heart and not with the lips. Cold reason cannot feel God. Only the pure, warm and loving heart can feel Him, because He is love. Now my lips uttered prayer, but my heart was cold and empty of God’s presence. In Flueraș it was the opposite of what I felt, and that is why he prayed with a warm heart, overwhelmed by the presence of God.

In our meetings in that chapel, I felt old Flueraș so close and warm to me, as if he were my father, with his white beard.

Flueraș was fervent believer and waiting to leave this world, while I, with my heart as cold as ice, wanted to stay.

As my madness progressed and the walls of the cell pressed down on my whole being, I wanted at all costs to escape this unbearable pressure and go out to work. When I met Juberian in the courtyard, I asked him to take me to work. Juberian looked at me and told me he knew I was ill. I replied that it was true, but that I couldn’t stand the cell any longer. He looked at me and promised to look into it.

I have only seen Flueraș once since that meeting with Juberian. What he said to me then still rings in my ears: “My son, these are all lies. Don’t lose God, you’ve lost everything.”

An example of a man who was honest with himself, this Flueraș; a man who had come to say that what he had believed until then was a lie, apart from God, who is the absolute truth. As Ecclesiastes says: “Vanity of vanities, all are vanities”, except God.

A few days later, I woke up with Juberian in my cell; he called me to follow him. Once in the carpentry workshop, at a table where all the pieces for the mechanical carpentry were being traced, he told me that in the future I would be a tracer, but warned me to be very careful, because if I traced the wrong piece, I would be sent to prison on the ground floor. He went to his office and I went to the carpentry shop.

I would see Flueraș for a while in the yard when I was coming or going from the workshop. I made sure he saw me and him. I greeted him with great respect. I even admired him because, although he was an atheist, he had returned to the true faith, kneeling before the icon of Christ.

After a few weeks of working as a tracer, I found the following words written in garbled block letters on my workshop table: ”The murderers of Rek and Juberian killed Flueraș”.

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I didn’t believe it for a moment. I didn’t believe it because Juberian was no longer in a position to kill anyone after the departure of Țurcanu, Popa, Livinschi, Caba and the others.

I am convinced that the murder of Flueraș was ordered from Bucharest and that the moral and physical perpetrators were not Juberian and Rek, but Goiciu. It is probable that when Goiciu found Flueraș on his knees before the icon of Christ, through the tip of a scoundrel, he had the pretext to make him a party, as he had done to so many priests in Galați, or to those he had seen kneeling and praying during his visitation.

Only God knows who killed Flueraș because he was praying to God for forgiveness of his unbelief and sins. These words: “From now on I will fear no more”, still ring dramatically in my ears.

(Dumitru Bordeianu, Confessions from the Swamp of Despair, Scara Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 352-356)