Ion Georgescu – a crucified man on the Calvary of Communism

When the day of our repatriation approached, an NKVD major, who had come specially from Moscow, and who was in charge of our transport on the recommendation of the camp’s political officer, Colonel Tobă, called “Hatman”, as he liked to call himself, wanted to entrust the transport to him. […]

Our embarkation and transport took place in wagons with improvised and overlapping beds, covered with straw so that as many people as possible could fit into one wagon. […]

In this way we travelled to Penz, where we met another group of Romanian prisoners from Siberia, with whom we formed a group of about 400 people, including eight women.

Here we met Professor Ioan V. Georgescu, Doctor of Theology, born in 1909, originally from Argeș County. He had been a professor of Hebrew history at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, and was much appreciated; the hall was filled to overflowing when he lectured. He was arrested in August 1945, dressed in a summer suit, and ended up in Moscow prisons.

Sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by the same Communist Party court, A.S. ended up a skeleton of a man at the end of the investigation and in this physical state was transported to the Arctic Circle with Tănase Rădulescu.

Wrapped in towels given to him by all the political prisoners to protect him from the cold, he travelled to the town of Uhta, where he was taken down in a dying state and admitted directly to the hospital.

After recovering and trying to adapt to camp life, he was transferred to camps in southern Siberia, where he spent his life as a prisoner doing lighter work and survived by returning home.

But here another ordeal awaited him – the notorious Gherla prison, with all its harshness, from where, after much suffering, he was sent to Bărăgan. Another ordeal!

Old, exhausted, with a very weak heart and eyesight, he was released and worked for a few more years in his field under the obedience of Patriarch Justinian. He died at his desk with his head on his books. God rest his soul! The cross he carried was far beyond his strength!

(Nicu Popescu Vorkuta – Crez și adevăr, Bucharest, 2009, pp. 233-234)