Letter of Priestess Alexandrina Mazilu on the sufferings of Priest Alexandru Mazilu
President of the Association of Former Political Prisoners and Victims of the Dictatorship
The undersigned Alexandrina Mazilu, resident of Dofteana commune, Dofteana county. Bacău, I bring the following to your attention:
My husband, priest Alexandru Mazilu, born on 13 December 1909, in com. Asău, Bacău County, who died on 5 October 1978, suffered the rigours of the Communist regime as a political prisoner, through no fault of his own.
He was arrested in October 1944 and sent to Tg. Ocna, Bacău County, after which he was transferred to the Bacău prison in January 1945. He has never been tried. There were no grounds for a trial. He was released at the end of 1945.
In the period after his release, he was strictly supervised, although his work was to do his job as a priest and nothing more.
In 1948 he was arrested again and taken to Bacău prison without trial; beaten, stressed, threatened with death, he was released after a few months. Strict surveillance followed, and on 20 July the secret police from Bacău and militia from the commune came and carried out a brutal search: they opened the floors, broke through the walls, etc., then blindfolded him, tied his hands behind his back with handcuffs that tightened with every movement, and he was thrown face down into a lorry and taken to Bacău prison. Again he was examined, beaten, cursed, and again, without trial, he was sent in a special CFR wagon to the canal, to the Poarta Albă colony, where the prison commander threatened him that it was an extermination colony.
It all came true, because they were made to work superhumanly, without food, without rucksacks, without dormitories, beaten, kicked and shovelled in the stomach, liver and spleen. According to his testimony, he was forced to work at huge depths (two hundred metres) into the ground in order to exterminate them. From here he was transferred to Galeș Colony, where his life as a prisoner continued, enduring beatings, starvation and endless insults.
In 1953, he was transferred to the Onești (Borzești) colony in Bacău, where he worked hard at construction (digging) until the end of May 1954, when he was released.
Returning home very ill, he was constantly harassed, threatened and regularly summoned to the Security Service until the last moment of his life.
Because of his work and the stress he suffered, he contracted a very serious illness, polycythaemia, a cancer of the blood; after a long suffering, he died at the age of 68, thinking of all that he had had to endure innocently.
The terror also extended to his family, to his three innocent children, the children of a political prisoner.
It is with tears in my eyes that I ask for the rehabilitation of my husband, who suffered at the hands of a ruthless and terrible regime.
I have no other claim than the desire for the rehabilitation of this martyred man, now that I too am an old woman, sick and at the end of my life; I would like to die with a peaceful heart, knowing that justice has been done, although I had no hope of it.
I mention that I have my husband’s correspondence from: Galeș, Peninsula, Onești-Borzești labour colonies, as well as a cheque for 595.57 lei, which I can put at your disposal if you need it. May God help you in all things.
In the name of justice and humanity, I thank you and await your reply.
Yours sincerely, Alexandrina Mazilu
18th March 1990
(Document published in Martyrdom of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Ramida Publishing House, 1994, pp. 115-117 and in Vestitorul Ortodoxiei, Year VI, No. 111, 28 February 1994)