Marcel Petrișor – the gentle philosopher

Cellmates…

Among us was a young philosophy student, Marcel Petrișor. He had a great philosophical culture. He had been brought from Jilava, where he had been treated very harshly. Marcel used to give us lectures on philosophy. He had the gift of making himself understood even in difficult matters. He was a good storyteller, but he also listened attentively to Dragon’s demonstrations… . In this way, despite all the rigours of Zarca, time passed relatively easily.

***

I remember Marcel Petrișor, whom I met a few years later in the Zarca of Aiud, telling us how he slept with a snake in his room. Petrișor took care of it, fed it, and the snake walked around as if it were at home, even on his bed.

Terrible, hard to imagine! I looked at this gentle man, who gave us real philosophical dissertations in the Zarca cell, and wondered how he could get close to these disgusting lizards. What’s more, he even caught vipers in a special way, squeezed out their venom and then let them go. He sold the collected poison to the chemist’s shop and thus had a source of income for his student life.

(Aurel Vișovan – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)