Marinică Naidim, a man “modest and good up to perfection”.

I met Marinică in March 1952, when I was sent with a disciplinary group from Jilava to the Baia Sprie lead mine, together with Dr. Cornel Petrasevici – who had just come from an investigation he had conducted at the Ministry of the Interior – and a group of Roman Catholic priests who had previously been sentenced to death and then to life imprisonment: Father Mihoc (the oldest member of the group), Father Dumitrașcu, who had a divine tenor voice and was always singing a popular folk song, Father Rață, who watched over Iuliu Maniu in Sighet until the last moments of his life, Father Rață, the youngest, but appreciated by all for his tough character.

All of them prayed the daily prayer rope in the Jilava cell.

I remember that on Easter Day 1952 I went out with Marinică behind the barracks and he spoke to me, as only he could, about the meaning of the Resurrection of the Saviour.

The colony political officer caught us in the middle of a discussion and put us in isolation without a written report. This was under the colony’s infirmary, where the doctors were Mr. Markoci and Mr. Veselovschi, the latter a former legionnaire who had left the movement on a whim of vanity.

Here, in isolation, under the old infirmary building, we stayed the whole of Easter Day. I was very ill. I had a high fever, was vomiting and was beginning to turn yellow. It was the second jaundice I had in prison.

Poor Marinica did his best to make my life easier.

He spoke to me from the Philokalia, taught me the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian (“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me a spirit of despondency, sloth, love of money, and idle talk. But give to me, your servant, a spirit of sober-mindedness, humility, patience, and love. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother, since you are blessed to the ages. Amen.”).

I have repeated this prayer ever since, always thinking of Marinică.

The military officer to whom Marinică presented my case refused to bring the doctor: “First he will serve the sentence given to him by the comrade lieutenant, and then we will treat him”.

It was only in the evening, after the count, that Dr. Markoci admitted me to the infirmary. There were two of us with jaundice, in a ward with lung patients: me and the former Major Șerban, who also died later.

After 21 days in the infirmary, I was transferred to the colony’s tailor’s shop, run by Mr. Taban, a former paratrooper from Germany who had undergone re-education in Gherla, and whom the famous Goiciu had infected with lung disease.

From here, from the tailor’s shop, I was assigned to a “surface” team, which carried earth with wagons, with the legionaries: Father Grebenea, Mr. Gabriel Bălănescu, Mr. Willi Popescu, Mr. Titus Beu – who died shortly afterwards of Basedof – a graduate in philosophy and naval officer Aurică Pastramagiu, Mr. Luca Dumitrescu. In this team there was also the journalist from Prundeni and the writer Romulus Dianu (who wrote “Nopți la Adakalem”) and who, when he was outside, proposed in an article that all the legionaries should be gathered on the island of the serpent.

Now I see that he was very well reconciled with his so-called “enemies” of the past, who treated him with great attention and kindness.

Marinică Naidim was a young man, over 30 at the time, tall, thin, with only one tooth left in his mouth. What struck me about him was his deep Christian faith and his philosophical and especially theological knowledge. He once told me “the story of the most precious thing on earth” and “the story of the hard-working disciple”. He knew the Holy Liturgy by heart and whole pages from the lives of the saints and the Philokalia.

He knew the Romanian philosophers very well, especially the two Testaments. He particularly excelled in the New Testament.

There were many mystics in the colony at that time, including Virgil Totoiescu, Nicu Mazăre, Father Teodor Bej, Vasilică Man, Father Iustin [Pârvu], Liviu Ceaca, but Marinică seemed to surpass them all.

His best friend at the time was Mr. Virgil Totoiescu.

Marinică was born on 25 March 1922 in Râmniceni, Vrancea. He attended the Buzău Normal School and was the first in his class.

At the age of 20, he was arrested by the Antonescu regime and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for being a member of the “Brotherhood of the Cross” and even its leader at school. He spent 23 years in prison, much of it with his inseparable friend Virgil Maxim. I met Virgil Maxim in the autumn of 1955, when the prisoners from Gherla were transferred to Aiud, apparently for re-education. […]

Released after 1964, Marinică studied Romanian language and literature without attending classes and then graduated.

Father Arsenie Papacioc, another of his fellow sufferers from the Techirghiol monastery, described him as follows: “Naidim was a deep believer in the Orthodox faith”.

Many have wondered why Naidim did not become a priest or a monk, something he was clearly called to do. He once confessed to me that he was afraid to think about such a thing because he did not feel up to it, unlike another suffering brother, Liviu Brânzaș, who confessed to me that since the Cavnic mine in 1953 he had felt his vocation to the priesthood. That it is above all the occupations and worries of men, because it forms men for heaven. 

This is how I saw Marinică Naidim, who died in December 1999, modest and good up to perfection. Although Marinică was neither a priest nor a monk, he remained a living example and a worthy model for all of us in the Legionary Movement and beyond, through his authentic Christian life.

Brașov, 28.06.2000. 

(Ioan Victor Pica – Portraits of Heroes and Saints, Semne Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003, pp. 43-46)