Martyrdom of Father Arsenius in the mill of Kalusek
As in all places in the country, the headquarters of the Regional Security of Brașov had been installed in one of the most beautiful houses in the city, the villa of the liberal leader Mihai Popovici, at some distance from the neighbouring buildings. (…)
I was in custody, in a common cell. In front of us was the image of a wartime field hospital. On a bunk bed, silent people lay side by side, their faces contorted due to suffering. When they saw us, one moment they sprang to life, the next they retreated one by one into a controlled apathy, a common reaction in prisoners.
Those who had completed their examinations or were being held for further examination were gathered here. Among them I saw a normal, radiant figure, a monk. He was lying barefoot. When he saw us, he stood up and asked us in a low voice:
– Are you students?
– Yes!
– Where from?
– From the Radu Negru High School in Făgăraș.
Father Arsenios, because he was the monk, and because he thought we were probably too weak for “Kalusek’s Mill”, waved his left hand upwards and said, as if to himself, but in a loud voice so that we could hear:
– The legion of angels in heaven is not yet complete!
Archimandrite Arsenios Boca, abbot of the Brâncoveanu monastery in Sâmbăta de Sus, had been arrested a month or two before us. We had met his trail in the basement of the Făgăraș Security Service, where he had carved a few words of encouragement on the wall of the basement. Here, in Brașov, his path briefly crossed ours again.
Father Arsenios did not seem troubled by his situation as a prisoner. Accustomed to the privations of monastic life outside, to the mortification of his own body, he endured the regime in the cellar of the security prison as an extension of his ascetic life.
As it was evening, we each looked for a strip on the prickly pear roof. Ionică Mogoș, Ioan Glăjar and I went upstairs, near Father Arsenie. An inner urge urged me to be as close to him as possible. After the cold shower of arrest, Father Arsenios’ presence with us was not only a landmark on the road we were destined to take, but also proof that our suffering had a profoundly Christian meaning. After telling him that we had passed through the same cell in Făgăraș where he had stayed, I asked him, among other things, how we should pray:
– How should we pray?
– By waging war against temptation, as you did outside against the godless. Now that you have mastered this experience, use it,” Father replied.
We gathered around him like chickens around a hen. At one point he turned his gaze to Ionică Mogoș and asked him, staring at him intently:
– Why are you dressed in black?
Ionică was not dressed in black, but his fate was as Father Arsenios saw it, it was inky. With him, minutes were moments, and even if we didn’t speak, we experienced a euphoric state, a state of great peace and tranquillity.
A militiaman ordered through the bean slot: “Lights out!
The sullen prisoners, weakened by the pressure of the threats, fled one by one into the blissful world of oblivion (…) Suddenly, a turn of the key. Then lost footsteps climbing the stairs to the examination rooms. And silence again. Another jangle of the key. The door to our cell opened. Someone entered briskly and made his way to our room. He stopped in front of Father Arsenios and pulled on his leg with one hand, signalling him to be quiet. Father Arsenios got up quietly, put on his shoes and disappeared between the walls of the “mill” (…).
At dawn, Father Arsenios was returned to his cell. I could make out the shuffling gait of a crippled man between the heavy steps of the guards who carried him by the armpits. (…)
Father Arsenios…, they first tortured Father Arsenios when he was arrested, around May. At that time all the demons of Kalusek rushed to him; everyone wanted to beat at least one “saint” to show his fidelity to the Party doctrine. But unlike the other prisoners, who screamed under torture, the priest prayed for the thugs. And through his holiness he managed to tame them. From then on, Kalusek, the head of the Security Service for the Brașov region, the most hardened of torturers, allowed him to receive food from the women who came to the gate every day. Even here he was not forgotten by the faithful. The secret of his arrest was soon discovered. A few days after he was taken to Brșsov, women from Schei, and then from other towns, appeared at the door of the Security Service office with baskets full of food. The first arrivals were chased away, but after the miracle, because the domestication of these thugs is a miracle, Kalusek accepted the women’s food, some of which he brought to the priest here in the cell. And the priest shared it with us. (…)
Gifted with extraordinary spiritual qualities, endowed with great powers of intuition, erudite and knowledgeable about human qualities and weaknesses, Father Arsenios, after a month of investigations, had become the favourite prisoner of Inspectors Ionescu and Tomescu during sleepless nights. During the day he was kept on guard like all the other prisoners, but at night, after the officers had left, he was taken upstairs to their office. During the interrogation, he answered the questions with interesting digressions that aroused the curiosity of the two tyrants with intellectual pretensions.
In 1948, the Romanian Patriarchate had proposed the name of Archimandrite Arsenios Boca as titular bishop for the seat of the diocese of Maramureș, temporarily occupied by Bishop Policarp of America. On this occasion, the Ministry of Culture asked the Communist Security Service for the necessary information to decide on the appointment.
After the investigation, the Security Service considered Father Arsenios to be a public danger to the proletarian dictatorship and, instead of deciding to appoint him as bishop, decided to arrest him immediately. A priest with such authority and influence over the masses of the faithful had to be quickly removed from the Church and imprisoned.
Father Arsenios was being investigated for alleged links with the leaders of the anti-communist resistance, who were said to have taken refuge near the Sâmbăta de Sus monastery between 1945 and 1947. Another very serious accusation was that he had given life to this Brâncovenesc monastic settlement at the foot of the Făgăraș Mountains, making it a centre of Christian spirituality opposed to atheistic communism. In the last two years, its very presence in the middle of the villages of Țara Făgăraș had become, for the Communist Party, a defiance against the action of sovietisation. Our imprisonment in the same cell with Father Arsenios was a great privilege.
(Victor Rosca – Kalusek’s Mill. The Beginning of the Communist Repression, ed. Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 87-94)