Memories about Father Coriolan Buracu

Father Coriolan Buracu was one of the great personalities of the Almăjului Valley in the mountainous region of Banat.

His achievements were in the fields of pastoral, culture and the promotion of Romanian ideals. There are a number of studies and articles that have presented the work of Father Coriolan Buracu, and others will undoubtedly follow. In what follows, I will only present some personal memories related to this great personality of the Almăj Valley, but also to his family. These memories are linked to documents kept in the Boldea House in Borlovenii-Vechi and in the collective memory of my family.

Father Coriolan Buracu was the grandson of the teacher Pavel Boldea (1842-1917) from Borlovenii-Vechi, who had direct descendants: Pavel Boldea (later Dean and Colonel K.U.K. with a brilliant career), Grigore, Remus, Călina and Măriuța. Călina married into the Buracu family from Prigor and had Coriolan Iosif, Tudosia and Elena.

In Coriolan Buracu’s upbringing and education, his uncle, the dean Pavel Boldea, played a decisive role. Protopope Colonel K.U.K., Pavel Boldea took upon himself the provision of schooling expenses for his nephew. From that time, in the Boldea house in Borlovenii-Vechi, there is an exchange of correspondence between uncle and nephew during the time when the latter was at school, at the Gymnasium in Brașov and then in Caransebeș. It also seems that the “nephew” obeyed him carefully, but still behaved within the limits of his young age, indulging in the little mischiefs inherent in age. It also seems that at school Coriolan Buracu, without being outstanding, was a good and excellent student in certain areas. Thus, even as a young man, he was a passionate and likeable person. The same Protopope Pavel Boldea, who had become the commander of the Orthodox canons in the Austro-Hungarian army, facilitated the appointment of Father Coriolan Buracu to the same corps during the First World War.

In the Boldea house are preserved letters to his cousin, Lieutenant Colonel K.U.K. Romulus Boldea in Borloveni, in the 50s of the 20th century, the time of the cruel communist persecutions, when the two cousins had to go through the Bolshevik concentrationist universe.

In his letters, written mostly from Baia Mare and Bucharest, from the home of his children who protected and cared for him, Father Coriolan Buracu wrote cautiously but still with fervour. His letters were an exhortation to hope in the good and just work of God.

In this context, in my family, the story was told with admiration of how Father Coriolan, “uica Coriolan” as he was lovingly and respectfully called, was brought up in the early fifties to be sent to the death canal.

The guard who arrested him, however, had a reflex of humanity and asked: “Father, have you been arrested before?” and the answer came loudly, fearlessly, in the manner of Coriolan Buracu: “Oh, how many times”. And then, at the canal, in the death squad of priests condemned to extermination, Father Coriolan Buracu found the moral strength to encourage those with him every morning at the beginning of slavery with the words: “Lift up your hearts, Romanian brothers!” But the most touching personal memory I have is a postcard that Father Coriolan Buracu sent to Borloveni in August 1954.

At that time my grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel K.U.K. Romulus Boldea, was under house arrest, and I remember well that the family did not think he would come soon, if ever. In the postcard sent and received at the beginning of August 1954, Father Coriolan Buracu wrote: ”Dear Romulus, I am writing to you in Borloveni because I know that you will be there before the feast of the Holy Mother of God.” Ten days later, on 16 August 1954, Romulus Boldea returned to Borloveni, to his house and his family.

I met Father Coriolan Buracu in person only a few times, but the memory of his personality makes me feel both the pride and the responsibility of being a descendant of the same family and the same nation.

(Prof. Alexandru Nemoianu)