“My dear ones, keep your faith no matter what comes next!”

They took me in 1959, to the Securitate on the 16th of September. “You have a gun at home. Give us the gun!” There was a reason. We went all the way home, they searched my house, then they took me away and kept us here in Drăgășani, in a cellar there, for I don’t know how long. One night they took us to Pitești. And there the torture began. The worst punishment in the world! Tortures, beatings! From 1:00 to 3:00 in the morning we were beaten.

What happened? From 1:00 to 3:00 in the morning, they would beat you like this, in a delirious frenzy.

They’d take you out in your underwear, barefoot, put these black glasses over your eyes and take you into a hall where there was only cement, and a few people would beat you: this one beat that one, that one beat that one. We were beaten by one Cetățeanu Dumitru. And he asked us to declare that I had bought a pistol and that Gh. Grecu bought a Steyr pistol from the Germans, that we wanted to shoot Gheorghiu Dej. “Well, sir, I’ve only seen Gheorghiu Dej in the picture.” “That’s not necessary, but you must declare!” Well, how could I declare if it wasn’t him? How could I write that if it wasn’t him? Of course, it was a fight! Six months later, Gh. Grecu made a statement, the poor thing! He couldn’t go on. And then they took me. “Well this one made a statement! Didn’t you hear? This one says you wanted to shoot Gheorghiu Dej!” Alright then! In the meantime he hit me in the nose and I fell head first on the cement. When I fell head first on the cement, the blood came running out of my nose, and I tried to get the blood out of my nose with my hand so that I could breathe, because I couldn’t breathe or come to my senses after the blow. Meanwhile an officer with a big star, a major, came by. And when I was on my back, I grabbed his trousers from down here. I said, “Comrade Major, save us!” He came over and hit me in the hand. But while he was hitting me, I didn’t let go of his trousers. No! And then the major said: “Lieutenant Cetățeanu, three steps back!” Cetățeanu says: “Comrade Major Săvulescu, please don’t interfere with my command!”

Major Săvulescu, sir, drew his pistol and said: “Lieutenant Cetățeanu!”. “Sir! I am Lieutenant Cetățeanu Dumitru. At your command!” The major said to him: “You’re dismissed!”. The major took my hand: “Get up! Come with me to the office!” I didn’t think he was human. I went over there. “Sit in the chair!” “Comrade Major, I can’t sit in the chair or I’ll bleed all over it.” “What is a chair compared to a man’s life?” One was a communist and the other one still a communist. Well, look at that! Two communists. Yes, this man and that man! And I ended up sitting on the corner of the chair. I sat down so I wouldn’t stain the chair, but I still had blood coming out of my nose. The Major gave me a towel and I wiped it off and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “They want us to declare ourselves crooks, me and a farmer, so they can take our houses – I knew the drill – and they want to put us on trial.” “Do you mind?” “Well, yes! That’s not true.” “Well, how is it not true?” “It isn’t, that’s what they’re asking us to do.” Then the doorbell rang and Cetățeanu came and said: “Bring me your father’s file.” He found out that I was a priest, I was younger, about 50. He brought me the file, read it and said:

“Fathers, you are sentenced to 6 years and the farmer Gheorghe Grecu to 5 years.” I told him: “Comrade Major, but I haven’t had the trial yet.” “Well, you haven’t, but here’s the list” – that is, the note from the Securitate, written in pencil, how many years they were going to give us. It was written there: The bandit Bălașa Dumitru will get 6 years, as an intellectual. The bandit Gheorghe Grecu will get 5 years, because it was considered that I had influenced him as an intellectual, because he was a peasant. When I saw that…! Major Săvulescu said: “If we don’t condemn you, others will come and lock us up and put us on trial and condemn us and put us next to you. How can I help you?” he said. “I can give the order that they don’t beat you any more.” “Comrade Major, that would be ideal. At least it would be quiet at night.” He also called Gheorghe Grecu, who had declared that he had indeed bought a pistol. He asked: “Did you buy the pistol?” Gheorghe Grecu said: “I didn’t buy it, Comrade Major.” They told him that if he declared that, they’d leave him and stop beating him. He said: “Why didn’t the Father make a statement?!” “Father resisted the beatings more than I did.”

Anyway, that was over, they let us go and as I was leaving he wanted to shake my hand – he was a nice man – and he said: “If anyone slaps you again or swears at you, ask for yourself to be taken out for the report of Comrade Major Săvulescu. But say my name, because if you don’t say my name you won’t do anything”.

We stayed, they took us to the common cell and asked us where we were: “I was in a fight.” Even here we weren’t allowed to say, because if we did, they would turn us in, our informers. And then we stayed for two weeks, and the testimonies of the six people from Sutești arrived. Mărăcine’s statement was that he did not know anything bad about Father Bălașa. One line was written. At the trial he said the same as everyone else.

And it was nice then, they beat us to admit it. How could we admit such things? When they saw that I didn’t admit it, that it wasn’t true, they interrupted the session. They took me into the other room. They beat the life out of me, I wiped myself, then they took me to court and I said it again. They beat me and stabbed me in the back with a knife. But even then I didn’t admit it. Then they asked me what my last word was and I said that I want these people who bore false witness, when they celebrate some big days, weddings, baptisms, to remember that they bore false witness and put an innocent man in prison.

The food was very good: beetroot soup, salted to the max. A doctor from Leleasca told us: “If you want to survive, no matter how hungry you are, never eat the soup with a spoon and leave as much as possible at the bottom of the bowl, because the salt stays at the bottom. Because many of the people who died in prison didn’t die of starvation, they died because they were given a lot of salt and no water to drink. We never had water to drink enough to quench our thirst.

In Pitești, kid, they beat me with a plank with nails. I don’t know how many nails it had, but they were only 3-4 mm long. When it hit you, blood flowed, but it didn’t go into your flesh. It went through your skin, it just made you bleed. Then they would put another prisoner on top of you and wipe you with a towel soaked in water, or even with spit. Then you’d catch fire! You thought you would go mad. I got infected. When I left here, I went to Jilava.

 

When I got there I felt I couldn’t go on, that I had septicaemia. I had a big wound on my back. We were lucky that they took us there for a bath. How could I take a bath? I showed the guard: “Do you know what’s on your back?” “I can’t see it, but I’m waiting to be cleaned.” They took me to the infirmary and a deaf doctor examined me. She ended up cutting out all the rot on my back. It helped me a lot that the woman poured a bottle of penicillin on the wound and told me to go and change the dressing in two days’ time. When I went back in two days, she said: “What, you bandit! There’s no more dressing.” Then I tore my shirt. I had something to bind myself with because others had given it to me, but I had nothing to put on the wound. I took my shirt, others gave me from the bottom of their shirts.

Then they sent us to Aiud, but they took us around the country for a few weeks. I don’t know where we went. By train. It was a van train, no windows, or anything. We arrived at Aiud. There they put us in a room for a medical examination, to say you didn’t die because of them. There was a doctor named Christmas who looked at my back. He took a scalpel and said that the big wound, had healed with buds. And he cut there. He said, “Don’t be shy, it’s going to hurt a little bit, but we have to cut those buds off so that the mark stays. And it stayed. I still have the scar on my back.

I arrived at Aiud in the autumn of 1961. At first they put us in a ward, in a bunch. We slept on the floor, like animals, without beds, without anything. Then they put us in cells with four beds on top of each other. And there we organised ourselves, we held conferences, in the cells, in the wards. Then they isolated us. Me, Father Dumitru Stăniloae – I stayed with him, but I stayed a little – Fr. Valerius Ananias. But they kept us for a while and separated us, because they said: “These are the bosses!”, because we were talking, giving lectures, telling stories, and they turned us in, all of us. But they were listening at the door, they had devices…

Finally they isolated me. They put me in a cell by myself. I had a guy next door who’d gone crazy from the beatings. Like animals. Water, never enough; food: beetroot, with arpacaș. At least the arpacaș was a bit substantial! They gave it to us in the evening.

Dr Ridichie asked me what my cellmates thought of the Communist Party. When I heard him say something like, “Well, sir, I said – I couldn’t help it, you know – is that how you ended up?” “They ask me. What should I tell them?” “Tell them what? That I’m the informer?” I don’t know what I did that got me into solitary confinement. They didn’t tell me anything, except that they kept me in a cell for about three days, and in the evening they brought me a straw mattress so that I wouldn’t sleep on the cement, because there was no bed, there was nothing. From there I understood that you don’t have to answer rudely, but what, could I do? Play Ridichie’s game? I couldn’t stand that. I had a very hard time in Aiud after that.

From Aiud they took us to Balta Brăilei, and then we had to make statements that we didn’t believe in God, they said, to re-educate us, to deliver us back to the society re-educated. And you had to make a written declaration. I couldn’t do such a thing.

I told you they took me in 1964 to make a statement that I didn’t believe in God. How could I make this statement when in the brigade of 2600 men I was doing mass in prison, with great risks, and they had taken me so many times… (Editor’s note: for a beating)? There was a paper saying that if we wanted to go home we had to declare that we didn’t believe in God. But they said everyone had to declare in writing: “I, the undersigned X, son of so-and-so from so-and-so, declare that I have never believed in God, that I have lied…”. That was the text, but it had to be written by hand so that the document would be preserved in the archives. It was written by Ișalnița, our commander (the major) who terrorised us. He beat me for about a week; Dr. Pușcașu said to me: “Make that statement, Father, because we know why you gave it, or they will kill you”.

And then, I’m not bragging, it was a grace from God, I told him: “Doctor, I’m not going to make a statement,” but in the end I told him that I was going to say that I was going to make one, but I was actually going to give them a sermon because they gathered us all there! They said they wanted us to make this statement so that they could return us to society, re-educated, that is, far from God. Let’s declare that we are far from God so that we can continue to build this monster of communism.

And I went to the Major with a notebook. He said: “It’s good that you’ve made up your mind. I told him that first I would declare in front of everyone, and then I would write, that you would have to write, so that the declaration could be found in the security archives, a declaration signed by me, that I, Father Balasha, declare that I don’t believe in God. What would have happened? It would have been better if the ground had sunk under me!

And they rounded them all up. He was standing about 40 metres away with four secretaries in the courtyard (in Balta Brăilei, where I was – they had taken us out of Aiud) and the microphone came so that everyone could hear, and then I started with “Dear comrades”, but I told them: “For eight days I have been fighting to get rid of God, to declare that I don’t believe in God. You have given…” (that some of them had made the declaration that they could not stand it and had nothing to lose). I then preached the most beautiful sermon I had ever preached in my life, and I expected them to come and shoot me afterwards, because I said that if a bullet came to my head, I would die faster than if I were to die in a normal way on a bed. And luckily for me, the power to my microphone didn’t go out. When I had finished, I told them that they were now going to kill me and tell my house that I had died with faith in God and hadn’t renounced my faith. I knelt down, put the microphone down, took two stones and sang the Lord’s Prayer on my knees. We had no voice because we werefamished, 2600 people knelt down and in the stones rhythm we sang an “Our Father” in Balta Brăilei (the microphone was still working). The four secretaries were still there and the commander of Ișalnița.

I got up, said three prostrations, asked them to forgive me because I thought they were going to shoot me, and “I’m sorry I hurt you too”. Meanwhile, I said a prayer that I used to say, ours, all of ours. And I told them the prayer, our prayer, the prayer of the old people who, in one way or another, had to make a pact with the devil, as Venerable Firmilian said, before we crossed the bridge.

With my soul full of sins
I enter Your temple of gold and silver,
I go with my eyes bowed to the earth.
I come to ask of You, Lord Most High, my praise,
forgiveness of sins, for my soul is full of them.
I have no more of what You have made.
I have profaned all that was holy.
I have often risen above You
And instead of praying and singing
I have praised You.
I have despised, O fool, all that is pure and holy,
I never thought of heaven
Nor did I think of heaven.
Nor have I ever said to thee, Father!
I’ve been in the wilderness so long
I can’t even hear myself.
But You, You are good and kind and holy Father,
and you have forgiven all those who have repented of their sins
and made them your children again.
Most Holy Father, forgive me too
For I too have been yours
A man who has done nothing but evil all his life.
And as You have washed the harlot clean from her sins,
Grant me, O Lord, your forgiveness
For I feel so burdened with evil
As I say this prayer, Father.

When I finished, they thought it over and switched off the microphone. The commander walked past me with four guards with pistols and said, “So this is who you are, bandit ay?” I said, “Comrade Major, I’m not renouncing God”. And he said: “You’ll see the house when the pigs will fly!

In the evening, of course, I waited for him to pick me up. After nine o’clock it was time for bed. I got into the second bed. We slept like monkeys, four beds on top of each other, and I was on the second bed. And after nine o’clock four secretaries came in with pistols and took me to the brigadier, a lawyer from Timișoara, who came to me (I pretended to be asleep): “Father Bălașa – said the lawyer – you are called to the command.” I got down, got dressed, went there… I won’t tell you what followed… Eight days followed, after which they finally put me in the heavy cell, with one day a piece of bread and three glasses of water, two days only a glass of water in the morning, one at noon and one in the evening. The next day a piece of bread and three glasses of water… And the same again. Then, on the third day, I was as hungry as a horse; this sinful body! I mean, I was thirsty, I was hungry. After the fourth day, the Holy God gave me no appetite. On the fifth day, the guard stood beside me with the batton and beat me to eat and drink water. On the eighth day, when I finally got out, he handed me over to the brigadier (the lawyer): “You can see for yourself he is not capable of staying on his feet”.

Anyway, I won’t add anything else to this. Two weeks later they let us all go home. Two weeks later! How would I have stood before God and the people if I had written that statement?

My dears, keep your faith, whatever comes next, don’t think about it. The greatest strength, the greatest help comes from God: “Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth”. Everything that is evil, everything that happens, the troubles, the pains in our household, the misfortunes, these are from the enemy.

May Lord help our Romanian people, help us too, enlighten our minds so that we know what we are doing, so that we do not go towards death but towards life. The Holy Scripture says: “19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; (Deutoronomy 30:19)”.

Years of communist imprisonment had passed. More than three thousand Orthodox priests had been torn from their families and taken away in black security vans. Where to? No one knew. Nor did we know where we were being taken. From time to time, when the noise of the engines allowed, we would find out which station or town the train was passing through. Squeezed on our knees by the guards, like fish in a sardine tin, we could hardly breathe. In the darkness of the endless night, the wagon stopped. Not a whisper, ordered the guard. The black glasses on everyone. – You’re not going out, bandit? – He’s dead, comrade officer… Christmas had come.

More than three thousand Orthodox churches were closed. The bells called to prayer in the empty spaces. The faithful crossed the holy threshold, but the altar was deserted. The myrrh bearers still wondered, slowly, in silent sorrow: “Has there been any news of Father? When will they let him go, since he has done nothing? Silence and fear. For two months I had been alone in a cell on the top floor of Aiud prison. Now I was free from that terrible loneliness. There were eight of us in the cell. Four iron beds on top of each other, we rested from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. We sat on the edge of the bed and against the cold walls. From time to time the bean slot of the cell door would open. The guard would look to see if anyone was lying on the bed. And if it was discovered that someone, deprived of strength, had broken the agreement, the cell would be open and the ‘bandit’ in question would be taken to the hole (solitary confinement), for a day or two, depending on how generous the guard was. The eight of them were twinned in misery. One had been sentenced to 25 years. He had given another a loaf of bread in the mountains. He knew Morse code well and told us the news he received from time to time: another van is coming… from where?… with how many?…

The palm of the Damascene was the prisoner’s calendar. Christmas was in three days. Let’s have a Holy Mass. How? Every now and then, instead of a piece of polenta, they’d give us a slice of bread the size of two matchboxes.

Rarely, they’d give us two acorns of jam in the morning… And we’d celebrate the Holy Mass. How? A man’s slice of bread was the “artos”. We put a cup of water in a small bowl – we didn’t have enough water – and mixed it with the jam. In three days it fermented and we had some kind of wine. It was Christmas, the holy night. In all the cells they sang carols, carols! For the good Lord is born / His name is Christmas. For the Lord is born, the Beautiful One / His name is Christ. Communism dies and our Saviour is born, the Saviour of us all. Some of the soldiers were human. They pretended not to hear. Others knocked on doors, opened the locks. Who sang? And the terror began. There were no snitches among us. The door was slammed, the padlock sealed the cell.

The most severely punished was placed on the floor, and the oldest priest – for, thank God, there were enough of us – placed the slice of bread and the bowl of wine at the foot of the one who was lying face up. With a towel over his shoulder, instead of a patrafir, he gave the blessing with his palms crossed: Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It was answered: Amen. The great ectenia followed… all orally. An Apostle was said from memory, a Gospel – the gifts were consecrated when all seven were on their knees. Lord, who sent Your Holy Spirit at the third hour… make this bread also the Most sacred Body of Your Christ, and what is in this vessel the Most honoured Blood of Your Christ. We blessed them both, we sang the Lord’s Prayer, and the head priest gave each one a piece of the Body of the Lord and of the cup, tasting it three times, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He rose and the “lifer” made three prostrations, with “bless and forgive me the sinner”, he also received his portion of the Holy Blood from the mess tin. Was there any discussion about whether our offering would be accepted or not? “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20)”. And we all began to believe that the Holy Mass, which had as its prestol and antimension a martyr, an innocent condemned man, […] was well received. The prayers were said with tears, remembering those at home, remembering our departed. The heavens opened and we saw the light that surrounded the Godhead. The hope of the Almighty’s help strengthened us in suffering, in pain, and even when we died, we died in God, in eternity.

In 1963, he took us out of Aiud prison and took us somewhere – where? We ended up in Sălcia, in Balta Brăilei – by the dikes, to fight the waves of the Danube. A stone’s throw into the puddle made by those of us who had fought “against the socialist order”. But compared to the cell regime, here we had air, water and food, not better, but more… substantial. Horse meat was considered “humanitarian”, comforting, by the communist regime. And in truth, it was the only kind of meat given to “bandits”.

Many times I said: “God, why don’t you give those who tortured us at least two months, as they fed us, with beetroot soup and horse meat, and as little of it as possible. Let them say: I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty!

Here, on Sundays, we had a cleaning day, when we washed our shirts and found time for Holy Mass. Here, among those sentenced to several years in prison, we were the martyrs on whose chests we, the “bandits”, 3-4 priests, celebrated Holy Mass. We had an advantage over the cell because some of us, who were entitled to a parcel, received “raisins” from home. We used them to make real wine. Here we were no longer watched by the guards through the bean slot. We had Holy Mass, which lasted an hour, we and everyone received Communion. There were cowards among us who did not take part in the Holy Mass due to fear of the informers, who had begun to believe that if they served the devil they would get home sooner. We were asked to make statements that we didn’t believe in God… It was the hardest moment of our lives and mine, which we passed with flying colours. But among us, the sisters, nuns and Orthodox Christian students suffered the most… How would I look on the Day of Judgment, or before my descendants, if they found a denial of God written by my hand in the archives of the Securitate! I am not ashamed to say that I have never celebrated Holy Mass with tears and in total denial of the world, as I did in Aiud and in Balta Brăilei.

The Cell with enforced regime and the Cell with snakes – better than people, I will never forget them.

Orthodoxy should count its dead and make a List with the names of those who suffered and died in the forty years of communism. A day of those who died in the fight against communism…

(Pr. Dumitru Bălașa – The command of Love no. 1 of February 2001, pp. 20-22; The command of Love no. 2 of April 2001, pp. 28-30; The command of Love no. 3 of June 2001, p. 34-35)