Fr. Nicolae Grebenea – a man of high moral standing
A star has gone out! On 2 July 2006, Father Nicolae Grebenea left this world.
Believing that he had fulfilled his mission here on earth, God sent his angels to raise his tormented soul to heaven, healing the pain of his body, weakened by three persecutions: Carlist, Antonescian and Communist.
He was born in Rășinari, the ancient Romanian village at the foot of Sibiu Mountains, on 25 October 1905. He was the eighth of nine children.
He was orphaned at the age of six. As his book “Memories of Darkness” shows, he had a difficult childhood. He attended primary school in his home village with teachers who were unusually harsh. In addition to being beaten with a knotted cane for reading mistakes in Hungarian, from 5 to 20 strokes for misreading a letter, he was also hit on the head with the key to the school office, causing excruciating pain. The marks on his head disappeared after many years.
After finishing primary school, he enrolled at the Normal School and graduated in 1925. He was appointed as a teacher in the commune of Văleni Roman. After one year he enrolled as a student at the “Andrean” Theological Academy in Sibiu.
Between 1934 and 1935, as he was not a priest, he completed his military training at the Ploiești Officers’ School.
A difficult mission was his destiny. In 1936 he became a member of the Legionary Movement, a path with no turning back, with long and stormy years, when everything was falling apart, when everything in our country was crumbling.
Together with his comrades in arms and his faith, he stood up for the Church of Christ and defended the essence and history of a nation threatened with destruction…
I met him in the summer of 1941. We worked together and remained brothers in all that united us here in life and beyond. He was secretary of the county organisation of the Legionary Movement in Bacău from 6 September 1940 to 21 January 1941.
Next to Father Nicolae Grebenea and Professor Vasile Stoian, former Prefect of Bacău County, I had my most beautiful apprenticeship. He was a man of high moral and cultural standing, of chosen intransigence, with a beautiful diction, a pleasure to talk to.
He had the kind of tenacity that we find in the Moți people of Iancu when they came down from the rocks and trees to face the battalions of the Hungarian oppressor (…).
In the autumn of 1941, he was arrested by theSecuritate forces in Bacău. After being detained for several days, he found a good moment and one night, through a small window, climbing down the drain on the first floor, he escaped from Securitate’s arrest and took refuge at a German airport in Gherăiești-Bacău, from where he hoped to cross the border. From here he will go to Iași for this purpose: to escape from the country.
But the demons of evil are at work, not at rest. A trainee in our ranks, disguised as a Legionnaire, pursued by the Securitate – an agent of the Anti-Legionary Brigade, led by Commissioners Onică, Oproiu and Atanasiu – manages to get in touch with Father and will sell him out.
Thus begins the long and dark ordeal of Father Nicolae Grebenea, an ordeal that will last 25 years. We meet in April 1942 at the General State Security in Bucharest. I had just been arrested.
He was very weak. He’d just come out of a hunger strike in the water cell. What was this cell? It was a toilet on an iron grid with water running underneath. This was where Father was kept for days and nights in order to extract statements that would please the investigating officer. We were only kept together for a few hours. We were kept in isolation for further investigation. In two months’ time we will meet again in Galați, in the court-martial, in the courtroom for the trial. First on the agenda will be Father’s case. The indictment will be read.
Nonsense! A man not only lacks the material strength to commit these crimes, but also the time of life necessary to comprehend their magnitude.
Father Nicolae Grebenea defended himself with all his dignity and courage, with a plea of particular beauty. He was prompt in his replies and did not deny his convictions.
He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labour and released in the summer of 1964, after 23 years of subjugation and destruction. He would spend most of his years in Aiud prison, the dungeon of Romanian suffering, of the Wallachians, of the Legionaries and then of the Romanian elite after 1944. He was also sent to the lead mines of Baia Sprie.
In 1951, he found himself in the very harmful Baia Sprie lead mine labour camp. Here, during the Great Week of the Passion, some of the inmates suggested to Father Nicolae that he celebrate the Resurrection by celebrating Liturgy in the mine.
Father accepted the proposal, determined that they would all bear the consequences if necessary, since prayer was severely punished by the administration’s executioners. On the night of the Resurrection, the song of glory rang out from every breast: Christ is risen!
It was the most fantastic atmosphere of silence in the mine, 500 metres underground. The mystery of faith gave them a holy thrill and an unspeakable satisfaction. Forgetting for a moment the conditions of the damned, the service shook the souls of all, lifting them to higher spheres and giving them new strength.
Released from Aiud prison in the summer of 1964, Father Nicolae Grebenea was not spared from persecution, investigation and harassment, even by his brother priests.
Yes! The brother priests (superiors) persecuted him, denounced him and asked the ecclesiastical authorities to excommunicate him. Father forgave them, knowing that he was fighting for a just and holy cause – a protest against the godless.
(Petru Baciu – Hidden Crucifixions, Vol. II, “Buna Vestire” Cultural Foundation Publishing House, Bucharest, 2004, pp. 206-209)