One of the many sufferings of Gioga Parizianu
One day, Țurcanu announces us again:
-Bandits, see to it that I bring you one of your brave legionaries. A green Macedonian. Don’t say a word about what’s going on here!
Soon the door opened and the guard appeared, accompanied by a shorter but well bound prisoner with lively, questioning eyes. I heard a whisper: It’s Gioga Parizianu.
Gioga was indeed a young man of whom much was said, for he was of a cheerful and robust nature.
I had also heard that he had taken part in an action in Bacău (if I’m not mistaken), where the unit to which he belonged, having only one rifle, had thought of getting it from the Russian soldiers who had surrounded the town. It was around 1945-1946, or you could find Russian troops everywhere in the country. This was probably the reason why Țurcanu wanted to know from his own mouth how this action was carried out and who was involved.
The scenario repeated itself. Gioga was immediately surrounded by his former friends, now re-educated, who asked him all sorts of questions, making him believe that there was a nice legionary atmosphere in the room.
They proceeded in such a way as to make the moment of their attack on him as shocking as possible. At a signal, all these friends rushed at him with boots, fists and whatever blunt objects they had at hand.
-You bandit, do you think we’re still bandits like you? We’ve woken up to reality. And give, and give… they hit him with the shift. When some got tired, others started.
One day the guard who’d taken him out of his cell with his clothes came in.
When he saw Gioga, he shuddered. He was a misshapen mass of flesh, almost unrecognisable. They had disfigured him in a beating.
-Leave the room immediately, without a word! the guard ordered.
What could have been in the minds of these guards, who knew everything that was going on, who had taken part in this massacre from the beginning, and who were now watching everything that was going on in this room? They had their own families. When they left in the evening at the end of the programme – when they went home – could they embrace their wives, their children? Could there be another life for them that we couldn’t even imagine? And so many others… There were questions we couldn’t answer.
After many days of torture, Gioga began to speak. He told how he and other friends, armed with a pistol he had, had been waiting in a more suitable place for an armed Russian soldier to appear. The soldier appeared with a machine gun strapped to his back.
Plucking up courage, with his heart between his teeth, he fired a shot at the Russian. The echo of the gunshot was so loud that the soldier, startled, ran away, forgetting the Russian’s machine gun.
He now said he wasn’t sure if he had hit the Russian. It seemed to him that the soldier had ducked when he fired at him. Could he have ducked to avoid the bullet? Certainly, after a while, when the shock had passed, it seemed to him that he had made a reckless gesture, and he told others of his deed with great pride.
There was much admiration for Gioga Parizianu, especially among the Macedonians. He, too, joined our ranks of the isolated, subjecting himself to the same regime and the same time that was going on in Pitești.
(Aurel Vișovan – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)