Order of indictment of Nicu Steinhardt (January 8, 1960)
Indictment of Nicu Steinhardt.
Ministry of the Interior, Criminal Investigation Department
Order of Indictment
Bucharest, 8 January 1960.
I, Captain Onea Mircea, Criminal Investigator of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Police, examining the criminal investigation file no. 1523, concerning Steinhardt Nicu Aurel, born on 29 July 1912 in Bucharest, son of Oscar and Antoaneta, lawyer, recently legal adviser, Romanian citizen, citizen of the People’s Republic of Romania, last residing at 3 Ion Ghica Street, Bucharest.
Report
Steinhardt Nicu Aurel was arrested on 4 January 1960 on the basis of an arrest warrant.
According to the criminal investigation documents, in 1954, having adopted an attitude hostile to the P.R.R. form of government, the aforementioned person, under the name of Ion Creifăleanu, resumed his contacts with the fugitive Alexandru Paleologu, then hiding in Câmpulung Muscel, with whom he began to carry out counter-revolutionary activities.
For this purpose, and in order to attract more followers to this criminal activity, Noica Constantin, in agreement with Steinhardt Nicu and Paleologu Alexandru, began to write a book hostile to the socialist order in our country. This counter-revolutionary writing was entitled Povestiri din Hegel (Stories from Hegel) and was completed at the end of 1956, beginning of 1957, after which it was distributed to several people in Câmpulung and Bucharest, both at meetings organised for this purpose by Noica Constantin, Casasovici Coca and Strelisker Beatrice, and by Strelisker Beatrice, Enescu Teodor, Steinhardt Nicu Aurel and Al. George Sergiu.
The hostile writings of the legionnaires Cioran Emil and Eliade Mircea, who were in contact with Noica Constantin and who were known to Steinhardt Nicu, were also distributed at these meetings; these writings were smuggled into the country and our press took a stand against them, exposing their counter-revolutionary content. These writings were also passed on to Steinhardt Nicu, who in turn passed them on, and in the meetings organised they were praised by him and those present, always trying to popularise their authors, while at the same time the authors of press articles exposing the content of the writings in question were slandered in every possible way.
Also for the purpose of propaganda and undermining the social and political order in the Romanian People’s Republic, Noica Constantin, in agreement with Steinhardt Nicu and the other members of her group illegally transmitted his counter-revolutionary writings Povestiri din Hegel and Resposta unui prieten lontat (Stories from Hegel and Letter to a friedn from afar to the legionary refugees Cioran Emil[1] and Eliade Mircea[2] in the West, so that they could publish them in France among the Romanian refugees.
Until the arrest of Noica Constantin and the other members of this group, they managed to involve in their subversive activities several people hostile to the regime, belonging to the former exploiting classes[3] and with political convictions hostile to the regime in our country:
Considering that the above facts fulfil the elements of the offence under Article 209 (2) (a) and (b) (2) of the Penal Code of the Republic of Poland;
on the basis of the provisions of Articles 248-6 and 248-7 of the Criminal Code of the R.P.R,
Order
– that Steinhardt Nicu Aurel be charged with the offence under Article 209(2)(a) and (b) of the Criminal Code of the Macao SAR;
– the defendant shall be informed thereof by signature;
-a copy of this order shall be submitted to the military prosecutor supervising the investigation within 24 hours.
Criminal Security Investigator, Captain Onea Mircea
Aware of the contents of this order
(ss./Nicu Steinhardt)
(AMJ, D1M, criminal files, file no. 118988, volume 3, pp. 312-313; document reproduced in Nicu Steinhardt in the Securitate files (1959-1989), edited by Clara Cosmineanu, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, pp. 67-69).
[1] In fact, Emil Cioran was never a member of the Legionnaires’ movement, but only a sympathiser during the inter-war period, like most of the intellectual elite of the time. Sympathising with the Legionnaires is not the same as being a Legionnaire, but this aspect of basic logic did not apply to the Securitate, which labelled most opponents of the Communist regime as “Legionnaires”. Moreover, the Securitate’s obsessive accusations of legionnaireism eventually reached the point of absurdity, as Ioan Ianolide would confess in his memoirs: “I was given to know that: a wedding could be considered a ‘counter-revolutionary legion meeting’; a gift given at a baptism could be ‘legion aid’ organised for anti-state purposes; a pilgrimage to a monastery is a ‘legion training march’ with the aim of seizing political power; (…) a girl who falls in love with a former prisoner becomes a legionnaire and is put on trial; faith itself is legionnaire, therefore it must be condemned by the law”.
[2] Mircea Eliade, at least in his youth, was attached to the legionary phenomenon, but Eliade’s attachment was primarily to spiritual values, to their important role in national regeneration, which the legionary movement supported. In his memoirs, Eliade noted that Legionnaireism was “the only Romanian political movement that took Christianity and the Church seriously” (Mircea Eliade, Memorii, vol. II, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1991, pp. 26-27). Later, in exile, he no longer expressed any direct link with the Legionary Movement.
[3] A typical expression of the wooden language that reflects the class hatred promoted by communist ideology.