Our Lady appeared to me in my cell

I was arrested and taken to the Securitate headquarters in Pitești, on Equality Street. Then followed the investigation—the horror of horrors. It lasted nearly two months and was unimaginably cruel. (…)

One night, after another brutal beating, though I was in unbearable pain, the Mother of God granted me sleep while I prayed. Late in the night, I woke and stirred. Thinking it was the guard, I asked, “What is it, Mr. Guard, are you taking me away again?”

I opened my eyes and saw, in the dim light of the cell, a luminous figure—a nymph-like presence. “Is that you, Mother of God?” I whispered. She replied in an unearthly voice, placing her palm gently on my forehead:

“It is I. Do not fear. You will not die in prison, and your situation will be resolved on the fourth of March.”

“Mother of God, Mother of God!” I cried, reaching out my hands toward her—but she vanished, ascending to heaven from where she had come.

The apparition of the Mother of God was my salvation—not only from Pitești, but also from the hell of Aiud, where I later suffered two lung congestions, a galloping fever of over 40 degrees, and not even an aspirin was given to me. Each time I was granted an aspirin, it happened miraculously—again through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, to the astonishment of all the prisoners.

Please, dear readers, do not smile. I am not a mystic, and the torture had not driven me to madness.

I prayed to God day and night to deliver me from those beasts. On 25 September 1948, I was transferred to Craiova Prison, and on 4 March 1949, I was tried by the Craiova Military Court and sentenced to six years in prison. I had no right to a defence lawyer, and the sentence was pronounced the very same day—4 March 1949.

I can still hear the voice of the Mother of God: “Your situation will be clarified on 4 March.”

(Nicolae Enescu – Memory of Tears, Ed. Pitești, 2007, pp. 19–22)