Priest Dimitrie Balaur and his relatives…

There are things that I have experienced directly, and there are others that I have felt through my parents, first of all, and then through my whole family. My father, in particular, is the repository of many events in the history of a whole Bessarabian family that had to pay a heavy tribute to life, both in Bessarabia itself and in communist Romania. Today, my elderly father (soon to be 90 years old, God willing) is very active: he celebrates Mass and tirelessly responds to the call of the faithful, reads, translates, but… he speaks a little and with reserve about what he and our entire family had to endure under the communist regime on the other side of the Prut. That is why, in a way, I have taken over his pen to tell you something of the drama of our suffering.

My father, the priest Dimitrie Balaur, was born in 1903 in the village of Rezeni, in the county (then governorate) of Lăpușna, in Bessarabia, which had been under Russian occupation for almost a hundred years. Rezeni, a village that will remain in the history of our country because it was also the birthplace, some two decades earlier, of personalities already inscribed in the Book of the Nation, Ion Pelivan and Ion Inculeț, the great fighters for the Union. (…)

It was the tradition of the Balaur family that the male line, from father to son, were teachers or, above all, priests, and all of them loved to study. (…) According to the family tradition, my father went to the seminary in Chișinău. He started teaching in 1910. Bessarabia was then under Russian rule and the process of Russification was in full swing. Everyone spoke Romanian at home, but as soon as they stepped onto the school steps, the children were forced to speak only Russian. (…)

Then came the First World War. Then came the Bolshevik Revolution and the great moment of Bessarabia’s union with the motherland. My father was 15 at the time.

In reunified Romania, the young Bessarabian studied at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, graduating magna cum laude in 1928. He attended the university courses of the great personalities of the time: Nicolae Iorga, Constantin Giurgescu, Simion Mehedinți and others. He also graduated from the Faculty of Geography in 1932, also magna cum laude. During his holidays, he went home and collected folklore, among other things, which he published in the article “From the Popular Literature of Bessarabia”, 1929. Armed with these diplomas, he could have settled anywhere (…) But the love and duty he felt for Bessarabia brought him back to his homeland.

He was immediately appointed cultural adviser to the diocese of Hotin-Bălți and in this capacity, in addition to visiting other parishes, he travelled the roads of the Bessarabian counties in search of documents and old books of historical and cultural value. This effort resulted in the printing of a book entitled “Churches in Eastern Moldavia”, 1934. He married in February 1937 and was ordained a priest on Easter Eve of the same year.

Seemingly a quiet life. But not really, for grim news came from across the Dnieper, from the “Soviet sky”. These were not mere rumours, but terrible realities. They were brought by people, as many as they were able to squeeze through the dense barbed-wire net the Soviets had erected on the Dnieper.

A priest, Petre Vasilcovschi, had arrived at my father’s house. He had crossed the Dnieper with his wife and mother-in-law on the night of 1 February 1935 at Naslavcea. They had crossed the Dnieper on ice, wrapped in white sheets so as not to be seen by the Soviet border guards. My father welcomed him with great friendship and helped him to find a parish. What Father Vasilcovschi told us was terrible: murders, deportations, torture… On the other side of the Dnieper there seemed to be no life. No bells rang, no dogs barked, because the terrible famine of the grim year 1932, planned by Stalin as a year of “collectivisation”, had made people eat even cats and dogs. Priest Vasilcovschi told my father one thing he remembered: “If the Communists come, the only way out is to flee”. And so it was.

We all know today that on 26 June 1940, the USSR gave Romania an ultimatum to evacuate Bessarabia within 48 hours, an ultimatum that it did not respect, forcing the border after 24 hours. But the inhabitants of the ceded province found out too late what had happened.

On 27 June 1940, my father and mother went to the cinema in Bălți to see the film – I’m happy to say – “The Red Beast”, a documentary about the atrocities in the USSR. After the film they went home. Little did they know that the Romanian government had accepted the ultimatum under duress.

At dawn on 28 June, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, knocked on their window and told them that a priest in the neighbourhood had heard on the radio that Bessarabia was surrendered to the Soviets and that their armies had already crossed the Dnieper.

My father didn’t think twice. He quickly packed a small suitcase with papers and photographs and took my mother and me to the railway station. I was two years old. My mother later told me that we were travelling in a freight train, in the brakeman’s cabine, she was crouched on the floor with me in her arms, my father was standing to keep out the draught, because the cabine had no doors. Behind us was the house intact, with furniture, carpets, books, etc. Then the precious Horologion and about three other valuable books were lost.

That’s how we ended up in Iași, where we met many refugees, many friends, including Father Vasilcovschi. As in all these situations, there were comments: who stayed, who left? Many had loaded their luggage onto wagons and set off for the Prut to reach Romania. But at the Prut, the Soviet border guards appeared and prevented them from crossing. Others hesitated before making up their minds, and when they did, it was too late. And there were some who didn’t want to leave at all. My grandmother on my mother’s side was like that. She wanted to stay in Bălți because she was old, because she wanted to die and be buried in Bălți, and because… “the Russians are human too”, what can they do to her? And she stayed, like many in our family.

With the help of friends, my father with my mother, Minodora was her name, and myself, we arrived in Bucharest. My father was given a parish in the Obor district. But my parents’ thoughts were with their homeland and the people who remained there.

Finally, God helped and the war began to recover the stolen Bessarabian land. When the Romanian armies liberated Bessarabia, the refugees began to return to their old homes. We returned too. My father and mother filled a few suitcases with gifts for those they had left behind a year before, and with great joy they set off for Bălți. But what did they find?

In Bessarabia… nothing but misery. Space does not permit me to describe the grief of many Bessarabian families, an overwhelming grief. (…) My father had two sisters. Each of them had a son, my father’s grandchildren, my cousins. One of them, Vladimir Cecati, a young civil servant, was arrested shortly after the Soviets arrived and killed almost immediately. He left behind a young wife and a 4-month-old boy. My poor cousin wanted to go to Romania but was stopped by his parents in the hope that he would take care of them in their old age. My other nephew, Dimitrie Georgescu, a senior in high school, had been deported along with many young men from the town. His mother, my father’s sister, had buried her mother, my paternal grandmother, and her husband, who had died of tuberculosis. (…) A cousin of my father’s, Constantin Balaur, a teacher in the commune of Vorniceni, was arrested with other intellectuals from the commune and killed on 15 July 1941. (…) My maternal grandmother, Elena Danilov, who used to say that “Russians are people too”, was deported to Siberia on 13 June 1941. (…)

We learned all this when we returned to Bălți immediately after the liberation of Bessarabia in 1941.

My father resumed his post as cultural adviser and editor of the magazine “The Bessarabian Church”. Concerned about the tragic fate of many of his relatives and acquaintances, he wrote, among other things, an article entitled ‘The Fate of a Transnistrian Priest’, which appeared in the magazine in 1943. In this article he did nothing but tell the truth. But later, in 1948, when communism came to Romania, the article was among the works banned by the new academy. My father was proud of this and said: “I’m honoured because I’m alongside Eminescu and other Romanian writers banned by the Communists”. But in a while the ‘payment’ for this article would be harsh. But I do not want to get ahead of myself with the story.

So I lived in Bălți from 1941 to 1944. The war had moved away from us, reached Stalingrad and then started to move closer again. It was clear what was waiting for us.

My father and mother packed their bags, this time a little more than four years earlier, and on a Monday, 21 March 1944, we hurried off. I remember that second escape well: the house with all our things packed, the streets full of people and, above all, the Bălți-Pământeni railway station, with the last trains to Romania, crowded with desperate people, the screams, the cries of those who left and those who stayed, the luggage and children pushed through the windows into the compartments… We left in time, because a few days later, on Friday 25 March, the day of the Annunciation, the Soviet armies entered Bălți.

I first stopped in Caransebeș, but I didn’t stay there for long, because my father, who was known in the world of priests, a respected man, was appointed “spiritual” (a theological teaching rank) at the “Mitropolitul Nifon” seminary in Bucharest. We had no home. I slept in a room in the seminary that had previously been its museum. Many other Bessarabians slept with us, some of them without papers. They had all fled from the Soviet mob.

The war was not yet over, and the Soviets had already begun their hunt for Bessarabians. (…)

I will never forget the day of 26 October 1945, St. Dmitri. It was my father’s name day. Many people came to wish him a happy birthday. There were priests, but also civilians, gentlemen in neat black suits. I was playing with other children nearby, when suddenly we stopped playing in amazement because my father’s guests began to sing: “Dnieper, on your shore / grass grows and grows / grass grows and grows, / my heart is rotting…”. Or: “Mother, you cursed me so badly / that I became a refugee…”.

Tall men, white-haired or grey-haired, sang and their eyes were full of tears, and some cried their eyes out. (…)

In the following years, on my father’s name day, there were fewer and fewer guests. The communist regime began rounding them up and throwing them into prisons.

In 1948, the ‘Metropolitan Nifon” seminary was closed by the atheist regime and turned into a factory. (…) My father was transferred to the large and beautiful cathedral in the Domain Park, improperly called the Cașin Monastery. The parish priest was Dumitru Manta, who had built the church around 1938. We moved into two small rooms in the attic of the parish house (…).

The revolution in Hungary had taken place: 1956. Immediately the atmosphere in our house became tense. In our neighbourhood, and especially around the church, pairs of young vagrants appeared who seemed to have nothing to do. In fact, everyone knew they were Security Service agents. They would argue with each other, sometimes even on the steps of the church or on the grass in the courtyard of the rectory. And they’d whisper to each other: “Last night they picked up so-and-so”.

On 22 March 1959, the church was closed. During the night they arrested the parish priest, Dumitru Manta, with his whole family: his wife and three children. Along with the priest, a teacher, a caretaker and some parishioners were arrested. While suspicion was still in full bloom (suspicion, that poison the communists used against each and every one of us), whispers were heard among the parishioners accusing my father of arresting the parish priest. Hadn’t this Bessarabian priest done his colleague a “favour”, thinking that he alone would remain in charge of the parish? The slander seemed to have taken root, especially since the church was reopened on 1 April, eight days after the priest’s arrest. Father remained calm. On 3 April I turned 21. It was a sad birthday. We felt the danger around us, the ground floor and first floor of the parish house were deserted, the apartments were sealed.

The next day, Saturday 4 April 1959, my father was on duty. The secret police insolently entered the church, right up to the altar. Dad asked them to let him finish the Holy Mass. They reluctantly agreed. Probably so as not to upset the faithful in the church. When the Holy Mass was over, they took him away.

It was supposed to be a great trial. With… “legionaries” (nothing new under the sun), especially since the church was dedicated to the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and with… a plot against the communist state. At the trial, about a dozen people appeared in the dock who had no connection with each other; some of them could barely see each other’s faces. The trial was held in two sessions, on 11 August and 4 September. The 4th of September was my father’s birthday; he was 56 years old.

My mother and I attended the trial. In his last words to the accused, my father said: “Yes, I fled from Bessarabia to come here, among my brothers…”.

The sentences were pronounced on 8 September 1959. Heavy sentences. My father was sentenced to … 27 years; a first “part”, 12 years of hard labour, for … activity against the first socialist state in the world (Art. 193), i.e. not against the Romanian state, be it communist, but … against the USSR; as evidence of guilt, my father’s old article, written many years ago, in 1943, “Destiny of a Transnistrian Priest”, an article from which the prosecutor insistently quoted the last sentence, was incriminated: “Joseph Stalin will be cursed from generation to generation”; the second “portion” of the prison, 15 years of hard labour, for activity against the state order, the famous art. 209; to support this guilt, the prosecutor’s case was based on the testimony of only one witness, only one, I emphasise, who said that my father had said in a sermon that… “the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16)”. Out of 27 years, my father was to serve 15 years, the longest sentence.

I haven’t seen him since. He had gone to the communist prisons: Jilava, Gherla, Periprava. And no news for years. A few rumours that he had died. It was only in 1962 that I received a postcard from him, the only one of its kind during all his imprisonment, in which he said that he was working and that he was entitled to a parcel. He asked his mother to put two black grapes in his parcel. My mother understood immediately: my father celebrated Holy Mass in prison, secretly of course, and he needed the grapes for Communion.

After that, silence. He was released in 1964 during the general amnesty.

On 2 August 1964, at 5am, he got off the train from Gherla at the North Railway station. He was dressed as a priest, with short hair. He saw trolleybus 81 on the same old route. He got on and said to the ticket inspector: “Miss, I’ve just come from prison and I have no money for my ticket”. The trolleybus was almost empty at the time. The girl put her head in her hands and started to cry.

We at home had been waiting for this for years. He brought a handkerchief with a strong smell of mould. On the handkerchief, drawn with great skill with charcoal, was the body of the Saviour. He told us that the handkerchief, soaked with tears and blood, had served him as an antimension; with it he had celebrated Holy Mass as often as he could.

Then he asked us how we managed without him. What could you tell him? My mother, a graduate of the German Faculty, had lost her job after his arrest. At great risk, the priest Simeon Neaga (who was a former prisoner at the Canal) had taken her to St. Nicholas’ Church, known as the “Russian” church, where he sold candles. I had finished university a month before my father’s arrest, and I took my final exams under terrible stress, while my father was under investigation, and every day in the university there were lists of students who had been expelled for various reasons, obviously political. I managed to get my degree, but now no one will employ me anywhere. I had become a day labourer. (…) I managed to have my doctorate later, in an institution with a less vigilant staff…

After his release from prison, my father was, with difficulty, assigned to a parish. But not near his home, but in a distant neighbourhood. He would have liked to return to the Cașin monastery, but he was not allowed to.

During the revolution, my father served in the church of St. Nicholas-Buzești. In 1991, on 7 December, the day after the feast, the church burned down in a devastating fire. It was another blow that he suffered with difficulty…

Soon, this year, 1993, my father will be 90 years old. His physical strength has dimished, but his spirit was alive. (…) In his cell, I can always hear him singing softly with his mother, verses from Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” And then I told myself that this is the sigh of every Romanian when he thinks of our crucified Bessarabia.

(Elena Teodoreanu – Memoria magazine, no. 9, September 1993, pp. 27-37)