Prince Alecu Ghica – Fearless advocate of the Romanian people

Here was Prince Alecu Ghica, former head of state security under the Legionaries, a magistrate with ten ancestors who had sat on the thrones of Wallachia and Moldavia. He was from Iași, a handsome figure, well groomed, with a dignified demeanour, serene and gentle, not at all distant, had been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment. […] 

After a long farewell, I met Prince Alecu Ghica again.

He had wandered through many places, especially Jilava and the interior of Bucharest. He had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labour. When the sentence imposed by Antonescu was reduced by a quarter, the Communists had to release him and took him to Bucharest for a new trial, without having done anything.

But in the courtroom, in front of the whole court, he refused to answer the question to identify himself. And so the trial could not take place. They questioned him:

– Why don’t you answer?

– Because I do not recognise you as the legitimate judiciary of the Romanian people. You have imposed yourselves on the Romanian people by force, by a foreign power. The Romanian people did not elect you, did not want you and do not want you. You are still sitting over the Romanian people today, supported by the Russians. If the Romanian people could express themselves freely, they would reject you immediately. So you are a foreign judge, you represent the interests of a foreign power and you have no right to judge the sons of the Romanian people.

By declaring him insane, they sent him to a psychiatric hospital. But the doctors said he was sane.

– And so, he told me, they couldn’t give me a second trial. They detained me, but my detention has no legal basis. We’ll see what they do now. In Jilava, I met some of Antonescu’s Security officers, who had been sentenced to many years’ imprisonment themselves and did not know how to apologise for the mistakes they had made with us. One of them cried because I refused to take any of the goodies his wife had brought him, thinking that this would not forgive him. I also sat with Ion Stănescu, who earnestly asked me to ask the forgiveness of a priest from Bacău, a former teacher, “whom I condemned as totally innocent and for whom I have great regret”. He couldn’t remember the name, but after I told him a few names, Stănescu exclaimed:

– Yes, yes! That’s him, Grebenea.

I have long since forgiven him, just as I have forgiven all those who have contributed in any way to my troubles. They have now gone to prison to show that the wheel of life is always turning and those at the top can always be brought down. That is why we must behave in such a way that when we are on top we do not do anything that will worry us when the waves of life throw us down.

The Prince told me a lot about how he sees things developing in our country and in the world. He was in a good mood. He had no regrets about being a legionnaire and having so many hard years of imprisonment reserved for him. He did not blame anyone for the mistakes made by the Legionary government in 1940, because he knew that foreign agents had infiltrated the movement, working to compromise it and doing everything possible to create enmity between it and the people.

The uprising of January 1941, which the Prince called a coup d’état by Ion Antonescu to oust the legionnaires from power. And the draconian laws that Antonescu introduced after the “rebellion”, with no right of appeal, showed the harshness of the character of this man, called “the red dog” by some officers who knew him. The lack of the right of appeal drove some judges to the greatest transgressions, and Antonescu should not have given them this opportunity.

Antonescu’s regrets after being brought back from Russia for his trial in May 1946: “I am sorry for these boys that they stayed in the dungeon, because some of them were good boys and I put them in the dungeon anyway”, shows that he was aware of the mistake he had made with us. But the great criminal was Eugen Cristescu, the head of the secret service, who gave him a distorted picture of the situation and deceived his master.

Although he was a great enemy of ours, we were not happy that Antonescu was handed over to the Russians and not to the British. Those who arrested him, led by the King, should have considered where they were sending him after his arrest and not been surprised by events. They are all guilty of this lack of patriotism. Antonescu was the leader of the country and for the sake of the country he should not have been handed over to his worst enemies. Ghica had news of his family and told me that his three sons were doing well and that he was happy with them.

I do not remember the moment when I said goodbye to Alecu Ghica, for whom I had one of the most beautiful memories in my heart.

Later I heard that they did not release him, but sent him as a servant to a pig farm, in a semi-free position, where he was visited by his children, who found him as a “pigman”, but who had won the sympathy of all the “pigmen” there.

Oh my God! How the Communists made a mockery of our upper class! Vintilă Brătianu was put in the canal to make the militia men’s boots, to polish them.

(Pr. Nicolae Grebenea – Memories from the darkness)