Prince Ghica, “the fearless Job of the modern age”

Prince Alexandru Ghica, a former legionary commander, former head of the Romanian police and a man who spent 24 years in political prison, was not consecrated by Romanian history as a reference figure, like his ancestor, the ruler of Moldavia. But those of us who knew him in prison know who Prince Ghyka was, a model of dignity and anti-communist resistance, of exemplary fairness and an unimaginable strength to suffer for his ideals. Nothing could defeat him.

He remained a prince to the end.

The trials he faced were not few. The history of the last century, so fragmented, so bloody and so far from God, did not destroy his personality but, on the contrary, showed it in its true dimension. He faced them all with a princely smile on his lips. A mast that no storm of the soul could bend or break. That’s how we remember him.

He crossed them all with his eyes always on the star that guided him on the straightest paths, through the most twisted spaces. Prison cells and borderline situations through which enemies could not repel him and friends could not confuse him.

And how many have not tried it with the fearless Job of modern times. The devil changed his strategy and no longer respected the biblical contract from heaven: he tried to touch his soul, after hunger, thirst, cold and the darkness of the dungeon that had tormented him for decades had eaten into the flesh that was barely left on his bones. But the cold of so many years did not freeze him, it only loosened him so that he would not shiver in front of anyone. And the darkness, instead of blinding him, sharpened his eyes even more. A sphinx-like gaze with which he obsessively pursued his ideal: salvation. His salvation and the salvation of the entire nation.

Physical oppression was followed by temptations, which were also crushed, with all their funeral processions. But not on a biblical mountain, but on the mountain of deep human suffering. And the devil touched his soul, not with his own hand, but with his neighbour’s. Several times, until divine wisdom put an end to it. “The prince is going out into the world!” – exclaimed a guard in Aiud’s dungeon as he saw him pass through the open prison gate. It was 1964, the year in which the Communist regime pretended to be merciful and opened the prison gates to pour us into the greater dungeon that was Romania. But the prince who had gone down in history was going down in legend.

And how could the guards not be surprised by his attempts to dress up as a prince, or the witnesses forget his ordeal, or when he was, in fact:

1. In all the 24 years of his imprisonment, not one day did he stretch out his hand to take even the smallest portion of the bread or malt given as food to those who were in the cell or room with him. Even when he was seriously ill, he wanted only the smallest amount of food.

2. Throughout his imprisonment, he never hesitated to give his drinking water to anyone more thirsty or needy than himself. One night, when I fell into the filth of a cell, he washed me with the last water left in his canteen.

3. All those who were punished with him in prison or in solitary confinement remember some gesture of affection from him, if not the offer of bread, his portion of food or hot water for a day.

4. Prince Alexander Ghyka was never seen or heard to ask anyone for anything. However, he was willing to offer anything to anyone. Even his own identity, to endure a prison sentence when confusion might have been possible – and often was.

5. Under no circumstances did he ever blame anyone, rightly or wrongly, for what had happened to him.

6. He was never heard to sigh and complain about anyone or anything. Not even from those who had condemned him to life imprisonment for believing what he believed and being what he was.

7. He never lied or compromised. Once, the Minister of the Internal Affairs, Draghici, offered him his freedom in exchange for a testimony against Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu – on the basis of which he was sentenced to death. The prince said: “Minister, you know how much I love you and how much I would like to keep you alive as an adversary; but to triumph by a mischief against anyone – even against Pătrășcanu, whom I pitied as an enemy and loved as a man – I had better fall on the path of honour, as the captain used to say. So find another client for this kind of crime, Minister”.

8. He was never harsh, accusatory or rude to anyone. To himself, however, he was always uncompromising.

9. During his famous “re-education” in Aiud prison from 1961 to 1964 (as long as this torture of the conscience and of the flesh of bodies exhausted by decades of imprisonment lasted), Prince Alexander Ghyka made no concessions, always keeping the aristocratic smile on his lips and the mouldy halo on his body. Forced by the Ministry of the Interior to make a supervised tour of the country to see “the great achievements of triumphant socialism in the villages and towns”, and asked on his return what impressed him about what he had seen, he replied, still smiling: “How beautifully the willows weep on Aiudel, Mr. Colonel! Aiudel is the marsh surrounding Aiud prison. The result: an explosion of indignation on the part of the “organisers” of the forced trip, the astonishment of the auditor – inmates were forcibly gathered in the prison yard to hear him speak – and a huge number of days in prison for Print, from which the man only emerged when he was released.

10. Also as part of the preparations for his conditional release, for renouncing his political identity, one day, in front of hundreds of prisoners who had gathered to see and hear him speak, after reading a letter from his family – in which those at home begged him to renounce what he had not renounced during his 24 years in prison – Prince Ghyka replied, still smiling: “Colonel, more than a hundred years ago, an ancestor of mine lost his head for Bucovina, and another ancestor, common this time to you and me and to the whole Romanian nation, Constantin Brâncoveanu, lost his head and that of his children in Constantinople for his faith, begging him to submit to the will of the Sultan. Can I be lower than them, when I am not asked for my head, but only for my identity and my honour?”

“Damned prince, you don’t know what world you live in!” exclaimed Colonel Crăciun, the commander of Aiud prison.

But Alexander Ghyka knew. He lived in a world that an effigy, even a princely one, could hardly encompass. And he never left it.

(Marcel Petrișor – Rost Magazine, issue 46, December 2006)