Professor George Manu – immense patience and full dedication to people
A few months before [the start of the re-education process n.n.], Professor George Manu closed his eyes forever in the prison infirmary, scornfully refusing to negotiate with the nation’s schizophrenics. Professor George Manu was one of the most important figures in Aiud prison, and there were probably not many like him in the whole country. For months, he had been persistently asked to take on the role of mediator between the prisoners and the administration in order to pave the way for re-education in the world of prisoners.
At the cost of his own life, he did not betray his conscience and always took a clear and categorical stand against the communist regime, which he denounced and condemned for its infamous crimes.
We cannot pass over this name, which will remain as a banner of virtue of the Romanian people from times of too sad bejenie, without revealing what Professor George Manu meant for the Aiud prison and how overwhelming the memory of this scholar and martyr will remain in the history of Romanian resistance and politics. If for some people prison was a place where one went to die or came out “dead” for a cause, George Manu went to prison alive and will remain alive forever, regardless of the fact that he never came out from under its dark and cold walls.
George Manu was born into a family of old Romanian intellectuals, from the aristocracy of our country, and at the same time from a family whose members were present several times at the presidency of Romania’s destiny. The Wallachian nobleman Ion Manu was a member of the Căimăcămia from 1858, together with I.A. Filipescu and Emanoil Băleanu. Professor George Manu’s grandfather was General Gheorghe Manu (1833-1911), who distinguished himself by his manliness and patriotism in the War of Independence, serving several times as a minister.
After 1944, when he was a professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Bucharest, he saw the terrible danger that Romania was in following the signing of an armistice without any real guarantees, thus he proceeded to act immediately. He did not belong to the category of politicians who combine the genius of thought with the lack of action and courage of the barricades. George Manu was an outstanding scholar and scientist. For him, the belief in the imminent triumph of justice and the irreducible power of the word were existential levers with metaphysical content.
Shortly after the surrender of Romania to the Soviet army, George Manu wrote a voluminous memoir to the great allied powers, with the exception of the USSR, in which he demonstrated and detailed the plunder and pillage to which Romania had been reduced by the armistice agreement, using figures and conclusive data collected at great risk and with rigorous accuracy. This memoir will one day be a document of great value as to how some of the country’s scholars effectively and patriotically understood how to serve their country and fight against the communist usurpers.
In 1948, George Manu, whose activities were being monitored step by step by the Securitate (as it was then called), was involved in the so-called Trial of the Great National Treason. As we know, the group of those accused of national treason included representatives of all the Romanian political parties and even some people who did not belong to any political group, such as Professor Nicolaie Mărgineanu or the industrialist Max Auschnitt, but who feared relations with the Western powers or simply still had a strong influence on the Romanian economy. Alongside the engineers Ion Pop, Ioan Bujoiu, Max Auschnitt and Professor Nicolaie Mărgineanu, there were well-known figures in Romanian politics, such as Nicolaie Pătrașcu, Nistor Chioreanu, from the Legionary Movement, or Horia Măcelaru, a member of the National Teamist Party.
Professor George Manu was imprisoned in Aiud after his conviction. He was briefly transferred to other prisons, but it was at Aiud that he served most of his 25-year sentence, until his death in 1961.
I had the opportunity to sit in prison with dozens of people who shared the same cell as Professor George Manu, or who were in the same cell as Professor Manu, or even in the same section or building as him. I was able to form an almost complete picture of this wonderful man, whose loss meant an enormous amount, not only for the world of prisoners in those times of great hardship, but also for the whole of Romanian thought and culture.
This is how Professor George Manu introduced Captain I. V. from Roșiorii of Vede:
– Mr. Professor Manu (it should be noted that even after his death no one called him anything other than “Mr. Professor Manu”, so much was his prestige established) was a man of ordinary appearance. I don’t know what he looked like when he was healthy, but when I knew him, after the 1954 strike, when about sixty people were brought in chains from Baia Sprie mine, he looked like an ascetic. At that time, in winter, we were kept all the time with chains on our legs, short and heavy chains, so that we couldn’t get up from the ground. We had no fire and our food rations were cut in half or even less. Among us was Professor Manu, and among the fifty tuberculosis patients declared in the spring was his lordship. Apart from being TBC suferrers, all sixty of us were dystrophic to the last degree.
From the first moment we met this man, I remembered the intense and warm look in his eyes. I have never met another man like him in my life. His kindness was boundless. Each of us had moments of irritation caused by our cellmate, as is common. Each of us had faults and created complexes out of weaknesses. Professor Manu had no such weaknesses. He was always serene, extremely kind to everyone, always ready to make any concession to create harmony in the cell, even if it meant seriously limiting the minimal comfort we had, even giving up his share of food just to satisfy the hunger of someone he saw tearing himself apart with suffering. Never tired of being asked for advice on the most varied subjects, Professor Manu was always there with an outstretched hand and an open heart. As far as I can remember, there was never a question put to him to which he did not give a competent answer. In literature, philosophy, mechanics, physics, chemistry, history, religion, politics, he had a thorough knowledge of all of them. A truly encyclopaedic man. There is not a single person in Aiud who does not owe something to Professor Manu. Whether it was an extra bit of knowledge, learning a foreign language (French or English), advice or encouragement in a moment of depression, we all took something from Professor Manu.
I could tell you a lot, a lot, about the trials and tribulations that Professor Manu had to go through in order to meet all the demands placed on him in the best possible way. Being an exceptional “Morse codist”, he could easily tap messages or lessons on the pipe or on the wall, which were then transmitted through other relays. I would like to tell you just one story which will help you to appreciate the immense patience and dedication of this man in the service of science and people.
After 1960, when the new generation of prisoners began to arrive at the prison, the discipline at Aiud, which had already been quite strict, became even stricter, but the control was not quite so strict. As soon as the new prisoners arrived, communication between cells was monitored. That’s why it was difficult for us to talk to each other over the pipe or through the walls, except very rarely and with great care. Our messages were brief. Professor Manu had been asked by a group of students from the ward below us to give them, on soap or glass, some articles from the American Constitution of 1787. Professor Manu was thinking about the best and safest way to give them what they wanted, and he came up with the most incredible invention. Taking advantage of the fact that we had been given a needle and thread in the cell that day, he unravelled a long thread from the thread spool and wound it on a piece of cloth. Careful not to be seen by the guards spying on us through the bean slot, the professor began to tie tiny knots in the thread, one or two close together. This was a new way of transmitting Morse code on thread. An enormous, tedious, painstaking job, almost impossible for another prisoner to conceive and carry out.
When the work was finished, the muster roll, containing all seven articles of the Constitution of 1787, was left at one corner of the staircase when he went out for a walk. Those below, informed, would pick it up from where it had been left when it was their turn to go out.
One winter, after this new form of communication had been put into practice, our cell and several others around it were searched without warning. In one of Professor Manu’s pockets the guards found a length of white thread tied with knots. Professor Manu could not explain where he had got the thread (it was forbidden in the cell, as was the needle), nor could he explain the significance of the knots. It was, of course, a “snitch” from one of the inmates.
For the English lesson that Professor Manu had prepared to send to his destination, a cell, he was punished with ten days of “black”. This time, unlike other times, Professor Manu was stripped to his shirt and his most essential clothes, his food ration was reduced to a quarter and he was not given any heat. Tubercular as he was, it’s easy to imagine how he returned from solitary confinement.
I consider that this isolation, concluded Captain I. V., his evocation, sprinkled with admiration, duioșie, revolt and indignation, was decisive in the deterioration of the professor’s health. I note that Professor Manu has suffered many such punishments, but this seemed to me to be the most serious and despicable. I do not know what happened to him afterwards, until his death, for I was separated from him a few months after the misfortune of which I have told you.
Professor Manu, as I was later able to find out, was taken out of ZARCA, where he had done the most work in prison, several times during that time, and taken to the office of Colonel Crăciun and Lieutenant-Colonel Iacob. Professor Manu was asked to re-examine the political situation in Romania at that time, on the basis of the material made available to him by the administration, and then on the basis of his own conviction – that there had been irreversible movements of opinion and progress in all areas in the country – Professor Manu undertook to hold discussions with the other prisoners with a view to converting them to a different understanding of the revolution that was being made in the country, which was necessary and desirable, and which was accepted and supported by the popular masses, condemning any reactionary resistance at home or abroad.
To his credit, Professor George Manu categorically rejected this proposal, preferring to suffer further humiliation, torture and ill-treatment. When he was close to exhaustion, when he no longer had the strength to stand up straight in bed, he was taken to the infirmary. But it was too late. The coughing up of blood could no longer be stopped and many of his internal organs, which had already been damaged, were no longer functioning. To this day, Professor Manu has never been heard to complain. One of the men who witnessed the passion and death of Professor George Manu, who described the last moments of the man who was a beacon of Aiud, told me about the final scene:
– He was dying every moment. Only his eyes burned like two small lights and his chest heaved painfully. The sweat of death had broken out on his forehead and bare chest. Suddenly, staring at the ceiling, he said in an unrecognisable voice:
– Forgive me, brothers. Let me sigh once.
“Professor Manu sighed deeply. It was as if this sigh resembled another groan that the Son of Man had uttered on the Cross when suffering had reached its paroxysm. Then he convulsed in a short, agonising spasm, his face contracted, and from the brink of death he had the lucidity to utter a few words that he would never forget:
– Be true to your ideals and remain worthy…
He said a few more words that we, who were beside him in other beds of suffering, did not understand. After a while, his body began to cool down, and on his face, from the depths of his being, serenity returned, except in the corners of his lips and under the corners of his eyelids, a few thin, black lines of pain deepened.
This is Professor George Manu, who brought honour to the Romanian intelligentsia in prison. He was not only a true scientist, but also a great and enlightened patriot, a humanist in the noblest sense of the word. He created a school in the penitentiary, through the daily lessons that he gave for years, depriving himself of the minimum rest to which he was entitled, giving to the mind and soul the nourishment that young people who had been torn from the benches of schools or universities so desperately needed. He prepared people for life and inspired them with ideals. Never wavering from the line of honour, Manu was an eloquent example of the miraculous power of spiritual values to ennoble and uplift man through culture…
(Ion Cârja – Return from Hell)