Professor George Manu – “Rector of the Aiud University”
Coming from an old family of patriotic intellectuals (he was the grandson of General George Manu – 1838 – 1911 – who distinguished himself in the War of Independence and served several times as a minister), Professor George Manu was arrested in 1948, implicated with other leading Romanian political intellectuals in the Great Trial of National Treason, and sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour.
At the time of his arrest, he was a professor of nuclear physics at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and, along with Professor Horia Hulubei, was considered one of the country’s great atomists. It is said that, after his conviction, he was visited in Aiud by a Soviet adviser who proposed that, in exchange for his release, he should agree to work in the Soviet Union’s laboratories with a well-known Russian atomist with whom he had studied in Germany. But Professor George Manu refused this offer with dignity, because he would have to work for those whom he rightly considered to be enemies of the Romanian nation.
Professor George Manu was not only a renowned scientist, recognised as such by his opponents, but he also had a thorough education in the humanities. Philosophy, theology, law, philology and, above all, literature were fields in which he moved with the same ease as in his specialist field, which, as I have already mentioned, was nuclear physics. He was a true encyclopaedia, and if it is true (and it certainly is) that communist prisons were real universities, then the “University of Aiud” had as its “Rector” between 1954 and 1961, the year of his death, Professor George Manu.
Returning to Aiud from the Baia Sprie lead mine in 1954 with a group of 60 prisoners, all in chains, brought to this prison as a disciplinary measure following a strike at the mine, Professor George Manu was among the more than 50 prisoners in the group suffering from tuberculosis. He was initially diagnosed with ganglionic tuberculosis, but being subjected to an extremely harsh disciplinary regime along with all the others, and without adequate food, medical assistance and the basic care that this disease requires, his health deteriorated and eventually proved fatal. In spite of this, Professor George Manu began a sustained and incredible activity, given the conditions of total isolation in prison, which we can safely describe as didactic.
His vocation as a teacher did not leave him, even in these difficult conditions. During this period, Aiud was populated by many young people who had been arrested from school or university and who therefore had unfinished studies and incomplete education. Most of them, hungry for knowledge, turned to the “old men” who, mostly intellectuals, made their knowledge available to them. One of the most active in this respect was undoubtedly Professor George Manu. Throughout this period, he transmitted, by voice to those who were fortunate enough to share a cell with him, or by Morse code (Professor George Manu was an accomplished Morse reader) to those in the other cells, dozens and hundreds of conferences, lectures or lessons on all areas of the humanities: history, law, geography, philosophy, literature, foreign languages (especially French and English), etc…. . which were memorised or written on walls, pieces of soap, shards of glass, etc. and then passed on from cell to cell and from person to person. Many of those who came out of prison with a thorough knowledge of English language and literature, for example, owe this to him. I didn’t know him personally, but many of the lessons he developed found their way into my cell, so much of the knowledge I gained in prison I owe to him.
Professor George Manu is also credited with the invention of writing on thread using the Morse alphabet. Once a group of students on another floor asked him (in Morse code, of course) to convey some of the basic principles of the American Constitution. The professor had roughly memorised all seven articles of the Constitution and was waiting for the right moment to transmit them to his destination. Just then, the door opened and the guard handed his cellmate a needle and thread to repair the machine. Seeing the thread, Professor Manu had the idea of writing on it in Morse code (a double knot, a line, a single knot, a dot) the text he had to transmit. With great patience and thousands of knots, he managed to “write” the text of the seven articles of the American Constitution on several dozen metres of thread. He then made a scroll and sent it to the recipients with instructions on how to decipher it.
This new method of writing was a revolution in prison communication. And it caused a lot of headaches for those who made sure the inmates didn’t communicate with each other.
After 1958, when Colonel Crăciun took over the management of Aiud prison and preparations began for the start of re-education, Professor George Manu, whom the prison administration knew to have great influence over the other inmates, was asked – like the other personalities in Aiud – to accept re-education and to make a statement to the inmates about his dissociation from his past and all his beliefs and ideals. Despite all the pressure put on him, he refused any compromise with dignity and without ostentation. Professor George Manu paid with his life for his firm and unequivocal stance. The inhumane treatment to which he was subjected after his categorical refusal to make the statements demanded of him aggravated his illness. The last diagnosis made by the official prison doctor, Dr. Balea, in the presence of Colonel Crăciun, was T.B.C. meningitis. This time, however, he was refused treatment, which was made conditional on his signing the required declaration. He died in 1961 in the Aiud hospital, where he had been admitted only a few hours before his death.
(Demostene Andronescu – Re-education at Aiud. Inner landscape. Memories and verses from prison, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2009, pp. 144-146)