Professor Manu – a great scholar and a true hero of our nation

I met Professor Manu in a van that took us from Aiud to Gherla. We had taken part in the hunger strike in Aiud in the spring of 1957. As a result of that strike, a large proportion of the prisoners from the Zarca were sent to Gherla for disciplinary reasons.

I had heard about this a year before, when I was taken to Zarca. When Professor Manu’s name was mentioned, all those who knew him personally or by hearsay felt the need to lean back and listen respectfully.

I have often wondered what this immense respect was for? He was sentenced to life imprisonment as a legionnaire,1 but he was respected by all the prisoners, regardless of their political affiliation.2 Beyond his political qualities, he had something that made him stand out. He was also a great scientist. He had a doctorate in physics and mathematics and had been an assistant to Marie Curie at the Sorbonne for ten years. I had previously learned that the greatest Romanian specialist in nuclear physics was Horia Hulubei. I was told in prison that Hulubei had taken over in the absence of Manu, who had been deprived of his professorship and research since 1945.

Apart from his great specialities, physics and mathematics, Professor Manu could easily teach chemistry, history, art history, biology, geography and other subjects, except music. There was no question that he knew the great composers and their main works, but he did not know music and musical technique, and he regretfully confessed that he was tone deaf.

There was not a man in the prison who did not want to sit with him in his cell. When I came to the barracks, he had been there for seven years. For seven years he had done nothing but share with others the culture he had accumulated in a life dedicated to science. He was a living encyclopaedia. He was aware of the mission he had to fulfil in prison, and he did it with all his heart.

The inactivity to which we were subjected by the prison administration condemned all the prisoners to mental mutilation. The intellectual personalities of Aiud, however, were aware of the aim of the Securitate and, as far as possible, selflessly and devotedly opposed the achievement of this diabolical goal. Of these great figures of Romanian thought, Professor Manu was perhaps the most outstanding. His multilateralism and tireless activity echo in the soul of each and every one of us. By his behaviour, his example and above all his work, Professor Manu stood like a rock against the mutilation of the prisoners’ souls.

He worked from early in the morning until late at night to send to each cell everything that was asked of him, because I don’t think there was a single person in the prison at that time who didn’t ask him a single question. He worked with all his conviction and dedication to save the prisoners whom the Securitate wanted to drive to despair and madness. And Professor Manu’s work was not in vain.

While in prison, he gave real university courses in foreign languages (English, French, German), history (of Romania, France, Russia, America), geography (of North America, China, etc.), history of art, history of the discovery and development of atomic energy, and much more.

He was proud of the French he learned from Duță Costin, who had the “good fortune” to live in the same room as his teacher for three years.

His lectures were written on small pieces of soap and passed on to the other inmates, often through the so-called bathroom and toilet, sometimes even under the blind eyes of the guards. This constant exchange of notes was rigorously planned, with a note generally remaining in the same cell for only one day. The discovery of such a slip could mean 10-14 days in solitary confinement under a strict regime. The danger seemed no greater than the idiotic intellectual inactivity to which the administration deliberately subjected us. We, the inmates of Zarca and other sections of Aiud, bravely faced them, and he, Professor Manu, the most seriously targeted of us all, did not hesitate for a moment to continue his work as an apostle.

When the administration and the guards became aware of the transmission of information and lessons on soap-boards, and we began to be strictly controlled and monitored, this method was abandoned, but the intellectual activity continued unabated. Professor Manu then created the most unexpected means of transmitting information: the Morse code on the wire… a long piece of thread pulled out of the mattress… a knot on this thread meant a dot, two close together meant a line. It was perhaps the most ingenious and effective means of communication between inmates, a creation of the great professor’s thought and intelligence. Who would have thought that a ball of string thrown into the rubbish would contain the most uplifting soul food, transmitted under the eyes of the lightless brutes on guard. What could be written on paper in an hour was “knotted” on string in two days of strenuous work, but Manu never complained. He did it with the joy of the teacher training his pupils, with the love of the apostle fulfilling his mission.

George Manu was not only an intellectual of great class, but also a skilled craftsman. He strove for perfection in everything he did. His handwriting, for example, was more beautiful and neat than his printing. The knots on the thread were of unimaginable regularity. When two threads had to be knotted, the knot was never extra, but part of the code, so that you could never tell which was the knot.

After eight years of penance, he was released from Aiud prison and sent to Gherla prison. On that occasion we met in the van that took us there. In Gherla I spent three weeks in the same cell with three other prisoners. I was happy to have been able to stay with the professor for such a short time. Together with the other three inmates, we were all eyes and ears, so as not to miss anything that George Manu said and passed on.

We often looked at him with admiration and studied him secretly. He was 54 at the time. He wore glasses with very thick lenses, was not too tall and seemed very modest, too modest for what he was. Once, while he was telling us about a lecture he had given in Paris, he raised his head, straightened his back and looked around the cell, which for a moment had been transformed into a lecture hall at the Sorbonne, taking in with his eyes the “hundreds” of students who filled his room to overflowing…

That’s when I saw the “professor” in him.

He had none of the recklessness of the revolutionary fighter, nor the conceit or cynicism of the politician. He was the calm professor, master of his knowledge and always ready to share it with others. He seemed to have something of the greatness of the family he came from. After his mother he was Cantacuzin, but it was not the family that gave him his brilliance, it was he who made another flower shine on the family tree of the Byzantine Basilians.

He was healthy in body, mind and soul, and he had a great memory, ready to serve him at any moment. When I asked him how many times he had read the works he presented to us, he replied: “Once, but then I made myself one with the book”.

He once told us about a work by M. Roller on the 1907 insurrection, in which he reproduced telegrams between the Ministry of War and the military units involved in suppressing the insurrection, and between the Ministry of the Interior and the county prefects, and their replies. On this occasion, the professor made the following remarks:

“I was very flattered when I read the orders of my grandfather (General George Manu, then Minister of War) not to shoot at the rioters. I studied all these telegrams and calculated the number of people shot by the authorities. This number does not exceed 400, of which about 40 were a gang of robbers operating on the banks of the Olt river. These telegrams are the only historical record of those killed in the uprising. Where did the communist press get the figure of 11,000 peasants shot in 1907? I have never understood why previous democratic regimes did not publish these telegrams, which would have exonerated them of such a crushing figure”.

Among the other important things Professor George Manu told me is the book he wrote shortly before his arrest. It was called ”Behind the Iron Courtain”. It had been sent secretly to the West and had already been printed in the free world. Its author was unknown.

Professor Manu’s investigation revealed that he was the author of this book. One of the investigating officers said to him: “Sir!… and how we’ve tried to find out who wrote it. And it only contains data based on documents that cannot be disputed”.

Many of these documents, the professor added, were provided to me by Anton Golopenția, the then Director General of the Central Statistical Institute. He too was later arrested and killed during the investigation.

In Gherla he continued the work he had begun in Aiud. We spent three weeks together, after which I was transferred to Bucharest. I was very sorry to part with him. I have not seen him since. I learnt that after a year and a half he was brought back to Aiud, where he continued his concern for the spiritual life of the convicts with the same care.

George Manu had an iron health which impressed many. He told us that he had not suffered any illness in prison. “I am ashamed to say that I have been in prison for ten years,” he sometimes said.

During the “re-education” to which all prisoners in Aiud were subjected, he had an attitude that matched his soul: dignified, tough, constant, without any inclination. He was an example to everyone. Everyone in the barracks followed him in silence. The good, however, was infested with evil.

Agents of the administration were infiltrated among the hardened men. Soon it became clear, if it had to be, who was the head and soul of the resistance in Zarca. He was put under a very strict regime and had the misfortune – he, the healthy man – to fall ill with T.B.C.

Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun, the Aiud prison commander, refused him any medical treatment. When it was certain he was dying, he was taken to the prison hospital.

And on the hill near Aiud, in the Trei Plopi cemetery, in pits unknown to anyone, forgotten even by those who dug them, where thousands of bodies lie unburied in the torment of Aiud, lies Professor Manu, a great scholar and a true hero of our nation.

When the sad news was announced, there was general dismay among the prisoners of Aiud, especially as they were going through the hard times of re-education.

But, as with men of his stature, Professor Manu did not die completely. The souls who have always received spiritual nourishment from his tireless efforts continue to carry him with them and will carry him forever.

(Ion Dima – George Manu. Monograph, edited by Gheorghe Jijie, Babel Publishing House, Bacău, 2010, pp. 317-321)

[1] George Manu was sentenced to life imprisonment not because he was a legionnaire, but because he was one of the leading members of the National Resistance Movement and, in particular, because he edited the book “Behind the Iron Courtain”, a synthesis in which the USSR was exposed as a country that systematically plundered the patrimony of the Romanian nation.

[2] In this respect, the example of the psychology professor Nicolae Mărgineanu, whose aversion to the Legionary Movement is undeniable, is eloquent. Professor Mărgineanu, however, will most beautifully evoke George Manu, with whom he had the opportunity to exchange experiences in Aiud.