Professor Manu – It was like a treasure from which all received
The admirable man who supported and maintained knowledge in Zarca was the university professor of atomic physics Gheorghe Manu, grandson of the nationalist general Gheorghe Manu of 1848.
He was like a treasure from which everyone benefited. He was fluent in English, French and German and gave lessons in these languages to everyone who came near him.
He knew the history of the world and of Romania like a specialist, although his PhD was in atomic physics. He worked and studied in Paris at the Curie Institute and witnessed Werner Heisenberg’s discovery of the theory of indeterminacy in 1927, which won him the Nobel Prize and made him one of the world’s seven greatest atomic physicists.
He told me: ‘My colleague Heisenberg’s discovery makes it possible for the first time in the world to prove scientifically the existence of God. However, the Church has not done enough research on this theory to draw all the consequences to its advantage”.
Gheorghe Manu, like his predecessor, was a great patriot, a tireless fighter. After the 23rd of August 1944, he was able to enter the big industrial enterprises to get data about their unworthy exploitation by the Russians, although we were their owners.
He presented to our Peace Congress in 1946 a powerful documentation of economic and financial data, in English and French, in 14 chapters. The manuscript, entitled “Behind the Iron Curtain”, was put on the table of the Congress for the defence of Romania. In one chapter, he points out that Romania is the “hub of Europe” and that whoever owns Romania and the Carpathians has an enormous strategic advantage over the other side. He shows the enormous efforts of the Romanian states of Moldavia and Wallachia to defend Europe from the Turkish invasion and its push to the West. What enormous sacrifices the Romanians had to make! For 500 years, they were invaded about every eight years.
Who could have advanced in such conditions? He met twice with the head of British intelligence for south-east Europe to discuss what could be done to improve the situation here and in the Soviet-occupied countries.
The bottom line is that public opinion in Britain and America has barely got used to the idea of collaboration with the Russians. Stalin is called Onke Stalin. It will be difficult to dissuade him from the way he now judges. He recommended that everyone should resist Russian-imposed communism, so that the West would be persuaded to change its ways and do something for the area behind the Iron Curtain. After all, if the Westerners were powerless, Stalin had deceived them and tied them to the fence.
Gheorghe Manu was writing a lesson on American history. He wrote in block letters on a soap dish the text that the whole floor of Zarca was eagerly awaiting. It was hidden in the cupboard, where it was sought and taken. But it was written so neatly that it looked like a printed page. Everyone studied American history and admired the democracy that was born there.
Gheorghe Manu was undoubtedly one of the wisest men to fall into prison. He endured it calmly, patiently, with great dignity and without exaggeration, as an inevitable, inescapable condition.
A legionnaire, with a strong character, an upright life and respect for the great values of the spirit, he could not accept re-education when he was released in 1964. He indignantly refused the request to deny his past, to attack the former political parties and the Legionaries and to praise the Communists. He was put under pressure, in solitary confinement, alone, in order to break him, and when he was searched he had blisters in his armpits and elsewhere: tuberculosis had broken out in full force and incessantly. The emergency services intervened, but in vain, as his body continued to fail.
The great man died, like Mircea Vulcănescu, struck down by the same disease, just when he was supposed to be freeing himself. His death was due to the excesses of the director of the Aiud prison, who did not understand that a completely weakened body could not be subjected to the hard tests, the “tests” of resistance, without completely destroying itself. Colonel Crăciun broke his body, but he did not get any concessions from him.
The news of Gheorghe Manu’s death in the conditions in which he was exposed deeply saddened the whole of Zarca. If I remember correctly, he was born in 1902. He had taken good care of himself. He would have been liberated at the age of 62 and could have been very useful, both in terms of his knowledge and his great relations, if the fanaticism, dogmatism and intolerance of Crăciun had not killed him.
(Fr. Nicolae Grebenea – Memories from the Darkness)