Radu Șerban – the drama of a priest at the end of his rope

One day the priest from Dobrogea, Șerban, told me:

– The high temperature and the effort of the mines, after the hunger I went through, have made my heart seriously ill. If I continue to work in the mines, I’ll be completely destroyed. I decided to stop working and ask for a job on the surface.

– It’s a risky decision, I told him. We’re condemned to travaux forcees. If you refuse, you can be shot. Are you determined to die?

– Yes, I am! I have to. It’s my only chance. Otherwise I’ll die later, completely destroyed by the disease, but if they don’t shoot me, I can live.

– Pray and prepare yourself.

He told me:

– I have a wife and a little child, please make sure you escape, and if I die, let them know how I died. It was not out of cowardice that I chose to die, but in extremis: the only chance I had left to continue to be of any good .

I promised him.

He said to me:

– “Give God a good thought for me.”

The next night, Nelu Rusu, a legionary lawyer from Bucharest, dreamt that there were three candles lit in a place in the camp and that one of them suddenly went out. He recounted the dream and Hegheduș, who was with him in the barracks, said: “Today there will be a lightning death among us”. And they went down into the mine. Father Șerban didn’t want to go into the mine. He was made to collect stones in the camp. While he was collecting them, one of the guards shot him and he fell dead.

The administration justified the death by saying that the prisoner had tried to escape over the fence. Hegheduș’s prediction came true. After his release, I was not able to contact Father Serban’s wife to show her the dramatic situation her husband was in when he was shot. But there were some people from Dobrogea in the camp who knew about the shooting and his illness. I found out that the soldier who did the shooting was rewarded with seven days’ leave.

(Pr. Nicolae Grebenea – Memories from the Darkness, Scara Publishing House, Bucharest, 2000, p. 209)