Remus Daneș – a young man full of great qualities, a great character
It just so happened that in a moment of bad luck I had the ‘good fortune’ to have a neighbour in my bed, a former schoolmate from Campopulunge: Dumitru Fetitari. At the “Dragoș Vodă” high school in Câmpulungul Bucovinei, many years ago, we had both been active in the “Brotherhood of the Cross” and we were on very friendly terms.
This Dumitru Fetitari had been arrested and tried in a large group of legionaries led by Barbântă (a handsome and energetic young man who was a colleague of my brother, Professor Emil Blănaru) and Alexandru Lațiș, whom I had left in Aiud in a state of terrible dystrophy. From this meeting I remember only a fragment of the following dialogue, as a confession of faith:
– You know, Vasile, that I spent several weeks with Remus Daneș in Aiud. Do you remember him? He lived with his sister in Capul satului… Mrs. Bendela…
– I know “the giant of the high school”… I remember him… A young man full of great qualities… That’s how I knew him… a great character. I also had a literary friendship with him…
– Yes, true, a man of great character. But when I left him in Aiud, he was unrecognisable… A human wreck… He had been tortured in the torture chambers of the Security Service, starved and tortured to confess how he had organised the fight against communism… Can you imagine, with his enormous size, how he was able to survive the hunger and communist tortures?
When we parted, all he told me was this: “I have no regrets, except that I am dying and I do not understand to what extent the sufferings and sacrifices on the altar of the Fatherland, our sacrifices, will be understood and will be an incentive for those who come after us…”.
– It’s interesting what you say… that Remus Daneș spoke about death, that he regretted his death, without understanding to what extent the sufferings and sacrifices on the altar of the fatherland, our sacrifices, will be an incentive for those who come after us… I say this because last autumn he spoke very enthusiastically about how we would both be active in the literature of writing.
It was the beginning of September 1949. In the Security Service “van” that took us from the interior to Jilava, I discovered Remus Daneș among the 30 or so prisoners in the van. He was accompanied by the architect I.D. Enescu and the engineer Manciu from Reșita. In Jilava we stayed together for a few hours until we were assigned to cells. Then he told me about his plans for the publishing work he wanted to do after his release. He was also sure that he would be released in 1950.
– In fact, he was telling the truth: he was released in the spring of 1950…
– When we parted, Remus Daneș said to me: “If one of us should fall, even if it is absurd, the one who remains must undertake not to forget the one who fell and to write about him”.
Later, Aiud would learn that Professor Remus Daneș, “the giant of the Dragoș Vodă” high school in Câmpulungul Bucovinei, a high school patronised and directed by an illustrious man of culture, the professor and poet Ion Biletchi-Albu, met his end in the Zarca of Aiud, on the bed where the university professor Traian Brăileanu from Cernăuți ended up as a martyr.
I was deeply saddened by this news. For a few days all hope left me. With Remus Daneș it seemed that all hope had died…
I didn’t know then that almost half a century later I would have the opportunity to write about the MAN who, in his death, regretted that his sacrifice would not be understood, and who was an inspiration to those who would come after us.
The family of Remus Daneș will receive the news of the professor’s death through the next act of the Aiud prison:
“Please bring to the attention of the family of the prisoner Daneș Remus, born in 1917, 28 February, son of… (indecipherable) and Aurelia, that he died today 10 / IV 1950, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. The director of the prison, Farcaș Alex”.
Simple and tragic. How tragic!…
I would later learn that Remus Daneș had been arrested and his house searched in Mitocul-Dragomirnei, a commune in Suceava, in a more than barbaric manner. Lazăr Popiș’s Suceava gang proved themselves worthy “leaders” in the fight against the socialist rivalry of Dulgheru’s Security Service and the bloody General Nicolschi.
Much of Remus Daneș’s literary work was destroyed, and shortly afterwards his mother died, destroying a Romanian family. Those who come after us must not forget the significance of the sacrifice of Remus Daneș, who fell on the altar of the Fatherland, the sacrifice of this great fighter against the Communist evil, who died in Aiud prison on 10 April 1950, not of tuberculosis, but of murder.
A star has fallen like a tear of blood! Remus Daneș!…
(Vasile Blănaru-Flamură, The Mercenaries of Hell. The curse of the files. Incredible întâmplări din Gulagurile românești, Vol. I, Elisavaros Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999, pp. 70-73)