Sergiu Popescu – a centre of energy and moral strength

Sergiu Popescu is one of the most famous inmates of communist prisons. There is a tragic side to his fame. Sergiu Popescu, a pugnacious fighter, suffered a serious accident at the Canal: an explosion riddled his face and chest with hundreds of tiny shrapnel, leaving him without light in his eyes. Sergiu was left completely blind. Before the accident, he had been one of the bravest and most dignified men in the prisons and camps he had passed through.

Sergiu sees his accident as an act of revenge, a premeditated murder by the camp political officer for his attitude. In almost every camp there was a case of murder organised by the camp police to intimidate the inmates. The case of Father Gheorghe Șerban in Baia Sprie is notorious.

But what makes Sergiu an almost unique personality is his attitude after the accident. Despite his handicap, in the midst of the misery of his cell, he is a centre of energy and moral strength. There are fibres of steel in the substance of his character. Nothing can bend him. He is the great amputee of the anti-communist struggle who did not hold back. He did not retreat to the hearth, as his scars would suggest, but is constantly at war with the evil that communism represents. When you look at Sergiu, you feel small and unworthy in relation to him. All the comrades who knew him love him boundlessly.

(Liviu Brânzaș, Raza from the Catacomb. Diary from Prison, Scara Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 172-173)