Teacher-martyr Gheorghe Popescu – an apostle of dignity and freedom of the Romanian nation

It is said that the mountain people, by their nature and behaviour, live with a sense of freedom and dignity, with the fear of God, but much more resistant to the vicissitudes of time. They are not easily manipulated by politicians who are temporarily in charge of the country. That is why the people of the mountains are openly opposed to the Stalinist regime that was installed in our country with the help of Soviet tanks immediately after the Second World War. It is well known that after Petru Groza’s government took over the country in 1945, terror was also introduced in Romania.

Human freedom was suppressed and the so-called ‘people’s democratic’ regime, based on the terror of the Securitate, was established. Those who did not submit to the new regime were sent to camps or to death. Terror, fear, hopelessness and cowardice spread like a contagious disease throughout the country. In this “swamp of despair”, an armed anti-communist resistance was formed with the task of taking action against the Soviet occupiers when the time was right.

Thus, from 1949, on the southern slopes of the Făgăraș Mountains, in the region of com. Nucșoara, Muscel County, the group of partisans “Haiducii Muscelului” (Muscel’s Outlaws), which included the brothers Toma and Petre Arnăuțoiu, the brothers Ionel and Alexandru Marinescu, the Chirca family (Ion and Elena with their sons), the Jubleanu family (Titu, Maria and their son Constantin), Maria Plop and others. However, the resistance was a much broader phenomenon, involving not only the brave men who went to the mountains with weapons in their hands, but also the people from the villages of Nucșoara, Poenărei, Corbi, Stănești, Domnești, Mușătești, Brădet, etc., who gave them material and moral support, who gave them material and moral support, who provided them with what they needed, who encouraged them, who sometimes hid them in their attics, stables, cowsheds or houses, who confused them and led the Security Service on false tracks. In fact, the greatest problem that the Security Service encountered in its action to liquidate the “gang”, symbolically called “Haiducii Muscelului”, was the extraordinary determination of the people in the group’s support network (members of the families of those who had left to fight in the mountains, relatives and citizens who knew about the partisans’ mission, people in charge of procuring food, clothing, weapons and ammunition, maintaining the necessary contacts, etc.).

In Poenărei, a peculiar geographical area, an isolated mountain village that did not allow itself to be seduced and drawn into the “history” written by others over the heads of the villagers, the coordinator of this network of secret support for the partisans was the teacher Gheorghe Popescu, the headmaster of the village school at the time. As a true Romanian, he could not cowardly bow to the local Communist power, which was infiltrated by the State Security. Based on the biblical principle that “the place of birth is sacred and its freedom must be defended”, the teacher from Poenărei decided to sacrifice his life and his family to defend the freedom of his fellow countrymen. From the beginning, he understood his mission as an apostle of freedom and national dignity, and he acted in full knowledge of the facts. But his beautiful dream of freedom turned all too quickly into a terrible nightmare in Communist prisons. The wounds of history deepen, they are difficult to heal, but they are not forgotten! Today, with the help of his devoted daughter, Mrs Gina Marinescu-Popescu, the only surviving member of his family, we are trying to reconstruct, at least in part, the rich and exciting biography of the hero of Poenărei.

Born and raised in Poenărei, with extremely healthy genealogical roots in his native village, the teacher Gheorghe Popescu was openly involved in the resistance movement of the partisan group “Haiducii Muscelului”. People with values unite to defend their roots! After many secret “consultations” with teachers and priests from the Poenărei-Corbi-Nucșoara area, the teacher Gheorghe Popescu and his colleagues decided to voluntarily support their brave colleagues who had fled to the mountains to fight the communist security on several fronts. From Nucșoara, the teacher Iancu Arnăuțoiu (father of the brothers Toma and Petre Arnăuțoiu) and the teacher Virgil Marinescu (father of the fighter Ionel, murdered in the mountains, and of Alexandru, political prisoner), from Corbi, the teacher Ion Mica, from Stănești, the teacher Mucenic Comândășescu, as well as the priests Ioan Constantinescu and Nicolae Andreescu from Poenărei, Ioan Drăgoi from Nucșoara and others. Thus, the teachers and priests, aware of the danger of the establishment of communism in the country, were the first to get involved in organising and starting the anti-communist resistance. And it was they who paid the heaviest price in blood for the “audacity” of opposing the communist regime in Romania.

It is a great honour and duty for me, as a grandson (my mother is his younger sister, born in Poenărei), to recall the personality of the teacher-martyr Gheorghe Popescu. He was born on 12 April 1902 in the village of Poenărei, Corbi, the fourth of the eight sons of Gheorghe and Paraschiva Popescu. His father gave his life for his country in the battles of Mărășești, leaving his wife and eight children without material or moral support. The burden of their upbringing and education fell on the frail shoulders of their mother Paraschiva (my maternal grandmother), a beautiful woman, with eyes like the clear sky, respected by the people of Poenărei, who knew how to wield the hoe as well as the spade in the field of life. All her life (she lived to be 102!) Grandmother wore only the traditional folk costume of an apron and a flowered mare. My dear mother, Paraschiva (she has the same name as her mother), who learnt from her how to sew and weave beautiful shawls and fote in the Poenarean style (famous Muscelian models, in fact), wore only the traditional folk costume all her life, both on working days and on holidays. With such distinguished parents, the teacher from Poenărei could not have been inferior to his father, the hero of Mărășești, who dedicated himself to the fight for freedom and the anti-communist and anti-Stalinist resistance, sacrificing his life and his family.

He completed his primary and secondary education in his hometown and then went on to the Pitești Normal School, where he graduated at the top of his class and became an excellent teacher, thoroughly training successive generations of students. He was a respected reserve officer in the Romanian Royal Army and a war veteran. He worked in several schools (Mușătești, Sboghițești, Corbi) before being appointed headmaster of the school in Poenărei, where he settled permanently with his family. Thus he fulfilled his dream of working in his native village (where he also built a house in 1935) and contributing to the education of the children of Poenărei. He was also deeply involved in community, construction and housing activities to modernise the village of Poenărei and raise it to a higher level of culture and civilisation. Together with the landowner Vică Poenăreanu, the priest Ioan Constantinescu and other village leaders, he was active in the initiative committee to obtain the support of the government of Armand Callinescu for the paving with river stones of the “Caldarâm” road leading to Poenărei, considered at that time “the most modern road in the country”. My father, Gheorghe Dejanu (nicknamed Rucăreanu because my grandmother was from Rucăr), told me that as a driver for the landlord Vică Poenăreanu, he worked on this paved road, carrying stones from the Doamnei Gorge in the landlord’s car. As can still be seen today, more than 70 years after the construction of the “caldarâmului” (as it is called by the locals), the work was very resistant. Thus, the work of the teacher Gheorghe Popescu is doubled by a rich public activity. Together with the villagers, and especially the schoolchildren, he managed to plant hundreds of acacia and fir saplings on the slopes of the village, in order to reforest the area and stabilise the soil. In order to develop fruit-growing in the area, he was responsible for attracting and training young farmers in the grafting of fruit trees of noble varieties. On the estate of the landowner Vică Poenăreanu, the teacher organised practical courses in fruit growing, “tree grafting”, with the participation of eager people from the mountain area. My father also took part in these courses, learned the art of grafting and was then asked by the whole village of Stănești to graft trees… It is not by chance that in the gardens of Poenara, Stanești, Corbi, Nucșoara, Domnești, etc., there are the most beautiful plantations of fruit trees, apple, pear, plum… Today, unfortunately, old! During his time as headmaster, he collected materials for a new school building, helped the parish priest Ioan Constantinescu to build, together with all the parishioners of the village, the beautiful wooden church “Cuvioasa Paraschiva”, which still stands today as a sanctuary of the ancestral Orthodox faith.

Through his work in the school, he poured out on his pupils all the warmth of a true teacher, whose aim was to form people of character, with a serious and rich general culture. He urged all the children to learn books, and when they finished primary school, he sent them to higher schools, to the “despair” of the Boyar Vică Poenăreanu, his godfather, who, owned a sawmill on the Râul Doamnei, used to say to him: “Well, don’t send them all to school, stop them in the village, because there is no one to bring my logs from the mountain to the sawmill. Send them to me to learn how to work at the sawmill”… One of his former students, Eng. Vasile Deaconu, told us that “at the end of the year, teacher Popescu tested everyone in Romanian and mathematics and, depending on the results, directed them towards higher schools”. He himself benefited from such guidance.

I was not fortunate enough to know him personally, but from my mother’s descriptions and family photographs I have a lasting image of a handsome man who was a presence in his native village. His figure seemed like a living, stately statue, moving in the community, smiling paternally at generations of pupils, always different, coming from the past and stepping into the future… This image was confirmed to me by the artist Constantin Samoilă, a former pupil of Poenărei Primary School, who painted a significant portrait of him in his book of memories: “Mr. Gheorghe Popescu was the headmaster and the most demanding man. He was a handsome man, with a fork moustache and black hair that blew in the wind. He dressed very well, in trousers, a white shirt with rays in the fringes and a black waistcoat. Sometimes he wore a felt hat. On festive days, when he went out for a walk, he also carried a walking stick that commanded elegance and obedience… “[1]

During the partisan era, the priest Gheorghe Popescu, the headmaster of the school, but also a reserve officer, was obliged by the local authorities to act as commander of the pre-military centre in Corbi. This gave him the opportunity to train young people for the fight to defend the homeland by teaching them to love freedom, but at the same time the Securitate was preparing a “Verification and Tracking File” on him…

With the Security Service on his trail, the Poenărei teacher’s “freedom” ended tragically in Jilava prison, where he was sentenced to death for supporting the partisan group “Muscel’s Outlaws”. It was rumoured in the village that “for some time the teacher had sheltered the partisans in the attic of the school and in the cattle shed behind his house, supplying them with food and even arms and ammunition…”. The teacher is said to have contributed to the dissemination among the villagers and the partisans of mobilising poems “with an anti-regime content”, signed by Radu Gyr and Nichifor Crainic. He knew the great poets of Câmpulung-Muscel personally, and unfortunately they also met in communist prisons. From a statement by Toma Arnăuțoiu we learn that “the priest Ioan Constantinescu took the poems from the teacher Popescu and gave them to the partisans”. These were the poems “Hunger”, “You were not with us in the cells”, “Letter from Aiud” by Nichifor Crainic and the poems “Prayer”, “Get up, Gheorghe, get up, Ioane” by Radu Gyr, found by the Securitate in a notebook which turned out to belong to the teacher Gheorghe Popescu. Although it is hard to believe, the writer Gr. Constantinescu “suspects” that the poem “Get up, Gheorghe, get up, Ioane” was written especially by Radu Gyr to encourage and mobilise Gheorghe Popescu and Ion Constantinescu from Poenărei to fight.

From the Security Service documents we learn that “inv. Popescu from Poenărei was from the beginning against the installation of the People’s Democratic Regime in the P.R.R.” and that he was suspected of having “links with those who had fled to the mountains”.

In the autumn of 1950, the partisan group “Haiducii Muscelului” (Muscel’s Outlaws) was in constant harassment with Muscel’s Security Service forces, who had surrounded Com. Nucșoara and had infiltrated their scouts through all the state institutions. Under these dangerous conditions, the Arnăuțoiu brothers, Ion V. Marinescu (who had fled to the mountains after three years of medical studies in Cluj) and the young Titu Jubleanu visited the teacher, Rev. Gheorghe Popescu, at his home in Poenărei, in order to stock up on weapons and ammunition and to inform themselves about the “movements of the Securitate”… On the occasion of this visit, “hostile remarks were made against the People’s Democratic Regime in the P.R.R.”. From the “interrogation of Toma Arnăuțoiu” of the Pitești Security Service, we learn that on the night of 5-6 September 1950, Ionel Marinescu went to Popescu’s house, and in the morning “Ionel Marinescu and Gheorghe Popescu came to our house and we talked with him for an hour. With Gheorghe Popescu we talked about ammunition and the clashes we had with the security services. We also talked about our act of terror and we made spiteful remarks about the democratic regime in the P.R.R.”[2] From the testimony of Toma Arnăuțoiu we know that, at the suggestion of Gheorghe Popescu, the partisans stayed at the edge of the pine plantation in Poenărei and “at noon he came to us with food, accompanied by his son, the student Gogu Popescu”, then inv. Popescu informed them that “they appeared in com. Nucșoara and he saw a small car with a superior officer driving by”[3].

We also note that the entire family of the teacher Popescu supported the partisan movement: “We stayed in the forest for a few days (Toma Arnăuțoiu explains), where Popescu Gh. and his son Gogu Popescu brought us food, and we also met Popescu’s wife, namely Maria Popescu, who came to the stable with food together with her son. We had angry discussions with Popescu Gh. and Gogu Popescu, telling them that the democratic regime in the P.R.R. was going to fall. Popescu to the priest Ioan Constantinescu, whom we wanted to recruit to the gang. We stayed in the garden and Ionel Marinescu went to Constantinescu Ioan’s house, climbed up into the hall, knocked on the door and shouted at the host. Someone inside locked the door and then Ionel Marinescu wrote in walnut letters in the yard: ‘A GOOD ROMANIAN DOES NOT LOCK THE DOOR OF A…’, after which we left for the plantation”. (op. cit. p.89).

Also on the initiative of inv. Gheorghe Popescu, the partisans met with Ion Mica, a teacher from Corbi, in Zgaia. The two teachers informed them of the “movements of the Securitate”, brought them food and “made spiteful remarks about the regime in the RPR”.[4] The partisans found excellent shelter “in the stable of the Popescu family, near the pine plantation”, from where they could immediately take refuge in the nearby forest if necessary. The problem of food supply was solved, as “the teacher’s family had proved more than generous in providing them with food”.[5]

Petre Arnăuțoiu’s statements, recorded in the interrogation report of 4 February 1959, read as follows Popescu Gh. informed us that there was an army in the north-western part of Nucșoara and Slatina, that fixed posts had been set up, that citizens returning from the mountains were being asked by the security organs for information about the gang, and that an operation with many soldiers had been carried out in Dobroneagu. In the forest, at Poenărei, the teacher, Fr. Gheorghe Popescu “brought us 120 cartridges of a 9 mm pistol, which he took from Popescu from Mușătești, he brought us 3,000 lei from Grigore Poenăreanu and Victorița Bera and some playing cards. He also told us that in the attic of the church in Poenărei there were Z.B. weapons and 50 cartridges”. [6] From the same file we learn that, in mid-September 1950, “we left Poenărei and, passing through Corbi, went up to Plătica – Bahna Rusului, the mouth of the Cernatului, Mârna, where we found Constantin Jubleanu, Maria Jubleanu and Maria Plop, to whom we told of our activities and the contacts we had had during the time we were in Poenărei”.

Between 5 and 15 September 1950, the partisans had seen for themselves “on the spot” that the village of Poenărei offered perfect visibility for observing the movements of Securitate military units on the access roads from Pitești, Câmpulung-Muscel or Curtea de Argeș towards the Făgăraș Mountains, in the valley of the Doamnei River. Given these favourable strategic conditions, the partisans, at the suggestion of Pastor Gheorghe Popescu, made plans to “build a shelter near Poenărei”. They found the most suitable place: “Râpa cu Brazi”, 1 km from the village, on a difficult road. In fact, in sentence no. 107 of the Military Tribunal also mentions the “Bordeiul din Poenărei”, the last refuge of the partisans: “In 1952, the members of the Arnăuțoiu Toma gang settled in the area of the village of Poenărei and built a bordeiul at the place called Râpa cu Brazi, where they hid”.[7] Until the bordeiul was completed, they hid in various places around the village of Poenărei. At the suggestion of the priest Nicolae Andreescu, they also lived in his stable in Bârlog. At the end of June 1953, the partisans settled permanently in the cave of Râpa cu Brazi, until their capture on 19/20 May 1958, when the State Security acted to capture or liquidate the “group of partisans”.

From the information provided by Mrs Gina Marinescu-Popescu we learn that “inv. Gh. Popescu was arrested for the first time in 1950, accused of having helped the partisan group with food, various materials and clothes, which he had found in the attic of the school and had not reported to the authorities. They had not found out about the weapons and ammunition or that they lived in our barn behind the house. They kept him in prison for 6 years on trivial charges, carrying him around and torturing him with terrible interrogations. He also underwent re-education in Pitești. In 1956 he was released from prison, but was not allowed to return to his family, and was deported to the commune of Olari in Bărăgan, where he worked as a farmhand for two years. In 1958, after the arrest of the Arnăuțoiu brothers, he was arrested again and sent to Jilava prison. Here he was again subjected to torturous interrogations, after which he was sentenced…”.

We interrupt Mrs Gina’s account here to record the sentence from the Securitate documents: “With sentence no. 119 of 4 June 1959, of the Military Tribunal of the Second Military Region, it is decided to condemn the accused to death and to confiscate all their property… (several accused from the Anăuțoiu lot are listed), among whom, at position 3, POPESCU GH. GHEORGHE, born on 12 April 1902 in com. Corbi, son of Gheorghe and Paraschiva, teacher, married, 3 children, residing in com. Olari”.[8] The condemned men were executed with a pistol on the night of 18-19 July 1959, by order of the commander of Jilava Prison, by a team of three reinstated soldiers. It was the turn of the teacher Popescu to be executed at 00.00. 15, by order of the commander of Jilava prison, in the place where “the other deceased prisoners are buried”, i.e. in a common grave, the location of which has not yet been identified.

The tragedy of the Popescu family is compounded by the arrest and conviction of their wife, Maria Popescu, and their eldest son, Gogu Popescu, a geology student: the same court, in “Sentence no. 119 of 12 September 1959, sentences Popescu Gh. Gheorghe (Gogu), son of Gheorghe and Maria, born on 10 March 1931 in the village Poenărei, Corbi comm., with the same address, with no previous criminal record, to 8 years’ imprisonment and total confiscation of his property. He commuted his sentence to 28 June 1958″[9]; by sentence no. 203 of 4 November 1959, Popescu Maria (the teacher’s wife), daughter of Grigore and Justina, born on 15 July 1908 in the village of Poenărei, com. Corbi, with the same address; no previous criminal record, sentences her to 8 years of hard labour, 6 years of civic degradation; orders the total confiscation of her property; revokes her preventive detention from 25 April 1959; orders her to pay 500 lei in court costs” (p. 212). The other children, Dan and Gina, who were minors, were not imprisoned, but they were expelled from school and left on the streets… The Stalinist “people’s democratic” state confiscated their house and property, and the children were sent to live with relatives… The Popescu family from Poenărei paid a heavy tribute of suffering!

In the book “Armed Anti-Communist Resistance…”, the writer Grigore Constantinescu (son of the martyred priest Ioan Constantinescu from Poenărei) talks at length about the “arms depot in the attic of the Poenărei church”. [10] In this chapter it is mentioned that in October 1951 the Arnăuțoiu brothers met again with Fr. N. Andreescu in order to “go with him to get the weapons from the attic of the Poenărei church, which Popescu Gheorghe had told us about”.[11] We know that by this time Fr. Popescu had already been arrested. Through Fr. Andreescu, the Arnăuțoiu brothers also contacted the parish priest of the church in Poenărei, F.r Ioan Constantinescu. After describing the “circumstances of the meeting”, the writer insists that the weapons were “hidden” in the church tower by Father Popescu, “without the knowledge of the parish priest Ioan Constantinescu…”. The writer also claims that this is “blackmail that Fr. Ioan Constantinescu will have to accept, since the path of deconsecration of the Securitate bodies of this action, in which partisans, a priest friend and above all his brother-in-law, Fr. Popescu, was a path of betrayal that would have eaten away at his Christian soul for the rest of his life…”.[12] Intrigued by the accusations that “her father had hidden the weapons in the church without the parish priest’s knowledge” and that he had spoken of “blackmail”, Popescu’s daughter, with tears in her eyes, says: “Such accusations are untrue. The truth is that Father Popescu and Father Constantinescu collaborated in all actions in support of the partisans. They acted together. They were brothers-in-law and friends. They never did anything bad to each other. Then I know that my father didn’t have a key to the church and he didn’t go in there to hide weapons without Father Constantinescu’s knowledge. I remember that they spent many days and evenings together, either at school, or at church, or at home, in our living room, or at the priest’s house, talking… I don’t know what they talked about, what they planned, because we, the children, were sent away by my father to study… In any case, my mother didn’t go to their meetings either. But it’s not nice what Grigore is doing now, judging my father! Writing untruths… Isn’t it enough that the communist security put him in prison and sentenced him to death in Jilava? But, as they say, history and the good Lord will judge them all…”. Shocking thoughts, uttered with indignation by Gina Marinescu-Popescu, the only survivor, who has fought all her life to recover from the communist state the house, the furniture, the little wealth left to her by her parents, and above all the “memory” of her father, which she wants to keep intact…

I discussed the “arms depot in the church tower” with the son-in-law of Fr. Popescu, Mrs Gina’s husband, the political prisoner Alexandru Marinescu, “the last living outlaw”, as I called him in a report published in the magazine “Pietrele Doamnei” in September 2009. With the calm and wisdom of a man who has been through many communist prisons, Mr Sandu began by telling me about the passion of the teacher, Mr Gina Marinescu. Popescu’s passion for hunting and guns: “Since his youth, when he was an officer in the royal army, he had a whole collection of weapons, pistols, ammunition, etc., which he did not hand over to the state after the war, when the confiscation decree was issued. They were his and he kept them. As far as I know, he handed over one rifle, and he could not have done otherwise, but he had more. He also collected from hunting friends in the area. When he saw the regime coming to power after 1945, he must have thought of hiding his guns and ammunition in the hope that a favourable time would come to use them. He couldn’t keep them at home. He knew from history that our ancestors, in times of need, in troubled times, used the tower of the church or the tower of the castle, the fortress, etc., to organise the strategy of observation and defence, of fighting against the enemies of the country. Surely such a tactic was in the minds of Father Popescu and Father Constantinescu when they took the weapons, ammunition, binoculars, cartridge cases, notebooks and other materials to the church tower. They probably had in mind to set up the church tower as a kind of armed barracks, ready at any time for the fighters to take up arms against the Stalinist security… They hoped, as we all did at the time, that the Americans would not hand us over to the Russians… We all hoped that in good times we would be able to fight with American support against the Stalinist invaders… Unfortunately, this didn’t happen… The partisan group “Haiducii Muscelului” (of which I was also a member) was organised as an anti-communist armed fighting group, and the teacher, Rev. Popescu, was one of the first supporters of our group. At the first meeting with the Arnăuțoiu brothers, he even talked to them about the arms depot in the church tower and the possibility of collecting them and using them against the Securitate”.[13]

Likewise, the statement that “another irresponsible hand of his kind had desecrated the place of worship in Poenărei” (p.147) is a mischievous statement, to say the least, because in dangerous, troubled times the church can be a place of defence or struggle against the enemies of the country, for the defence of the ancestral faith. This is how I believe that Popescu, and certainly the parish priest, participated in this action,” says Alexandru Marinescu. Logical explanations that need no further comment! At the foot of the church tower, exactly in the place indicated by Father Popescu, were found: about three military weapons and ammunition, a Steyer pistol, a Parabellum pistol, a small 6. 35 calibre pistol and another with a butt; two hunting rifles with two barrels, one 16 calibre and the other 12 calibre; some German tools and a bag of goods with ammunition for the hunting rifles; a camera, a gas mask, a canister, a notebook with writing, a tin box with decoration” (file 1238, vol. II). Priest Andreescu mentions in his statements that “of the materials hidden by Popescu Gheorghe in the attic of the church of Poenărei”, he gave to his wife Maria Popescu those that remained on his person (a notebook with something written in it, a decoration and a pair of binoculars), telling her that the objects were her husband’s, entrusted to him for safekeeping long before his arrest” (File 1238, vol. 45).

In the chapter “Various Sources of Armament” of the above-mentioned book, it is stated that “the priest Andreescu gave the partisans a hunting rifle and a Steyer pistol from those that came from the church in Poenărei, respectively from the armament of Popescu Gheorghe” (p.153). ) “The weapons and ammunition taken from the church of Poenărei were hidden by the partisans in some tree trunks at Plătica Point, and the loaded pistol, some cartridges from a hunting rifle, a notebook and a play written by Popescu Gh. and a cartridge case – in the ground behind the stable of Andreescu Nicolae, showing him the place” (File 1238, vol. 45), (p.149). I could go on quoting Securitate documents that reveal the complexity of the events of the “decade of horror”, as the Stalinist decade 1949-1959 is called by some historians. Unfortunately, the beautiful dream of freedom for which the “Haiducii Muscelului” and their supporters fought turned into a tragic nightmare in the communist prisons or even before the firing squad in Jilava. The anti-communist resistance movement must be remembered forever…

Do not forget, brave Romanians, that throughout history our nation has had no other protectors than the strength of the armed arm and the good Lord! Starting from this sacred truth, the hero of the anti-communist resistance in Poenera fortified the spire of the “Cuvioasa Paraschiva” church with the force of arms, in order to defend and fight for the defence of Christian traditions. At that time, Romanians hoped that “salvation” would come from the American people… The right moment was waiting for the Romanians to take up arms again, with American support, to fight the “Red Plague” from the East. All it took was a cry of alarm for someone to ring the mobilisation bell. Pastor Gh. Popescu had the weapons ready. He didn’t “hide” them (as the Securitate documents say), he prepared them for the true patriotic fighters. He announced them and invited them to use them against the “red dragon” that had invaded the country. The icon of St. George was nearby, as a model of encouragement to fight for freedom…

Don’t forget, brave Romanians, that in Poenărei, the tower of the Orthodox Church still dominates the heights of freedom with dignity! Next to the church, in the street that today bears the name of the hero of the “Anti-Communist Resistance”, is the Popescu family house, where the turbulent history of the “Haiducilor” of “Râpa cu Brazi” comes to mind at every turn. Here, the history of the “Haiducilor” is intertwined with the extremely harsh history of the Popescu family. Here we meet the “last living outlaw”, the political prisoner Alexandru Marinescu. Along with the partisans, the Popescu family was a constant symbol of civic and patriotic leadership for the community. All members of the family dedicated and sacrificed their lives to defend the traditional democratic values of the Romanian nation.

With the drama of parting from her loved ones in her heart, Mrs. Gina Marinescu-Popescu mourned her beloved father for many years, searching in vain for his grave in order to light a Christian flame of gratitude and remembrance at his head…

The name of the teacher Gheorghe Popescu remains forever engraved in the hearts of the Romanians, on the Cross of the Heroes of the Homeland and on the gilded façade of the monuments to the fighters of the anti-communist resistance! That is why, as a sign of gratitude and appreciation, every year on the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, for the heroes of Poenărei and for all the heroes of the homeland, we will enthusiastically sing the “Hymn of the Heroes”: “Heroes they were, heroes they still are/ And they will be in the Romanian nation,/ For they are broken as from a hard rock/ Romanians wherever they grow…”. Lord, protect the heroes! Lord, protect the Romanians!

(Prof. Daniel Dejanu – Argeș Expres Magazine)

[1] Constantin Samoilă – “Unforgettable childhood memories”, Ed. Tiparg, Pitesti, 2006, p. 38

[2] Grigore Constantinescu, “The anti-communist armed resistance on the southern slopes of the Făgăraș Mountains”, “S.C. Tiparg S.A.” Publishing House, Pitești, 2006, p. 89

[3] ibidem

[4] ibidem

[5] idem, p. 90

[6] File 1238, vol. 43

[7] File 1220/59

[8] Grigore Constantinescu, Op. Cit. p. 205

[9] idem, p. 209

[10] idem, p. 146-150

[11] From the statement of Toma Arnăuțoiu, file no. 1238, vol. 43

[12] Grigore Constantinescu, op. cit., p. 148.

[13] Tape recording, author’s archive

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