Testimony of a Saint – Alexandru Ghica
One Sunday morning – the church bells were ringing in the town – they took us all out, they brought us in from the cells, from the wards, from the factory, about 2000 people. In the “Bomb”, where we had been sorted out in 1959, benches were set up, and on a higher planked platform, the presidium table, at which, when the hall was full, at Christmas, two very elegant civilians, officers and the infallible “Rodica”, the secretary, took their seats.
The Zarca were brought in and placed in the front rows. A few shadows, among which Prince Ghica and other leading figures of the political life of 1940.
On one side, the power represented by Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun, and on the other, a former dignitary, a prince whose dignity could not be lowered in 20 years of suffering. Alexandru Ghica had been head of State Security during the Legionary government. The first, a communist, put there by the party, the other, convinced of the nobility of the cause for which he had worn chains since 1940. He had therefore been in Aiud for 21 years.
Crăciun: – “You sold your country to the Germans! You betrayed the interests of the Romanian people!”
Ghica: – “And you to the Russians! We gave wheat and oil to the Germans, you sold the soul of the nation! History will judge you. I hope you will live to see your sons and grandsons cursing you for being the servants of the devil from the East![1] Communism is a utopia, Colonel! It is the heaviest curse that has fallen on the Romanian people! The future will prove it. You will destroy us, but you will be cursed, from generation to generation, by your children and grandchildren, to whom you closed your eyes for the sake of an idea doomed to failure! We here forgive you, but history will not forgive you![2]”
Crăciun: – “Imprisoned Ghica! You are no longer head of State Security! When you speak to me, stand up straight!”
Ghica: – “You should kneel before this crowd of martyrs who carry the cross of a nation that you have crucified every day for more than 20 years!”[3]
He stood up straight, white, dignified, and the next moment, and at a sign made by Colonel Crăciun, he was taken out of the room, but from the door he turned and cried out:
“I’d rather die here than in your freedom![4]”
A hand covered his mouth. Like him, there were several others who were not brought to the confessional.
(Ilie Tudor – De De sub tăvălug, 3rd edition, MJM Publishing House, Constanța, 2010, p. 93)
Note on the title: the title of the article is not a forced, artificial one, but the title given by the author in the book. Ilie Tudor perceived Prince Ghica as a saint, so the author’s personal experience should give us food for thought.
[1] We notice how much lucidity Prince Ghica acquired during all these years of imprisonment, lucidity that went beyond the condition of a prisoner and a prisoner of the moment. Moreover, the confession turned out to be prophetic, because Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun lived to see the fall of communism and the shame of all communists in the eyes of future generations.
At the same time, this confession of the prince, besides its prophetic character, also shows his fearless courage to speak the truth at the cost of his life, since a few days of solitary confinement after so many years of imprisonment could even mean death.
[2] Here we can see Prince Ghica’s love for his enemies, the highest level of Christian love. “We here forgive you” is the forgiveness that Prince Ghica, in the name of all the prisoners who are still in prison, gives to his oppressors at this moment, just as Christ the Lord forgave his enemies on the cross. It is true, however, that “history does not forgive”, because no matter how much forgiveness a persecutor receives, he will fall into the disgrace of future generations as long as he has not appropriated repentance and thus the forgiveness of the whole Church. In history, then, the memory of martyrs is also a form of justice towards those who martyred them.
On the other hand, the foreshadowing of the judgement of future generations can also be interpreted as a “cold slap” with which Prince Ghica tried to awaken his persecutors to reality, to make them break away from the atheism and hatred of the class struggle that had blinded them, so that the persecutors would realise that the communist ideology was doomed to failure, regardless of the appearance of momentary victory.
[3] With these words, Prince Ghica defended all the confessors in Aiud prison, whose dignity was systematically trampled upon by Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun.
[4] Prince Ghica was aware that Romania at that time was in fact a bigger prison than the wall, and therefore a pseudo-liberty. Ioan Ianolide will testify to the tragedy of this situation in his memoirs: “Now we were all leaving the dungeon, weak, ragged, dirty, shadows of what we had been 20 years before. Many had gone to the barracks sick. We all looked pathetic. We waited at every station for them to arrest us and for this bad joke to end, but we were wrong: we were actually going to the big dungeon. It seemed to me that I was carrying a grave inside me, that I was moving in a grave and going to a grave. Oh, I said to myself, how happy are those who have died and have not lived through the bitterness of this liberation!”