The arrest

But to see the method of arrest, perhaps this should be said: It was before the 14th of May of the year 1948, which is the night of Saint Bartholomew for Romania (…), it was the most odious night, the most criminal for the political and social history of Romania. I was in the Romanian diocese one day. Two very luxurious cars drove by, the most elegant I’ve ever seen. Interestingly, you couldn’t see anything inside, not even the driver.

Everything was black. Man, what is it with these cars? Nobody knew, nobody had ever seen cars like that before. Well, a few months passed and I saw the cars passing by, mysterious, silent, black. There was a hill there, near the diocese of Roman, and you could see that they were pulling hard, but nobody knew what they were carrying, where they were going, who they were for. But on the 14th of May, these two carriages appeared again in front of the bishopric and stopped. They leave again, they come again, they stop again. (…) I served with two other priests, one from Secu and one from the Neamț monastery. One of them was Valerian Blaga, may God forgive him. (…) But by now it was evening, it was getting dark, we had our room there, me and Valerian. And just then we heard a loud noise at the door. But when we knocked on the door, they came in. What did they want? God knows. I got up. “Come on, get ready!” I could see right away it wasn’t clean in here. I said, “Let me get my coat.” “No, no, you’re coming back! You don’t have to, you go like this”. I left as I was dressed. My dears, they started to look, they turned around, they looked. (…) We’re going out into the courtyard. What was at the gate? That big, beautiful car with the black windows! It was parked. When the door opened, there were people. This lawyer, this priest… I look to the right, to the left, just people, one after the other. “Well, if you’re here, it’s OK, it won’t be a big deal… Let’s go!” And where did he take us? I didn’t know. But he drove us around the city for an hour and a half to give us the impression that we were being taken to the end of the world. There was nothing to see outside and an hour and a half seemed like a long time…

They were evil…

– Yes, they were evil. At one point the car stopped, howling loudly, braking… Where are we going? To the Securitate in Roman, there, in the barracks. He took us in, one by one… Come on, let’s go. They took us to a floor, to an attic, the attic was full, packed. A carriage, like this… One dog for every two people. I’m going in too: Face down on the floor, they shouted. The carriage took me inside. “Don’t move, bandit!”… That’s when I came into contact with this term, bandit, and it followed me for sixteen, seventeen years. I’ve never had any other name than ‘the people’s bandit’. What’s that got to do with anything?

But before that, in 1947, as I told you, we had a relationship with a former political prisoner, a legionnaire arrested in 1941, whose name was Doina Constantin. He used to come to our parishes and monasteries, he used to go around the villages and collect aid for those who were in prison, to help them. How could we help them? What should we give? I asked him. And we’d give, every week, who knows what, a penny, food, a coat… We gave ten lei, fifteen, thirty, and all this was written down in a notebook by this Doina Constantin as a kind of contribution. On that occasion, as I told you before, you would see in the notebook the lawyer Florescu, Father Pâslaru, Father Ambrozie… So we made a list of donors and supporters, which we found in Doina Constantin’s writings.

Good! The investigation of those of us who were in the attic, gathered in those black cars, began. Well, who do we see at the entrance to the investigation office? Doina Constantin!

– Was she now the accuser?

– She was the one who discreetly signalled to us not to say anything. She would put her hand to her mouth to be… grave! She’d make a determined gesture… Well, after four months of investigation, this whole group died. We couldn’t communicate with each other, we didn’t know what each other was saying, what the investigators wanted from us. The dogs were on duty, if you made a move they were on you, they would squeeze you and stick their fangs in like knives. They were so well trained that you couldn’t communicate with anyone. The guards were mostly Russians, you couldn’t get anything out of them either. And after the investigation was over, after our files had been checked and filled in, one rainy, cold, stormy night we heard some shots and we all wondered: What could it be? And suddenly there’s a rumour that the biggest bandit has escaped. Who’s the biggest bandit? Doina Constantin! They started a rumour that Doina Constantine had deserted and escaped. But why did Doina Constantine run away? Because she was their man…! The Bolshevik Securitate forces entered the prison and began to make promises to some of the prisoners: “Look, you’ll get out, free, we’ll forgive you the years you still have to do, we’ll put you in posts, we’ll make you more human than you were before…! The rulers of society are now of great humanity and will get you out of the mistake you made in the time of the bourgeoisie, now we are rehabilitating you…! There were people who gave in and got them out, out of prison, out of security, out of freedom, they formed legionary movements and groups where it suited them, as a lure for sympathisers, for the nostalgic, for the innocent. To attract the pack of dogs, don’t you make one of them howl? These people in prison gained a reputation as people who were fighting against the system, against the regime, in which case they had credibility, many people believed them. They were a bit like wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing to deceive the innocent lambs, the overconfident ones.

(Pr. Justin Pârvu – Father Justin Pârvu and the morality of an earned life, Credința Strămoșească Publishing House, Iași, 2005, pp. 57-58)