The arrest
Sine ira in Studio[1]
I will review the events that led me to Aiud, where it began and where I knew the divine light and where, against all the vicissitudes and conditions of gradual extinction, I lived the most divine moments of my life.
For lack of adequate expression, I may say less than I have lived, but I will say no more than the truth.
All that I will write here, in this book, is a confession of self, as in the Holy Confession, before God, my nation and all humanity[2].
On the night of 12 January [1952] I was taken from my home by a group of Securitate[3]. After searching the house, turning every room upside down, looking for, as they put it, weapons and propaganda material, they took me away from my home.
At dawn on 13 January 1952, they took me blindfolded to Bucharest, to the Securitate in Uranus, where I was subjected to a lengthy investigation for a month or two.
On the very first night of my detention, a black, hairy orangutan appeared to me in a dream, torturing and frightening me, telling me that he was the master there. It was a sign of things to come.
Before I left Uranus, I dreamed I was on an exotic island, an island of happiness. The appearance of the palace on the island was similar to what I saw the next day, but in a negative light. Never before had I seen, either from the inside or the outside, that this fortress had been transformed into a prison, a place where prisoners were transported, tortured and executed.
It is the Jilava Prison, and as I spent a few months there, I will try to explain what Jilava looked like then…
Fort 13 of the capital’s 19th century defence system became a prison with a grim name in the 20th century. All the cells, the former rooms of the fort, are underground. From a distance you can only see the mound in the centre. The front has two wings of cells. The mound is surrounded by high walls with openings for firing weapons and another row of hideous cells.
Below the central mound is a large room that is constantly damp. Water trickled from the walls and puddled on the floor, and only here and there were a few slightly dry spots where you could lie down and rest during the night.
There was an inner courtyard, between the central mound and the surrounding walls, where prisoners were rarely allowed to walk. My description may have some shortcomings, but this is pretty much how it looked in 1952 when I was taken there. Thousands of guilty and innocent people lay and died in this prison because some knew what they were guilty of and others did not.
There were cases where some were released after the investigation, after a year or two in there, and were told that they had been arrested because of a mix-up of names.
When I walked down the corridor to the cell I was meant to be in, the first thing that struck me was the musty smell of sweat and faeces. In each cell there were wooden platforms, called beds, stacked on top of each other, so close together that you had to squeeze in.
New arrivals had to enter and sleep on the serpentine, that is, under the platforms, directly on the cement, on which there was some straw, until space was made on a higher level by the departure of others from above.
I stayed there until the autumn of 1952… and met all kinds of people: young, old, helpless and sick…
In the meantime I heard that the poet Vasile Militaru[4] (1886-1959) was also in Jilava. One day the former Minister of Finance, Alexandru Alexandrini[5] , who had been arrested for having links with the American Embassy in Bucharest, was also brought in. He told us that he had indeed taken a written report to the American Embassy, showing in precise figures that Romania had paid ten times the debt stipulated in the armistice with the USSR[6] up to 1952. He was discovered and ended up in prison… During the investigation, Alexandrini admitted this and was afraid of the consequences he would suffer for admitting his links with the Americans.
Meanwhile, the university professor Victor Cădere[7] (1891-1980), an elderly man of great prestige and former Minister Plenipotentiary to the USA, also spoke[8]. I saw him coming back from the hearing, after having been kept for several days on a chair in the Securitate corridor, not allowed to sleep by the secretaries who circulated in the corridor day and night. He didn’t even know why he was in prison… When he returned to his cell, he was very happy because he could rest on straw like a dog…
Again, I remember a handsome, cheerful and fearless young man called Zamfirescu, and another Zamfirescu, a very mature and self-confident person who loved to tell stories.
There was also an engineer among us, well trained in his field, with whom we chatted, reading novels or explaining technical matters, and who made us forget the harsh conditions of the cell, whose walls radiated a damp coldness that could not be felt.
The shutters didn’t allow us to see outside, nor did they let in any fresh air, so the stifling atmosphere inside the cell made our skin clammy and sticky. Only when someone was close to fainting would the others allow them to approach the window to breathe some air through the cracks in the shutters.
From this room I was taken to another room consisting of a series of cells connected by very low vaults, where the crowding was even greater and the air even more suffocating. Here, among many others, I met a group of students from the Mihai Viteazul High School in Bucharest[9]. They had been given priority to eat by the older students, so the older ones, who helped the younger ones, ended up eating only the lukewarm juice. The young high school students were busy carving small icons and crosses into bones. So we were all very careful not to be surprised by the guards when they opened the door. They had needle chisels with which to carve. Unlike the older ones, who were mostly demoralised, the young ones were very cheerful, telling the whiners that they were not afraid, that they had a long way to go and would survive anyway.
Towards the end of the summer of 1952, when Pitești’s[10] re-education inquisition, for our own good, for everyone’s good, was coming to an end, a young man appeared in our cell, much to the horror of those of us who knew him, Octavian Grama, who had been one of the torturers of Dr. Ion Simonescu11, the former Minister of Health in the Cuza-Goga government, previously director of the hospital at Turnu Măgurele.
Doctor Simonescu had performed the first or second successful heart operation in our country around 1937.
When Grama came to our cell, there was malice, hatred and darkness in his eyes.
I know that Dr. Simonescu could no longer bear the tortures, which I don’t want to remember now, and for this reason he ran to the barbed wire of the forbidden sector, for which he was shot by the guard on duty.
(The complete writings of Blessed Elijah the Seer of God and his life, commented on by his disciple and son in the Lord, Pr. Dr Dorin Octavian Picioruș. Vol. I, Theology for Today, Bucharest, 2010, pp. 274-278)
[1] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_ira_et_studio. That is to say, I reveal them without anger, but for the study/knowledge of those who wish to know them. I do not pay politics, I do not take revenge, but I clarify and expose conditions.
[2] One can see here the high, full awareness of the confessions here and the fact that Blessed Elijah wanted us to know the details of his ecstatic experiences for our benefit, so that we might be inflamed to desire them. Filled with the grace of his prayers, we too, in this endeavour of the integral of his works, are only placing on the pages, for the benefit of all, the treasure of grace and the work of our Father.
[3] From Turnu Măgurele.
[4] About himself: http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasile_Militaru. You can find some of his poems here: http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poeti/militaru.php.
[5] See: http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandru_Alexandrini.
[6] Idem: http://romania-rusia.info/Romania1944.asp.
[7] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_C%C4%83dere.
[8] Questioned.
[9] The site of Mihai Viteazul National College in Bucharest, the former high school he is talking about.
our author: http://www.cnmv.ro/.
[10] See: http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimentul_Pite%C5%9Fti.
[11] See: http://www.miscarea.net/1-simionescu.html.