The bandits of yesteryear. Ioan Ilioiu: “I had gone into battle almost a child and I was coming back from the depths of hell”

When I saw him again after a long time, I was warned before I crossed the threshold: He can’t see or hear much anymore. He no longer communicates… It’s as if he had returned to his prison programme: he prays and sits like this, in silence…”. Ana Ilioiu recalls the suffering of her husband – the last survivor of the resistance group in the Făgăraș mountains – in prison. The former prisoner ignored us from a corner of the sofa in the modest kitchen of the block of flats. On the gnawed mustard on the table – bread with margarine and a few stale cucumbers. Ion Ilioiu looked over at us, blinking slowly.

When I mentioned the names of his comrades, a smile flashed across his face: “Andrei Hașu… Ghiță Hașu… the boys…” “Can you hear us? Do you remember the ones in the mountains?” I asked. He found my hand and shook it firmly, “Sure, I remember.” I talked about the framed photos on the walls and finally dared to ask if I could take his picture. He straightened his shoulders and smiled. The glare was hard to bear as the Security Service’s lights had destroyed his eyesight.

His silence was electrifying. He had withdrawn from the world. I found him the same way a few months later, then again in the autumn. Calm and serene. He was suffering from atypical Parkinson’s – without the classic tremor, but just as devastating. Then, suddenly, his condition took a turn for the worse. There was more there than here. The last meeting was a farewell. He held my hand longer than usual and whispered excitedly, “freedom fighter”. 

It was only a week or so later that we attended the funeral.

He ran away to the mountains at 18

Ion Ilioiu joined the group of fighters in the Făgăraș Mountains when he was in high school. He was one of the top students at Radu Negru, one of Romania’s 25 elite high schools at the time. The wave of arrests in 1948 decimated the teaching staff and students – suspected of Legionary sympathies. Ion Ilioiu, a farmer’s son from Sâmbăta de Sus, fled his home before being picked up by the Security Service. He was 18 years old and a member of the Brotherhood of the Cross – a youth organisation of the Legionary Movement. He was not accused of any crime or law-breaking, but was suspected that he and others might threaten the establishment of communism. In the 1930s and 1940s, when the leaders of the movement were committing crimes, Ion Ilioiu and his fellow resistance fighters were kindergarten children. It is not clear what they later learned about the history of the group with which they sympathised. They had not participated in any illegal acts and had no criminal record. Their close friendship with the Saxons, Hungarians, Jews and Gypsies of the Făgăraș area saved their lives more than once during the fighting in the mountains – they cannot be suspected of anti-Semitism or xenophobia.

Ion Ilioiu hid alone for a while, then he met other young people from Fagaras whom he had known since childhood and who were wanted for arrest: sons of “chiaburi”, members of the historic PNT or PNL parties, students or fellow Brotherhood members. They began to meet at night, in the fields, between villages.

The meetings began and ended with a prayer – according to the investigations of the Security Service, which recruited its first informers.

“We talked about the Church and God, about the behaviour of people in society, about individual property, about the family, about the army and the monarchy. We had read anti-Soviet literature, from which we knew what had happened in the USSR to the Church, the family and property, and we were worried. My hatred of the regime grew as I saw the increasing restrictions on my father, who was considered a slave driver. I was against the system of social organisation, I didn’t do any politics” – Victor Metea, one of the members of the group led by Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu, told the Security Service in 1956. Every fighter has his own motivation.

In the spring of 1950, the 12 young men wanted by the Securitate decided to flee to the mountains and wait for the right moment to overthrow the regime. They knew that there were other resistance groups in Romania and hoped that the Americans would not accept that the countries of Eastern Europe should remain under Soviet domination. From time to time they visited their homes and found hundreds of people willing to support them. Many did, at the cost of years in prison or a death sentence.

The beginning of the struggle

The first arrests took place in the autumn of 1950. In November, several young men were arrested as they prepared to leave for the mountains. After cruel tortures, described by the few survivors, the names of the partisans and vague information about their activities were obtained.

Those arrested in November 50 were only given warrants after the first year of investigation. In the end they were sentenced, most of them to death. Their testimony was used to convict in absentia those in the mountains – about whom the Security Service knew nothing.

A Security Service report from December 1950 blamed the locals for supporting the partisans: “The locals are sympathisers with the bandits. There are also many emigrants who have returned from the USA, enriched by the speculations of the capitalist regime, and who have increased the size of their households by multiplying the number of their families. That is why the radio broadcasts of the Voice of America and London have many listeners and the psychosis of the future war with the victory of the imperialist camp, as trumpeted by the aforementioned stations, has created a fertile ground. “[1]

The evidence against the “bandits”

Evidence of the alleged robberies does not appear in the records of the first convictions, at a time when the Fafargers were helping them without fear. In later investigations, the partisans were asked to explain how the alleged thefts from the stables took place: “We stole in agreement with the shepherd, who promised not to denounce us. We didn’t take any maize because he didn’t have enough, just the cheese he gave us. He also showed us a box of flour if we needed it”[2]. Some shepherds and witnesses were to testify to this and bear the consequences.

At each hut and sheepfold, the partisans left a note with the products they had taken, which the owner had to hand over to the Securitate. The purpose was twofold: the shepherds could defend themselves without arousing the suspicion of the Securitate, and the partisans could be sure that they would not be charged for more than they had taken.

In the early years, there was a kind of tacit agreement among the soldiers sent after them in the mountains: neither one nor the other fired. They met casually and walked around each other. The only survivors of the resistance in the Făgăraș mountains, Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu and Ion Ilioiu, would recount after 1990 the rules of the resistance in the mountains: they never fired first in a confrontation, did not use violence against civilians and always left vouchers for the goods they had collected. Security Service reports and eyewitness accounts confirm this. The historian Dobrin Dobrincu, former head of the National Archives, records that the partisans’ struggle was Christian – they had been practising it since childhood; national – they were fighting to defend the country from the illegally installed regime; they considered themselves the true Romanian army; and monarchist – they saw no other way than to overthrow communism and restore the monarchy. The most common tactic was retreat – the partisans were few in number compared to the Securitate battalions sent after them, and they had poorly maintained weapons.

During the entire period of fighting in the mountains, the Security Service claimed responsibility for “9 murders and 40 robberies”. The victims were Security Service officers involved in armed clashes in the mountains.

First conviction

In 1951, on the basis of arrests made in 1950, the military tribunal of the newly founded city of Stalin (Brașov) found that “several fugitives have formed a gang, which can be deduced in particular from the fact that they move around more at night and have weapons”. In view of this, the court considers it appropriate to sentence them”.

On 2 July 1951, the summons for the trial was first pasted on the house of Ion Ilioiu’s parents in Sâmbăta de Sus, then the sentence no. 687 of 16 July 1951: 20 years of hard labour plus 7 years of civil degradation. For the parents, the series of arrests and persecutions began only after they were forced to pay all the court costs. The fighters’ homes were avoided. But many secretly supported them. Similar sentences were handed down to all those in the mountains for whom there was no turning back. 167 supporters were arrested. Terror reigned in the villages of Făgăraș. The number of informers increased; paradoxically, the number of those who joined the fight against the regime increased proportionally. The Security Service’s abuses were unimaginable. Black vans and army battalions were part of the daily landscape in the villages at the foot of the mountains. Arrests were arbitrary, without warrant, and ended with various periods of imprisonment without trial or conviction. Relatives of partisans, especially parents and siblings – often minors – were regularly investigated. If they were not imprisoned, they were cruelly beaten in the streets until they lost consciousness. All the Security Service’s actions were demonstrative – they tried to scare the villagers into becoming informers. Meanwhile, the partisans tried to contact other resistance groups in the country, and in particular the American Legation – through various foreign legations, including the Israeli one. Their Jewish friends were of great help. They were successful, but coordinated operations abroad and the parachuting of supporters were thwarted by the Securitate. The details of the “Sons of the Fatherland” operation are recorded in the diary of the historian Neagu Djuvara, who was directly involved in the training (in France) of those who were to be parachuted in to support the Făgăraș partisans. The team was liquidated shortly after the parachute drop in 1953.

The Security Service capture

In August 1954, after 6 years of hiding and fighting in the mountains, Ion Ilioiu was seriously injured in a confrontation with the Security Service. He was 24 years old. It was the first capture of a living militant since 1950. The bullet had hit his spine, perforating his liver and right lung. The partisan knew what was in store for him and hoped to die as a result of the beating he had received before medical intervention. He underwent emergency surgery in Sibiu and was examined the following day. He was photographed on the operating table and the picture was sent to his family so they could identify the body. They wanted the people in the mountains to believe he was dead and not to be afraid of the information they might give. For the next 10 years, until his release, the family thought he was dead.

In critical condition, he was beaten again, then the doctors intervened. Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun, the head of the Brasov security service – the future director of Aiud prison – lost patience with the refusal to cooperate. Ion Ilioiu was physically and mentally tortured for a year. He never spoke of the beatings. He called them “the usual physical torture of the Security Service”. But the psychological trauma would mark him for the rest of his life.

“Only my faith in God and my love for my country kept me alive,” he would later say. He prayed for death because he could no longer bear the nightmare and tried to explain to his torturers that he could not imagine betraying his friends: “I am bound in my heart to those with whom I was in the group. This is because we lived with them, suffered with them and broke bread with them”[3].

The methods of torture to which he was subjected are comparable to the re-education experiments in Pitești. Hypnosis and induced states of terror, combined with cruel beatings, starvation and sleep deprivation, brought him to a state of total unconsciousness. He was told to report to the prison doctors, who recorded his testimony.

Meanwhile, the last partisans in the mountains had been captured by betrayal. In the summer of 1955, the Security Service set them up with the help of a former supporter of the group – a former schoolmate of Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu. He promised to arrange their escape to Greece.

 Torture and mysticism

Ion Ilioiu’s health prevented him from attending the 1957 trial of the “mountain gang”. A year earlier, he had been admitted to the 9th Psychiatric Hospital – it is unclear whether this was for recovery or as part of the torture experience. When he was released, he could not be put back on his feet. The prison administration was in trouble. He is the only partisan who has medical documents proving that he was tortured. A team of psychiatrists found in 1957 that he was suffering from “prison psychosis”[4]. A courageous medical report noted the physical traces of bullet wounds and inadequate treatment, as well as the effects of mental torture. An opposing report concluded that the prisoner’s condition was due to “the mysticism with which he was contaminated in childhood”, given the proximity of his birthplace to the Sâmbăta de Sus monastery, “a known nest of mysticism”.

In the second volume of “Brazii se frâng, dar nu se îndoiesc”, Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu, the leader of the resistance group in the Făgăraș Mountains, publishes a letter sent to him by his comrade Ion Ilioiu, in which he describes what happened after his arrest.

“The day after the operation, I was interrogated by Colonel Crăciun. How much hate could fit into that man! The hatred that radiated from his eyes, his questions, his threats. At first I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t because I often fainted. Then I began to explain, as we were supposed to do in such cases, that I had no ties with anyone, that I lived on what I could steal, on what I looted from state farms or huts, and on game. We tried to put them on the wrong track, to get them as far away from you as possible. They didn’t believe me. Christmas and others got angry and threatened: “We won’t let you die, bandit. You’ll see then…”

I dread the mental memories. One day I fell into the hands of a hypnotist. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I was tortured horribly – fear, terror, anxiety and maximum nervous excitement – followed by apathy in which I thought nothing. That’s how I was examined for a year in Brașov.

Then I was taken to Malmaison in Bucharest. Here I was shocked one day to find that what I was thinking was being shouted out in a loud, gloomy voice that could be heard all along the corridor. I think they had a tape recorder that printed out everything said by whoever was listening to my thoughts. They claim that because of the drugs it was all in my imagination. No, it wasn’t. And now I’m convinced that it was a real experience. For example, he gave me a name – Olimpiu Borzea – and repeated it over and over in a dark voice, until, unable to bear it, I began to repeat it, shouting to cover the thought, but the voice kept repeating it, like a hammer in the brain. Then it would start with another name and so on, like an infernal machine. Then it threw me into terrible nightmares, which I experienced both in my sleep and with my eyes open, the same and the same. I saw myself cemented in with my whole body, I couldn’t even move my eyes, and a horrible animal was on my chest. I could hear it in my ears: “Bandit, I’ll torture you as much as I want. I cried and begged him to kill me, to stop torturing me. I prayed fervently to God: “Take me to yourself, Lord. Deliver me from this hell”. An invisible force, a kind of creaking, disturbed my prayer.

For four years I was kept in total isolation, alone in a damp, dark cell. I was kept under observation (perhaps even in a state of hypnosis), with the lamps pointed at me, almost completely destroying my sight. The devilish hatred of the interrogators made me wonder whether this was a nightmare or reality.

I was then thrown into the Aiud barracks, kept in isolation and reliving the same nightmares.

Once out of solitary confinement, in the last years of my imprisonment, through the love of my comrades, their compassion and their prayers, I slowly came back. Then, after my release, the same love, the love of my comrades, for whom I had risen from the dead, brought me back. I had entered this struggle almost as a child and returned to the world as if from the depths of hell, with the burden of a terrible experience.

Looking back, I feel those nightmares lurking at the gate of consciousness. I suffer as I did then, reliving that hell. I wasn’t exaggerating in the least. I believe that God’s eye is everywhere and He will judge us all. We will heal our soul wounds with faith in God and in our ideals, with hope for a better world and with love for each other, those of us who survived the hell of that time”.

“We did the right thing”

In October 1957, a month before the other fighters were executed, Ion Ilioiu’s trial began in absentia. Several court appearances followed, to which he was unable to be brought because of his health, and he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. He had not been heard, but the doctor wrote in a file that “the lack of desire for freedom that every prisoner has for himself is interpreted as the result of a desire to serve a sentence”. It was April 1958, four years after his arrest. Ion Ilioiu was 29 years old.

Four years of total isolation followed, in a damp cell with no windows. He was released in 1964, after 10 years in prison, during the general amnesty for political prisoners. He was one of the last to be released from Aiud prison, run by Colonel Gheorghe Crăciun, who had personally investigated him after his arrest in 1954. He struggled to regain his health and his life. Married only in his third year, he had no children. He lived an extremely modest life to the end, receiving few visits, asking for nothing and making no complaints, living in complete anonymity, speaking very rarely and little about his suffering in Communist political prisons.

On the meaning of the struggle, Ilioiu said only this: “I didn’t consider what I did a waste of time. I did the right thing. Even though I didn’t win, my conscience is clear and I don’t feel guilty about the outcome of our struggle. If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same”.

He was buried in Făgăraș on 2 November. It was a discreet ceremony attended by the few people who had ever visited him. He would have been 83 at the end of the month.

(Ioana Hașu – Apostolate in Țara Făgărașului, year VI, no. 69, November 2012, pp. 4-6)

1. CNSAS, Criminal File 1210, vol. 3

2. CNSAS, Criminal File 16, vol. 1

3. CNSAS, Criminal File 16, vol. 11

4. CNSAS, Criminal File 16, vol. 11

From the actions of the local militia against the partisans “the investigator understands nothing more and orders to find out what banditry the bandits have indulged in, and if not, why”.