The beginning of the Golgotha in the Romanian prisons
On the street, on my way home, I was greeted by a red-haired, unshaven, burly man, flanked by a smaller, skinny man. Behind them, two citizens with their right hands in their pockets.
They saluted me. And I walked on, I could see the encirclement. I knew I’d been followed for a long time, step by step. My “shadow” was following me. I knew, I saw, I waited. The two behind me, hurried past me, ten metres, and stopped at the corner. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Few people on the street. A car at the corner. The redhead, flanked by the thin man, comes around the corner again and, with a tentative, wolfish movement, grabs my back. As I turn, the thin man sticks his gun under my nose. The vanguard quickly ties my hands behind my back and we all get into the jeep, which starts up immediately.
– We’re going to Internal Affairs to make a statement, the redhead explains.
– Just one?
– Ha, ha, ha! You got it!
– I think I am arrested.
– That’s right.
– Have you got a warrant?
– Here it is. I’m reading the paper with the warrant, which the thin man is holding in front of me.
The car stops at the Internal Affairs and we go down a few steps. On the left, there was a large room where an athletic-looking lieutenant was casually looking at me and waiting to receive me. (…)
I sat down and examined myself. I’ve been arrested. And I’ve had the honour of being deposited at the Ministry of the Internal Affairs. And now what? Who am I facing here? And for how many years will I be in prison?
I think it’s 10 o’clock at night. A platoon officer appears, waves me over and says: “Don’t look anywhere, don’t talk to anyone, follow me!
The lift takes us to the fourth floor. We pass through several doors and enter a large room with several desks on the left.
In front of me, on a desk, a young, blond, thin lieutenant. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before. I think I’ve seen him in Oranki. Yes, him, him, Dgionat (from Chișinău).
He comes within a step of me and, after looking me in the eyes, he slaps me three times. I didn’t feel any pain. It’s as if someone else had been hit. Yet I feel a deep disgust for the traitor of Oranki, for the displayed act of villainy.
– Do you remember, you thieving priest, the chaos you caused us in the Russian camps? Do you remember the decision of comrade Ana Pauker – announced at the decisive meeting in Oranki, where you reactionaries did not heed her call to form the voluntary units that would liberate the people from the fascists and restore the democratic regime? Do you remember all the negative propaganda that you traitors of the working people made when you fought hard for the boycott of the voluntary action? The words of comrade Ana Pauker, her determination, have become reality today: “We will go over your dead bodies, you sons of bitches”. Here you are, in the dock. For a month you have been free, and you have started to talk, to slander the Soviet regime, and you have even gone into action with the other bandits, criminals and thieves, making plans against the communist regime. And now you are here before us. Do you have any objections? You don’t play with the will of the working people! Since the working people have taken their destiny into their own hands, the people are not playing any games; they are laughing, burning everything in their path, whistling victoriously on the march for the realisation of the regime, trampling on their opponents without a care, tearing off their heads like vipers, littering the road of the revolution – on the march – with the corpses of their enemies. What you didn’t understand in Oranki, you could have understood here, in Bucharest, during the month’s leave I gave you! (…) And now, do you have any objections?
– Lieutenant Dgionat, I see you’ve learned your lesson well. I congratulate you. But just between us, I know that you were the son of a landowner in Chișinău, that you were a legionary politician, do you remember? And there was a time when you struggled to occupy a leadingposition in this movement? When did you believe in anything? Then or now? It wasn’t long ago that you denied this present age and put your life at stake for God and country!
– You deceived me and were prepared to lead an entire nation to its doom. Now I’ve seen that “light comes from the east”. Justice is on the side of the Soviet Union and the working class. You sold the country to the Germans, who stole its wealth, and we must raise our voices to the Soviet Union, which freed us from the hideous Nazi yoke.
– Do you know, Second lieutenant, how much the love of the Soviet Union, so warmly expressed towards the Romanians, is costing us – more warmly than towards any other “liberated” country? Our very existence as a nation is threatened. That’s what I mean, betrayal of the country. Our history as a nation has never seen a greater threat to our existence than the present one. If the Soviet Union stays here, at the Danube for another ten years, it will either suffocate us with its love, or we will erupt.
– You bastard, bandit, let me enlighten you on the politics of the day. And slaps me in the face, over the head, and kicks me in my feet…
Several officers with stars and epauletts entered the office. Some I know, some I don’t.
– Is that him? asked a lieutenant-colonel as tall as a mountain.
– Yes, comrade,” answered Dgionat.
– Come with me!
We walk out into the corridor, small rooms on either side, and at the end a large office with a powerful spotlight on a table. At the back of the light, Colonel Dulgheru. On the chair, in a semicircle, twenty, thirty security service officers.
At Dulgheru’s request, I sit in a chair near his desk.
– What have you been doing?
– Nothing much!
– The Soviet regime gave you bread and sugar, and you plotted like bandits, prevented people from being enlightened, and organised your criminal activities from there. Why didn’t they shoot you? To rid the earth of you!
– I don’t know why they didn’t shoot us. They must have had some good reason. Maybe we needed them for the yoke…
Someone nearby slammed his fist down on my head in anger.
– You jerk! You son of a bitch! Oh, how I’d strangle you!
– Let him go, says Dulgheru from behind the spotlight. What did you do in the camps? How did you organise yourselves? To what extent?
– There was no organisation. It was something spontaneous, very natural for people who put their faith in God and their love for their nation above their own lives.
– God doesn’t exist, it’s an invention of the priests and there are only people on earth. There are no nations. Only hard-working people! And another category – a small one – which exploits the workers.
– Of course, Colonel, you only see the forest world and not the trees – the people. But I distinguish the fir from the oak, the hornbeam from the beech, the mistletoe from the willow. These are the relatives. And God rains on them and raises them up.
– God? God I’ll fucking wreck you! I’ll make you sick of rain. Rain with batons!
– Why do you curse me, sir?
– Don’t you like it? Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, call the guards! Have them clear him up…
The brutes, four soldiers with broken Romanian, took me into a room and, in front of me, prepared all sorts of objects for torture. I had heard from the outside about the torture chambers in the Internal Affairs.
Hands tied to a beam, leaning only on the tips of my toes, I count the blows with the rubber baton.
All my bones ache, my cheeks creak, blood drips on my clothes. Then it came over me like a heat, then a thick darkness and I don’t know what happened next.
I woke up in the dungeon. Squeezed between the cold, narrow wall and the iron door at the back.
I can’t move left or right. I can’t turn around. Maybe in a day, maybe in two, maybe in three, red, yellow, green circles will appear in my eyes. My feet, stumps! My mouth, glue!
(…)
It’s been a month, two, three and a half of the month of flowers. I have bruises on my body and the taste of poison in my mouth. The soul has settled down quietly in its place, giving living water to the weakened body with brotherly caresses. And guides its steps. (…)
The great blizzard has begun! How long will it last, Lord? Light, O Jesus, through the darkness, as in the light of the fiery serpents, make us feel the way. And save us from evil.
(Fr. Dimitrie Bejan – Vifornița cea mare, Technical Publishing House, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 7-13)