The condemnation
Then came the trial in Suceava. Father still remembers with humour and amazement the parody of this trial. It took place only at night in the prison. Daylight would not have tolerated such a despicable framing of the guilty, which was actually the most legitimate and natural attitude of a man, a Christian and a Romanian. But then nothing was normal. The judges were the same ones who had condemned the Communists in 1941-1944, and now they hoped that by giving harsher sentences to the poor innocents, the Communists would be lenient with them and forgive them.
But they hoped in vain, for in the end the sad convoy of newly condemned prisoners, including Father Justin, had the zealous judges in the last wagon[1]. But here’s Father’s story:
“When the investigations at the Securitate Department in Roman were finally over, we were taken to Suceava. There they put about eight to ten of us in a room, arrested from all over Moldavia, and they started the investigations again, this time to determine the punishment for each of us on the basis of the files, and to put the poor arrested people in prison for as many years as possible. Many people, countless innocent people, were involved in these investigations. For example, if I talked to someone for 10 or 15 minutes in 1945, and then I happened to meet that person 6 months or a year later – that person’s name would appear in the investigation. We had to answer the questions: “Yes, of course, we had a short conversation” and the investigators would ask: “What did you talk about? About how to organise the resistance? I would answer: “No, nothing about these things, just ordinary things”, but the real answer was not accepted by them and finally we were beaten and tortured physically and mentally until we agreed to sign a paper saying that we knew everything, that we had hatched who knows what plan and that we were criminals. And that’s how we ended up getting 10 or 15 years.
The sentences were given in years, very few were two or four years, generally they started at five years, five, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen, like nothing… And so, from a man respected in society, honest, decent, here you were, without even knowing why, a pariah, a “bandit”, an “enemy of the people”, a “legionnaire” and so on…, sentenced to many years in prison and very hard. Your parents didn’t escape either; the persecution of your family began, the senseless persecutions (…).
They made these mass arrests to show Moscow and the world their vigilance and strength. If you wore a cap, a long ponytail in front of your face, you were already labelled: “Ah, you are a fascist!” You’d get to be picked up and be given nat least five years”.
(Father Justin Pârvu and the morality of a life won, Credința Strămoșească Publishing House, Iași, 2005, pp. )
[1] Ioan Ianolide also confessed this turn of events in his memoirs: “I knew communists and I knew Jews in prison, I also knew those who had been in power. I even took care of the general who had been the president of the military court that had sentenced me. I was given the task of closing his eyes. After serving his masters, he had also been thrown into prison”. (Return to Christ. Document for a New World)