The demolition of idols continues

Tase Rădulescu finished reading with a trembling voice and tears in his eyes. The silence that had prevailed during the reading was prolonged and seemed to intensify. The people, withdrawn, were stunned by what they had heard. Colonel Crăciun, after gazing triumphantly for a few moments from the rostrum on which he stood over the speechless room, broke the silence and addressed the audience:

Well, what do you say? I address myself in the first place to those of you who are stubbornly refusing the opportunity offered to you. Take the example of your great poet, Radu Gyr, who has always been an example and encouragement to you. You may ask me why I did not bring him here in person to tell you directly what he wrote to you. I did not bring him because he is now ill and in the prison hospital, where our doctors are giving him special care to save him.

I believe that he will not collapse and that one day I will be able to bring him here to tell you of his new and healthy direction.

Gyr, however, was never brought to us. This was probably the concession made to him when he agreed to write the infamous letter, for sensitive as he was, he could not bear to face those whose idol he had been and whom he had now disappointed.

After this brief speech by Colonel Crăciun, the letter was passed from hand to hand at his direction, so that everyone could be convinced of its authenticity.

People picked it up, looked at it, turned it over, but could not believe it. When the letter reached the man who had confronted Colonel Crăciun after reciting the poem, he passed it on without even looking at it. This time Crăciun could wait no longer and, although he knew the man, he said to him: “What, you don’t want to convince yourself of the letter’s authenticity?” The answer came promptly: “No, I’m not interested! The letter may be genuine, but I don’t understand why you are so anxious to convince me. This is not my problem, it is Gyr’s problem, because, Colonel, here everyone dies alone.

Today Gyr has fallen, tomorrow others will fall, and one day I may fall as well. Tempted by promises, or unable to bear the treatment you will inflict on me, I may write such a letter myself. If I do, I will not be sincere. It is not I who will do it, but the villain or the fool in me. Back to Gyr, I don’t know what methods you used to persuade him to write such a letter, but I’m sure it wasn’t a lentil bowl that made him kill his dream. We know that Gyr was and still is, by your own admission, very ill. And we also know that, with your characteristic humanism, you have so far refused to give him medical help in order to force him to give in. But it was not only the fear of death that made him turn away. You had another argument to make him give in…”.

Colonel Crăciun was clearly angry because the unexpected intervention could have diminished the effect he hoped the staged event would have on the prisoners. He made no reply to the bold speaker, but leaned over and whispered something into the ear of the political officer next to him. And on the same day, after the circus that we were forced to witness had ended, the one who had dared to mess with Crăciun was taken out of the cell and isolated in the Zarca.

The prisoner, whose name I no longer remember and whom I never saw again, was right.

The poet of the prisons, Radu Demetrescu-Gyr, did not give up the dream just because he was afraid of dying, just to get medical help, but the re-educators used a more effective method to break his resistance. By mirroring his sensitivity, they created a serious problem of conscience. “You are responsible for the misfortune of hundreds and thousands of people,” he was told. “You wrote the lyrics of the ‘Holy Legionary Youth’ and other Legionary songs and marches, which fanaticized whole generations of young people and led them to join your criminal movement. In prison, with your lyrics, you maintained their fanaticism and hatred of the regime and the working class, making them believe that they were chosen for the “holy sacrifice” that would ensure the victory of the Legion. Now that it is obvious that we, not you, were right and that the future is on our side, you have a moral obligation to help them get off the hook in order to save yourselves. We want to free you all, but not all of you. We can’t send individuals into the middle of society to create problems for us again. We want to re-educate you first, to make you understand and admit that you were bandits and enemies of the people, and only then set you free. We want you to come out of here not with your heads held high, but with them bowed, not with the aura of heroes, but defeated and compromised, so that you can no longer plot against the regime”.

Someone who was in a cell next to Gyr’s when pressure was put on him to sign the letter in question told us that for days and nights the poet was disturbed and troubled in his soul, experiencing a terrible crisis of conscience for the reasons given. He was well aware of the influence he had on some of the prisoners and that many of them would follow his example.

If it was true that the release of many of them depended on it, did he have the right to deny them that chance? In the end, the man in him won out and forced him to capitulate and sign the letter, which, as we have seen, had a disastrous effect on many of the prisoners.

But who could judge him? No one. Especially no one among those who had not experienced what he had experienced.

***

With Gyr, the work of destroying idols was just beginning.

It would continue throughout 1962 with the demolition of lesser personalities, culminating in the unforgettable spectacle of the last remaining night in early January 1963. One evening after 8 p.m., while waiting for curfew (which was at 10 p.m.), there was an unusual amount of activity in the corridors. Doors were opening and closing and short, whispered orders could be heard.

Our amazement was all the greater because it was known that after closing time (5 p.m.) there was no movement in the cell except in very exceptional cases, and when there was, it was done with the utmost discretion. When the door to my cell finally opened, the guard gave me a brief order: “Hurry up with the equipment and get to the club! For a moment I was confused and a little uncomfortable.”

What could have happened that we (who did not go to the club!) were taken to the club at such a late hour? I didn’t have time to try to find an explanation because, urged on by the guard, I went downstairs with the other prisoners and we left the cell in a circle. It was snowing and freezing outside. I felt a strange sensation.

It had been years since I had walked in the snow and my face had not been smeared by the wind. This feeling was short-lived, however, as we were soon back in the snow and soon reached the entrance to the club.

Here we were in for another surprise. More than half of the room was already occupied by people in civilian clothes, sitting quietly on benches. All of them were freshly shaved and all of them had an unnatural seriousness about them. I understood immediately that this was a group of prisoners ready for release. The guards urged us to take our seats, but many of us remained standing as the hall was packed. Soon Colonel Crăciun appeared, accompanied as usual by his staff. This time he looked more serious than usual, as if he was aware of the importance of the mission he had to carry out, as “representative of the government”, as he himself said at the beginning of his speech (which this time was also short and sober). Before getting to the heart of the matter, he also reminded us of the presence in the hall of some important officials from outside the prison: the first prosecutor of the Cluj region, the first party secretary of the same region, the party secretary of the Aiud district and some other minor people.

As I said, the speech that Crăciun gave that evening was short and to the point. Among other things, he told us that we had been brought there to witness the release of the second batch of political prisoners (the first had been released, he said, the night before), so that we could see for ourselves that we had not been lied to when we were told that we would be released if we agreed to re-education and proved it by our behaviour.

“Secondly,” he continued, “I have brought you here to hear with your own ears what thoughts and new convictions have been acquired as a result of their recent contact with the realities of the country and as a result of a lucid and responsible process of conscience. Do as they have done and you too will be liberated. I make no promises, but if you change your views and attitudes towards the regime and the working class, you won’t regret it”.

After Crăciun finished his speech, he gave the floor to those who had been specially chosen to speak.

These six were seated at a table near the podium where the officials were seated.

Of these, I knew only Gheorghe Parpalac, whom I had heard was one of the most aggressive and fierce re-education chiefs. As I was to find out when Christmas gave them the floor, the others were Victor Biriș, former Secretary of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, Victor Vojen, former Romanian Minister in Rome, the priest Dumitrescu-Borșa, who was part of the legionnaire’s team that fought in Spain, Father Dumitru Stăniloaie and another whose name I cannot remember.

As we can see, all those who were chosen by Crăciun to make their “self-demonstration” (euphemistically called “self-presentation”) before us were leading personalities of the Legionary Movement, and some of them, by their uprightness and moral integrity, as well as by the spiritual life they had led until then, were true examples for the other prisoners to follow. From this point of view (of moral integrity and spiritual life), Victor Biriș was undoubtedly the most prominent, almost legendary figure. That is why his fall shook the conscience of those who listened to him at the time, like an earthquake of the highest magnitude, on a night that one of us called “the night of the dream killers”.

The self-demonstrations of those who spoke then all followed the same pattern that I knew from Gyr’s letter, which I read a few months ago. First, the unashamed rage, in the harshest and most venomous words possible, at the past and the unholy denial of that past. Then the harsh hosannas to the communist regime and state, and finally the solemn pledge, spoken like an oath.

Although they were all delivered according to a certain pattern, and all had to fit into the scale imposed by the re-educators, these speeches were, to the careful observer, very different from one another. No matter how much they tried to appear relaxed and convincing, some of the speakers could not hide the turmoil and immense tragedy they were experiencing. Biriș, for example, read his speech without looking up from the papers in his hand, with a monotonous intonation that seemed to say nothing more than the words themselves. But if you ignored the meaning of the words and went beyond them, you had the impression that you were listening to a psalm of repentance, a sinner’s prayer for forgiveness…

Anyway, Biriș couldn’t have survived this terrible breakdown for long. He went out, “on the loose”, unable to bear his conscience, and committed suicide. Some say he was murdered by the Securitate forces. But his death is closely linked to what happened that night in Aiud.

Others, however, were so vehement, so relentless in their denigration of the past – their own and others’ – that you couldn’t help but shudder to listen to them. Some were so stubborn and so hateful in their denunciation of themselves and others – dead or alive – once dear to their souls, that as a human being you could not help but feel great embarrassment for the human condition. There is undoubtedly a sensuality of collapse.

(Demostene Andronescu – Re-education at Aiud)