The fate of historian Constantin C. Giurescu in the era of communist totalitarianism
“On the day of his arrest, 7 May 1950, an officer asked him:
“Are you the author of the history of the Romanians?
The officer replied in the affirmative and added: “Now the history of the Romanians is written differently”.
To which the teacher replied: “That may be, but our history remains one”.
Constantin C. Giurescu, one of Romania’s great historians, was born in Focșani on 13/26 October 1901. Secondary and university education (1922) in Bucharest. Studies in Paris. Doctor of Letters (1925) and Doctor of Romanian History (1925). Member of the Romanian School in France (1923-1925).
Assistant at the National Museum of Antiquities in Bucharest (1920-1926 and 1963-1975). Director of the Ion C. Bratianu Foundation (1927-1930). Founder of the Institute of National History (1941) and the Romanian Historical Review (1931). Liberal-Georgian. Member of Parliament for several terms. Royal Resident of the Lower Danube County (1939). Minister of the National Republican Front (1939-1940), Minister of National Propaganda (1940) and Minister of Culture and the Arts (1940). Political prisoner in Sighet prison (7 May 1950 – 5 July 1955) and forced resident in the village of Măzăreni, Brăila district (July-November 1955). Senior researcher at the N. Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest (1948-1950 and 1956-1963). Emeritus researcher (1971). Member of the Romanian Academy (1974). Nicolae Bălcescu Prize of the International Academy of Specialised Sciences. Scientific missions abroad: Austria, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, England, USA (visiting professor at Columbia University – New York, 1972). Died in Bucharest on 13 November 1977.
An exceptional political historian, with more than 50 years of scientific activity dedicated to the study, knowledge and presentation of Romanian history at home and abroad. His works, based on impressive scientific documentation, are characterised by clarity and sobriety. He tackles with the same competence problems of ancient, medieval, modern or contemporary history, as well as toponymy, historical geography, linguistics, law, art, historical methodology, literature. A tireless creator, he has shown originality, combativeness and an uncompromising attitude in his almost 350 works in volumes, studies and articles, as well as in numerous reviews, notes and replies, all in the service of a better knowledge of Romanian history and its place in world history. Among the volumes published, we mention New Contributions to the Study of the Great Rulers in the 14th-15th Centuries (1925); Contributions to the Study of the Great Rulers in the 14th-15th Centuries (1926); The Financial Organisation of Wallachia in the Age of Mircea the Elder (1927); History of the Romanians: I. From the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Good (1935); II. Part I and Part II. From Mircea the Elder and Alexander the Good to Michael the Brave (1937) III. Part I. From the death of Michael the Brave to the end of the Phanariot era (1601-1821). Part II (1946); History of the Romanians. From the earliest times to the death of King Ferdinand (1943); Economic relations between Romanians and Russians up to the Organic Regulation (1947); The Romanian Principalities at the beginning of the 19th century. Historical, Economic and Statistical Findings on the Basis of the Russian Map of 1935 (1957); The History of Fishing and Fish Farming in Romania. I. From the earliest times to the establishment of the Fishing Law (1896) (1964); Life and work of Cuza Vodă (1966); History of Bucharest from the earliest times to the present (1967); Moldovan towns and cities from the 10th century to the mid-16th century (1967); Transylvania in the history of the Romanian people (1967); History of the city of Braila from the earliest times to the present (1968); History of the Odobești vineyard. From the earliest times to 1918 (with 124 unpublished documents, 1969); Contributions to the study of the origins and development of the Romanian bourgeoisie up to 1848 (1972); Contributions to the history of Romanian science and technology in the centuries of the Romanian forest (1975). And, in collaboration with Dinu C. Giurescu: Istoria românilor din cele mai vechi timpuri până la întemeierea statelor românești (1974). II. From the middle of the 14th century to the beginning of the 17th century (1975); Probleme controversate în istoriografia română (1977).
He presents testimonies for the famous professor and historian Constantin C. Giurescu, his son, Prof. Dr. Dinu C. Giurescu, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy.
Toader Buculei: Mr. Academician, knowing how much you are involved in your teaching and scientific activity, I propose that in our dialogue we refer only to the imprisonment of the scholar Constantin C. Giurescu, your father, and to the events of his family during that time, based on his book “Five years and two months in Sighet prison”. He wrote this book in the village of Măzăreni, in the district of Brăila, in a short period of time (17 July – 12 November 1955). It was an act of great courage and extremely risky. I ask you: How did it escape the “vigilance” of the repressive organs of the time, so that it could be printed?
C. C. Giurescu: Professor Constantin C. Giurescu was arrested at dawn on Saturday 6 May 1950 at his home in 47 Berzei Street, Bucharest, along with the rest of the former dignitaries.
At the time of his arrest, he was a researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of the People’s Republic of Romania, having been transferred there in July 1948 after being suspended from the Faculty of History, where he had been a professor for 22 years.
He was taken by van to Sighet prison, where he arrived on Sunday 7 May at around 6.30 pm. He remained in custody until 5 July 1955, when he was informed of his “release”, but with the obligation to reside in the village of Măzăreni, in the district of Brăila, a village made up exclusively of Banat people who had been deported there since the summer of 1951. In November 1955, the teacher received “permission” to return to his family in Bucharest. He left Măzăreni on 25 November.
The “approval” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs came after the intervention of Petru Groza, President of the Presidium of the Grand National Assembly. He had been asked to do so by the professor’s family, who had received direct and effective help from the lawyer Adrian Brudariu.
In the village of Măzăreni, twelve days after being informed of his release (17 July 1955), Constantin C. Giurescu began to write his notes on his imprisonment in Sighet. He completed them in an abbreviated form on 12 November. He intended to expand them, as can be seen from the many lapidary facts recorded in the “Addenda” (pp. 146-160). (The pages in brackets refer to Constantin C. Giurescu, five years and two months in Sighet Penitentiary, “Romanian Cultural Foundation”, Bucharest, 1994 – n.n.). He did not continue, however, and soon afterwards he was hired as an external collaborator at the Institute of History of the Academy of the Russian Federation.
In 1958 the communist regime proceeded with new arrests and political trials, with the “unmasking” in public meetings of intellectuals accused of various “sins” and “deviations” from the party line. We discussed the “notes” with the family at the time, as their discovery would have automatically led to the author being sentenced to further years in prison. Constantin C. Giurescu then entrusted the manuscript to a good friend, his former head of cabinet (from 1939-1940), the lawyer Nicolae (Nicu) Ionescu-Caracaleanu. During the days of the Legionnaire’s Rebellion, from 21 to 23 January 1941, the lawyer Nicolae Caracaleanu and his brother Grigore Ionescu, together with my parents, stayed in the house on Berzei Street, with several hunting rifles loaded, in case the “rebels” tried to enter the house.
The “Sighet Manuscript” was buried by the lawyer Nicolae (Nicu) Caracaleanu in the garden of his parents’ house on Calea Călărași, not far from the intersection with Traian Street.
After the professor’s death (13 November 1977), the lawyer Caracaleanu returned the manuscript to me at my request. In the 1980s, I thought it best to put the “notes” under protection. They are now in the care of Professor Paul Michelson (Huntington College, Huntington, Indiana, USA).
After my family and I arrived in the United States (12 April 1988), Professor Paul Michelson sent me a photocopied copy of the manuscript, after which the 1994 edition was prepared.
Please give some concrete examples of the value of the book-documentary Five Years and Two Months in Sighet Prison.
Professor Constantin C. Giurescu’s notes are a document about the Sighet prison, where more than a hundred political, religious and cultural leaders were imprisoned between 1950 and 1955: “It is a simple testimony to be used by future historians” (p. 31). It contains what the author saw or heard directly.
From this “testimony” a few facts must be established.
The “system”, especially in the first three years, “was beastly…” (p. 105).
“Everyday life was constantly dominated by suspicion and fear:
“Mistrust of everyone, spying on everyone against everyone, these were the basic principles in relations between the prison staff. An atmosphere of terror not only for the inmates but also for the guards. “Here, in the prison, there is the greatest wickedness”, the guard Gavrilă Pop from Vișeul de Sus said to me one evening in January 1951, as he brought me my portion of wood – “we are all trembling, not only you, but us too” (Guards, p. 105). Fear and suspicion did indeed multiply the reality of the communist world outside.
As everywhere else, the basic rule forbade any communication between prisoners. This was countered by the ingenuity of those targeted.
In June 1955, when “détente” was taking its first steps towards the outside world, new restrictive rules were introduced into the prison world: in the cell, prisoners spoke only in whispers and only in pairs (among themselves); they were not allowed to give presentations, “lectures” to others; they stood facing the wall when prison staff entered the cell; they all slept with their heads turned in one direction so that their faces could be seen when the peephole was inspected; they kept their hands visible, above the blanket… (p. 101).
The general prison regime was described in a suggestive way by the prison warden: ‘We communists don’t kill, we have our own methods that make you bang your head against the walls all by yourself’ (p. 94). Professor Constantin C. Giurescu comments: “As for Sighet, his words came true: they committed suicide out of desperation, they died of disease, they were deprived of medical care, or they went mad. I don’t think there is any other prison in the country that has such a high percentage of deaths, suicides and lunatics…” (p. 94).
Hatred of the inmates was fuelled by “regular meetings, Saturdays, then Wednesdays, meetings in which all kinds of lies and slander were uttered…. It was a systematic action of ennui, constantly fuelled; at these meetings we were presented as ‘vampires’ who ‘sucked the blood of the people’, as ‘beasts of the soil’, as ‘exploiters of the proletariat’, as individuals who had ‘champagne parties and orgies’ and the like” (p. 106).
From the very first days of his imprisonment, on 13 May 1950, the professor heard one of the guards shout to one of the prisoners upstairs: “So what if you were a general? Now you’re nothing! Move faster when I tell you, or I’ll slap you so hard your eyes will pop out!” (p 72).
It was persistently attempted, without evidence, to engrave in the minds of the guards “contempt for everything that had been the dominant blanket in the past; it was the symbol of sin, incompetence and dishonesty, in contrast, of course, to the current dominant blanket (the communist one!), the repository of all virtue and knowledge” (p. 106).
During the first three years of his imprisonment, food was reduced to a minimum: 250 grams of bread (actually 220-230!) for 24 hours; in the morning, water with a faint lime smell for tea. “From 8 May 1950 to 3 July 1953, arpacaș was the dominant prison food, although there were periods, such as between 20 December 1950 and 5 January 1951, when I received it continuously at lunchtime and in the evening” (p. 67). “Dinner” was in fact “arpacaș soup, in reality a kind of dishwashing” (p. 73).
The feeling of hunger was constant. “Half an hour after one has finished eating, one is hungry; the feeling gradually increases and reaches its peak at half past five in the evening, when the dinner bell usually rings. After the lukewarm juice of the evening, you don’t even have half an hour’s respite from lunch; you’re hungry as soon as you finish eating” (pp. 73-74). It was not until the second half of the year that there was some improvement in the food.
Prisoners were put to all kinds of work: chopping wood, carrying paper with food, washing floors, carrying tubs of faeces and urine to the toilet, cleaning latrines and even cesspits.
The cupboard was “a hole cut in the dirty cement of the floor. Not even one mention of running water…” (p 62).
Most of the toilets had no drains near the Turkish chairs, “so that in the morning, after the operation of emptying and cleaning the toilets, of taking the water into the mesh tins, one would find the floor covered with a layer of liquid 1-2 cm high; this liquid had to be removed with a rag or a cloth and poured into the oriffices of the ‘Turkish chairs’…” (p. 88).
The prisoners cleaned the cupboards “with their hands through the urine, using rags as cloths”. Boca, one of the guards, “took a real sadistic pleasure in making us clean the closets” (p. 137).
The same was done with the cesspools, which regularly became blocked: “Dumitru Nistor was forced to go in and remove the waste with buckets, which his fellow inmates then carried away; when he came out of the cesspool, he was covered in waste from top to bottom” (p. 137).
The guards, some of them real beasts, were designated by the initials B – for beast – namely B1, B2, B3, B4…. Others were simply “beasts” – J1, J2. With few exceptions, the real names of the guards remained unknown to the inmates.
B1 was called “the Mongoloid”: “he stank to high heaven”; he swore all the time – “crosses, God and Easter were current” (pp.108-109). Arba, a former common law prisoner (for murder), swore like B1 and took a sadistic pleasure in torturing and humiliating the inmates” (p. 109).
“Pithencatropus erectus” was “one of those bestial guards… if not the most bestial” of all those at Sighet. “A hardened alcoholic” with a degenerate head, more snarling than talking… “greedy, stealing from the prisoners’ meagre rations” (pp. 118-119).
But there were also guards who, despite the regime, managed to remain human, to help in any way they could, by passing on news, a word of encouragement, an extra meal… Among them, “The Flyer” (pp. 123-124), Gavrilă Pop (pp. 125-126), “The Barber” (p. 121), “Cherry” (p. 125) are worth mentioning. Their words and gestures certainly meant something to people immersed in suffering, misery and intolerance.
The slightest deviation from the rules – a deviation that was never invented at the whim of a guard or officer – was met with extra punishment. In the “black” – a cell without windows – the punished were stuffed into shirts and underwear, or even left completely naked (p. 76). At other times, they were made to sit for half an hour in the “dropia” position – on their haunches, with their hands horizontal, without leaning against the cell bed for even a moment: after about 15 minutes, the position became almost unbearable (p. 121).
The world of Sighet prison – like all the country’s prisons – directly reflected some of the characteristics of the communist regime, as defined by Constantin C. Giurescu:
“distrust, mutual espionage and denunciation” (p. 50).
“Mutual suspicion and fear… two of the fundamental principles of the (communist) regime” (p. 71).
“Pretence, pretence… another characteristic of the system: people say what they do not believe, show opinions and feelings they do not have, which they deny or even despise in their hearts” (p. 114).
Using this “testimony” again, tell us what you consider to be significant about the ordeal suffered by Professor Constantin C. Giurescu in Sighet prison.
Professor Constantin C. Giurescu also knew all the “procedures” and measures applied in Sighet.
He was kept alone in his cell from 7 May 1950 to 25 January 1952. To keep track of the days, he carved a line in the thick paint on the door, starting with 7 May 1950. Sundays were marked with a longer line, broken off to the left; the day with a special event or news item was also marked with a longer line, but broken off to the right (p. 71).
In order to counteract the terrible pressure of isolation, the teacher began or revised from memory a number of research topics, checked his vocabulary in the foreign languages he knew, sketched out the plan and components of a new paper.
For the first few days he didn’t feel like eating, although the food then was more substantial than what was to come. “Why didn’t you eat all the beans?” the guard asked him. “Because I can’t!” he replied. “You’re doing it wrong… later you’ll be so hungry you’ll be gnawing at the walls” (p. 65).
When they were given their civilian clothes instead, the trousers were too tight in the waistband, the two top buttons could not be buttoned: “Let them fit you, in two weeks they’ll be fine,” said the guard (p. 72). And so it was; after two weeks the trousers fitted, and after two months they were too loose (p. 72).
He had become so weak that the bishops and Greek Catholic (United) priests, who were led out into the yard, did not recognise him when they saw him at the cell window (p. 79).
Alone in cell 21, he was beaten at midnight by four guards, one of whom was nicknamed “Nazone” (p.129).
Constantin C. Giurescu was in “Neagra” (solitary confinement) eight times (p. 133).
In June 1950, during “the first period of unleashed hatred, of passion, when punishments of all kinds flowed freely, when the ‘neagra’ was in constant operation” (p. 110), the professor climbed on his bed to look at the prisoners in the yard, but did not come down until the guard Arba unexpectedly entered the cell. She asked the professor three times if he wanted to look out of the window, promising him that she would not harm him if he told the truth. The professor was naive enough to admit it. He was put in “Neagra” for premeditation (p. 110).
About a month after his arrival at Sighet, the guard Boca accused him of making a puddle of urine in the toilet when he emptied the seat. Here is the “dialogue”:
“Boca (B): You made a puddle on the floor, I’ll make you wipe it with your tongue.
C.C.G.: I didn’t spill a drop on the floor.
B: You did, I saw you.
C.C.G.: You didn’t see anything because when you appeared in the doorway, I was washing up and rinsing my toilet.
B.: Wipe up everything on the floor at once, otherwise it will be bad.
C.C.G.: I don’t have anything to wipe with.
B.: (shouting) With your band.
C.C.G.: I won’t wipe this with my band…
B.: Wipe with this (and throws a palm-sized cloth)”.
The teacher wiped everything because refusing to carry out the order of a guard was considered “a serious offence” (pp. 112-113).
The “dialogue” continued as follows:
“Boca: Not good, erase again.
C.C.G.: There’s nothing left, I cleared up all the liquid.
B.: Wipe it off and don’t argue, otherwise I’ll have you scrubbing until the end of the day.
C.C.G.: I will report this mockery to the director.
B.: You can report it; what, you think he’ll give you justice? He’ll give it to me too; just wipe it off and don’t say another word!
C.C.G.: I’ll also report you for swearing.
B.: (after five minutes): Go to your room! (p. 112-113).
Another time, when he was a member of the kitchen staff, he was made to wash the floor three times (p. 87). In 1954, on St. Constantine and St. Helen’s Day (21 May), the teacher took part in carrying buckets of faeces out of the cesspits, which were again blocked (p. 107).
He was twice ill. In the spring of 1951 he developed “a rather serious form” of jaundice, which lasted about three months. He was down to “skin and bones”. Yellow as “saffron”, he was taken one afternoon to the large courtyard, guarded by a soldier. The guard, Arba, came and said: “You know you can die of this disease?” (p. 109).
“C.C.G.: Thank you for your encouragement.
Arba: I didn’t say it on purpose for you, but you know you can die from it”.
After Arba walked away, the soldier standing guard said quietly through his teeth, “Fuck the fucking sinner” (pg. 109).
In return, the “barber” guard had words of encouragement. Twice he brought the teacher a little bit of medical alcohol: “It’s good for you,” the barber said, “but don’t tell anyone I gave you some medical alcohol” (p. 122).
The second time he fell ill with jaundice was in the autumn of 1954. He was removed from the “collective” of cell no. 18 and moved alone to no. 60 (13 October).
“I almost died,” the teacher recalled in Măzăreni in 1955.
“The only thing that kept me going was the will to live, to get out and to be with all of you again”. He once said in Sighet that even if only a few remained there, he would still be among the living. His will to live, his desire to see his family again and his faith in his profession kept him going. On the day of his arrest, 7 May 1950, an officer asked him: “Are you the author of the History of the Romanians?
The officer replied in the affirmative and added: “Now the history of the Romanians will be written differently”. To which the professor replied: “It is possible, but our history remains one” (p. 57).
This time, too, he succeeded. On 7 February 1955, he returned to the “collective” of cell no. 18. While he was in solitary confinement in cell 60, “Bălăcescu”, “one of the nicest guards”, checked on his condition every day, asking him in the morning if he still wanted extra food (p. 126).
In mid-June 1955 – about three weeks before his ‘release’ – the new prison director described the professor as a ‘bandit’. The director was unhappy that he could not prove a false accusation against the professor and Aurelian Bentoiu (p. 100).
What news did you receive about your father during his imprisonment at Sighet? How did he look when he came out of prison?
The only news I received about the professor’s fate was in 1954 (I can’t say which month). I was living with my mother in a room in the parish house of the Mavrogheni Church (4, Monetăriei Street), where I enjoyed the kind hospitality of Father Grigore Burlușeanu and his family. One morning the historian Zenovie Pâclișeanu came and told us that my father had been in Sighet in 1951 and that he had been ill but had recovered; he had no more recent information.
For the rest, there were only rumours, especially in the first months of 1955, when the international “détente” began to be remembered.
I met the professor again on the first Sunday after 5 July 1955, in the deported village of Măzăreni (Brăila district), where I arrived at dawn with my mother and sister Simona.
Constantin C. Giurescu had been assigned to the landlord Vasile Pigulea, who had himself been deported from Banat in 1951. The house, made of clay, had only one room and a beam with a stove where food was prepared. There was a bed made of planks in the beam, where the teacher slept, as well as my mother, who stayed in Măzăreni from July to November 1955.
When I saw him again after 62 months of “absence”, I did not recognise him at first. He was 53 years and 8 months old. His teeth were almost gone. His face was drawn, with very marked features. When he started to smile, I thought it was my father. “Well, I look good now,” he said, “you should have seen me in 1952 or when I came out of my last bout of jaundice!
Professor, tell us a little about the reprisals of the communist regime against the family of the great scholar Constantin C. Giurescu.
After the arrests in May 1950, the communist regime also took measures against families.
We lived in the house at 47 Berzei Street until the last days of June 1950: my mother – Maria Simona Giurescu (Mica – daughter of Simion and Maria S. Mehedinți); my sister – Simona Giurescu – student of philology; Dinu C. Giurescu; grandparents: Simion S. Mehedinți and Maria Mehedinți. Amil S. Mehedinți, a lawyer and former industrialist, who in 1950 worked as a topographer in a team of the Bucharest City Hall, often slept with us.
In May 1950 (after the professor’s arrest), Dr. Gh. (Gică) Mănescu and his wife moved in with us. They had been evicted, together with the family of Dr. Dumitru (Titel) Vereanu, from their house in Făgăraș Street, which had been confiscated by the authorities. Such evictions had become frequent between 1948 and 1950. (The house was still in Făgăraș Street. It escaped demolition in August-September 1987 because it was the seat of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Mongolia).
That’s how we lived for a few weeks. There were rumours that there would soon be a selection of those arrested in May and that the professor might be released!
On one of the last days of June – just after the outbreak of the war in Korea – I heard the doorbell ring repeatedly and insistently. It was in the morning, before 7 o’clock. I came down from my upstairs room and saw some figures through the jagged glass of the front door. I opened a window and saw two militiamen and two civilians: “Does the Giurescu family live here?”, “Yes!”. “We have an evacuation order. You’re going to Alexandru Moruzzi Street no….. Move immediately!”. “What do you mean immediately, we have to pack?” “Yes, you can only take your personal belongings and a mattress!” The four of them came in and immediately spread around the house, both downstairs and upstairs.
My mother fainted, but soon recovered. She recognised the man leading the operation: it was Comrade Webber from the Housing Department, who was in charge of evictions. He was small in stature, thin, with an earthy face. Shortly before, he had evacuated the family of engineer Luca Bădescu, his wife Lelia and daughters Anda and Măriuca – from their house on Aviatorilor Boulevard. My mother had helped pack their belongings and had met comrade Webber. The Bădescu house (the first after the Parhon hospital) was immediately occupied by the family of Gizela Vass, a member of the communist hierarchy, who still lives there today (July 1998)!
In the haste of the evacuation, we took some of the professor’s costumes with us.
“He doesn’t need them anymore, don’t take anything,” was the answer.
I wanted to keep one of Dad’s watches, but it was taken. The earrings were taken from my sister’s and mother’s ears.
At 11am we were loaded onto a lorry, each with two suitcases and a mattress, and got off in Alexandru Moruzzi Street, at the address we had been given: two rooms, one with a floor, one with a floor; one had a light bulb in the ceiling. No bathroom. No kitchen. Cupboard in the courtyard.
It was the “space” reserved for the Giurescu family – 3 people – and the Mehedinți family – 2 people.
Everything in the house at 47 Berzei Street was confiscated. Of course, without any inventory signed by us. The specialised library of two generations – at least 2000 volumes – was scattered.
At that time my mother went to see Professors Mihail Ralra and Petre Constantinescu – Iași and asked them to save the library so that it could be taken over by the Institute of History (of the Academy of the Russian Federation). The former replied in a polite tone, the latter in a very hasty and gruff voice, that there was nothing they could do. Thousands of files, original documents, correspondence, everything was collected and burned, later in the courtyard in front of the house. The new regime of popular democracy had no use for the values that belonged to the “enemies”. The paintings – Grigorescu, Petrașcu, Tonitza – disappeared without a trace. They have never been found in any museum. So were all the carpets, the Romanian bark, the furniture – including the parents’ cherry-wood bedroom. The solid oak library that covered all three walls of the teacher’s study also disappeared. A collection of Romanian stamps, including almost all the issues from the reign of Alexandru Ioan Cuza until 1945, also disappeared. To this was added the current inventory of the house – crockery, silverware, clothes, two radios, records, everything that had been collected in a household for over 24 years.
The looting was total and the individual beneficiaries of these confiscations remained unknown. We then learnt that similar measures had been taken against the families of the other people arrested in the batch of 6 May 1950. Later, the government issued the H.C.M., which retroactively legalised the June 1950 looting.
The Giurescu family’s wanderings continued. Since I was “employed” on the construction site, I received a new “assignment”. We were received by the lawyer Petre Ghițulescu and his wife Aretie in the apartment they occupied on Domnița Anastasia Street, not far from the intersection with Brezoianu Street. They had the courage and kindness to give us a room, knowing the situation we were in. I lived there until mid-September, when I received a phone call at the construction site (I was working at the time in the commune of Alexeni, Ialomița County, near Urziceni), informing me that my mother and sister had been evicted by the same comrade Weber. He shouted that he wanted to beat me because I had dared to leave the “home” assigned to us at the end of June. So I ended up in Alexandru Ciurcu Street (not far from Crucea de Piatră Street, known for its brothels – already dismantled in 1950). We were “assigned” a room with a vestibule, at the back of a courtyard, with the toilet and the lavatory outside. The Ghițulescu family was punished for this gesture. They took away our room. With difficulty, over time, through successive moves, they managed to leave the apartment and regroup in another one.
In the winter of 1950-1951 I benefited from the repeated hospitality of my uncle’s ex-wife, Wanda Mehedinți (née Braniski), who, together with her children Șerban and Mona (my first cousins) and her son-in-law, Dr Traian Ștefănescu, occupied three rooms in her former house on Ștefan Mihăileanu Street. Visiting them meant not only moral support, but also the possibility of a warm bath.
In the summer of 1951, we managed to move – this time with “permission” – to a room in the parish house of St. Mary’s Church (behind St. Friday’s cemetery), a house located in the Carol Knappe entrance (former N. Serban dead end).
Here we benefited from the human hospitality of Father Șerbănescu and his wife.
In the autumn of 1953, with the permission of the Patriarchate, we moved to the parish house of the Mavrogheni Church, at 4 Monetăriei Street (near Victoriei Square), where our grandparents, Simion and Maria S. Mehedinți, also lived. Here I had the constant support of Father Grigore Burlușeanu, and it was here – in the same room – that the professor returned in November 1955.
Thus, on two occasions, I benefited from the direct help of the Orthodox Church.
During all these years, my mother made necklaces and other ornaments, with which she earned a little money from time to time. I sent at least half of the 1,200 lei a month to Bucharest. Whenever I came home from work, I enjoyed her care and a meal prepared “like at home”. She didn’t complain about the situation we were in, but took it calmly.
My sister Simona started working in a plumbing company in June 1950. She did it naturally, as if she had always done it. Later she married Professor Ion Agârbiceanu and life went on. When I came to Bucharest, I also found relaxation and hours of rest in her house.
The family’s second son, Dan, had been in Paris since December 1946.
He had received a French state scholarship for his first year. He had a gift for mathematics and a real talent for painting and drawing, and had taken up architecture while working for a living. I began to receive letters from him after 1950. We kept him informed of our change of address. It was there, in Paris, that he learned of my father’s arrest, but he never asked us, because it would have had bad consequences for us here… As soon as he heard of the Professor’s return, he telegraphed to us that he had lived one of his happiest days.
Lieutenant Colonel Horia Alexandru Giurescu (1904-1994), the brother of Professor Constantin C. Giurescu, was imprisoned between 1951 and 1956. He experienced all the rigours of the communist dungeons.
Vasile Antonescu, liberal senator, brother of Elena Giurescu (mother of Professor C. C. Giurescu and wife of Professor C. C. Giurescu) was also arrested and died in prison in 1952.
(Toader Buculei – Clio in prison. Mărturii e opinii privind destinul istoriografiei românești în epoca totalitarismului comunist, Editura Libertatea, Brăila, 2000, pp. 106-119, interview taken on 19 August 1998)