The last coercion for renunciation

The tortures involving the  raising of the hands, then the spiritual and moral prostitution of the conscience, have strengthened our conviction that we will end up either in madness or in the rejection of the Legionary Movement.

During the two weeks after Easter, when the public declarations and the written declarations continued in hospital room 4, each one of us went through a hard process of conscience, thinking about what to choose.

If you had gone mad, you would have been of no use to anyone. If you had renounced, you would have insulted the movement, but you had a chance to keep your sanity. There was another question: after what we had seen and experienced, convinced that nothing would happen in the communist camp in a hundred years, because we had been sold as a perishable commodity for petty interests, without taking into account the human rights that were made so much of, was there any point in living under these conditions?

On the other hand, what did we represent for the Legionary Movement as lonely individuals? When we entered the gates of this hell, we were already dead for the Legion. We had only done our duty to take part in a battle we had already lost, in which we had been hummiliated and tortured. So what was the point of renouncing the Legion? Renunciation led to total compromise, to contempt, and not renunciation led to madness.

For me, the alternative made no sense. I and my comrades had reached the last limit, the dead end.

The most optimistic among us tried to solve this problem of conscience, like Gheorghiu, with the example of the beautiful girl he loved so much. And many followed his example by formally renouncing it.

The death of the “Red Dragon” in the Kremlin came too late. Many had already renounced the Legion. Those who asked for a postponement were refused. The only one who didn’t renounce was Nedelcu Aristide, who was mad and therefore out of the question.

This was the aim of the Moscow occultists: to renounce the Legion through constant and unbearable tortures, to compromise each other morally and to lose mutual trust.

You, our comrades who have not gone where we have gone and who are still alive, and those who will come after us, judge us as your conscience leads you. Our conscience has judged us harshly. We do not wish the tortures we have suffered on our enemies.

What more can I say about our renunciation of the Legion? History will judge us by a fair trial and not by a mockery of a trial, as the Bolsheviks did to us, with the Red International behind them.

The best and the greatest among us were killed.

(Dumitru Bordeianu – Confessions from the Swamp of Despair)