The martyrdom of Elena Bagdad
On 22 September 1939, Elena Bagdad, who had been seriously ill for eight months in the Bârnova tuberculosis sanatorium, was taken from her bed of suffering and taken to the Bârnova – Iași road and executed. There she knelt down and prayed to God. She was told to turn her back.
– Why? she asked.
– To execute you.
She was outraged upon hearing this.
– How do you think a legionnaire fears death? Shoot me in the face, through the heart. Shoot and don’t let your hand tremble.
But the gendarme’s hand trembled. Five bullets couldn’t take her down.
– What in God’s name, can’t you shoot? Do you want me to show you how to shoot?
Sergeant S., a brute who had given her a lot of trouble, took the gun and killed her with three bullets, extinguishing the cry of “Long live the Legion and the Captain” in her chest.
She was cowardly killed and left to die on the road. A Ranger found her, her head resting on one arm. At the sight of the maiden asleep in the Lord, he crossed himself and fled. She was buried at night, crouching, more in a standing position, at the place called “Lotul Dumbrava”. During the night, the dogs raked the earth. In the morning, the peasants piled up earth to cover her head. The patients of the sanatorium called her “The Holy Miss Persecuted”.
(Aristide Lefa – testimony published in the newspaper “Buna Vestire” on 6 September 1940)