The power of imprisoned faith: Marcel Cazacu
Marcel Cazacu was born on 18 April 1930 in the town of Rădăuți, the son of Artemisia and Gheorghe Cazacu. His father was an ardent patriot who ran after Iancu Flondor to listen to his word. On a white horse, he rode through the villages of Bukovina with the other unionists, spreading the idea of uniting Bukovina with the motherland. It was in this atmosphere of respect for traditions, faith in God and love of country that Marcel grew up and entered school life at the Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi Gymnasium in Rădăuți, where he was one of the bright lights. In the summer of 1940, when the Red Army was occupying Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, arriving a few kilometres from Rădăuți, the family of the bookseller Gheorghe Cazacu set out on a journey of migration, crossing the mountains and stopping in Alba-Iulia.
Marcel enrolled in the secondary school there and the family settled in Zlatna. At the end of the war, the town of Rădăuți was relatively calm and Marcel Cazacu, who had returned alone from his wanderings, became a welcome guest. He re-enrolled in the Hurmuzachi Gymnasium and once again became a pupil who was awarded prizes for his outstanding academic achievements.
In this time of turmoil, the threat of the monster from the east was present and imminent. There was an urgent need to fight the evil, the darkness, the invasion of the godless. In high school, young, pure, idealistic, courageous people found themselves in the Brotherhoods of the Cross, preparing for the fight against a satanic social order imposed in our country by violence, force and terror. Together with his colleagues, Marcel stood out as a protester and refuser of the new educational system, which denied the traditional values of faith and patriotism. With youthful vigour, they threw themselves into the fight against the system that was destroying spiritual values.
As a result, pretexts were found and the young people of the FDC unit, of which Marcel Cazacu was a member, were arrested and detained in Suceava prison, at the disposal of the Security Service. A harsh regime of extermination by starvation, of degradation from normal living conditions, which Marcel will mention in an article “A high school student in prison”. The interrogations of the young students were cruelly carried out in conditions of physical and mental terror, using barbaric methods, torture and beatings, in order to obtain statements for legal classification. The FDC students were tried and sentenced to between 5 and 10 years’ imprisonment after a trial dictated by the security services. Marcel was sentenced to 8 years’ hard labour for the crime of “conspiracy against the social order”, the communist social order of course. His destiny shattered, his aspirations buried in the suffering that was to follow.
In his memoirs, Vasile Lazăr fondly remembers the students of the Brotherhood of the Cross in Rădăuți, who were immune to the “re-education” campaign (initiated by the communists in the Suceava prison and continued violently in Pitești, ed.). He dedicates a special portrait to Marcel: “But the one who conquered me at first sight and stayed in my soul was Marcel Cazacu. He was a handsome young man, with large, penetrating eyes, always penetrating and easy to anger, but which nevertheless expressed kindness and generosity. God was kind to him, endowing him with beautiful qualities and a will of rare strength in the face of oppressors and torturers”.
In the autumn of 1949, the group of students from Suceava prison were loaded into vans and taken to Târgșor, passing through the notorious Jilava prison, a place of torture and torment that left a chilling memory for those who passed through. In Târgșor, the atmosphere of imprisonment was different from that in Suceava and Jilava. The guards lacked the cruelty of other prisons. The prisoners were allowed to spend the day in the yard, walking around and talking to each other.
Here Marcel had a special opportunity. He met Virgil Maxim, a Brother of the Cross who had been imprisoned during Antonescu’s dictatorship, who had a high level of religious training and experience and who exerted a strong influence on Marcel. In Târgșor, he secretly distributed a part of the New Testament, which he studied with great zeal, anchoring himself definitively in the Christian life with the practice of religious ascent: fasting and prayer. In his relations with his fellow sufferers, Marcel was fair, open, sincere and affectionate, creating a strong fraternity that lasted until the end of his life.
From Târgșor, he was transferred with a group of young men to Canal-Valea Neagră – Colonia Peninsula. This colony was the largest forced labour and extermination camp in the Romanian Gulag. It housed around 10,000 political prisoners from all the country’s prisons. Marcel was assigned to a heavy labour brigade, digging and wheelbarrowing earth for the canal bed. The work was hard, the rules draconian, difficult to comply with, punishments, terror, beatings. The lack of food brought Marcel to the limit of minimum physical resistance, to the point of deterioration of the body, heart, liver, dystrophy, so that he was transferred to the so-called “infirmary”. After a few days in the infirmary, he was transferred to a brigade with a certain specialisation, which was considered easier: railway assembly. Marcel was the youngest and came under our care. The work in the brigade was varied and suited two people. That’s how I ended up working with Marcel, using a special wrench to screw the corkscrews into the wooden sleepers. Working in pairs became automatic and there was time for spiritual exercises, “ora et labora”. Marcel had become a practitioner of continuous prayer and fasting.
During the Great Easter Week of 1952, at Marcel’s initiative, we fasted on Friday and Saturday, and only ate on Easter Day. This was an unimaginable excess in the face of the terrible lack of nourishment that we had to put up with for the work we had to do. I can’t believe it was possible. And yet it was a triumph of the spirit over the flesh: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4). A Japanese thinker once said: “Not even a god can turn man’s victory over himself into defeat”.
Forced labour, inadequate food and the terror regime led to the biological degradation of political prisoners to the point where they were unable to work regularly. This led to the creation of light labour brigades, known as Ks. Marcel, in an advanced state of debilitation and dystrophy, was transferred to an unfit brigade called K1. Here he had the opportunity to get to know some of the personalities of the inter-war generations, such as Prof. Ernest Bernea, Prof. Vladimir Dumitrescu, distinguished archaeologist and Doctor of Letters and Philosophy, Dr. docent Vasile Trifu, collaborator of the scholar Nicolae Paulescu, and many others. Marcel, the youngest, is gifted with the power of devotion, shows his willingness to help the elderly and the helpless, and thus earns well-deserved recognition, being loved and praised by all. Bernea gratefully and affectionately nicknamed him “Little sheep”, after the impressive white cap that adorned his head.
In 1953, Marcel found himself at the White Gate. Remus Radina, in his memoirs, “Testament from the Morgue”, writes: “On Christmas Day, when we woke up, 15 young people were surprised to see that Santa Claus had visited us during the night and placed a package of goodies next to our bedpost. We also found the halva, which we had forgotten what it looked like. Santa Claus was Marcel Cazacu from Rădăuți, a very young, intelligent and selfless student. The child had fallen ill with a heart condition at the Canal and had no other goal than moral perfection. Just before Christmas, he received a parcel from his family. Although parcels were very rare, Marcel Cazacu shared the whole package. Marcel was endowed with the noble quality of generosity”.
His intransigence, his defiance, his constant clashes with the administration and his disrespect for the wardens and camp leaders led, in 1954, to the decision to disperse the brave young men and transfer them to other prisons in the country. Marcel was sent to the Gherla prison, run by the famous executioner Goiciu. The regime at Gherla was one of extermination by starvation. It was here that Marcel served his 8-year sentence. In 1956, having served his sentence, it was only natural that he should be released. However, being in an advanced state of dystrophy, he was taken by ambulance to the clinic in Cluj, where, thanks to the professionalism and care of the doctors (Dr. Hațeganu), he was able to get back on his feet after two months. But instead of freedom, a guard took him to Răchitoasa (Fetești district), where he was sent to Bărăgan, where he had to stay for 24 months.
In Răchitoasa, Marcel’s impeccable moral and religious behaviour won him the esteem of his fellow villagers, whom he fervently led to his ancestral church, which had been converted into a house for worship. The services were held by three priests who had also taken up residence in the village: Pr. Stoicescu, Pr. Drăguș and Pr. Bejan, originally from Bucovina, who left deep traces in the souls of the faithful. Gifted with the abilities of a great confessor, consecrated and living in the spirit of holiness, he had suffered a cruel imprisonment in the Arctic Circle, condemned by the state of the godless: USSR. It was here that I met Marcel again after several years of separation. We went to church together. Everything seemed unreal to me, with trembling and shaking. The liturgical responses were given by the improvised choir led by Eng. Ion Pantiș, gifted with a warm, lyrical baritone voice. It had been months since I had attended mass. In a more discreet corner, Traian Trifan was on his knees, and at the moment of the consecration of the Holy Gifts, I noticed that tears were streaming down his cheeks. I was amazed and realised that he had the gift of tears, a phenomenon that belongs to mystics. I humbly joined him and thanked God for allowing me to be present at this act.
In Răchitoasa a new kind of fortress had been built. Respect for the values of the Christian doctrine, a sober life, conscientiousness in work, respect among the members of the community. Visitors to this village (parents, relatives, friends) were deeply impressed by the behaviour of the householders. In the countryside it was customary to address each other as ‘comrade’, whereas here it was ‘sir’ or ‘madam’. Good manners and principles of life rooted in Christian morality contrasted with the attempt to create a new type of person, anti-religious, without God and denying the values of Christian morality. Therefore, the Party and Security Service organs became more vigilant and realised that they had to take measures to prevent their plan to create an infidel society based on lies and terror from being thwarted.
As a result, on the night of 11-12 September 1958, the village of Răchitoasa was surrounded by repressive forces. A team of secret police, accompanied by soldiers from the M.I.A. troops, entered the houses of the political prisoners under house arrest and, after the necessary searches, they were taken to the prepared trucks, loaded up and sent off into the unknown. The whole village was in a state of real terror, even the dogs disapproved of the bestial arrest with their mournful barking.
After a while we arrived at a new settlement, ready for a new stage of the ordeal. It was terrible. The dogs greeted us with curses and beatings. It was the extermination colony “Noua Culme” near Constanta. The regime was harsh, terrifying. A brigade was organised to work in a quarry, where we had to work hard. For those who remained in the barracks, the special regime was to remain motionless at the edge of the bed, frozen in such a way that, although we were Marcel’s neighbours, we could only communicate at great risk.
At the end of the spring of 1959, a terrible epidemic broke out, the Asian flu. Marcel was one of the first to contract it, and despite his frailty, he overcame the critical moment of the flu with manliness. The carers, frightened by the consequences of the flu, which was even killing people, were more lenient with us. But they looked at us with hatred and envy, seeing our resilience, a resilience based on our faith in overcoming the moment, practising with great devotion prayers to the Most High and accompanied by brotherly love among us, manifested in the care we showed each other. For example, Marcel cared for me with devotion and love when I was suffering from pulmonary congestion and a high fever.
In one of the barracks, among those arrested on the night of 11-12 September 1958, was the old artillery general Nicolae Stoenescu. An officer in the 1914-1918 War of National Unification, he was Minister of Finance in the government of Ion Antonescu from 1941 to 1944. Suffering from influenza, weak and old, he died and was thrown into a watery grave without a Christian service. All the priests of the colony conducted the funeral in silence, accompanied by invisible angels. The presence of angels is not a figure of speech, but a reality experienced on another existential level, felt in the intimacy of the soul as an act that “surpasses all understanding”, as St. Paul says in his epistle to the Philippians. The winter of 1959 passed in this cloister and in this anguish, with prayer and solidarity between us as the only means of overcoming the weather.
For Marcel, the days and months leading up to the end of his imprisonment were spent in Periprava, where he was released after more than 12 years. Thus, with dignity, he entered a new phase of his life, leaving behind the memory of an honest, faithful, loving and remarkable man who considered Christian values and virtues to be the only way to live, fulfil and overcome the human condition. He settled in Timișoara, where he started a family and continued his secondary and university studies, becoming an economist.
After the revolution of 1989, Marcel dedicated himself to the fight against communism and the appropriation of the ideals of the Timisoara Revolution. He worked tirelessly in the Timisoara branch of the Association of Former Political Prisoners and was elected president. Out of modesty, however, he resigned as vice-president. He showed particular concern for young people, alienated from spiritual values and the Church during the communist period, by initiating and fighting for the construction of a church for students in the student complex. Gifted with a special inner strength of thought, Marcel’s insistence succeeded in obtaining the consent of the rightful owners of the land for an ideal site for the construction of the church. With the approval and blessing of the Metropolitan of Banat, His Eminence Nicolae Corneanu, Marcel began the construction of the church and took care of the financing of the work. With his moral authority, he strengthened his comrade from the same generation, Traian Mirică. After his imprisonment, the latter managed to reach the United States, where his work earned him the handsome sum of 30,000 dollars, which, after his death, was left to begin the construction works.
After completing the first phase of construction and inaugurating the church in the basement, Marcel retired, abandoning his socio-political activity, which he had devoted himself to selflessly in the post-revolutionary period, convinced that the eradication of communism required a wise and long-term tactic on the part of its followers.
He went to God far too soon, on 22 November 2001, after a few weeks in which the effects of a stroke gradually worsened. Marcel Cazacu was a man of high moral character, a profound Christian, an example of dignity, altruism, selflessness for the good of others, dedicated to the cause of the nation, an exponent of the aspirations of generations of young people who have fought against evil, sacrificing their youth, spreading light, love and truth. May his path to eternity be illuminated and, at the end of it, may the Almighty Heavenly Father receive him into his bosom for the sufferings he endured and for the faith he steadfastly upheld throughout his life. This can be summed up by the verses of Radu Gyr, which form the epitaph carved on the cross of his tomb:
You are not defeated when you bleed
Nor when your eyes are in tears.
True defeats
Are the renunciations of one’s dream.
(Anonymous author, testimony published in the magazine Permanence, year XIV, n. 11 of November 2011)