The Red Aiud

“After they sentenced me the last time and I got 25 years because I was one of the most resistant, I was in Aiud. I was on the 1st or 2nd floor, in the big T, 8 in a cell; you were not allowed to rest. You had to sit still or walk between the beds. And because I was one of the most resistant, I was constantly followed in the prison; they wanted to catch me with something. And because I had a very bad cold (I had a temperature of over 40 degrees), the brothers held me against the head of the bed.

That’s how they took me to be punished, to the “section”. Next to the door of the “section” were two rooms, one to the left and one to the right of the main door, very high up. It was freezing cold and they fondled me and took off the thickest thing I was wearing. They put me in the cell, and the militiaman who brought me in (he was also a bit ill), when he opened the door and came out of the cell, made way for the guard to come in, and the guard, when he smelled such a strong smell and such a terrible cold, said: “It’s like hell in here!” I stayed there, although I had no bed or chair, just a frozen tin in the corner of the cell. There was just a sort of wooden blind up there, so we couldn’t see outside. Every movement of the door rattled the blinds because of the current; they made a loud noise. It was so cold inside that you couldn’t sit still, and I, already a monk, was used to doing prostrations, or poklons. But because of the frost I could hardly do my prayers and poklons. And then I had to walk around the room, neither too fast nor too slow – if you walked too fast, you would freeze because of the draft, and if you walked too slow, you would freeze because of the cold. When I got tired, I’d sit on the toilet or say my prayers. You couldn’t sleep because you didn’t know if you’d ever wake up again. That’s how I survived for three days and three nights.

The food was a piece of frozen polenta. At some point I couldn’t stand it any longer and fell unconscious. I don’t know how long it was. I awoke from my insensibility, my body restored by a restful sleep, and a stove-like warmth around me. So I rose from the floor and continued my asceticism. But when I saw that my former situation continued, I felt myself becoming exhausted again, and said aloud, “I am dying here!” Then they took me and the other one out, whom they had taken into the other room. Later I found out that he was the former legionary mayor of Ploiești and that his ears, chin and cheeks were frozen.

I met Țuțea in a prison hospital, in the same room as Father Ioan Negruțiu. This priest was feeding a man who couldn’t move. He certainly had the Jesus Prayer, otherwise he could not have been so patient. One day this helpless man started to urinate, almost a bucket full, and it was uncontrollable. The room we were in was full. Someone[1] took a broom, a dustpan and rags and wiped everything off the floor. Țutea said: “What a test that man gave! What a test!”

Another time I was with Father Arsenie Papacioc and Father Ioan from Vladimirești, whom they had heard had the Holy Mysteries with him. And since I had made my confession, I was getting ready to receive Communion. And I asked Father John to give me Communion. Also there in Aiud was Vartolomeu (Valeriu) Anania, who had rheumatism in his last vertebrae. He was later cured by lying on his stomach in the sun. One day I was with Fr. Vartolomeu Anania’s parents and Sandu Tudor. Fr. Vartolomeu Anania sent me to Father Daniil to persuade him not to write the book the Communists wanted to publish[2]. In the evening they took his luggage, they took Father Daniil too, I didn’t know where. After a few days they took me back to the big cell in Aiud, at the end of the T, pretty much where I had been taken from. One morning I heard them saying to the guards, “He’s dead, man!” Then I heard a cell next door open and the man taken out. “He’s not dead, but he’s not breathing.” He was in a coma. He died in hospital two or three days later. We found out through the hairdressers that it was Father Daniil. After that they took me back to Zarca.

We had to fight with all our helplessness. Many wanted to commit suicide because they couldn’t stand the torture any longer. And the worst thing was that they asked you to tell the others, to turn them in. And they tortured you so badly that you could only die or give in.

Although he didn’t tell me what happened there, I know from those who knew him that towards the end of the diabolical “re-education” in Aiud, two pillars remained: Father Arsenie Papacioc and the Fakir. Their confession was one of the greatest spiritual aids the people of Aiud could receive.

(Fr. Marcu Dumitru – Confession of a Christian. Father Mark of Sihăstria, edited by monk Filoteu Bălan, Petru Vodă Publishing House, 2007, pp. 64-68)

[1] Here the father speaks about himself.

[2] The two had been asked to compile a volume containing in writing the confessions made in the Aiud re-education.