The second trial

By 1958, days of immense suffering, loneliness, hunger, isolation, disease and death had passed, but there were survivors. Some of the former Târgu-Ocna political prisoners were still in jail, those sentenced to less than ten years had been released.

The international political situation was confused and gave the communists unchecked power in our country. No force had emerged after the war to oppose the Marxist-Leninist revolution, no idea had a chance to replace the materialist ideology, no personality was equal to the times.

The age seemed crushed by Soviet ideology, revolution and armed power.

***

One evening in the autumn of 1958 the bolts came down and I was dragged out with the rags I had left. In the course of the night, I was put into a van that had been built with eight little prisons that you could barely squeeze into. And the van started. The van is a symbol of terror, but also of hypocrisy, because although it has windows, they don’t exist, they are fake windows installed to deceive the eyes outside. Where are they taking us? What do they want? I knocked on the wall and found out through Morse code that there were other friends, all former prisoners in Târgu-Ocna. What do they want from us? Re-education in Pitesti was over, but the prospect of it still frightened us. God willing!

At one point the van stopped on the way. They took us out one by one for the necessities of life. We were in the open air, with the massif of the Făgăraș Mountains in front of us. The thrill of freedom, of contact with nature, of fresh air, was mixed in our souls with terror, uncertainty and hunger. A deep sadness penetrated every fibre of our being. We understood that we had taken the road to Bucharest, and at dawn we were disembarked at the Securitate.

With a blanket over our heads, we were each taken to a Securitate cell in Calea Rahovei. The cell had no window to the outside, but to the corridor. It was dawn and I was immediately taken to an office where I was greeted with curiosity by a skinny, bespectacled, stunted child with the rank of lieutenant major. Apparently his name was Cinderella. Though he was rough and impertinent, I also sensed a timidity in him:

– Here you are at Securitate, he told me. How long have you been here?

– Since 1941!

– Are you ill?

– I am ill!

– You may be sick, but you don’t give up evil! In which prisons have you been?

– Jilava, Pitești, Târgu-Ocna, Caransebeș, Galați, Aiud.

– Wherever you’ve been, you’ve made victims. You put people in prison!

– I don’t know anyone who has suffered because of me.

– Do you know C.V. [Constantin Voicescu]?

– Yes, I know him.

– And N.F.?

– Him too.

– Where did you meet them?

– In Târgu-Ocna.

– And how did you organise yourself there? Aren’t you going to answer? We have ways to make you talk! Bandit, you wanted to overthrow the Republic!

I was amazed at the nonsense he was talking. I wondered whethever he was going.

– Hey, aren’t you going to answer me? he roared again. I put my finger in the wound! Did you think we wouldn’t find out? You’ll answer for this! I’ve arrested all the bandits from Târgu-Ocna. Pity the little children and their families! You will have them on your conscience!

– Sir… it’s too much, too untrue, not to be astonished. You’re throwing accusations in my face that have no basis in fact, and I’m sure you don’t believe them either!

– Hey, you, damn you, call me a liar! I’ll prove who you are!

***

I’ve been investigated many times. I’ve been beaten, ridiculed, humiliated. The more I found out about the legal monstrosity they wanted to stage, the harder I tried not to get involved. It was all a lie, a complete fabrication, a legal forgery. The charges were twofold: that I had organised a group of legionaries in Târgu-Ocna with secret counter-revolutionary plans; that I had arranged for those who had been freed to maintain the organisation, co-opt others and carry out the counter-revolution. How could they accuse me of being the leader of a legionary gang? They had interrogated and tortured the detainees to get them to say who had organised them and who was in charge in Târgu-Ocna.

– There was no leader, they said.

– If there was no leader, who had more authority over you?

The people, they said, convinced that they were doing no harm:

– There was a prisoner with great authority: Valeriu Gafencu.

– Forget him, he’s dead. Another one!

– There was Ioan Ianolide, they said.

– But who wrote these poems?

– Some are by Valeriu Gafencu, some by Radu Gyr and some by C.D.

Valeriu has died, Radu Gyr was involved in another plot, as “real” as all the trials of that period. So they brought in C.D. First they accused him of writing “enemy” poems, like the one in which Lenin’s ghost walks over the imprisoned country, satisfied with the bath of suffering and blood in which he bathed it. Then they asked him:

– Do you know Valeriu’s poems?

– Some of them.

– But do you know I.I.?

– Yes.

– Tell us what you know about him!

– He knows about him. They only talk about me.

As all the new prisoners were of the same mind, the secret police thought of making me the head of the group.

– Gentlemen, I told them, everything you do is disgusting. You’re looking at a man you should at least respect for his immense suffering! I warn you that I will not allow myself to be drawn into this plot in the slightest.

Neither I nor the people you speak of are guilty of anything. First of all, I have to tell you that I am not in the position of a Legionary because of some spiritual processes for which I am not responsible. Secondly, many of those arrested were not even Legionaries. So there can be no question of a legionary action! And the facts you speak of are inventions and distortions that cannot be politically charged. We had a terrible life, we lived on the edge of the grave, and our only concern was to be saved and perhaps to survive.

– Don’t you help each other?

– It was human help from unfortunate people, and it was allowed by the administration.

– You’re not taking us with you! You were supposed to take care of the people in room 4, but why did you organise collections? Why did you give away your food? Why did you give medicine and streptomycin to other bandits?

– It’s painful to hear that we can be accused of anti-revolutionary organisation because we shared rags and loot as needed! The communists who were in Târgu-Ocna enjoyed human rights and received “red aid”!

– Hey, don’t touch the memory of our heroes or you’ll be fucked! We are not stupid and we will not repeat the mistakes of the past!

– Gentlemen, you don’t judge by the law, but by your own good will, and you have two measures, not one.

– We have as many as we want. We share power with no one. We are not answerable to anyone. The people and the working class are omnipotent.

We smiled bitterly and they saw it. Now I was being questioned by many.

– What about Streptomycin? We know you called it W. [Richard Wurmbrand]. Isn’t that an organisation?

If they were lying to frame me, I took the right not to admit anything.

– I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said, and I don’t even understand how a baptism, let alone the baptism of a Jew, can be a political organisation!

Did you also call him a legionnaire?

– You don’t want to admit anything! All right, let’s get on with it. I prepared a more select company for W. We can’t even get rid of this stinking traitor!

Later we found out that W. had been arrested and, as it was too unlikely that an anti-Semitic organisation would include a Jew, they lumped him in with a group of accused religious cultists and convicted him.

The questions continued to be silly and implausible.

– Did you order X, Y and Z to be made priests?

I didn’t even know, but I was pleased with myself.

– I didn’t order anyone to do anything, I replied, and certainly not to make themselves priests! You know what you have done. But I don’t see the connection between the priesthood and the legionary organisation you keep talking about.

– Well, it’s either priests or legionaries, the same thing! You’re both against our revolution. But we’ll roll over you. We only stop in America!

– Gentlemen, I told them, the religious plan is not the same as the political plan! And if any non-communist political organisation is banned, the Republic recognises the legality of the Church and tolerates theological institutes.

– Our revolution is scientific, and all measures have been taken to bury the Church publicly and splendidly! We’ll need it for a while, and we’ll get it! Your church is at our disposal. It’s no use you calling yourselves Christians, because your whole Synod has gone over to the side of the revolution. They’re making a mess of you, do you understand?

– It would be far wiser to try to understand what Christianity and Christian morality are, I say, it would serve you well.

– We don’t need your obscurantist mysticism! And I have already told you that we share power with no one. All power is in our hands. Nothing and no one escapes us. I smiled again. You went on:

– Perhaps you think the Americans are coming? We’ll make sure they don’t! We have sent our emissaries to stop them. The revolution has no enemies. China is on our side too, and if we let out a billion Chinese, we will invade the world!

Then suddenly they started again:

– Hey, what do you think, are these your principles or Valeriu’s?

I kept silent. So you knew about them too.

– Do you?

– I don’t know them,’ I replied dryly.

– You’re lying! You’re a fool! In fact, you thought about it and saw that it wasn’t working as it was, and you changed your mind!

– My ideas are those of Jesus Christ, I say.

– We’ll prove to you that they are legionary, you say.

– But how can you call them Legionary when you yourself say that Legionary ideas are no longer current?

– Your theologians will prove to you that they are not Christian ideas, but legionary.

Theologians? What theologians? I was thinking of a confrontation with the Patriarchate, but in fact the investigators were referring to three men who had studied theology during the brief period of freedom and who, under the Gârbaci empire, had declared the most authentic Christian principles to be legionary. I could only respond by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge such incompetence. I knew exactly what I wanted. I heard things that would be laughable if they were not tragic. So it came to me: A wedding could be considered a “counter-revolutionary legion meeting”; a gift given at a baptism could be “legion aid” organised for anti-state purposes; a pilgrimage to a monastery is a “legion training march” for the purpose of seizing political power; A visit to a friend is a “subversive courier service”; an illustrated holiday card is a “cipher” to keep members of the illegal organisation in touch with each other; a love song is a “subversive hymn” when sung by a legionnaire; “Lord, help! “, our ancestral greeting, is a Legionary greeting; friendly relations between families are “enemy activities”; church services are “congresses” with counterrevolutionary vows and initiatives; a girl who falls in love with an ex-convict becomes a Legionary and is put on trial; faith itself is Legionary and must therefore be condemned by the law.

It went so far that a friend who gave another in need a 1-leu tube of polivitamins was accused of “organising mutual aid for hostile purposes”! Everything was sewn up with red thread. There was no intention, no movement, no trace of political activity, neither legionary nor counter-revolutionary, of any kind, because it was inappropriate to think of such a thing in Târgu-Ocna or in the Romanian People’s Republic of 1958, when we were sure and permanent prey to communism. But out of nowhere they organised a trial in all the legalities, with all the taboos of a legal masquerade.

At the end of the trial I was devastated. They sent me to the hospital in Văcărești to recover a little. Here I was treated by two Romanian doctors, whom I thank, and by a young Jewish doctor who tortured me without any legal, medical or moral justification for the treatment to which he subjected me.

When I was brought before the military court, I was assisted by a prison guard. Our families were in the courtroom. I walked past my mother and father, whom I hardly recognised, so much had they changed and aged.

When my mother saw me, she didn’t know who I was and exclaimed:

– But this poor thing, whose is he?

So I was so crippled, so dirty, so wretched, that even my own mother didn’t recognise me. It is well known that mothers have a keen sense of discovering their children, and if he did not awaken in my mother, who was a woman of great spiritual and intellectual resources, it meant that I had really become another man. My mother didn’t recognise me. The court was made up of officers, judges, a prosecutor and lawyers disguised as prosecutors. The prosecution’s witnesses were the parents and wives of the accused. The secretaries conducted the trial. The whole audience was intimidated.

We pleaded everyone’s case. When I spoke for the last time, I said:

– None of the accused is guilty! Let them go to their families!

The sentences ranged from M.S.V. (hard labour for life) to 15 years. Only one, who had accepted the role of informer and accuser, received less than 15 years. Hundreds of trials were held along the same lines, and tens of thousands were sentenced, many to death. The latter were kept in chains for almost a year awaiting execution, terrorised, ridiculed and slandered on a daily basis. Finally, ‘humanism’ prevailed and they were granted the right to live out their lives in hard labour. At the same time, a group of respected monks and Christian intellectuals in Bucharest were condemned for ‘mysticism’.

The dungeons groaned. People were exhausted. There was no hope in sight. We asked more earnestly for God’s mercy for us and for the world.

The persecution foretold by Valeriu on his bed of suffering, when he passed from death to life through Jesus Christ, had already begun.

(John Ianolide – Return to Christ. Document for a New World, Ed. Bonifaciu, Bacău, 2012, pp. 194-207)