“The whole colony was shocked by what had happened”

I had detained Father Șerban during a call to the colony office. We were often summoned to this makeshift registry, where all sorts of personal information was recorded, probably because somewhere up there they were constantly studying how to organise and reorganise this huge mass of prisoners. Father Șerban happened to be called in front of me and I unconsciously listened to his answers to the guard’s questions. I found out that he was a priest somewhere in Dobrogea, that he belonged to a resistance organisation, etc. When asked what his wife’s profession was, he answered quite naturally:

– Priestess!

The guard, who was not used to such an answer and had no such profession in his nomenclature, replied angrily:

– What’s a priestess! What was it before?

To which Father Șerban again replied calmly:

– Miss!

The guard could not stand it any longer, swore at him and threw him out. I don’t know how he ended up filling in the column, but this humorous dialogue made me like Father Șerban.

Back on the surface, he had to clear a path to the colony’s toilet. He worked for a few days with the stone he had collected from around the barracks. Then, when the stone was finished, the guard supervising him told him to get another stone from behind a barrack, from the so-called forbidden area, which consisted of a corridor about 2-3 metres wide that ran around the colony to the camp fence. Above the fence, right next to this place, was the hut where one of the guards was sitting. The guard supervising him told the guard in the watchtower to let Father Șerban collect the stones from there, and for two hours he continued his work in peace.

At some point, while I was in the technical office, I heard a gunshot and some groaning. Alarmed, I immediately went out into the courtyard. The moaning was coming from somewhere behind the shed. The guard in the yard was shouting desperately to the guard in the watchtower.

– Don’t shoot, comrade, don’t shoot! but the guard, with perfect calm, took no notice, cocked his rifle again and fired a second shot at the moaning man in front of everyone. It was Father Șerban. The director of the colony and other guards came in a hurry, picked him up and took him to the so-called infirmary, but all in vain. Father Șerban was dead! (…)

The whole colony was shocked by what had happened. We all realised that the life of each one of us was entirely at the discretion of our jailers, who could end our lives at any time on the slightest pretext, and that everything happened as a mere incident.

(Ion Diaconescu – Dungeon. Destinu generației noastre, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 1998, pp. 91-92)