Virgil Mateiaș – a tough man

On 30 July 1964 we were all taken to the yard. The release forms were ready. But one prisoner was missing. He remained – allegedly – “forgotten” in a room, somewhere on a mobile phone. It was Virgil Mateiaș, the tough man who had endured six months of non-stop torture in Ocnele Mari prison. In Aiud prison, he stood up to all the torturers without giving up even a pinch of his legionary creed.

At the last moment, the administration hoped to smear him a bit… It failed. In the end they brought him in.

The officers escorted us to the station and made sure that they took out our train tickets and gave them to each of us individually.

(Octavian Voinea, The Massacre of Romanian Students in the Prisons of Pitești, Gherla and Aiud, edited by Gheorghe Andreica, Majadahonda Publishing House, Bucharest, 1996, p. 201)