Zaharia Marineasa – “I have always, at any risk, resisted doing harm, to make anyone suffer because of me”

My name is Zaharia Marineasa. My political affiliation is Legionary. I served 21 years of political imprisonment in Aiud for political acts. I was always classified under articles of the law that the justice system of the time considered to be incitement against the social order. In the sentences handed down against me, there are no accusations of racism, anti-Semitism, religious intolerance or against the ethnic groups living in my country.

In summary, I have not been convicted of murder and therefore the 21 years of imprisonment I have served cannot be justified by any social order in the world.

In the following I will briefly mention my deeds in connection with the fight against communism. I will repeat some extracts from the interview I gave to the magazine “Gazeta de Vest” in September 1992.

I was asked whether the organisation I led was the one that took part in the first anti-communist armed clashes in Banat. In the spring of 1948 I was chased by the communists in order to be arrested. I was wearing a peasant’s costume and ski boots. I had an automatic pistol in my pocket. I gave the following answer to the “Gazeta de Vest” at the time: I admit that the clashes with the Securitate, in which I was involved as a leader of the group, (I report) three clashes, (which) were the first in this region. But they are not enough to cover a headline with claims of anti-communist struggle. I would like to mention that the organisation of the anti-communist struggle in the Banat mountains began in 1946 and belongs to Professor Filon Verca.

Spiru Blănaru, Commander Domășneanu and the peasant Gogu Cristescu were our comrades in the struggle, from whom I was separated because of my arrest and conviction, which took place before the death penalty law was passed.

In the first fight we had, I was in the leading role, and it was to my advantage, but with your indulgence I will leave out the details of this event, considering my spiritual involvement in the situation to be much more important. After my arrest, three months after this event, I was questioned by the Securitate, the investigators being Colonel Coloman Ambrus, Mois and Kling Zoltan: “Why did you raise your automatic pistol in front of loaded guns and only 2 or 3 metres away and fire upwards?” I mentioned that there were no casualties in this incident. I answered the three investigators: “Because a voice inside me told me not to act as if it were a declared war.” I don’t know if they understood what I was saying, but even if my answer didn’t lessen the severity of my questioning, I admit that I was surrounded by vulgarities and insults. In court, this incident at the Herculane station was judged in my favour because I accepted the great personal risk involved in the voluntary gesture of using a weapon solely for the purpose of intimidation, renouncing a mode of defence equal to that of my adversaries; adversaries who, in the situation in question, were both aggressors and representatives of the Communist-Soviet occupation.

Similar situations are described in the books of Professor Verca and Ion Gavrilă. Professor Verca says that he was in the forest with a grenade and a pistol. He saw the forester leading the policeman to where he was. He did not throw the grenade because the ranger had children. He surrendered, but a few days later he escaped from the custody of the Timișoara Security Service Police. One of the colonels who followed him told Ion Gavrilă where he was being watched, assuring him that if they had seen him, they would have shot him. Ion Gavrilă also shows the colonel some of the places where he saw him, standing a short distance away, and did not shoot him. It is up to future historians to examine these gestures, which are apparently simple attitudes, but which contain the results of a Christian education.

About my presence in the prison of Aiud.

Since my first political conviction, I have served five years in Aiud. The second sentence of 15 years was also served in Aiud, and at the end of my sentence I continued my extension in Periprava. As I said, in 1948 I was sentenced to 15 years, which was the maximum sentence for a group leader at that time, because the law on the death penalty for armed confrontation had not yet been passed. The regime in Aiud prison was as follows: starvation, solitary confinement, beatings, all to the point of repression. For 15 years and eight months I had no contact with my family. No letters, no parcels, no right to read and write. I was routinely one of those who were not spared isolation or punishment. I think it would be enlightening for those who know the prison environment to talk about some essential ways of living in a cell. The most important and welcome are love and kindness, justice and fairness are not enough. When you are alone in a cell, you have to be aware of your thoughts. Many thoughts of all kinds will come into your mind, and in addition to the uplifting ones, you may be assailed by disturbing, depressing thoughts. The latter must be eliminated immediately. I too, in accordance with Legionary spirituality, sought to live an authentic Christian life. The extent to which I have succeeded in this remains to be judged by my fellow sufferers. There were situations in which I could not do good, but I was always opposed to doing harm to someone who was suffering because of me, whatever the risk. I was not released at the end of my 15-year sentence. My detention was extended ex officio, without trial. Similar extensions were granted to others, but half a year before these extensions were suspended because about three thousand political prisoners with unexpired sentences had been released from Aiud prison, people who had been very important in the past: ministers, generals and various high-ranking people. I was told that there were three reasons for the extension of my detention and isolation in my cell: The incident at Herculane station, which this time was judged against me; a hunger strike I had declared six years earlier to obtain religious support and the New Testament, which was considered an instigation because one of the points of the general legionary strike that followed in Aiud was also formulated by me; and thirdly, the way I spoke in response to the pressure to accept re-education, an answer that was considered unsatisfactory.

Finally, I would like to express my wish, addressed as a prayer to God, that the hundreds of lives cut short by communism because they opposed it may be accepted as sacrifices for the building of a Christian Romania.

(Zaharia Marineasa in Anti-Communist Resistance in the Banat Mountains, by Miodrag Milin, Marineasa Publishing House, Timișoara, pp. 30-33)