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Translation and sync: Bogdan Bobolea 2013
THE PAIN MEMORIAL
From the peaks where the storm and the flint are queens
From the forests with virginal clearings
You lifted suddely and harshly like a hurricane, you Carpathians people from Fagaras.
Deep in the graves the ancestors are struggling and they are calling us,
The dead men of this people do not have peace.
The call for justice sounds from copper alpenhorn And the mountains are carrying it over with their rustle.
The call for justice sounds from copper alpenhorn And the mountains are carrying it over with their rustle.
United with all those who want To die in freedom,
We all will start, the enemy we will strike. We will break their bondage in no time
When the whole people will wake up From the deadly sleep.
You, Carpathians people from Fagaras, come on, let'*** those who have killed and are desecrating
the shrine and the Romanian people.
The Pagans brought grief and plunder in the country,
They had taken our wealth and our clear speech,
We were free and just here and abroad,
They strangled laws and customs.
Parents and siblings today lie in bitter chains
Children and wives remained alone
Our ancient altars were desecrated, We don't know if those taken are dead or alive.
A HISTORY not taught in school.
THE OLD MAN
Ogoranu was my nickname that I had, a nickname that we all had it from that village,
starting from my grandfather, who was a native of Iasi village, a village near Fagaras city.
And to whom the inhabitants of Gura Vaii village called them "Ogorani".
Because he moved into the village and he got married there it remained with this nickname "Ogoranu".
When I was a kid I was fighting with the other kids in order to defend my honour when they were calling me "Ogoranu".
Now I am the one who I am calling myself "Ogoranu".
As long as I was a kid I was named Mielu Ogoranu Lidu, then "Ion Ogoranu".
If I would had remained in the village I had finished with "Old Ogoranu".
Ion Gavrila Ogoranu, the one who became starting with 1950 to be called "Mosu" (the Old man), has a singular destiny.
because of his wisdom, the leader of the Resistance Group from Fagaras Mountains
and who almost for 30 years did not allow himself to be caught by the Securitate.
Despite the fact that "it's good for the heroes to be dead", as he is commenting lucid and caustic, now at his old age,
through who knows what God miracle, a fir tree from the ancient forest remained vertical.
A fir tree which is asking for the right to be remembered. After a life lived nearby death, evil and captivity.
And mostly is asking for his brothers to be remembered.
Ion Gavrila was born on January 4th, 1923, in a village, Gura Vaii from the foothills of Fagaras Mountains.
Even now he is opening the gate of his parents' house and sees clearly the panorama of the peaks
where the storms and the flint are queens, and he hears his comrades' "salute" from the infinite world of their youth.
His parents are Ana and Gheorghe. The father dies in 1949.
Three children are surviving his death, a boy and two girls
who had been taken care by their mother, an enlightened woman from Apuseni Mountains.
He receives a rough education which had as guidelines: duty for the country, moral life and faith in God.
At 11 he is sent to "Radu Negru" High-school from Fagaras,
like all peasants' children who later on became the intelligentsia of this country.
From the teachers Valeriu Literat, Ermil Rosala, Mihai Novac, Procopie Bentia, Octavian Popa and many others
he learns the core values that will guide him all his life.
He joins the Brotherhood of the Cross, a nationalist and Christian organization for Romanian children
some of their fundamental books were the writings of a young Bishop Ioan Suciu: "Heroism, Youth, The Mother".
The oath said "the most saint right that I have regarding the Romanian nation, is to work, to fight and to sacrifice for it".
All the time there were mentioned Christian places and role models:
Stefan cel Mare, Mihai Viteazul, Avram Iancul, Horia, Razboieni, Calugareni, Marasesti,
because only the past could shake a sleeping national consciousness.
The Communism was considered to be the death enemy of the Romanian nation and against it you should wage a mortal fight.
The 1944-1948 "Radu Negru" High-school graduates didn't live to see each other after 10 years from their graduation.
The Fagaras youth armed themselves to fight against the Communism.
There were sacrificed generations.
A part of those who were young died in the skirmishes with the repressive forces.
Others died in the Communist prisons.
Many decided to leave the country in exile.
And many more were dismantled physically and mentally because of the pains endured.
Their generations never met in order to celebrate. They met in the inquiries prison cells from Fagaras, Sibiu, Cluj, Brasov, Bucharest.
They didn't have the chance to enjoy their youth, too.
He enrols to the Agronomy Faculty from Cluj. As all the others teenagers from that time,
Gavrila took part at the emotional moment when the University came back home in 1945 after the 1940 Vienna Diktat.
Then it followed the students meeting May 10th, 1946 against the new Communist leadership of the University.
The violation of the election from November 1946, elections that justified the Communist government.
The persecution of the Roman - Catholic Church.
"We never died in a glorious rebellion", said Ogoranu, "instead we dimmed one by one"
"unknown in the mountains, but many of us in the darkness of the Communist prison cells".
"This was the tragedy of our generation".
What's interesting is that Ion Gavrila has the biggest file in the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives.
IULIU CRACANA historian
The file has 119 volumes and more than 50,000 sheets.
These sheets contain the Securitate informative memos and reports regarding all the persons that could had been able to help Gavrila.
His parents, relatives, the possible support persons from the villages near Fagaras with whom he could have met before or after he run into the mountains.
After he left Jean Pop, four days he moved through the woods, grain fields and swamps, following the railroad.
He didn't have any food. He ate only mushrooms from the forest.
Arrived in Santimbru he sought refuge to good Romanians whom he asks to notify Petre Sabadus' family.
Petre Sabadus, his former school and fighting mate, was sheltered by his family after 1940,
when Transylvanian refugees fled from the occupied Ardeal.
Now he was thinking to ask him to offer him a shelter just for a few months until he will manage to cross the border.
He didn't know that the doctor was killed in the prison.
The foothills villages were full of families who were mourning.
Many, many had fallen from the groups Dabija, Macavei, Susman brothers, Capota and Dejeu.
Their mothers died broken hearted. Some wives and sisters survived, living in another world - hallucinatory - of grief.
Lazar Auruta, a friend of mine from Santimbru, called me and she said that Gavrila came to them.
And she called me to see him, too.
I went there,
he was poorly dressed, very skinny, with a sheepskin and a worn backpack.
He had a submachine gun.
After two days he came to us.
And he asked me to go to Cluj, to Maga Mihai, former colleague of my deceased husband Sabadus,
and ask what happened with Chiujdea and the others.
I went and I didn't find him at home.
I didn't find Maga.
The host told me to come back in the autumn when he would have an exam.
I went in the autumn and he told me that Chiujdea and the others crossed the border to go Greece.
He was preparing also so Gavrila could go, too.
Gavrila should wait.
In the spring of 1956 I went again to Cluj to see Maga Mihai.
He told me that "they were sold" ...
... "and that they were apprehended by Securitate. Chiujdea and the others, except Gavrila".
"Gavrila should do what he knows better".
Then Gavrila wanted to cross the border to Yugoslavia.
And I told him that my husband was caught there, too and he should not go.
I prayed to God and I had faith in God that he is helping us.
Talking about his captivity, Ion Gavrila said: "you cannot survive without people's help".
A brave community of Romanians from Galtiu and Santimbru helped him to survive.
First it was his wife Ana.
In 22 years she was many times at the end of the straw but he never saw a sigh, a remorse, a reproach regarding what it might could have happened.
Ana's children helped him a lot, the mother of Petre Sabadus, the aunt Lucretia and
many other neighbours and friends who understood his doom and they defended his life.
Everybody knew what they were facing. Only on their street out of 30 houses there were deported and killed 11 persons.
This was the tribute of their village.
The former water mill, where Ion Gavrila Ogoranu stayed hidden for 15 years.
The mill is no longer a mill.
Now it is inhabited, it is a house slightly changed. Probably only the windows and the steps remained the same.
How did you arrive in 1950 from the house where you were leaving in this abandoned mill ?
In December 6th, 1959 from the Popular Council came the Party Secretary, the President as they said at that time, the gatherer, the chief of the village Militia.
Well, around six or seven men, burst into the house.
And the first impression that we had, me and my wife, was that they want to raid the house.
I hid in the usual place where I was hiding and they burst:
"Madam, in 24 hours you have to move from this house. You have to move".
Of course my wife's heart relaxed when she realized that it is not a raid,
but she continued "where can I go now in the brink of the winter?"
"We don't care. Here will stay the Secretary of the Popular Council. You have to relocate".
My wife made few remarks and they found the solution:
"There is a mill in Santimbru".
"Yes, there is, but it doesn't have windows frames, doors and the windows glasses are broken".
"The ceiling is collapsed on the floor". Anyway it was a deplorable situation here.
At that time the water was going through the mill.
"We don't care. You are going there."
"OK, but in 24 hours I cannot go there".
There was also a woman who was merciful and they said:
"OK, madam, in that case you'll go there in few days".
So this is how we arrived to be relocated here.
My wife came on the road with the chariots. I came here during the night.
We settled in. We organised before the start of the autumn.
A guy from the village who replaced the doors from his house gave the old ones to us.
Another one gave us the windows frames. We paid to them later on in time, of course.
In time we managed to arrange everything so we can live here.
Here I stayed hidden as I said, more than 15 years.
The mill has changed now. A hard-working man changed it into a nice house worth of living in it.
He changed it a lot because a lot of time passed after we left this place.
But the surroundings are the same as they were at that time.
The tranquillity that is here.
- The fountain was here at that time ? - The fountain was here. These steps were at that time.
And everything that can be seen around.
The Securitate opens in 1958 an intelligence file called "Negoiu" or "Fagaras".
So he was followed by Securitate having two nick names.
This names were code names. Exactly as the informants had these "aka" names.
He was confined at the borders when he was member of the Anticommunist Resistances Carpathian Group.
Until 1976 his photo was on each desk of any Militia border staff.
He was confined to all borders and on regular basis a memo was sent saying
that Ion Gavrila with the following features is searched by Securitate, "he is a bandit, antisocial and he must be apprehended"
Not many people knew about him and this was due to his conspiracy self imposed, despite the fact that it was difficult to stay hidden so many years.
In order to find out where Ion Gavrila might be hidden and then to capture him, Securitate had deployed massive forces.
more than 1000 persons were watched, this number is revealed from the files.
At that time, a neighbour, called Dobrescu lived in the house behind me, in the yard with the walnut at the front.
who knew almost all the time that I was here.
He didn't know details, but he knew that someone is hidden.
Furthermore Securitate counted on him as being their agent.
This man defended me so well all these years
that when I arrived at Bucharest, all Securitate officers were swearing at him
saying : "How well he tricked us, that old villain".
Furthermore, this is the capstone:
his son-in-law was a Securitate officer.
Despite these circumstances he didn't tell anything at that time.
He told to my wife: "Madam, I have a soul and I don't sell it".
As far as I am concern, I can't see, I can't hear. Beside what I know that I must tell I won't speak about.
When I was writing the book, in 1990-1991 he died. The grave was still fresh when I had written the book.
So Traian Dobrescu must be mentioned as a man of humanity, a man with soul, because of his silence I am alive at this moment.
After some years a villager destroyed this human solidarity relationship. He wrote a denunciation addressed to Securitate.
It was 1976. Ion Gavrila was a free man at that time.
"We the inhabitants of Santimbru village we are asking you to relocate Ion Gavrila and Ana Gavrila from this location because they are very dangerous".
The "rat" is still living on the same street with Ion Gavrila.
- I knew that if they will find him we will all of us executed. - All? How come ?
My family, too. Because my family knew about him.
He stayed one year in the attic of the stable and only then he came in the house.
And in that house we had two wardrobes on the corner.
And each time someone was coming to visit us, he was going behind the wardrobes.
The little girl was looking in the mirror, the toilet was at the back of the room. She was making wry faces in the mirror.
Gavrila slid the curtain so he can see inside, and the little girl saw that the curtain is moving.
And she started to cry "Who is in our house ?"
I figured it out what happened and I rushed in and I hugged her and we went in the other room and I told her that he is the father.
And that she should not speak with anybody about him because the evil persons. Because I was taken to Securitate, you know.
And they were crying and they were praying to the God together with my aunt.
They didn't tell to anybody. But the little girl attached to him and so she didn't feel the need to stay with other kids.
He always was telling stories to her and she always stayed with him.
In what year have you married with Ana Sabadus ?
There was a settling, later on when I decided to stay here,
and when we found the opportunity to go to Alba Iulia for the wedding ceremony.
- In what year ? - I don't know exactly.
Around three or four years after my arrival.
The children are away, are married, they have their homes.
- They have their own homes. - They love their father ?
Of course. He is the father.
We are helping them. My daughter has a job here in Santimbru and she has four children.
The older girl is student in the fourth year. There is another one, also a student.
Another one is graduating the High-school this year.
Another one is in the 9th form.
They are coming here and they are helping us with the chores.
And they are here as they would be at home with "papa". He is calling the children "papa" and the children are calling him "papa", too.
So his name it remained "papa". And myself I don't know how to call him, beside "papa".
For Securitate the informants within the Church were very important.
Mainly in the villages near Fagaras Mountains, where the population is very religious.
The Ogoranu's parents and relatives didn't trust.
They never spoke inside their houses about Ion Gavrila, but Gavrila's mother trusted the clergy.
Because of this, at one moment of time Securitate figured it out that Gavrila is alive. How?
During a religious sermon dedicated to the deceased, the priest came at home,
Ogoranu's mother told to the psalm reader or to the priest (details are given : the conspiracy nick name is "Ion Creanga")
told him to put Gavrila in the list of those who are alive. She told him whispering "put him with those who are alive".
The source went straight away to Securitate and told them "beware, Gavrila is alive".
The Securitate officer recommended to the agent that "around Christmas celebrations when she is coming to confess for her sins",
"he should pity her life for the problems generated by his son", of course with the idea of asking her about Ogoranu.
According to the files, Ogoranu's family had microphones in their houses for 15 years.
In 1973 I arrived to the conclusion that I have to cross the border.
To try to cross the border.
I didn't see it such a hard task.
Definitely the boarder couldn't be better guarded than we were surrounded. It could have not been.
But I couldn't leave the country before I was seeing once my mother, my parent's house and the mountains.
I was feeling the need...
- From here you cannot see the mountains. - No, you cannot see them.
From Copsa Mica they can be seen.
When the sky is very clear you can see them very well from the top of a hill.
And because of that I had to go to Fagaras.
I didn't see it as a big danger and it wasn't a big danger.
At least after so many years if they would still chasing me, my physiognomy had changed.
As a matter of fact, if I would have seen myself walking on the street I had not recognized myself.
How this meeting evolved ?
It was... I arrived at the dusk, during the night. I entered, determined not to enter in the house during the night,
I wanted to enter in the attic of the barn
and to observe the yard my next of kin or they were replaced by other persons as it happened in so many places.
The moment of certainty that I was in the right place was triggered by the fact that I had seen the yoke of the she-buffalos.
But it could have been someone else, the things could had remained there but my next of kin to be taken away.
And even in the morning, when I saw my married sister and two lads, who had taken the scythes to go away, I wasn't fully certain until I saw my mother coming out.
I couldn't be sure until I found my mother alone.
I was surprised because she received me very aloof and she threaten me to get out and leave.
- She didn't recognize you ? - She didn't recognize, she couldn't recognize me.
The things happened in this fashion: Securitate used this technique, few times some guys came in pretending to be me saying "look mother, I am Ion, I came back home".
Of course she didn't recognize them and pushed them out from the yard.
Ion Gavrila remembers that when he saw his mother, she didn't recognize him.
Was he so changed after so many years of hiding?
- Did he change ? - He looked older, of course he changed.
So much that his own mother didn't recognize him?
Yes, but his mother didn't want to recognize because many persons went to my mother in law, Gavrila's mother.
And they were saying that they are his son.
And my husband went there and he said to her "It's me Ion". She said "go away because many Ions are coming here".
He didn't know how to convince her that he is his son.
- "You have beaten me". - "Any parent is beating their children".
- "Mother, what birthmarks had your son ?" - She said "a mole and another birthmark".
Her eyes withered and she said "My beloved son!" Only then she recognized him.
I called her "mother" Gavrila, because she was older. She suffered a lot because of the fear.
She received a lot of beatings.
She was connected to the electricity and all the staff.
Ileana and Geana, Ion Gavrila Ogoranu's sisters are remembering the trauma endured by their family.
They connected a live wire to one finger and another wire to another finger. So it makes you jump up and down and collapse you on the floor.
- Do you understand why they put you to the electricity ? - To tell something about him.
If I had known I would have told them. But we didn't know to tell them.
After his apprehension, in June 1976, months of inquiries passed in the cells of Securitate building from Calea Rahovei.
They are asking him statements after statements.
The questions from the inquiries are bordering the paranoia fantasy.
In the same time the person who read these pages understands that because of decency Ion Gavrila didn't confess
either the interviews or in the book about the life of hell he had in captivity.
He wanted to clarify his situation.
He was hoping to get out after so many years of isolation.
The trips to Cluj in 1974, 1975 and 1976. Trips to Lugoj and Timisoara, Buzias and Arad.
A constant pressure and harassment.
In the winter of 1975, when the Militia chief from Galtiu asked about the house's plan he had to leave the house and stay in a cottage.
The drawings of their routes, railways stations which he passed through, forests, hideouts, crossings of the Olt river (swimming or over the ice),
doors that were closed in front of him and mainly his thoughts.
I cannot relax. I have the feeling that everybody is watching me.
I enjoy to be alone at home. Not to...
- Do you enjoy to stay alone? - Yes, I do.
- I'm not going to anybody. - You're not going to anybody ?
No, I am not going to anybody. To whatever I say...
Do you have friends in this village ?
I have a good relationship with my neighbor.
I am going to the Church and that's all. I am not going to anybody else.
We are ...
aliens here. We are intruders.
Ion Gavrila never knew the real identity of the Colonel Tudor Vladimirescu. One day after many years he found on his doorstep a book.
It was a notebook with a close reading circuit.
In this way he found out that that his inquirer killed among other Toma and Maria Arnautoiu, too.
What were the differences between the good and the bad inquirer, the way you felt them?
Colonel Nagy was the guy who searched for me his entire life.
And he is, as I mentioned, the one who knew all my personal details: next to kin, who was listening the chat from the family,
they were wiretapping on constant basis my mother because there was a microphone in her house.
Let's say, that in time, we knew each other for a long period of time and probably it transformed in a sort of benevolence regarding
- Firstly for your biography and then for yourself. - And I think that he became benevolent.
And in many situations he told me specifically, either he let the sentences as I had written.
Against me there were three major counts : that in three circumstances I behave without humaneness.
What were those three circumstances ?
The first one: at the outskirt of a village I tied up two guys back to back and I let them to walk like that into the village.
That once I caught a guy called Vulcu, a Securitate agent from Breaza, and I had threaten to kill him.
And the third one that at the squirmish from Izvoarele Topologului, at that sheepfold, one guy from Securitate had died.
All of these three were just to frame me.
First of all: one of those two asked me to do that thing.
It is true that I did threaten the Securitate agent, but I just threaten him.
I didn't harm him not even a scratch. I didn't beat him.
In the last circumstance, they caught us in the sheepfold where we were unarmed, he had only with small pistols.
If someone died there, a soldier died, it died because it was friendly fire, because there were more than 100 of soldiers.
They were firing in all directions given the superiors orders.
I am puzzled that it was only one dead person.
This inquirer told me "stick with the statements given by me to you. Under no circumstances you should not get out of that story".
After a while another inquirer came, Tudor, the one you mentioned, who took everything in detail,
day and night, coming back to the previous statements, to every word, to every situation.
I could feel that this guy was hating me from the bottom of his soul.
While in 2005, on Ion Gavrila's criminal record, there are still maintained all the convictions for the anticommunist fight,
even the one that was pronounced in his absence - the death penalty - those judges were rewarded by the new power that was installed in December 1989.
As an acknowledgement of these merits, one of them, Colonel of Military Justice Niculae Vasile Sitaru, was promoted straight away in February 1990 to the rank of General Major.
As I worked before at the Archives, I am the one who brought. I am the first person who saw his file and after that I was the one who gave to him this file in order to be read.
This is why I know this situation better.
Ion Gavrila is on one side a very sensitive man and on another side he is very powerful.
He is never complaining.
I met him once at a Communication Session at Pitesti.
He traveled by train from Alba, he had led that Session.
Because we're happy, we're young, we kept him awake the whole night to speak with him, and we went to bed for 2 hours.
When we woke up, Mr. Gavrila was not there anymore. He went to Fagaras.
So as a matter-of-fact he didn't sleep at all. And it happened recently, he had 81 or 82 years.
He is a very strong person. Probably that's the reason he survived. He has certain features that the other persons do not possess.
He has undoubtedly leadership skills.
What do you think remained in the history in relation to the fight and, as you say, the sacrifice of the teenagers from Fagaras ?
I think ...
At least it remained something that shows that the Romanian people had some dignity in that era.
Because a nation doesn't live only with bread and with salami (with or without soya), but with dignity and honor among the other countries of the world.
And I believe we brought at least this to this country through our sacrifice, through the death of so many thousands of people.
At least they washed with their blood the Romania's face soiled by treason and selling.
From the peaks where the storm and the flint are queens
From the forests with virginal clearings
You lifted suddely and harshly like a hurricane, you Carpathians people from Fagaras.
Deep in the graves the ancestors are struggling and they are calling us,
The dead men of this people do not have peace.
The call for justice sounds from copper alpenhorn And the mountains are carrying it over with their rustle.
The Romanians longed for Americans. They have waited for them for 60 years.
As long as they had fought in the mountains, survived in the prisons, they have waited for those who they thought are the real eliberators.
And at last, they arrived.
Through the historical agreement signed by Romania and USA, the US military troops will be based on Romanian soil.
At the military base from Cincu, Sibiu for the first time a US military flag will be waving in the Fagaras area.