Anticommunist resistance (IV): Fagaras - northern slopes

[Mihai Caragiu]

The great government offensive and the bitter winter cold had isolated
the partisans completely in the bare rocky Fagaras Mountains and cut
them off from any life-sustaining sources. Some of them trusted a
certain
Marin of Brasov, who claimed to have connections and to be able to
arrange for them to be smuggled out of country, to Turkey. Gavrila, the
head
of the partisan group, allowed those who vished to leave, to do so. He
personally thought that the arrangement was atrap, and he continued
fighting
with those who remained. He died in battle, together with his closest
friends
in 1954 (of whom the names of Parascau and Marcel Cornea are known).
Those who
trusted Marin fell into the trap and were arrested. Of that lot, Dr.
Nicolae
Burlacu, Borza of Vistea, Ion Moldovan of Lisa, Dr. Ion Munteanu of
Lisa, Iov
Popa, a schoolteacher, Virgil Nan of Arpas were sentenced to death but
were not
executed at that time; two years later their sentence was changed to
life
in prison. Ilie Serafim, a student, was put to death at Sibiu in 1953.
His
mother was arrested and was heard of in the extermination political
prisons
of Jilava, Mislea and Miercurea Ciuc. Thousands were arrested in Fagaras
in 1953 and 1954. Among the regime's victims were children and girls
under 18. Half of the population of the villages Breaza and Lisa were
arrested. Among the people destroyed at that time was Professor Borza
of Fagaras, whose wife had lost both legs in 1945 when the Soviets
were deporting her to forced labor in the coal mines of Donets, and she
jumped from the train to escape. Her husband was taken away and she was
abandoned in the house, incapable of moving. Other victims in that lot
were Mother Gordona, arrested together with eight young girls, for
having
given food to starving mountaineers, and Mother Serafina and her
husband,
whose son Ilisie had been killed in prison at Jilava.

Reference: Golea, Traian
Romania beyond the limits of endurance, 1988