Interview with the youngest daughter of the New Confessor Mircea Vulcănescu

“My father was deeply faithful and he didn’t like to show it”

I would ask you to tell us some of the memories from your wonderful childhood spent together with a father like Mircea Vulcănescu. Which was the religious climate in your family?

Since childhood I had more than respect, rather a warm love for God, due to my mother, which helped us to go to the church, and to my father, which gave us a living  example. For at Easter father Daiculescu from the Mântuleasa church that we belong, asked my father to be one of the persons which carried the Holy Epitaph. There is a photo with me father when he was young, dressed as a priest, cause he really wanted to became a priest, he was a very religious man.

His life took another course and, being twice married, I believe he renounced to this thing. His first wife was more exigent and he had our eldest sister, Viorica, Vivi, and then they separated. My father was younger than his first wife, Anina Pogoneanu, which was  a philosophy teacher at The Central School and her parents said she deserved more than a simple  clerk/ jack-in-office. The nice thing is that the mother of my eldest sister made peace with us and we maintained a very good relationship.

My father was deeply religious and he didn’t like to show it. My grandfather was very  just  and he was very much respected for his honesty. My grandmother was very religious and taught us to go to the church, to receive the Holy Eucharist, just like my mother.

Do you have any childhood memory about your father, one which was engraved in your soul?

I remember how he used to take us in his bed and showed us: “this is the highest mountain, the Everest”, and he lifted his legs together with the quilt or bent his knees and said: “this is the Caraiman”. We practically learned geography on the blankets of our bed. My father had a gift to learn us with a mild spirit and playing, without dispute, ostentation or quarrel. He prized my sister Sandra and he took her very seriously, as she was  much more serious. I used play hooky/truant, being younger, they tolerated me like that. I used to do some pranks and I liked to make them laugh. Afterward, passing through the concentration camp, I lost my ability to do so many jokes, but I think that experience  was useful to me, being in the middle of such variety of mankind, and I had very good examples. The daughter of professor Traşcă, for example, was a model of a especial/remarkable character.

 “It was an honor for me to be under arrest”

Why did they arrest you?

I don’t know why. I know just that it was so and that they thought well.  I’d just finished the college and  I was preparing for the faculty, the architecture, where my father advised me to go, knowing that I had the gift of writing and drawing. He had been in the prison with an architect, D. N. Cantacuzino, and he liked a lot that he had made those vilas in Eforie, at the sea shore, and my father prized him. He lived in an attic, the poor man, and he gave me lessons in drawing so that I might be admitted to the architecture school. I wasn’t admitted. I was erased from the list. At the exam of admission  they didn’t see if I was good or not and I followed a technical school, with the courtesy of the board, because when you are erased from one list, you are compromised in any other place. But there are persons which tolerated my presence and it was still an architecture school. Afterward I had a job in Bucharest.

When did they arrest you?

When I was eighteen years old, in 1952, and I stayed till 1954.

What sustained you more in your resistance?

The fact that my father was supposed to get out in 1954. I used to tell myself that if my father got out in ’54, I got out too. And I got out, but he didn’t...

Did you think about the advice he gave you on Christian patience?

He didn’t emphasise very much this theoretical side, but he had an exaemplary conduct I remember that when he was asked by the priests to carry the Epitaph  I said to myself that he was worthy of that, as they chosed him from an entire district.

What can you tell us on his relationship with Nae Ionescu and D. Gusti?

I think I didn’t met Nae Ionescu. Maybe I was at a meeting and I’ve seen him only once more at a conference, after his imprisonment, but I used to see D. Gusti very often because ha had a kind of orchard in Bucharest, at the main road. And he then asked us to pick cherries and professor Reiner hold the stair for us, and then Mr. and Mrs. Gusti invited us to a great feast.(His wife was a jew and a relative of Mrs. Lupescu[King Carol the second mistress], she was very generous, very discreet and of a special elegance.). I remember with great affection of  professor Reiner too. His wife had been the midwife of the Queen and professor Reiner, which was deaf, sang us.

Do you know by chance to whom your father confessed?[ Who was your father’s confessor?]

My father had a very good friend to whom I think he confessed his sins: father Alecu Popescu from Doamnei Church. He was very discreet with this side of life. After the death of my father, when I went to Aiud[state prison], I took a handful of earth from there and I brought it to Doamnei Church. I went to Aiud years after his death and I asked the grave digger where they used to bury the dead these years and he tried to remember and told me: “Here”. I don’t know if it was true, but I put a cross and many years after  we wanted to take his remains/ bones.

I went there with a friend, Ştefan Fay, which helped us very much, and we tried to find something, but we couldn’t recognize anything. And then we cover the grave again and took only a handful of earth that we brought to father Alecu. Afterward we went as often as we could to the cross.

Where were you when they arrested him?

I was with my sister and my cousin in Câmpulung when I found out that he had been arrested. He had been taken once, in the spring of that year, and brought to the Arsenal, where we saw him daily and brought him food, specially “colivă”, that he liked very much and from which he gave to the others,  too. The examining magistrate understood that these people were blameless and he was then replaced. With the order of the Russians, everything became political. When the trial begun, he was translated to Văcăreşti prison, where we weren’t aloud talking to him more than once a week, when we could bring him some food and clothes. And the guard was a good enough man that time and he felt pity seeing two girls alone there...

The big trial was during the time he was jailed in Văcăreşti and when he received his conviction they transferred him to Aiud, even before the sentence. My sister went to Aiud to see him. I arrived there with my mother after he had died. I think my mother was once, but he asked her not to come anymore. He said: “ This is the hell and I don’t want you to be here.” And then my mother didn’t go anymore. But my sister when she wanted to get married, went there to ask his consent and my father was very impressed that his consent was ashed  even in that state of arrest and told her: “I would give you my consent, just take care and be nice and don’t  upset your mother. And first finish your school.” Because she had another two years  till finishing the college. She went to my father with a sort of nephew who entered and said: “Your daughter is outside”. And he told the guard to call her, for the guest was on one side and the prisoners were on the other side, they couldn’t touch each other. They sent the packages and everything else by intermediary. Then they brought Sandra, tearful, for she stayed outside and she couldn’t see him. It was the last time she saw him. Then she has striven to obey father’s order and to finish the school.

“He is  a model to us and we strive to be worthy of his sacrifice”

Was Mircea Vulcănescu jailed at Jilava too?

Yes, he was. I’ve even been in the cell where he was jailed. When I went there , the cell had straw on the floor and the place was very moist/humid. My father loved the prayer and he learned us to pray. My Lord and the Master of my life... I know it from him. But he didn’t teach us by force. He taught us as if he had shown us some flowers... that’s how he taught us.

Mircea Vulcănescu was an example of a modest living. Where his modesty came from?

He had it within. My father never thought that a poor was less than himself. I know for certain that he gave his clothes to the poor which came at the corner of our street. That’s why he could bear in the prison some physical hardships that are difficult to bear. It was very hard in the prison. There were in prison people who suffer, people who can endure and other people who can’t endure. He devoted himself very much. He used to sleep on the floor, that’s why he fell ill of tuberculosis and died at the age of 48 years. He is  a model to us and we strive to be worthy of his sacrifice.

I was told by a guard from the prison, one who behaved badly with someone and was arrested too and was put in the same cell with me father. When he entered there, he was first scared because my father was so tall, dark and thin. When he got out he told me that my father was the  best person he had ever met, that he  gave him his food and everything he needed in that cell from Aiud. He told me how generous was my father with the little nothing he had. His name was Frăţilă and he had been a policeman. I was  colleague with his daughter at the Folklore Institute. I, in my flickleness, I succeeded in detaching myself and thinking very seldom to  this things.  I mean, these stayed like stones on the bottom of the water and I am floating on the top of them. I say  this is a gift from God so that I don’t become mopish. In all the things I wanted to see only the light side.

What do you think Mircea Vulcănescu wanted to tell us by this words: “Don’t avenge us!”?

My father understood everybody, the one which envied, the one which didn’t want what’s best for you and which has his mental limitations. The vengeance came from a need to express the malice within you, but my father  wasn’t malicious. He was on the battle field. He volunteered and stayed in the North until they asked them back because they said “what does the Department do without its undersecretary?”.

Do you think that the Martyrs from the communist prisons/ concentration camps should be  sanctified?

The most important is to know how to respect them. For we diminished them ofen in a stupid way. Others don’t know how to praise their values and their nations and we depreciate everything. In any case, there were enough young persons which had an elected   life and I think my father was among them. If he made some errors / sins I think they were forgiven.

Which was your opinion on the attempt of the Ellie Weisel Institute to demolish Mircea Vulcănescu’s statue from Bucharest?

First I didn’t know what was all about, but afterward I went there and I told that my father is protected, For, being in a jew district, my father gave them clothes and helped and didn’t persecute them. They understood and backed off. It matters the way you explain things, the spirit with which you fight or defend yourself. I think we may accomplish more things if we were more attentive and wise. To oppose isn’t all.

Do you see  possible a  resurgence of the Romanians?

Yes, if they don’t make enemies. It is something I try to do myself.

Do you have something to blame the Romanian State for?

No, I feel a terrible pity for it. I would have liked to be proud of it.

What Mircea Vulcănescu meant when he  urged us to pray more for the dead?

He probably thought to the forgotten  people...

Inteview taken by the Nun Fotini, printed in “Atitudini” review, no. 35.