Alexandru Zub

* 1934

  • "Prison was a totally different experience than being in the custody of the Securitate, at least in the first phase of the detention. We were administered a very strong shower from the very beginning, so we would realize we were entering another world, another reality. I have to confess that, after the ceremony of getting undressed and handing over any object we had in our possession, which was not allowed in the prison environment, we were all thrown together - this very large group - into a room with no light and no means of ventilation. It was practically an oven. It was a hot summer day in July. Of course, we started screaming, however in vain. We were held there for as long as they considered it to be bearable, and only then were we allowed to get outside, one by one, and we were placed in various cells. I ended up in a building with several hundred cells one next to the other, which were meant for a single person, but in fact 12-13 or even more persons were detained in a cell. It was terrible. The hallway door opened and I saw the cell. It was exactly the one where I happened to be locked up. There was a small hole with bars and several people screaming for air, they looked dreadful, in a state of complete despair. I saw naked bodies, sweating, with bumps on the head because of the infections and the lack of hygiene over a long period of time. They had been detained there for a long time, without any assistance."

  • "R: In the summer of 1956, several student organizations had started to appear. What did you think about them? They were indeed more liberal than the Working Youth Union, did they offer you the possibility to express yourself differently? I: Students only had access to the Working Youth Union, which was a political body. I think policy makers back then had thought of a way to create an organization for students, which wouldn't be political, or in any case not openly political. As you well know, the statute of this body was directed towards professional activities. Of course, there was a certain degree of openness in this respect, and some colleagues were enthusiastic enough to enlist in that organization. I did the same with less enthusiasm, but still, I eventually realized that there were no other tools available to concentrate students' interests on the desired path, in line with the discussions held in Putna in the autumn of 1956. 1957 was knocking at the door, and the spring of 1957 also meant an important anniversary, namely 500 years since the enthronement of Stephen the Great. We therefore thought we could use this circumstance to produce an initiative, a celebration, in line with these concerns, with our own aspirations. Of course, this idea wasn't enthusiastically welcomed by the officials, the university’s management body was extremely reserved. R: You asked for permission, didn't you? I: Of course, it was necessary. Everything had to happen within a formal framework, and of course we first proposed this through the student organization. We brought them face to face so to say because it was in the students' program and could therefore not be received with open hostility. But I quickly felt the hostility, since political leaders remembered that the same had happened in Budapest, all started with an appeal to historical values, to mobilizing symbols from this point of view, and they wanted to go about it in a very cautious manner. This is why they opposed the idea as strong as they could, and eventually sought to subvert this activity, to restrict it as much as possible. Which they managed and, at the the same time, didn't manage to do."

  • "So, I must say that, at one point, I was called in a very suspicious manner, at the beginning of March, by means of a written telecommunication, to the Academy in Bucharest (the Institute was subordinated to the Academy) I was summoned to appear at the Academy on March 7. I asked around, but couldn't find any plausible explanation for this request. The professor I felt closest to, Dimitrie Dărlescu, who was the vice-dean of the faculty, a very respectable modernist, couldn't tell me anything. He came up with a hypothesis that it could be the case of a scholarship abroad (there were also such possibilities). The idea of a scholarship in Egypt or somewhere else was also floating in the air. I had indeed refused this during my studies because I wasn't interested, but this perspective was now becoming real. A scholarship abroad had now become possible, as part of a research endeavor for a young employee. And most of the people I asked thought it was unusual because no one had experienced something similar. And so it happened that, on the night of March 6, before the end of the day, I got on a fast train in order to arrive in Bucharest the next day. We had only advanced a few hundred meters. We had just gotten outside the city when I found myself being asked to identify myself and to get out of the compartment, in a very discreet and civilized manner. On the corridor there was another man waving a pistol around. He warned me not to make any careless move because I had to follow him. I started negotiating with them, telling them it must be a mistake, that I had an important meeting the next day and so on. They told me that the misunderstanding would for sure be cleared up, and that, if so, I would soon be able to continue on my mission. But as soon as we arrived at the first station and the train stopped as usual, I was blindfolded and forced into a car. Suddenly, they stopped calling me 'mister', and any sign of politeness disappeared. They wouldn't talk to me anymore, and my protests were futile. Of course, I quickly realized we were heading back to Iaşi. They drove the car around, so I wouldn't realize where we were going, we could have been anywhere, but I obviously realized I was being taken back to Iaşi."

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    Sighetu Marmaţiei, România, 07.07.2002

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But, I felt that we had something to say, that we owed it to ourselves to try to find solutions, as best as we could, with the resources we had at our disposal, in order to determine a certain change in attitude, a way of being involved in the society.

Alexandru Zub (photo taken after his release)
Alexandru Zub (photo taken after his release)
photo: Arhiva foto a Memorialului Victimelor Comunismului şi al Rezistenţei

He was born on October 12, 1934, in Vârful Câmpului, Botoşani County.In 1957, while studying at the Faculty of History of the University of Iaşi, Alexandru Zub participated, along with other colleagues, in the organization of the 500th anniversary of Stephen’s the Great (Romanian: Ştefan cel Mare) ascent to the throne, which took place between April 12 and 14. On May 15, 1957, the Securitate in Iaşi initiated criminal proceedings against Alexandru Zub and Mihalache Brudiu, both members of the organizing committee for celebrating the 500th anniversary from April 1957. The Securitate accused them of plotting to turn the celebration in Putna „into a nationalist, anti-Soviet and antidemocratic demonstration, which they did not succeed due to the preventive measures taken by the governing bodies in Iaşi”, suspecting them of planning to organize such actions in the future. The grounds for suspicion lay in reading the personal mail exchanged between the students in Iași and their fellow peers in the country. However, the arrests did not follow immediately. The young initiators of the Putna celebration graduated from university in the summer of 1957. Alexandru Zub was employed as a researcher at the Institute of History in Iaşi, while Alexandru Popescu - the leader of the student organizations within the University of Iaşi - received a teaching position at a school in Haţeg, Dumitru Vacariu worked as a teacher in Vaslui and Mihalache Brudiu as an archaeologist. All of them were pursued by the communist authorities between May 1957 and March 1958.Alexandru Zub was arrested in a train on March 6, 1958, on his way to Bucharest, Aurelian Popescu on March 10, Mihalache Brudiu several days later, on March 14, while Dumitru Vacariu was the last one to be taken into custody. According to the prosecution, the four young men were accused of „intent to commit acts of hooliganism in order to provoke mass protests, which they failed to succeed because the state authorities managed to obtain this information and, as a result, take appropriate preventive measures”. The extremely serious accusation of „rebellion” was changed over the course of the trial into „machination against the socialist order”, an offence that carried lower penalties. Alexandru Zub and Aurelian Popescu were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in a correctional institution, while Mihalache Brudiu and Dumitru Vacariu received 8 years in prison. After spending six years and two months in detention in Iaşi, Jilava, Gherla, as well as in the Salcia and Giurgeni labor camps, Alexandru Zub was released on April 16, 1964. After his release, Alexandru Zub dedicated himself to research, presenting his PhD thesis in 1973 at the University of Iași. In 1990, he became the director of the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History and Archaeology, a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1991 and a full member in 2004, serving as head of the Academy’s History and Archaeology Department from 2006. He is now living in Iaşi.