On 5 February 1953, in a merciless winter, in a dark and freezing cell of the Sighetu Marmației penitentiary, one of the greatest statesmen of modern Romania passed away: Iuliu Maniu. He was 80 years old, and his death was not the natural result of old age, but the direct consequence of a detention regime designed for slow, methodical destruction, devoid of any trace of humanity. The communist regime did not defeat him through arguments or political confrontation, but through isolation, cold, hunger, and medical neglect.

The Sighet penitentiary, an instrument of political extermination

The death of Iuliu Maniu represents one of the most eloquent proofs of the systemic violence practiced by the communist regime against the political and moral elite of Romania. His imprisonment at Sighet was not accidental, but part of a well-thought-out plan meant to erase the memory of a generation that had built Greater Romania and that refused to accept the ideological dictatorship imposed from the East. 

The prison of Sighetu Marmației was deliberately chosen by the communist authorities as a place of slow extermination of the interwar Romanian elites. Located in an isolated area, with a harsh and hard-to-endure climate, it quickly became a space of absolute suffering. Here were brought political figures who had decisively contributed to the creation of Greater Romania, Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic bishops, prominent intellectuals, leaders of the democratic opposition, and people considered dangerous to the new regime.

Total isolation, permanent cold, insufficient food, and the almost complete lack of medical care turned the penitentiary into a place of death. Most of the detainees were of advanced age, and the detention regime took no account of this. On the contrary, physical weakness was exploited to hasten the end. Sighet was not merely a prison, but a laboratory of physical and psychological destruction.

The arrest and conviction of Iuliu Maniu

Iuliu Maniu had been under arrest since 14 July 1947, as a result of the famous Tămădău frame-up. This episode was orchestrated by the communist authorities to definitively eliminate the National Peasants’ Party and its leadership. The party’s leaders were accused of treason, although the entire case had been artificially constructed, without real evidence.

The trial that followed was summary, devoid of any trace of genuine justice. The sentence had been decided in advance, and the verdict was nothing more than a formality. On 11 November 1947, Iuliu Maniu was sentenced to life imprisonment. Arrest warrant number 105.515 of 27 November 1947 led to his transfer to the Galați penitentiary. For the former Prime Minister of Romania and leader of the democratic opposition, a path of humiliation and suffering began, designed to silence him forever.

Transfer to Sighet and the beginning of physical destruction

In August 1951, Iuliu Maniu was transferred to Sighet, together with Ion Mihalache and other National Peasant leaders. The penitentiary was under the command of Vasile Ciolpan, a sinister figure, responsible for enforcing an extremely harsh detention regime. The guards had clear orders to keep the detainees completely isolated from one another, in order to prevent any form of communication or solidarity.

Food was insufficient and of poor quality, temperatures in the cells dropped far below bearable limits, and medical care was almost nonexistent. Psychological pressure was constant, and the lack of information about the outside world intensified the feeling of total abandonment. After six years of detention, Iuliu Maniu’s body was exhausted. His body had become a heavy burden, yet his spirit remained intact.

Physical suffering and unbroken dignity

They tortured him and subjected him to physical and psychological pain for a long time, but they did not manage to break his spirit. Iuliu Maniu’s state of health deteriorated dramatically in the final years spent at Sighet. Weakened, ill, and almost immobilized, he could no longer walk on his own and could no longer feed himself without help.

The authorities allowed Nicolae Carandino to be brought in to care for him, but the gesture came far too late. The help provided could not compensate for years of suffering and neglect. Nevertheless, Maniu remained faithful to his principles. His integrity and moral uprightness could not be crushed by hunger, cold, or loneliness.

The night of death and the imposed silence

On the night of 5 February 1953, Iuliu Maniu died in cell number 9. The regime feared even his death, which is why everything was carried out in the strictest secrecy. His lifeless body was removed quickly, without ceremonies, without witnesses, and without the right to even minimal human dignity.

Vasile Ciolpan communicated to Bucharest a dry and cynical message: “In cell number 9 the light has gone out.” This cold phrasing concealed, in fact, the disappearance of one of the greatest political figures of Romania. Maniu’s death was not meant to become a symbol, was not meant to provoke reactions, nor to fuel collective memory.

The testimony of Nicolae Carandino

Nicolae Carandino, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Dreptatea and fellow detainee of Iuliu Maniu, left one of the most emotional accounts of the night of his death. Maniu’s disappearance was felt throughout the prison as a moment of exceptional gravity.

“Maniu was taken from his cell, in the strictest secrecy, but the news spread like lightning throughout the entire prison. At night we heard the cart stopping in the prison yard, the rumble of the wheels, the neighing of the horses, the faint sound of the ruts being closed. Then everything became quiet. Maniu was leaving toward the mass grave and toward eternal glory,” Carandino would later write in his memoir volume White Nights and Black Days.

The mass grave and the humiliation after death

After death, Iuliu Maniu’s body was thrown into the Cemetery of the Poor in Sighetu Marmației, into a mass grave, without a cross, without a name, and without the possibility for family or close ones to pay a final tribute. This was the way in which the communist regime tried to definitively erase all traces of his existence.

The death certificate was drawn up only on 20 July 1957, almost four and a half years after his death. On the official document, the great statesman was listed as “without occupation,” a final insult to a life dedicated to public service and the national interest.

Iuliu Maniu, architect of Greater Romania

Long before becoming a political prisoner, Iuliu Maniu had been one of the architects of Greater Romania. On 23 May 1919, as president of the Governing Council of Transylvania, he received King Ferdinand and Queen Marie in Oradea. The royal visit confirmed the union of Transylvania with the Old Kingdom and the liberation of territories threatened by Béla Kun’s Bolshevik revolution.

Maniu had been a lawyer for the Greek-Catholic Metropolis of Blaj, leader of the National Romanian Party of Transylvania, member of the parliaments in Budapest and Bucharest, and one of the most respected figures of Romanian political life. All these merits were turned by the communists into charges.

The legacy of an unbroken man

The communists never forgave Iuliu Maniu, neither during his life nor after his death. Precisely because he symbolized democracy, legality, and the connection with the West, he had to disappear. And yet, even in detention, Maniu refused to renounce his principles.

“They cannot intimidate me; I do not deviate from my path; I do not change my decisions; what I believe is good for the country and for the nation, that is what I do.” These words synthesize the essence of a man who chose dignity over compromise. Decades after his death, Iuliu Maniu remains a moral and historical landmark, a symbol of courage, uprightness, and sacrifice for truth. 

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