Hunted even after the war 

By Catrien Spijkerman and Volodymyr Karanfil 

Even after the Second Word War, Vasile Motrescu keeps fighting the enemy from the Rumanian mountains. He holds on to his principles, but the price is high: a deeply unhappy and lonely life.

Vasile Motrescu stands at the edge of the forest and observes the people in the village from his hiding place. The way they freely push their barrows along the road without even a second thought. The way they walk in and out of their houses, their children and loved ones around them as if it were a matter of course. ‘Why am I not lucky enough to live in a village or at least have someone with me – not to be alone?’, he would write in his diary at night. ‘Why am I living in the wild with the animals; why do I live the life of a hermit at 32?’

Motrescu had gotten a brief taste of ‘normal’ life. Shortly after the liberation, he had returned as a soldier to his parents’ home in the Romanian region of Bukovina. He had married Maria, a girl from the village and together they had gotten two children: Sofia and a year later Gheorghe. Poor like all farmers around them, they had owned just a small piece of farmland and hayfield. But life had been as it was meant to be.

I will not give in

All that comes to an end in 1949, when Motrescu finds out his name is on an arrest list. Rumania used to support Nazi Germany during the war, and the communists are now looking for him for having fought the Soviets. Back in 1942 he had been sent to the Eastern Front. Motrescu, used to tending sheep during summer and chopping wood in winter, didn’t really have a choice and just went. He never cared much for Nazism, but over time he is getting more and more convinced by the fight against the Soviets.

At first, he fights in the Crimea and in the Caucasus, but in 1944 Soviet troops occupy his own region of Bukovina as well. Together with other local farmers, Motrescu forms a guerrilla resistance group and sets up ambushes to defend his land. The fact that they know the area and the forests inside out, is very helpful.

After the war the communists seize control over Rumania, and any form of resistance is punished. Motrescu doesn’t see another option than to leave his wife and kids. Carrying only his rifle and a pan to cook polenta in, he flees into the woods. Again he joins an anti-communist resistance group. Life is hard for the guerillas as they depend on villagers to secretly provide them with food and clothes. Family members and other people who help them are arrested and tortured.

Motrescu writes a letter to the Rumanian authorities. He wants to explain that back in 1944 he did nothing but defend his country. He merely did what he was told to do. Why should he be treated like a criminal then? ‘I love freedom, more than life itself. The communist regime might last another fifty years, but I will not give in. I will only surrender dead! I will not betray my comrades as I feel it as my soulful duty (…) not to bow my head to the enemy.’

‘Tall and handsome as a pine tree’

In 1951, Motrescu gives in after all. To save his life, he agrees to work for the Securitate, the secret service of the communist regime. Together with three other members of the Securitate, Motrescu is to infiltrate a guerilla group in order to attack them from within. Motrescu does as he is told, but cannot bring himself to betray his brothers.

Instead, he betrays his three ‘colleagues’ from the secret service, who are all shot dead as a result. Many years later, one of the men whose lives Motrescu saved, would say a few words about Vasile Motrescu in an interview: ‘Tall and handsome as a pine tree, intelligent and better informed about Romanian history than many a contemporary intellectual. He came from the villages of Bukovina to the Făgăraș Mountains with one single Christian thought: to save us from certain death, from a trap set by the Securitate, at the risk of his own life. He was married and had two children. May they be proud of their father.’

Death penalty

But no one is proud of Motrescu at that point. On the contrary, news about his infiltration spreads fast and villagers and resistance fighters distrust him. The Securitate is looking for him. Family members and the few friends he has left, are arrested, tortured and threatened with imprisonment to pressure them into assisting in Motrescu’s arrest. Motrescu is now completely on his own.

‘My body is depleted and my mind is weary’, he writes in his diary. ‘There is not a soul in this world, who can imagine what my life looks like now. (…) In a birch tree I found my name, that I carved into it myself during the fall of 1944 when I was hiding for the Russians. It was hard back then, but not as hard as now. (…) Back then, the Russians were after me, now it is my very own brothers, the Rumanians. They sold their land and soul to the Russians for a kilo of sugar and a litre of oil.’

Eventually, he manages to convince a resistance group that he can be trusted. He joins them, and together they move through the forests in search of shelter and food. In 1955, things go wrong though: they are ambushed by Soviet soldiers and in the ensuing fight Motrescu kills two soldiers. With already a 26-year prison sentence to his name, he would now be facing the death penalty. After a fight, Motrescu leaves the resistance group and once again continues on his own.

Driven mad by loneliness

In the years that follow, he is regularly afraid that hunger, cold and loneliness will drive him mad. In his diary he describes his monotonous days, sometimes with a single sentence: ‘It is still snowing, I am cold.’ Or another day: ‘Every night I dream that I am home and I always go to bed in despair. I feel miserable.’ At times he writes songs and poems to distract himself.

Eventually, one of his hiding places is betrayed and Motrescu is arrested. He is executed in the summer of 1958 at the age of 37.

Sources 

Brișcă, A. (2005). Jurnalul unui partizan: Vasile Motrescu și rezistența armată din Bucovina, 1944–1958. Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului.

Romania Dacia. (2014, December 26). Partisans: The anti-communist resistance.