Viața spirituală și ethosul misionar în închisorile comuniste. Studiu de caz:Închisoarea Târgu-Ocna între anii 1950-1953
Spiritual Life and Missionary Ethos in the Communist Prisons. Case-study: the Targu-Ocna Prison between 1950 and 1953

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 1950s, the Târgu Ocna sanatorium prison represented a place of spiritual recovery for the prisoners that had passed through the hell of the Pitești re-education. Using the knowledge and the mystical experience gained in the Aiud penitenciary during the Antonescu period (the beginning of the 1940s), prisoners Ioan Ianolide, Valeriu Gafencu and Gheorghe Jimboiu became a focus point of spiritual life for the other prisoners at Târgu Ocna. Solidarity, cultural effervescence and spiritual effort accompanied by the practice of the Prayer of the Heart individualized the prison of Târgu Ocna within the memory of the Romanian Gulag. Using archive sources (individual files from the Archive of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives), along with memoralistic literature, the paper proposes to radiograph the spiritual life of the Târgu Ocna political prisoners within the larger context of spiritual resistance to communism. Transfiguration of suffering, detachment from the political struggle and the complete assumption of the spiritual warfare have defined the „resistance through faith” of the imprisoned.

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