Acceptance of power or power of acceptance?
Dilemmas and challenges of the architect students arrested in the „Burning Altar” lot (1958)

Dilemmas and challenges of the architect students arrested in the „Burning Altar” lot (1958)

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to reconstruct a faithful image of the route of the three students from the Architecture Faculty who were part of the „Burning Altar” group, until the conviction from 1958. The main source of the present scientific research were the files from the Archives of the National Council for the Study of Security Archives (A.C.N.S.A.S.) from which we selected a series of documents that directly concern Văsîi George, Nicolae Rădulescu and Emanoil Mihăilescu. Also, in order to avoid the danger of slipping into the Security logic, I appealed to combine the data obtained from the ACNSAS files with the lucid observations of the memorialists Emanoil Mihăilescu and Nicolae Rădulescu. The comparative analysis of these documents proves that their conviction did not focus on the individualʼs crimes, but the Securityʼs objectives and obsessions. The reading among the lines discloses an entire form of mind, through which multiple constituent elements (Security, Justice, administrative apparatus, etc.) of this deformed, absurd system are dynamited. The austere and tenacious profile of Father Daniil Sandu Tudor, the founder of the Burning Altar, a complex man, in which coexist the intransigence and the deepest sensitivity, the polemic spirit and the altruism brought to the highest sacrifice, is shaping as an epicenter, an opportunity to reveal some exceptional life histories.

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