A SUSPICIOUS SILENCE. THE WEST ABOUT THE CASE OF GHEORGHE CALCIU-DUMITREASA
A SUSPICIOUS SILENCE. THE WEST ABOUT THE CASE OF GHEORGHE CALCIU-DUMITREASA

Summary/Abstract: Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa was one of the famous figures of the Romanian anti-communist dissent, in the years 1970-1980, notable for the tenacity with which he supported the defense of some fundamental rights of the human condition, against a suffocating, repressive and criminal regime. His message of Christian essence managed to penetrate large segments of Romanian society, which turned it into a threat to the ideological monopoly that communism claimed. Subject to pressure, persecution, arrest, beatings, Father Calciu was quickly adopted by the West, supported, encouraged, used in anti-communist propaganda and portrayed as a hero for the courage of his confession.The present study sheds light on this whole case of Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa and without minimizing his near singular merits as an opponent of the regime, highlights an obvious silence that the West has accepted regarding him: his legionary past, the promotion, until his death, of some legionary, undemocratic, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideas and visions. Methodologically, I began by demonstrating that Father Calciu's ethical and ideological affiliation with fascist-legionary ideas is a certainty confessed by him in biographical works. Subsequently, using US government documents, Western press, reports of human rights organizations, scientific works of a historical and political nature by American, British and Romanian authors, documents of Radio Free Europe, I showed that the West preferred to remain silent about these inclinations of Father Calciu, in order to highlight only the anti-communist opponent.

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