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Religious poetry and aphorism from the Romanian Legionary group "the mystics"
The three images show the personal notebook of Constantin Voicescu (1924-1997) that was confiscated by the Securitate after his second release from prison (1954. It contains 33 aphorisms and 17 religious poems that circulated within the Communist prisons especially among the legionary group labeled by the Communist authorities as "the mystics". The notebook contains four pages of short sentences (aphorisms) written in black crayon about religious experiences, how to achieve personal redemption through self-sacrifice or the imminent victory of Christianity over the armies of Satan (Communism) -
Plans of an underground Old Calendarist Orthodox house church Romania
The two images are part of an individual file opened by the secret police on Bishop Evloghie Oța of the Old Calendarist Orthodox Church following his release from prison in 1964 in the general Amnesty Decree. The images show house layouts that were drawn by the police during their surveillance operation. Two handwritten documents precede the two drawings of the house layouts. They are from two successive years and originate from the street/ local policemen (sectorist) that supervised the area where Bishop Evloghie Oța established his community and built his church in Televiziunii street. The -
Surveillance photos of Greek Catholic bishop Ioan Dragomir Romania
These three pages of photo collages represent three instances in which Greek Catholic Bishop Ioan Dragomir was captured by secret police surveillance shortly after his release from prison in 1966. They all come from Dragomir’s individual file that extends to ten volumes. The first two collages are of photographs taken in stake out operations by Securitate officers from Maramureș county at the request of the central offices of the secret police. The officers had been instructed to map the network of persons Bishop Dragomir had contact with in his daily activities. These images consist of two -
Surveillance of underground Greek Catholic believers Romania
This two-page collage of photographs represent Greek Catholic believers coming to underground services and meetings with Alexandru Todea the underground Greek Catholic bishop in Reghin, Mureș county in the mid 1960s. The images come from the informative file on Bishop Alexandru Todea that was opened upon his release from prison in 1964 as part of the general Amnesty Decree. The photo collage was sent by the Securitate officers from Mureș region to the central office in Bucharest with the description of the individuals represented in the pictures. The pictures were the result of a longer peri -
Jehovah's Witness Coded Reports from Ukraine
Being surveilled and under constant risk of arrest, many clandestine religious communities developed their own coded language to communicate with each other and with their religious centres. This enabled them to avoid the disclosure of sensitive information in case of arrest and confiscation. Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the groups who developed their own coded system of communication, which they used in their missionary materials and finance reports and tallies. The secret police, in turn, made great efforts to intercept clandestine communication channels and to decipher coded messages. -
External surveillance photographs of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ukraine
These photographs come from a KGB surveillance file on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ukraine, 1955-1956. The photographs, which were taken with a hidden camera, capture the meeting of a KGB agent with a group of Witnesses in the town of Morshyn, western Ukraine. The agent was a Witness minister recruited by the KGB as an informer. He was appointed by the secret police to meet with members of the Jehovah’s Witness regional committee in Ukraine in order to gain their confidence and to intercept the communication channels of Ukrainian Jehovah’s Witnesses with their headquarters abroad. During one of the -
Novena for the freedom of the Greek Catholic Church Romania
In the early 1970s, during a raid and house search on Fr. Aurel Leluțiu, the officers found amongst other documents a typed prayer entitled "Novena for the freedom of the Greek Catholic Church". The prayer, however, is not included in Fr Leluțiu’s file. The four images presented here are selections from the same ten-page Novena preserved in Bishop Ioan Dragomir’s secret police individual file. The prayer was considered problematic by the Securitate with mentions of it being made in several other files. This Novena, a nine-day prayer exercise, is directed to the Virgin Mary to intermediate w -
Map of Nazarenes and Inochentists created by the Romanian Siguranța
This map, which was created by the Romanian interwar secret police, the Siguranța, shows the distribution of two banned religious groups, Nazarenes and Inochentists. The map is undated but appears together with other materials from 1938. From the second half of 1938, the new Royal Dictatorship headed by King Carol pursued harsher policies towards religious sects and the Siguranța made a concerted effort to gather accurate data on sects in order to be able to plan operations and determine whether its actions were producing results. The data for maps such as this one was collected by local gend -
Photos confiscated from Seventh-Day Adventist Soldier Romania
The first image is a photograph of Ignat Neculai and his family from Moșna, Falciu county. He is photographed with his wife, and four children, one of whom is in regional dress. Ignat’s name is written on the edge of the photo. The other image is a photograph of some soldiers, Sergeant Gheorghe Sorin, Captain Costache Jugnaru, and Costache Pițu, from Battalion I, Regiment 25, Company 4, stationed in Moșna. Their names are also written in pen along the edge of the photograph. The third image is a photographic negative of a group of officers from Iași taken at Christmas. On the back of each it -
Confiscated letter and religious images from Hungary
The image comes from a documentary file on the former leaders of KLOSZ (National Confederation of Catholic Girls), a Hungarian Catholic youth organisation, which was by that time, like other civil organisations, dissolved by law. It shows an intercepted letter, an envelope and two religious images. The message on the card is rather enigmatic: "I’m writing hastily, my dear Margit, asking Gizi not to write to our brother-in-law – on the contrary, if she happens to come here, she should tell him not to make any inquiries in this matter for now, – and he should also return what he had noted down – -
Postcards of Romanian Greek Catholic martyr bishops
These images are of postcards that circulated in the 1970s of the Greek Catholic bishops that refused the forced unification of their church with the Romanian Orthodox Church. The bishops were all arrested, imprisoned and either died in prison or in forced domicile. The two images show the Greek Catholic Bishops Ioan Suciu (1953), Valeriu Traian Frențiu (1952), Vasile Aftenie (1950), Ioan Bălan (1959), Alexandru Rusu (1963), Tit Liviu Chinezu (1955), and Cardinal Iuliu Hossu (1970). Their photos were then collaged together and artistically framed around an image of the Blaj Greek Catholic Cat -
Smuggled Catholic holy card Hungary
This is a picture of a confirmation holy card by artist Maria Spötl (1898-1953). The holy card depicts a confirmation with a bishop giving a blessing to a praying young boy. On the lower part of the holy card we find the following text: “Megbérmállak téged …….hogy Krisztus katonája légy az ördög, a bűn, a tévedés és gúny ellen. Győznöd kell, hogy megkapjad az élet koronáját.” “I confirm you ………..to be the soldier of Christ against the devil, sin, deception and scorn. You have to be victorious to receive the crown of life.” The "VMS" abbreviation below the picture stands for Verlag Maria Spö -
Cryphtographic letters written by a Hungarian Baptist minister
In this image we see cryptographic letters written by agent ‘Géza Szebeni’. This was not his real name but his secret service pseudonym. The first image is of the visible “cover letter” which masks the cryptographic letter shown here in the second image, while the third image is the decoded transcript of the cryptographic letter. The letters were created using a cryptographic technique that allows the writer to hide the important message underneath a decoy message containing inane and useless information. In this case, the cover letter resembles friendly correspondence such as family iss -
Hungarian religious samizdat on the life of Magdi Bódi
The first image depicts the cover of the samizdat book entitled Ketten egy felé… III. Ki volt Bódi Magdi (Two towards one… III. Who was Magdi Bódi?). The second image is the inside cover of the book with the text: Ketten egy felé… Szent Goretti Mária és Bódi Magdi utja. 1956, Karácsonyán. – Kézirant gyanánt.- (Two towards one… The life of St. Maria Goretti and Magdi Bódi. 1956, Christmas. -As manuscipt). The third image is a photograph of Magdi Bódi from the book with the caption below the image reading “Fűzfő angyala”, “The Angel of Fűzfő.” The last image is of page 204 of the confiscated bo -
Amnesty International postcards sent to imprisoned Greek Catholic bishop in Romania
The four images show Amnesty International postcards sent to Dej prison to the Greek Catholic Bishop Ioan Dragomir in 1964. They are selected from a total of 15 winter holiday postcards sent from various places in United Kingdom and Australia to Dej prison. Most of them have standardized typed messages on the Amnesty International cards. The first picture shows the inside of a card and back of an envelope. The card is a standard pre-written Amnesty International card to which the sender added: “I hope you will soon be free. God be with you.” The sender was the secretary of the University Col -
Booklet about the life of Inochentie of Balta Ukraine
The image depicts the cover page of a booklet published in 1918 in Odessa by the followers of Inochentie of Balta. It was confiscated by the Soviet secret police in 1921 from the Inochentist community of the village of Lipetskoe (Balta county, Odessa Governorate). The village of Lipetskoe was a spiritual center of Inochentism, where the followers of Inochentie of Balta built an underground monastery and established an utopian communal society called Gradina Raiului, the Garden of Paradise. The booklet contains 19 pages which describe the life of Inochentie of Balta, the founder of the Inochen -
Photo-icons of Inochentie of Balta Ukraine
The four photo-icons of Inochentie of Balta were confiscated by the Soviet secret police in 1921 from the Inochentist community of the village of Lipetcoe (Balta county, Odessa Governorate). The village of Lipetcoe was the spiritual centre of Inochentism, where believers established an underground monastery and a utopian communal society called Gradina Raiului (the Garden of Paradice). In September 1920, a few months after the Red Army occupied Lipetcoe, Soviet authorities closed the monastery and expelled a number of Inochentist leaders from Gradina Raiului. The second major repressive ope -
Letters renouncing membership of the Romanian Orthodox Church
The four images are of letters from members of the Romanian Orthodox Church community expressing their desire to leave the church. The almost identical, handwritten, signed and dated (spring 1973) letters were sent to the Romanian Orthodox parish in Lugoj. The second and third letters were written by the same person on behalf of different family members. The authors inform the Orthodox Church in Lugoj that they are leaving the Orthodox Church. The final letter, which was written in the name of an entire family, states that if by mistake they were registered as children with the Orthodox Chu -
Photo-icon of Alexandru Culeac as the Archangel Michael Bessarabia
The three images presented here all show variants of the same photo-icon of Alexandru Culeac portrayed as the Archangel Michael. In the first image he appears alone; in the second image, his photograph appears next to that of Inochentie of Balta, and the third image is a reproduction of the photo-icon that appears inside the front cover of a booklet containing Alexandru Culeac's visions entitled "A vision that appeared in 1920". The presence of multiple examples of this photo-icon in the same file reflects the importance of this devotional image to the Archangelist community. Archangelism fo -
Images of clandestine Greek Catholic services in Transylvania
The four images illustrate the religious life of a Greek Catholic community in 1970s Transylvania as recorded by the community in photographs and how it is described by the Securitate on the basis of their surveillance and investigation of the community. These materials represent a rare instance where it has been possible to relate secret police descriptions to photographic materials that can still be found in the community. The first three images come from the private collection of Mihai and Ana Rus and form part of a group of photos related to their regular attendance at religious services -
Secret police network scheme of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Romania
This network scheme comes from a documentary file on Jehovah’s Witnesses in the former administrative region of Cluj. Titled as “Organisation Scheme of the organisation “Jehovah’s Witnesses” in Cluj Region, it shows the structure of the group with names, ranks and connections of each of the functionaries (indicated by circles). The blue box at the top stands for the national leaders, while the rectangular boxes at the bottom represent the six territorial units in the region with the number of their subunits and members. The scheme also informs the viewer of the progress the authorities had ma -
Crime scene photographs from a file on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Romania
These crime scene photographs were selected from a documentary file on Jehovah’s Witnesses in the former administrative unit called Cluj region. The pictures were taken during various house searches conducted by the secret police in the homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses or people related to them. The photos in the first image show a "normal sized piece of firewood" with its inside carved out and the reports of the Huedin circuit (territorial unit within the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation) from 1951–1954 that were hidden inside it. It was found in the home of the already arrested Huedin circuit se -
Romanian secret police investigative methods Operation Leaflet
The four images of documents selected here come from a documentary file on the “Catholic problem” and represent clues and evidence used by the Secret Police in order to identify the culprit who wrote a leaflet that requested that at a certain hour on the feast of the Virgin’s Ascension all Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics and friends of the Church should go into the former Greek Catholic churches and say a prayer so that God would grant Nicolae Ceaușescu wisdom to legalize the Greek Catholic Church. The four documents come from volume 6, 10 and 39 of the file and represent forensic sketches us -
Confiscated handwritten Inochentist hymn Moldova
The images show an Inochentist handwritten hymn found by the Soviet secret police officers on an arrested Inochentist preacher in 1952 in Moldova. The hymn describes Jesus's preaching to his followers on the Mount of Olives about the End Time. The Apocalypse, according to the hymn, will begin when people would abandon the church. Then, according to the narrative, the wrath of God would descend on sinners and only those who do not abandon the true faith will be saved. The hymn is written in Romanian using the Cyrillic script. The preacher, who may not be the author of the text but was probably -
Confiscated images of Archangelist women Moldova
These photographs were confiscated by the secret police of the Moldavian SSR from a community of Archangelists in 1952. Archangelism inherited the iconographic tradition of Eastern Christianity and developed them creatively using modern techniques of photograph, photocopying, collage and multiplication. The first image was produced using the technique of photo collage. The creator of the image has utilised a copy of an Orthodox icon showing a female saint replacing the face of the saint with a photograph of the face of Elena Culiac, venerated by Archangelists as the embodiment of Virgin Mary o -
Newspaper as evidence of "collaborationism" in Moldova and Transnistria
The image shows a newspaper cutting of an article signed by Feodor Florea. Florea was a Romanian Orthodox priest who joined the Orthodox mission in Romanian-occupied Transnistria. The article contains a picture of Florea performing a religious service. This newspaper cutting was used by the Soviet secret police as evidence of his collaboration with Romania occupation in Ukraine. Following the Axis invasion of the USSR in June 1941, Romania liberated Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which had been briefly occupied by the Soviet Union, and continued military operations over the river Dnieste -
Confiscated family album Bessarabia and Odessa
These photographs are part of a family album found on a woman who tried to cross the border between USSR and Romania that was confiscated by the Soviet secret police in 1940. They depict different moments from the life of the family, such as a wedding and a day spent at the seaside in Odessa. The album contains images of members of the family at different ages and of some of the family’s friends. For over a hundred years both banks of Dniester river were part of the Russian Empire until 1918 when Bessarabia united with Romania and the river became frontier between Romania and the Soviet Uni -
Commemoration of the dead by a family in Bessarabia
The photograph shows a family from Bessarabia in a cemetery of Chilia Nouă celebrating Paștele Blajinilor (in Romanian) or Radonitsa (in Russian), the day when the Orthodox Christian families commemorate their deceased relatives. Almsgiving has a central place in the commemoration of the dead in Orthodox Christian tradition. It is believed that by offering to each other bread, cookies, fruits, tableware items and drinks, the believers redeem the sins of their deceased relatives, and satiate the dead’s thirst and hunger. This is why the grave in the image is covered with various items that we -
Confiscated stamp of a Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir in Romania
The first image comes from a photo album compiled by the Securitate on the Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir in the town of Ocna Sibiului (Vízakna). It shows a photocopy of a confiscated document, the last page of the choir’s president’s celebratory speech performed at the choir’s 80th anniversary. As with many of the group’s documents, it bears the official stamp of the choir. The second photo shows a document with a hand drawn replica of this stamp. This document, which is the last page of a handwritten copy of the choir’s Rules and Regulations from 1974 (its original was written in 1956), is -
Secret police photo album on a Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir Romania
These images come from a photo album compiled by the Securitate on the Hungarian Calvinist Church Choir in the town of Ocna Sibiului (Vízakna), Transylvania. The first image shows the title page of the album with a short introduction to the choir and its supposed activity. In the second image, we can see photos which were most probably taken by the secret police displaying the decorated walls of the choir’s meeting place. The third image includes shots taken in the usual fashion of crime scene photographs of items confiscated from the choir during a secret police raid. The fourth image shows c