REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

68
Remembrance in Time
Virgil Ierunca in the radio show: “About Alexandru Herlea”, broadcast on Radio Free
Europe in February 1981 and published later, in 1994, in “Memoria” magazine states that
[2]: “ He had chosen professor Herlea because he is a common case of the nationalpeasant
scholar who was to pay for his belief in democracy, for his involvement in
promoting it, with many years of prison, a payment due also to the fact that he was a
generous scholar, a legal advisor and a historian – a “cosmopolitan” as Stalinists used to
say – by being a collaborator with Western cultural centers. If we add that he had an
“unhealthy” social origin, we clearly understand why Professor Herlea would become a
victim of the Stalinist janissaries“.
When considering the topic of the presentation I was also touched by professor
Alexandru Herlea’s connections to Brasov and its university education, and also by his
Transylvanian origins.
Alexandru Herlea descendes from an old family from Ardeal, a very active one in the
religious, political and cultural life of those times. I would mention here bishop Vasile
Moga, and many other high ranking clergymen in this family, the deputies in the
Transylvanian Diet Grigore Ratiu, Ioan Ratiu, Ioan Balas, the memorandists Nicolae
Herlea and Rubin Patita, officers Theodor Stanislau, baron Gheorghe Balas and Remus
Herlea, lawyers and senior officials Iosif Pop, Gheorghe Balas, Dominic Ratiu, Zaharie
Munteanu, Constantin Moga, Alexandru Herlea, personalities of education and culture:
Ioan Moga, Moise Fulea, Gheorghe Dima, Lucian Blaga, Dorin Pavel.
However, the main reason for this presentation at this symposium is the manner in
which injustice worked in Romania during Communism and the destructive role of the
so-called Securitate. These are the aspects that I will insist on.
Under the influence of his family tradition, even from an early age, professor Herlea
takes an active part in community life, fighting for an evolution based on the high values
of liberty, democracy, justice and social justice.
Being a strong personality, Alexandru Herlea would fight on diverse areas.
Politically, he belongs to the left wing of PNT, candidate in a number of elections – a
secretary of the group of deputies from Hunedoara, running for the Parliament (1932).
Opposing with all his heart to all kinds of totalitarian manifestations, he gets involved in
exposing any totalitarian tendencies of the right-winged activists, which were widely
present in the political life at the end of the ’30s and during the war. In Brasov he is one
of the most active members of a group of Democrats gathered around the magazine The
Country of Tomorrow led by Victor Jinga, the dean of the Commercial Academy, where
Herlea was a professor of civil rights. This group drafted, in the spring of 1944, a
manifesto entitled: “Project of principial and programmatic statements”, in which they
denounced war and all kinds of totalitarianism and presented a project about the political
and social organization of Romania following the war. It is envisaged a society based on
the great values listed above, with a free market economy where cooperative play an
important role.
As a journalist, Alexandru Herlea takes an active role in many publications of that time,
writing articles concerning the important political, social, economical topics of the day.
He is the editor in chief of “The Message” newspaper in Orastie and a member in the
managerial board of the Press Syndicate in Ardeal and Banat.