However empty and boring may sound, the truth is that I graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, in 1964, when Romania was ruled by two of `Gheorghe`. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Gheorghe Maurer, a worker and a lawyer. The couple got rid of Russian agents, Anna Pauker and Vasile Luca, both jews trained in Moscow and the same couple managed to cheat Khrushchev to repatriate the Red Army occupation.

Sincerely I must admit that  I hadn’t very clear reasons to study the Law and I didn’t have enough informations about the legal profession. Instead, I knew that would not fit me to be either a lawyer, counsel or prosecutor. Remained the judge, a profession about I knew too little. Due to the education reforms, I have been put in a situation to attend school for 11 years and faculty for 5 years. At the beginning of the second semester of last year appeared recruiters agents from various fields. The first was those from security who left with a rich capture because they succeed to attract 10 colleagues from the best ones. 10 from 30 was a very big percentage! During those 5 years of faculty there was only 150 students. Recruiters agents of security didn’t give informations about the next work, as those recruited didn’t ask questions  because for them was enough to know that they were offered a job and a house in the capital city. I declined the offer, although I was in competition for 1^st place with another colleague. Those who interrogated me didn’t insist to convince me and I offered a single reason: ‘’I want to do what I’ve learned and not what I do not know I would be asked to do.’’

At the repartition of Government for vacancies jobs, it has begun with justice and I asked for a position of magistrate. The only available job across the monstrous soviet region, Cluj region, it was at the People’s Court  in the district of Zalau, about 100 km from Cluj and at the same distance to Dej, where my parents lived. I got this job in the summer repartition, following to execute the military convocation of 3 months in the stronghold of Arad beginning with November first. Around this date occurred the final choice.

After the leaving of security, appeared a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which started the work of explaining me, managing to impress me in a good way with the description that he made to the life of a diplomat. So we struck a deal for the Bucharest School of Diplomats lasting 2 year. In October, at the end of the month, I participated in a written test without any prior training because I was assured that what matters is only the dossier. My dossier was ‘’strong’’ : healthy workers root (although not really healthy because my father refused to seek entry into the party and after being ‘’cleared’’ with a period of rehabilitation at Canal plus unemployment without unemployment benefits. These details was not included in the dossier). After I finished the written test, at the exit, I met a former high school classmate who graduated another faculty and who just finished her first year of school for diplomats. He invited me to his home and I asked him to tell me in detail all he did in the first year. When he finished the story and I finished to close the suitcase, I took the way of the North Railway Station and from here followed a journey by train to a place where the railway ends and where were planted two huge pads from wagons. It was the end of the world and was Zalau, a dead city in all issues, buried in his own misery.

In the first week of November 1964, I tried to sleep in so-called “guest room” in the courthouse, which by his destination was the home for a family of a lawyer. Because it had two levels and it belonged to some owners with “unhealthy roots”, it was nationalized and turned into a Court, although the construction was totally inadequate in terms of his function. The irony was that the former owner from who the building was nationalized almost daily used to attend this building as lawyer of the mayoralty. Chairman of the Court, who I think did not have legal training, but graduated only a post-high school of legal education, perfectly matched the requirements of the position, because he had a boundless devotion to the Party, I was warned that I have to liberate the room. He did not lack a certain native cunning, and in any case he knew his interests. He didn’t move a finger to help me in finding a place to live during winter which was already announcing its teeth, but he convey to me that the Court isn’t a hotel and soon District Court inspectors following to live there will appear. In the hours after work, I walked near all the houses from Zalau and finally beside the cemetery in a miserable hovel of inferior materials, I found a room for rent. The house belonged to the widow of former cashier Of the National Bank of Zalau, widow who I never managed to see her face. Throughout the winter that followed and until late Spring, I have not even heard her voice, and I still believed she’s alive just because the money I let on a corner in the kitchen used to disappear in the same day. The negotiated rent with a neighbour was 100 lei, which was 1/9 of my salary. This rent I owed for a room of about 8 square metres which was an entrance to the garret having a rectangular shape with three 3 walls and a half from the 4^th without any link with the house. The remaining half was partially adhered to the wall of the kitchen and the rest was the front door in a single sheet, but also twisted, so that the ventilation was provided naturally. This construction spared me from locking the door, any lock being a priori useless. My favourite sport was breaking with axe the crust of ice formed over night in water basin that I used in the morning. That although the previous evening, I overloaded cast iron stove with the coal that manager of the store wood gave to me without any legal documents after made a rough and comradely criticism, knowing that I am a judge: ”Well, that’s the time you have to come, comrade? I finished all remaining stock since the summer and remained only the coals from there which nobody wants. ”

There would be much to say about the oddities of life in those years, a miserable life we all used to live, judges and those who were judged, and many were pleased even with so little. I was trying not to let myself lured by local customs, the most common and honest being the alcoholism. I started to learn Spanish without a teacher, I enrolled in a second faculty, psychology, and I began to write articles for the magazine Law, none of these articles being published because were not written well enough.

And passed the last six months, the most difficult, because I had to fight with nature too, not only with people, and once this period in which I have not added anything to my professional profile had passed, I was given the right to judge some real processes.

My first trial was a criminal one and the process held it having near my back the president of the Court that aims to censor me and having as prosecutor the chief prosecutor. The case was unusual for those place and times. Initially, this case was taken by the president of the Court  but afterwards it was given to me. A primitive carpentry workshop, a pathetic artisan cooperative, experienced a serious accident: a worker has sectioned his arm. The one accused and prosecuted was the assistant of the chief, a skilled workman. I asked the chief prosecutor why was not sentenced the chief of the workshop  who was responsible in terms of labour protection and was indicted the assistant. The chief prosecutor replied drily: “because the Office of the District Party Committee has not consented to the prosecution of the chief to the workshop“ (who was a member of the party, unlike his assistant who was not a member of the party and the custom did not involve consent). In the Court, I concluded verbally then I switched to the writing acquittal of the accused by saying the following reasoning: “So, the law breaker was acquitted by the Party? In this case, the defendant, I feel obliged to acquit because he is innocent and didn’t commit any crime. “Maybe you will not believe but the decision has not even been appealed by prosecutor but neither me was curious to ask “why“.

So my first sentence as a judge was the first discharge. Although it seems hard to believe, I had no reproach for the discharge and later I found out why: because I was not a member of the Party and the Party treat me with ignorance, hoping that after a year will put the bridle on me, and the discussion will take place in a different way. It didn’t happen  that, because before reaching one year of seniority in work and being aware of what it was preparing for me in the Office of the District Committee, I arranged by intercession a transfer to the People’s Court Of Dej, where a job turned into vacancy.

Meanwhile, spring has came and with it has came another inhabitant of Zalau who offered me a room in his house, far more civilized than that lady’s place who never had a face for me.

There followed other and other processes about I do not have memories. An exceptions is an unusual process of denial if paternity that I will evoke another time…

From People’s Court of the District of Zalau to the Cluj’s Court of Appeal and the Superior Council of Magistracy are 40 years devoted to this profession of magistrate. I selected a few moments of all 40 years because I consider them significant for those times, for those people and for myself. Placing them in this cyber space, I am aware that anyone can judge me, but nothing is more natural than being judges as you judged others.

I was given to discharge someone without a trial, just the days before the Revolution, which I hadn’t predicted.

The ”steersman” as he was glorified at the The Flame Literary Circle, gave the valuable indication in May 1989 to shear the sheep not only in August but in May, because in this way will be two crops. Sheep just climbed ”up to the mountain” where they have caught cold rains and died of pneumonia several million sheep. Promptly came the second valuable indication: ”to be exemplary punished saboteurs that undermined the national economy. ”

Each county secretary has understood the indication in his own way and did with characteristic zeal. In Cluj, Moga ”imprisoned” a hero of socialist labour and the the servile prosecutor conducted the investigation. The result has been materializes in a very thin dossier that was the following fate:

By November, being the President of  District Court of Cluj-Napoca, I was called by the secretary of the President of the County Court to go to his office. I did not know why he called for me, but I guessed seeing the chief prosecutor of the county in the middle of the office standing with a little dossier in his hands. In the room was also the President of the County Court who had an expression ”I am not here, you didn’t see me” and two strangers whom I have not been presented and I guess they were representatives of the general prosecutor, with the mission to witness the event. On a very solemn and wood language, the county’s chief prosecutor gave me the dossier to judge personally, informing me that the case is in the attention of the higher leading of the Party and the State. Immediately I notified that it came out of customs and I asked the confirmation of chief prosecutor that my impression was correct. ”It is an unusual case? The custom is that the woman on duty from prosecutor take the dossier to the registry and reach the president too. This time you have came personally to give me this dossier in this official framework. It is an unusual case? ” The response was positive. ”In this case , I should be allowed to go out and read aloud the indictment, to be informed the chairman of the Court. The indictment was a page and when I have done I told to the chief prosecutor: ”perfect, leave the dossier to me, it goes to discharging from the chair! ” For those unfamiliar with legal jargon, it meant the pronouncing sentence without retire to deliberate. Immediately, the chief prosecutor had a change of face and with a different voice than initially asked me to return the dossier. I did that and I recommended him not to give it to any judge. Later, I heard that after about two weeks, the defendant, hero of the socialist labour, whose name I can’t remember, was released but soon he had a heart attack and died. I must mention that no one has made me reproaches for this episode which is the first time revealed to others than those involved.

The proceeding described above, discharging without a judgement is fortunately unrepeatable.

In the days of Revolution, in the vortex of contestation and disorder, appeared in the presidential office, another discharged, Rakuscinetz Solyom Zoltan, worker, unskilled, but good at all, who offered to defend me, but I sent him home because I had two reasons: Nobody was threatening me and in a situation I could defend myself.

:: The source: JURIDICE.ro

prof. Dr. Ion Turcu
retired magistrate