Visarion Puiu
Visarion Puiu was a metropolitan bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. During World War II, at a time when Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany, he served as the leading Eastern Orthodox clergyman in occupied Transnistria, a territory where several hundred thousand Jews were murdered. In August 1944, when Romania switched sides, he took refuge in Nazi Germany.
After the war, he lived in Italy and Switzerland before finally settling in France. In 1946, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Bucharest People's Tribunal. He created the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Western Europe under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and for a few years played an important role in the Romanian diaspora. The in Bucharest defrocked Puiu in 1950, but posthumously restored him among its clergy in 1990. Puiu's connections to the Iron Guard, as well as his responsibility in the Holocaust, have been the subject of scholarly publications in the post-communist era.
Early life and monastic career
Victor Puiu was born on 27 February 1879 in Pașcani, Romania. He attended a local primary school before pursuing an education in seminaries in Roman and Iași. He graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Theology in 1905 and became a monk in Roman on 22 December 1905. He took the monastic name Visarion and was ordained a deacon three days later. From January 1907 to July 1908, he studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, in the Russian Empire. From 1905 to 1908, he was a deacon within the in Roman and in 1908 he transferred to the in Galați. There, on 6 December 1908, he was ordained a priest, being elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite on 1 January 1909. Three months later, he was named director of the Galați Theological Seminary and Vicar of the Archbishopric of the Lower Danube. On 1 September 1918, he became director of the Chișinău Theological Seminary in Bessarabia and, two months later, exarch of the province's monasteries. Romanian historian and nationalist politician Nicolae Iorga described him as "one of the most educated Romanian Orthodox clerics".File:Visarion Puiu si Ion Nistor spre Palatul Mitropolitan 1918 la Cernauti.jpg|thumb|Visarion Puiu and Ion Nistor in Cernăuți, 1918
On 17 March 1921, Puiu was elected Bishop of Argeș. He was consecrated in that position on 25 March by Metropolitan of Wallachia Miron Cristea in the Bucharest Metropolitan Cathedral and invested into the office that day by King Ferdinand. Two days later, he was installed in the episcopal chair at the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral; he remained there for two years. In 1923 he moved to Bălți as bishop of Hotin, where he remained until 1935. From this position, he organized theological schools, printing houses, the Clergy’s Aid House, and church workshops attached to monasteries. He restored 397 churches and 40 parish houses, built a candle factory, a sanatorium, and constructed six churches in Bălți. According to Florin Ţuscanu, he worked alongside the Romanian authorities to improve the living conditions of the city’s inhabitants, ensuring access to water and electricity, developing railway transport, rebuilding the sewage system, and overseeing the construction of an airfield, a slaughterhouse, a public bath, and a maternity hospital.
The political situation in Romania in the late 1920s and early 1930s was marked by the rise of a fascist movement known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael. The Legion was founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as a breakaway group from A. C. Cuza's far-right antisemitic party called the National-Christian Defense League. Throughout the late 1920s and the early 1930s, the Legion steadily increased its membership among students, peasants, workers and tradesmen, but also among priests. The term "Iron Guard", often used nowadays as an alternative name for the Legion, only appeared in 1930 and originally designated the paramilitary branch of the organization.
In 1935, Puiu appointed Archimandrite Antim Nica exarch in charge of the monasteries in his Bishopric of Hotin. In the following years, under Puiu's influence, Nica would become a member of the Iron Guard and a teaching assistant of Iuliu Scriban. Scriban, Nica and Puiu would all three be involved in the future Romanian Orthodox Mission in Transnistria.
Metropolitan of Bukovina
Following the death of Nectarie Cotlarciuc, Visarion Puiu was elected Archbishop of Cernăuți and Metropolitan of Bukovina on 17 October 1935. He was enthroned on 10 November, thus taking charge of a very wealthy metropolis. Prior to his appointment, the various assets were under secular management and no discrimination based on ethnicity was practiced. Under Puiu's leadership, however, contracts with businesses owned by Jews were terminated. He also started restricting the employment of ethnically non-Romanian individuals. The first press article supporting such policies of discrimination published in a periodical of the Bukovina Metropolis also appeared just weeks after Puiu's enthronement.Puiu tended to refrain from explicit, public, political statements. He allowed antisemitic articles to be published in the Romanian Orthodox Church's periodicals in Bukovina and would do the same later-on in Transnistria, but the only time he penned a political text himself was in September 1936, in Cuvântul preoțesc, when he published The Church Facing the Communist Danger. Puiu's article endorsed the thesis of Judeo-Bolshevism and attacked other Christian denominations. One paragraph read: "It is very true that the majority of the communists are alien to our people, mainly Yids, but it is also true that their destructive ideas have lured a great number of unaware Romanians too. Some of them, especially peasants, are attracted by the communist enchantment through the sects which, without exception, are encouraged by the foreigners in order to destroy the Church."
Puiu's support for the Iron Guard materialized when he used his private funds to support one of the organization's "work camps" in Tămășești. Moreover, in 1937, he defied the Romanian Government and held special religious services for the Iron Guard's leader Ion Moța and his fellow legionnaire Vasile Marin. The two had been killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting on the nationalist side. The same year, King Carol II began pressuring the Orthodox Church to depose Puiu. According to historian Ion Popa, the king's actions were due to "Puiu's anti-Semitic, pro-Iron Guard, and pro-German policies".
After campaigning against "foreign" banks, Puiu ended-up creating a new one altogether, named the Northern Bank, in 1938. The Romanianization of the metropolis' workforce, finance and business was practically complete at this time.
Apart from his Iron Guard connections, Puiu's time in the metropolitan seat of Bukovina was also marred by accusations of mismanagement and embezzlement, conflict with local academic and political elites and even the revolt of a part of the lower clergy.
On 10 February 1938, King Carol II suspended the Romanian constitution, banned all political parties and appointed Patriarch Miron Cristea, the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, as Prime Minister. This was the beginning of the "Royal Dictatorship". In March 1939, Cristea died, leaving the Patriarchal seat vacant. Puiu publicly withdrew from the race for succession in June, likely under pressure from King Carol II. The monarch sought to avoid the election of a pro-German Patriarch in the person of either Puiu or Nicolae Bălan. In May 1940, Puiu was forced to resigned from his position as Metropolitan of Bukovina. He was replaced by Tit Simedrea.
Meanwhile, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had joined Nazi Germany's leader Adolf Hitler in the attack and partition of Poland, had occupied the Baltic states and defeated Finland in March 1940. This reinforced the position of the Romanian politicians who had been advocating for closer ties with Nazi Germany. Then, in June 1940, following a Soviet ultimatum, Romania ceded Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union without any kind of military resistance. King Carol II's acceptance of the Second Vienna Award, which ceded parts of Transylvania to Hungary, further weakened his regime and on 6 September 1940, Carol was forced to abdicate.
An openly pro-German coalition of the military, headed by marshal Ion Antonescu, and the Iron Guard took over. The head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nicodim Munteanu, reacted cautiously and his September 1940 address was unenthusiastic. Puiu on the other hand benefited from the regime change as he was quickly reinstated as Metropolitan of Bukovina. According to Popa, this entails that Simedrea had not been properly seated as Metropolitan, or, at least, that was the pretext invoked by the Iron Guard to return Puiu to his old position.
The Legion's cooperation with Antonescu ended violently in January 1941. Indeed, seeking full control of the Government, the legionnaires organized an insurrection known as the Legionnaires' rebellion. However, the coup failed and in the aftermath, Puiu was once more replaced as Metropolitan of Bukovina by Simedrea.
Several hundred legionnaires, including Horia Sima and other leadership figures, managed to escape to Nazi Germany. Puiu would join this émigré Iron Guard community in the final stages of World War II.
Exarch of Transnistria
On 22 June 1941, German armies with Romanian support attacked the Soviet Union. After initial military success, Romania regained control over Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and, following an agreement between Antonescu and Hitler, also occupied the territory between the rivers Dniester and Bug. The name given to this province was Transnistria, and it would become the scene of mass murder. Under Antonescu's regime, 146,423 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported to Transnistria, with at least 75,000 of them dying; 25,500 Roma were also deported there, of which 11,000 survived. Moreover, at least 130,000 local Ukrainian Jews were murdered under the Romanian occupation.On 15 August 1941, under the assumption that the Soviet atheist rule had destroyed the Russian Orthodox Church in Transnistria, the decided to establish a mission and "re-evangelize" the locals. The main architect of the enterprise was Archimandrite Iuliu Scriban. Antonescu's decree of 19 August 1941, which made the occupation of Transnistria official, explicitly stated that the churches which had been closed by the Soviets were to be re-opened and efforts were to be made to return the local population to its spiritual traditions. The Government pressured the Romanian Orthodox Church to extend its authority over the occupied territories and establish a regular bishopric. Initially, the Church resisted since the plan went against canon law, as the Russian Patriarchate still held nominal authority over the region.
In November 1942, Puiu was called back from retirement to take over Scriban's duties in Transnistria. Puiu received the official title of "Bishop of Odesa and all Transnistria", but his ecclesiastic province was, under canon law, a temporary exarchate of military nature. Nonetheless, he was once again a member of the Holy Synod. Furthermore, aside from Transnistria, he was also granted authority over the neighboring Metropolis of Bessarabia. Puiu's plan for the exarchate included an evolution of Odesa into a metropolitan see, with two suffragan bishoprics in Balta and Tulchyn. This was partially successful since, indeed, Balta and Tulchyn were raised to bishopric status while Puiu was in office, but no bishop was ever appointed because of the Axis retreat.
Before the end of 1942, Puiu sent a report from the occupied territories to the Holy Synod. He wrote: The document would become evidence at Puiu's trial after the war.
The Romanian effort to restore Eastern Orthodox Christian life in the occupied territories was genuine. Under Soviet rule, by 1941, only 1 out of 891 churches which had been standing before the Russian Revolution was still open; 363 had been closed down, 269 partially demolished, 258 completely demolished and no functioning monasteries or convents remained. By the end of the Romanian occupation, 600 churches were operating, as well as twelve monasteries and two seminaries. However, many churches and monasteries were rebuilt and refurbished employing Jews as slave labor. This had been enabled by Antonescu's Directive 23 of November 1941. Moreover, many of the missionaries were former affiliates of the Iron Guard seeking rehabilitation after the 1941 insurrection against Antonescu. Some came with a history of antisemitic violence. They vilified Jews in their sermons and, in some cases, some of them were perpetrators of various crimes committed against deported and local Jews.
As far as the non-Jewish local population was concerned, there was some enthusiasm for the Christian revival brought by the Romanians, at least in the first two years of the occupation, but the behavior of the Romanian clergy undermined the mission's credibility. Cases of embezzlement, corruption, extortion and various forms of abuse antagonized the local population to the point where officers of the Romanian Gendarmerie in Transnistria complained in writing, with one report reading "priests manage to destroy what the Bolsheviks had failed to destroy, concerning faith in God. This is due to their engaging in illicit business transactions and committing actions which compromise the dignity of their office." The sexual conduct of the Romanian clergy was also a source of public outrage, and Puiu, pressured by both Government and Church authorities, was forced to issue stricter guidelines. Another source of resentment was the fact that ethnic Romanian priests were paid three times more than local ones.
There was an effort on Puiu's part to appeal to the local Orthodox population. Less radical in his approach to"Romanianization compared to his predecessor Scriban, he occasionally held religious services in Church Slavonic or gave sermons in Russian.
On 1 December 1943, Puiu sent a letter of resignation to Marshal Antonescu requesting that he be allowed to return to the Neamț Monastery. He argued that preparations were made for the evacuation of the province, that he had insufficient human and financial resources to run the mission and complained that he had waited six months to receive a printing press and was facing difficulties with the paper supply. The tide of the war was turning and, arguably, Puiu was being cautious. Between January and August 1944, he stayed at the Neamț Monastery, and then traveled to Bucharest.