I remember the demolition of the church Sf.Vineri. First of all, it was a terrible weather, a kind of humid fog, October or November, freezing cold, it was getting dark quite early, it could have be right on the day of Sf. Paraschiva. I used to live in Berceni district, I had just got home trembling with cold when a neighbour of mine rang the bell at my door and told me almost in tears that they were pulling down Sf.Vineri church. I didn?t understand in the beginning, because I didn?t even think about the church. She asked me if I didn?t want to go there, people were gathering. First, I didn?t believe that they were pulling down Sf. Vineri church. Yet I went there, I don?t know why, I think the despair of that woman who had let me know had impressed me. I don?t even remember how I got from Berceni over there, but I think that the first underground line had been opened. When I arrived, it was dusk, it wasn?t dark, that?s why I think it was November. The place was filled with people, the way I haven?t seen either before and after, on any occasion, be it at the Revolution, the commemoration festivities, Coposu?s funeral, or any meetings of such kind. Firstly, people weren?t jumbled up together. There were sparse groups, I could see a huge mass of people up there, I was standing down at the foot of the hill. It was a silent crowd, nobody talked, nobody moved, but people kept coming, appearing as if from thin air. I kept silent and listened to all kinds of whispered rumors. At a certain moment, a kind of roaring was heard. The crowd was getting thicker. There were lots of people with candles in their hand, they must have brought them from home. They were whispering that a soldiers? unit had been brought, but they refused to pull down and shoot when they had been ordered to take the firing position, because the parish priest holding the Cross in his hand had come out in front of the church with some students from the faculty of Theology. The workers on the bulldozers wouldn?t move the machines so they brought Hungarian soldiers to shoot and to maneuver the bulldozers. I haven?t found out till this day what kind of soldiers they were, I don?t know where the rumors came from. Nobody around me uttered any insults to the soldiers, nobody said anything, there were no comments. The place where I was had the atmosphere of a religious wake. Then a big noise was heard coming from upwards. Then it was like the lightening of a flame, because everybody lighted the candles on one side of the hill. But it didn?t seem anything had happened.

After that I went home. I wasn?t afraid, I felt a kind of numbness, nobody could do anything. I felt I was leaving from a funeral.

The second day, the same neighbor asked me why I hadn?t taken a stone, a piece of tile, because everybody had brought home a fragment for luck. (I. P., 24)