Benedictine Monk Father Placid 100-years old today

Father Placid was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on trumped-up charges by a Soviet military court and was sent to a Gulag forced labor camp in 1946, mno reports.

After the bolshevik takeover following the second world war Father Placid worked as a Social Service Advisor to Slachta Margaret’s Church Sisters Association; later, he took part in the election campaign that propelled the bolshevik controlled press to launch a hate campaign against him.

The abbot to protect him from persecution sent the monk to Pannonhalma monastery hoping that the press will pay less attention to him. He was wrong; the “Lenin boys” arrested him on June 5, 1946, and he was deported to the Soviet Union where a Soviet military court sent him to the Gulag for 10 years.

He was imprisoned in a forced labor camp 900 kilometers west of Moscow in Bryanskaya woods.

For five years, Father Placid was employed as a logging worker and after that he worked in various factories – in the meantime, he helped fellow prisoners “to keep their faith” – this activity has become his “vocation” in the forced labor camp.

“I realized that I’m not going to teach students as I planned before, but my job would be to help my fellow prisoners to keep their faith. This was my vocation in the labor camp for ten years. This is why back then, I was the happiest man in the whole Soviet Union, my life task has found me” he said later.

Father Placid released from the forced labor camp and allowed to return Hungary in November 1955, but he was not allowed to work either as a priest or as a teacher. He became a manual laborer in a Pesterzsebet box factory; later, he worked for twelve years at the National Institute of Rheumatology and Physiotherapy (ORFI mn) as an ambulance attendant, and as a laundry worker. In 1969, he led the Korányi Sanatorium laundry facility; he retired from the same job in 1977.