In the night of 14-15 of May, 1948, the arrests of most of the legion's members began, already known by Antonescu's6 police7. I, however, escaped this arrest, because they did not search for me in Iasi, where they did not know my address, but at my parents' house, where I was sought by the Police in
Falticeni. And the policemen, who wanted to be in the favor of the new communist rule, treated my parents like crap, physically abusing them, intimidating them and telling my mother she will kiss me dead.
After this day, I left Iasi (I was in the exam session) and I hid, temporarily, at the family of some friends.
6Antonescu reigned prior to the coming of the communist regime, he was a Marshal
7 There is the lying rumor that The Legion was anti-jewish; they never hurt any Jew, but Antonescu didAfter that, going back to Iasi, to be present at some of my university exams at least, one of my high school mates and also class-mate, who was living near my house, sharing the same yard, denounced me to the Police. So it came to pass, that, in the morning of 12 June 1948, I was arrested by two commissars (chief Ciochina, who later became my prison mate), a commissar-adjutant and a streetsergeant, who was armed with a machine-pistol. These cops searched for me, at mid-night, at the house where I lived as guest, on Saulescu street no. 18. Here, they threatened my three brothers with their pistols, and asked them where I was hiding. After almost an hour of threatening with the pistol, my smallest brother, Constantin, only 11 years old, told them where I was, because they told him they will shoot him if he doesn't, and he believed them.
Immediately after, the policemen arrested all three and took them to the house where I was hiding. There a policeman guarded them with a machinegun, and two commissars entered the yard, with their pistols in their hands. Their chief yelled at me to not try and run away, because they have my brothers with them. Then I thought about my mother and I surrendered.
There are once-in-a-lifetime moments, moments you live only once. Even now, it pains me to remember that my little brother, Constantin, couldn't look me in the eyes.
In front of this whole spectacle, which I couldn't bear any longer, I told them to let go of my brothers, because they do not know about my activities, and they did find me. After I insisted a while, they let go of Mihai and Constantin, but not Alexandru, the oldest of the brothers. They kept him along side with me. When they searched the house where my three brothers where, they found some of his poems written in green ink.8
From the place where they arrested me - Florilor (Flowers) street no. 2 near the Yellow Valley (Rapa Galbena) Hostel up to the Police's Headquarters on the Copou street, it wasn’t a long way walk. It was day time and they did not tie me up, because they would cause a commotion, and I was walking between the two commissars (they told me don’t make a single move and don’t try to escape because you will be shot on the spot). When we arrived at the police headquarters, they made us sit in the building hall, at the entrance. In the hallway there were lots of people arrested and they still kept coming. During this time, I had the opportunity to exchange some words with my brother, Alexandru. I told him to be tough, and even if he is interrogated and beaten, to not say a word because he risks life behind bars. I also told him to tell my mother to forgive me, and that it is very unlikely she will ever see me again, ever (which is true; she died in 1962, after the colectivization9 when I was still doing time). In the meantime, a policeman comes
8green being the color of the Archangel Michael's Legion9 between 1949-1962, the Romanian communist party(p.c.r.) ordered "the colectivization"- meaning all private agricultural land was confiscated from all private hands and put into the state's hands. The colectivization in Romania was done very much like the one in the U.S.S.R and takes off our shoe-laces and our belts. My brother, not knowing the procedure, signals me with a gesture, and I reply : this is part of the rules of the prison. When the policemen weren't paying attention to us, I held my brother in my arms, kissed him, and then we said goodbye, for 15 years time.
The heartbreak and sorrow in these kind of situations! I was then taken to a room on the first floor, with bars at the windows, where, to my surprise, I met comrades I knew : the engineer Costica Butan (Officer in Reserve and war invalid, the chief of the Legion's students at the Polytechnics University in Iasi) and Lates Mircea (chief of station in the University of Agriculture in Iasi). I remembered these two comrades of mine because, after 15 years, when I finished with my sentence, we three again met, in the room of the guarding officer at the Aiud prison gate.
But to continue - There was an un-bearable urine stench there, because the inmates weren’t taken to the toilet, thus being forced to pee in some empty cans on the floor.
In the afternoon, at about 4-5 o’clock, the cell door opens and a commissar with a list in his hand reads from it, shouting a few names. First I am being taken out, along with a friend of mine, Cojocaru. We are being tied up together with a piece of rope (they did not have enough hand-cuffs for all of us, there were like over 500, boys and girls) and taken in the back of the building. There a Jeep awaited us, with 4 more girls in it (students), tied up as well.
One of the policemen warns us to not try anything, because we will be shot. Me and my comrade, Cojocaru, we weren’t impressed at all by the policemen and their handguns. We were already very much familiarized with pistols from the War; but the 4 young girls were frightened.
After half an hour we arrive at Galata, an ex-monk monastery, transformed into a prison and located on a hill, West of the City of Iasi. Here the girls were placed as well, along with us, into a bigger room, with barred windows. After half an hour, six more girls were
brought into the same room, from the Police Headquarters. All this time, I and my comrade were trying our best to comfort them.
After a little while, the door opens and this hideous person walks into the room, who did not look like a man at all.
I am telling you this, for you to know and understand what kind of evil humanoids the communists used to torture us in the prisons.
Immediately after this monster walked into the room, he started blabbering what they told him or what he heard at the Party : “ You are the criminals who killed the working class, you exploited it, you kept it in the dark and treated it just like your slaves, but get this into your heads, this working class will crush you in due time, we are your doom”.- Words that I heard from the mouth of all the guards at all the prisons I went through.
After he finished, the monster tells the girls to turn with their faces against the wall, undressing me and my comrade completely naked, checking in both ends of our digestive tubes, to see if we hid armament there with the purpose of destroying the “working class”.
After succeeding in this operation and after we dressed again, he tells us to turn with our faces against the wall, inviting the girls to undress completely, like we just did. When they heard such a thing, the girls responded
energetically, and one of them, athletic type, slammed the monster against the wall with such strength that he was left unconscious.
Seeing this, the guard took out his pistol and threatened them that, if they don’t undress, he will use his gun, because he represents the working class.
In this situation, me and my comrade intervened, telling him to holster his pistol, and we told the girls to knock in the windows and the door violently. The monster, with the gun in his hand, insists that the girls will undress for the search. He represents the working class and to him everything is allowed.
A desk clerk, from the prison administration, hearing the knocks in the door and windows, comes into the room and remains stupefied because of what she sees.
She was an old-world clerk, and was not yet familiarized with the “spirit of the working class”. Finding out what just happened, she reprimanded the guard and invited him to get out. Because the guard refused, always saying that he is the messenger of the working class, the clerk went to denounce him to the prison warden.
After a little while, the prison warden steps in, and in a mild tone, explains to the guard that a man cannot search women, but only a woman, because these are the rules of the prison, and in conclusion, he must leave the room.
The warden was also surprised to see that in the room both sexes were present, giving orders for them to be put in separate rooms.
When the night came, the prison was filled with prisoners already.
On that day no food was given to us. Later, we were put 6 by 6 in every cell, without any kind of toilets to do our necessities in and with “beds” of bare wooden boards. Normally, we couldn’t at all fit all 6 people into the same cell, the cells being exmonk quarters for only one person, with their door opening into the yard. And still, they kept us into these cells for almost 10 days.
After all the time I stood there, I couldn’t forget three important facts :
- In all the time we spent there, I was given only one meal per day, lunch-time : a piece of bread (some 200 grams) and some kind of “soup”, but you couldn’t really tell what that was.
-At Galata, they made each of us write an auto-biography. Not one of us arrested declared he was member of The Archangel Michael’s Legion.- At the end of those ten days, we were forced out of our cells, late during night, on a rainy weather, some twenty of us, under strict military security, and taken to a nearby cemetery. It was so dark outside, pitch-black, and those who escorted us carried lanterns in their hands. Among these, beside the military guards, there were some civilians too. Once we arrived into the cemetery, many holes, freshly dug, were shown to us, similar to the mass graves. In front of that macabre scenery, many of us were indeed convinced that during that night we would be executed.
I confess, if I knew beforehand what horrors expected me later on, I would have preferred death right then and there. After all the years spent in prison and all that occurred at Pitesti and Gherla and later on, I concluded that the moment heroism is preferable to the long-lasting one, which grinds you, degrades you, changes and destroys you, bit by bit.
As I sat there in front of the graves, one of the civilians tears himself away from the others, and apostrophizes us with these following words : “You, bandits, you are the biggest enemies of the working class, of the proletariat; because of this we arrested you, and you will be thrown down into these holes, and not one of you will make it out alive. We aren’t executing you this night, because we do not have enough holes dug, for all of you arrested now to fit in. But know this : that the ones arrested on 15th of May were executed already and buried in this cemetery. After we dig enough holes, then we will execute you too. Now back to prison”.
What happened to us, those 20, happened to each one of the other groups after a few nights and to all the others in the Galata prison, excepting the girls. All of us took them seriously though, the communists - you could expect anything from them. The Katyn Massacre, where all those polish officers (cca. 4000) were shot each, one by one, in the back of their heads. We were convinced of another thing : the Bolsheviks’ only morals were immorality, plus we were near the river Prut (close to the Romanian border with U.S.S.R.). We lived those moments at such high intensity, that once they were finished, I could not tell if I dreamt this or if it was real.
Back to the prison, in the cells I could reflect better on the situation. Some of us were convinced they will shoot us, or, in the happiest scenario, we will be transported to Siberia.
Others were convinced that, if they did not shoot us that night, that meant it had only been an act of intimidation. After the ten days were over, after we sat in that prison, we were taken out of our cells, they tied our hands with a rope, two by twos, and took us outside the prison, to a military truck covered with canvas. We were some 30 people. In the truck they told us to sit on the truck floor face down, crammed into each other, with the head on the floor, while we were being surrounded by armed soldiers. A civilian warned us that, if we lift up our heads, we will be shot without warning.
Oh! How long that trip seemed to be! It was the trip of total in-security. We thought we will be taken either to the cemetery, to be shot, or to be deported into Siberia. The most of us, after we saw ourselves in the train, were convinced that our destination was indeed
Siberia.
So, we were transported and crammed in some wagons. To our surprise, we saw that the van-wagons were Romanianmade, even though at the Nicolina station in Iasi, where we just left from, there were some big international railroads, for Russian trains. We were asking ourselves where they are taking us. I was thinking they are taking us with a Romanian train to Vadul Siretului, at the Russian border, in the region of Bucovina, in order to hide their operation. The moments, the emotions, the state of mind, in front of the unknown !
After the wagons were filled, the train left. We did not recognize the direction in which we were going, due to the darkness and the shutters on the small windows of the wagon.
After a few hours of riding in the train I could see we had just arrived at Pascani, a station I only knew so well. I then told my comrades we are in the Pascani station; I suspected they aren’t taking us to Siberia after all, because they could have crossed into Russia by Ungheni, closer to the river Prut, instead of crossing through Cernauti, and they are taking us to the prison in Suceava, a prison which I knew, a bigger prison than the one in Iasi.
After a few hours we were incarcerated into the famous prison - “the unmarked grave” - the way the gen-pop inmates from Suceava “christened“ it. This Penitentiary was second in size in the country, after Aiud’s prison, and was also built by The Austrians. (Here Ciprian Porumbescu had been imprisoned and died of tuberculosis.)
The prison had the shape of a square, with basement, ground floor and two additional upper floors, interior yard, and at the exterior a wooden fence 4 meters tall, and every 50 meters there was a pot peg, and in it a soldier with a machinegun.
Cell 56/ basementOn 25 June 1948, here we are committed in the infamous Suceava prison and incarcerated in cell 59 in the basement, in the north side of the prison. This cell holds memories I will never forget. Here is where I lived in until 15 of January 1949. In this cell I felt for the first time claustrophobia, the loss of freedom and the pain which was the result of the connection severed with my loved ones. It was here I felt the prison pressure and the abyss which was opening in front of us.
Here in this prison I suffered the beatings and cruelties of the interrogations, which lasted until December 1948. I was sharing this cell with N.
Cojocaru, who also had been my cell mate at Galata prison, with Gheorghe Eftimie a deacon and professor and with two workers.
After a few days, I found out some information about others who had been arrested just like me, from the people in general population, who were doing guard duty on the corridor, and from those who brought us our meals. Among these there were some nice persons too. So, I found out that all those arrested starting 15 May 1948 until the time we came to the prison, in June, had been brought to this same
prison. And starting with the cities Vaslui and Bacau, and all the cities until the northern border of Moldavia and Bucovina, all those arrested, men and women, could be found in this same prison. The investigations and trials, for this region of the country couldn’t be done at Iasi, because Iasi did not have a big enough prison; that’s why they chose Suceava’s prison, which had many more prison cells and rooms, where several thousand men and women could be incarcerated. Those arrested from the south of Moldavia region, from Vaslui and Bacau until Milcov and The Danube river, were brought to the prison of Galati.
I also found out from the general population inmates that they are threatened to keep every secret, no matter how small that would be.
The investigations department of the ground floor was comprised of almost 30 cells. Some of them had been re-made into offices for the chief-commissars, brought from the afore-mentioned cities, each commissar brought along with his henchmen, one more brazen than the next, chosen from the scum of all scum of society. These chief commissars coordinated the investigations and sorted through the statements of the inmates. Though, each one of them had a history with the State Security somewhat tied in to the Legionnaire Movement : they were part of the ex bourgeoisie police from the times of Carol the Second and Antonescu, and the communist regime was using them, as docile instruments, because the monstrous being known as the Security (Securitatea) hadn’t yet been founded at that time and the regime did not have experts in matters of interrogation. They were scumbags, with no moral
conscience and fear of God, who had been serving under numerous regimes, having nothing in common with our nation. They borrowed themselves to an enemy which, after he made use of them how he pleased, had them too arrested and placed in Faragas’ prison, where very often they ended up killing each other. This is how their master rewarded them, after they served him with such dedication. Those in Iasi I knew personally.
The Legionnaires from the
Medical University were being interrogated by an old and experienced chief-commissar, but his name slips my mind now. I did not have to put up with him, except a few situations and in the last interrogation, when I had to write my last statement and sign it in front of him.
But I cannot forget his two henchmen, bullies, who were unimaginably ferocious.
I also found out that the interrogations were being done at night, and only at night, as the sun went down, until the morning hours, and that the beatings and tortures were so ferocious, that some of those who had been tortured were taken back to their cells on stretchers.
Even from the first few nights, from inside my cell, I could clearly hear wailing and many footsteps going back and forth.
Because of Popa Alexandru, the air in the cell became impossible to bear.
Popa Alexandru (“Tanu”)This man was from Soroca
(Basarabia) and whad been Alexandru (“Sura”) Bogdanovici’s class-mate at the local highschool. Popa said they were good buddies.
He was arrested the same day I was, in Iasi, city where he was a student in the third year at the Agricultural University. From the first moment I met him in the cell we started to fight. As a man, he had a great Ego and was ferociously sadistic. The two workers I was sharing the same cell with, experienced legionnaires, faithful in God and having lots of common sense, told us, whenever Popa wasn’t around, that not only he wasn’t a legionnaire, but not even a human being, being the devil himself.
In the cell he was quiet, paying careful attention at what others were talking to each other; whenever he intervened in a discussion, he had a great pleasure of contradicting the man he discussed with. He did not ever clearly say if he believes in God or not. In the conversations with the deacon Eftimie about faith, he always sustained the contrary. He was, as the others could tell as well, very atheistic. His interrogation lasted a few days, and you could tell by his face he wasn’t slapped once. No one had ever asked him a question and he did not reply anything either.
Here are a few observations, concerning this individual, which made him suspicious : -he grew fond of the Legion because of Bogdanovici’s great personality; -during his own interrogation he wasn’t beaten;-his attitude inside the cell, towards the comrades and the Legion, was very quiet, he made you suspect him at once; -he had a small time sentence, only 7 years;-when the reeducation at Suceava started, he was among the ones who tortured, along with Bogdanovici;-at Pitesti he wasn’t even slapped once, but on the contrary, he stood right beside Turcanu, the author of Bogdanovici’s physical death;-he left from Pitesti to Gherla in the winter of 1950, where he became the chief of the interrogations; -he was taken from Gherla to Jilava along with Turcanu;-he was part of Turcanu’s crew but he wasn’t executed. It was him who stated that the reeducations at Pitesti and Gherla had been carried out by the order that Horia Sima gave to the legionnaires, through Vica Negulescu – a lie; -he was the accusation’s witness in the trial of Vica Negulescu, where he stated the above
mentioned. (At this trial, the merit belonged to Gheorghe Calciu, who requested from the Court the presence of General Nicolski, the chief of Security, with whom Calciu talked at Pitesti, and could have been an important defense witness, and who, of course, did not show up). After this trial, Popa Tanu was brought to Aiud and released before the decree of August 1964.
When I left the country, in 1989, he lived in Sibiu, where he pretended to be an accountant and was a big-time informer. *
In the first 10 days no one was called at the interrogations. I had time to think, to put my thoughts in order, what do I write and what I don’t write in my statements. I was convinced that my direct superior inside the Legion, Moisiu, and the ones with whom I had activated in the Legion, were strongly decided not to give anything up. Each of us lasted as long as he could, until the break-limit of his body and soul. One of us gave up when they showed another person to him, disfigured because of the beatings, blood all over his body and wounds all over his body, being threatened this is what is going to happen to him also if he doesn’t tell them everything he knows. Facing this ordeal, the ones with low resistance gave up. Another one gave up after his first beating, another after a month of beatings, others after two, three, four … months, in the end declaring what they had to declare, in order to be trialed and convicted.
I will mention two cases :
Soltuz Laurentiu and Olta
Manoliu ( both being students at the Medical University in Iasi and born in the City of Botosani). They never gave up during the interrogations and still were sentenced – Soltuz, 20 years of forced labor, and Manoliu 15 years of forced labor – based only on what others had been stating about them. Manoliu was released in one piece, after her 15 years of prison, and Soltuz after his 16 years of prison.
The communist regime, being still in its early stages, did not have people trained for these kinds of interrogations yet. Instead, as I stated above, it used people from the regime before them, who had been working for the State, to give some authenticity to the statements in order to convict us. Their mission was to torture, and torture, and torture until they left you unconscious. They weren’t interested in the quality or quantity of the statements; this was the chief-commissar’s job, who was the leader of the interrogation. These people were the tools of the regime.
Even though the beatings and the tortures in these interrogations were un-bearable, the ones being interrogated did not tell 10 percent of what they knew, which was later confirmed in the interrogations that followed at the other prisons, Pitesti and Gherla.
Most of us realized this fact, allowing the ones that hadn’t been arrested to hide. When the ordeals at Pitesti and Gherla began, the ones subjected to those treatments stated not only what they knew, but even what they thought, seen or heard by chance, in different situations in life.
The purpose of this regime was to convict the ones being arrested to long years of prison, for, at the right time, having them under their authority, to constrain them to say even more, through the process of “selfdenouncement”10, at Pitesti and Gherla.
I want to mention that not one member of the Legion was arrested lawfully, with evidence that would rightly justify their sentences and arrests. The arrests of the legionnaires country-wide were done only based on information gathered by the State’s intelligence agency during the two prior dictatorships, of Carol the Second and Antonescu. So, it is irrefutable that all the legionnaires arrested by the communist regime, starting May 1948, were known by the old police, because of the information already gathered back then. The criteria was simple : everyone who was a legionnaire must be arrested, being him active or inactive, to be put under lock until the tortures began, tortures which will supply enough evidence, for the programmed extermination.
10 to tell everything that they were supposed not to have declared during Securitate interrogationsUnder Antonescu’s Dictatorship, the old security agency had been making these so-called political files of all members of the Legion even since the time of the Legionnaire National State, for the time would eventually come for them to use them. Most of these legionnaires comprised the “death battalions” at Sarata (village located in the south of Basarabia).
There, the Legion’s officers both active and in reserve, as well as the inferior ranks, were reduced to being simple soldiers on the battlefield and were sent on the front wearing the following indicative : “postmortem rehabilitation”. These battalions did wonders of courage against the Bolshevik army.
The Unit Commanders were being warned that all of these legionnaires, who were wearing the aforementioned indicative, must be sent on the first line or in dangerous missions, where death was certain for them. So Antonescu, another butcher of young legionnaire men, knowing their power of sacrifice, was convinced that in this manner, he will get rid of them.
The State’s Security recorded also the names of those young men and women affiliated with the Legion, high school students (“brotherhood of the cross11”), known since the time of the Legionary Government by some of the school principals, teachers and their class-mates. All of these people denounced them without mercy. (during the time of the Second World War, the brotherhood of the cross and the university students both continued to operate, underground, after they had been banned by the State).
11 The Legion’s young membersIn the same way they treated the university students who weren’t part of The Legion, those who had been working for the state, the legionary women movement and those part of the worker corp and other christian young men and women groups. So, in 1945, when the communists came and took over power, they already had a good idea about the
Legionnaire Movement across the country.
And another heinous, immoral event came to pass : all the scum who were part of the communist regime had to denounce the legionnaires they knew, as well as their sympathizers, no matter where they may be found. I know this to be true from the ex-intelligence officers, people who still retained a bit of conscience inside, and from the ex-cops, and from my brother Vasile12 as well.
*The Romanian prisons in 1948, could be categorized as : huge prisons, medium-sized prisons, and small prisons.
Huge : Aiud, Suceava, Gherla, Pitesti, Jilava and Galati.Medium-sized : Ramnicu Sarat, Targsor (city located west of Ploiesti, for students), Mislea (for women), Margineni (which had carpentry workshops for export), Fagaras (prison destined for ex-policemen), Dej, etc….
12 In English “Basil”The small prisons were found in each City Capital. Special conditions prisons were found in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and on the Uranus street in Bucharest.
Hospital-prisons, for the ones sick of tuberculosis : Targu Ocna, in Moldavia, and in Vacaresti – for the other diseases.
The prisons were organized by divisions, where you could find cells, as well as rooms, named – in prison terms – “common ground”. The cells varied in size; generally they were 3-4 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. The floor of some was made out of concrete, and in others of timber, pine. The rooms’ size timber, pine. The rooms’ size 15-20 meters long.
Each jail contained punishment cells – “black cells” – named thusly because they had no ventilation, no windows and no lighting; so, pitch-black.
All the prisons had, in their basement, special punishment cells, a lot more inhumane than the “black cells”. Each level of the prison had 4 black cells.
At first, when the arrests started, there were these “white cells” (thus the saying “I stick you in the white”). I later found out what they were, during my time in Aiud, in 1954. They were being called “white cells” because the windows weren’t made of glass; they lacked furniture. The one put in this cell was kept only in his shirt and underpants, for all the duration of the cold season.
I will now proceed to describe the topography of each prison I went through.
And because I found myself in Suceava’s prison, I will describe this one first, in short, this prison being in the top of the big prison category, in terms of huge and infamous. A characteristic of the cells and rooms, the ones in the basement as well as the ones on the second floor, is that these had floors made of wooden planks. The prison had been built by the Austrians, on the time when they held Bucovina, from 1775 to 1918, and here the Romanians who asked for their right to freedom were being amassed. The whole of the basement contained only cells. Starting with the ground floor up until the second floo