Basement room no. 3 2nd room of tortureWhen they arranged the rooms inside, repurposing them for the use in “denouncements”, Turcanu didn’t show up on the corridors, so the prisoners cannot know the purpose of these arrangements. Because of that the arranging inside the rooms was only done by the chief section guards. The room no. 3 remained on the screen of my conscience as a stain which will never be wiped away except along with my own death.
I looked inside the room to see if there were any familiar faces previously with me in room no. 2, but didn’t recognize anyone.
In prison there was a tradition. That was to choose a superior inside the room from among the inmates. One who would ensure order and discipline among the inmates and he would be the inmates’ link with the administration.
In that day’s afternoon the rooms’ superior was being picked. Personally I had to refuse any kind of proposal because I had a mission from Turcanu. (So I asked myself : who do I talk to and who do I ask for advice concerning this? Even the best friend today could be your biggest enemy tomorrow because he was forced to give you away during his torture and the trouble would be double, for me and for him. This was our big tragedy at Pitesti and Gherla. So who do I tell? NO ONE! I was left alone, like a man on a capsized boat in the middle of the sea. I was tormented for weeks in a row : what do I do?)
Now back to the room boss, there were some names proposed. Most of them inside the room were students in the Legionnaire Student Corps Iasi51 so they wanted to pick one of theirs to be the room superior. I proposed Magirescu Eugen for room boss, one of my two faculty colleagues present inside the room. When he saw I propositioned him as a room boss he made a counter proposition – he picked me saying that I was an experienced guy, I had been on the frontlines so I had authority, calm and discernment. So I was the most fit to hold this function. Even though I categorically refused, I couldn’t change the majority’s decision.
Facing this dire situation, I decided to accept the election because this helped me accomplish my plan even better. I would have to pay dearly for that.
51 C.S.L.
Some of the comrades who knew me well asked me why I disappeared from the section and where did I go several months. I replied that I was kept together with Oprisan and Iosub in severe isolation because Lunguleac had been ratting on us.
What troubled me was that I didn’t know what to do regarding the mission Turcanu tasked me with, meaning to not give anything away and instead dig for information, and I had to solve this problem really fast.
I tried to sit quiet. To say, or not to say what happened in room no. 2 would make no difference whatsoever. I realized
eventually that it would do no good if I talked, nor to me nor to the others inside the room. I was sure they brought us to this room just to be taken away later for denouncements so I thought to not disturb their peace until the drama would start.
The second of Turcanu’s directives – to dig for info – remained the ugliest issue. I was being put in the situation to follow that order but I would regret it for the remainder of my days. I couldn’t avoid the issue either. I was wondering if Turcanu was really remembering all that he said to hundreds of young men. I told myself it is impossible for him to remember everything. So I avoided to make others suffer. Once I made my decision I put it in practice. I won’t dig for info from any comrade or non-legionnaire colleague and I won’t engage others in pointless drama especially in the circumstances we were in.
In basement room no. 3, until the denouncements began, there was an unforgotten calm and harmony. There was some freedom, like the one before, in the forced labor sections, “freedom” given with a purpose. Meaning, when we went to empty our chamber pots in the toilet we’d find ourselves in front of other comrades and we exchanged information. This allowed me to find out the names of the comrades in the four basement rooms.
But this was the calm before the big storm. The thing which obsessed me was that every time the room door opened I could see Turcanu with his dozens of murderers rushing inside the room and hitting right and left. This is how the start of the denouncements began. So the months I spent in that room before the second wave of denouncements were for me more than a nightmare.
I knew the legionnaire meetings that some of our comrades were having, gathering themselves in a corner inside the room were a big mistake. I tried to stop them from having them but I failed.
Ionica Pintilie, good friend, comrade and colleague from the medical faculty, came to me to ask for my blessing and participation in these meetings because I was the room superior. I had activated with him outside, I knew him well and a strong bond of friendship grew between us. He was younger than me, had a delicate intellectual constitution and I was sure he won’t make it through the physical tortures. He remained orphaned of both parents since childhood and had been raised by a relative who didn’t have children. He was endowed with exceptional intelligence and had been one of the most proficient students at the Medical
University in Iasi. He had been raised by his adoptive parents with the most pure and unshakeable faith in God.
He clumped inside him unequaled gifts. He had natural-born moral purity and goodness, almost like an angel on the earth. Those I met in the prison like Pintilie could be counted on my fingers.
Due to so many gifts God bestowed on him and because he didn’t want to alter them, he was tortured to death with tortures which surpass any imagination.
I trusted him more than I trusted myself so I advised him like a brother to stop having the legionnaire meetings inside the room. I already knew what was going to happen and I tried with all my power to stop him. But Pintilie had his own mission on the Earth and Heaven called him to sit among the Christian martyrs. He combined so harmoniously faith and Christian morals, the love for God and his neighbor, the undying thirst for knowledge and faith in The Legionnaire Movement that even today I see him as a messenger from another world. For those who knew him and myself, Pintilie represented the prototype of the ideal man. He didn’t want to listen to me : his call was one thing, and my weakness, another. But I am sure that no matter what he or we did, he would have become a martyr anyway, because this was his destiny.
I asked him not to reveal my opinion concerning the legionnaire meetings and if he wishes, to ask comrade Dinescu to take part in these meetings too, who was in prison since the time of Antonescu. I don’t know if he asked Dinescu or not, but Dinescu didn’t attend the legionnaire meetings.
From the time I entered the room until the denouncements started I didn’t see the smallest animosity or contradiction between legionnaires or nonlegionnaires in the room. How much harmony and goodwill between these people when the spirit of love and trust united them! But when I thought at the room no. 2 I trembled.
In the calm before the storm all had intellectual preoccupations. Each one spread his knowledge before his comrade with such a goodwill you can rarely find otherwise. The many good and beautiful things learned! You felt like you attended a class where each one was pupil and professor. A thing which deeply impressed me was the discipline of the colleagues who weren’t legionnaires and who fitted in perfectly with the legionnaires without starting any arguments. Another thing which made a mark on me in a good way was that no one did anything inside the room without asking for my opinion first.
At that date many of us didn’t get clothes or laundry from home or penitentiary. Many woolen sweaters and socks were torn and required fixing. So thinking to be of aid to my comrades I learned how to knit. Discovering one of us who knew how to knit, I learned how to do it in a very small time. Noticing that you could see only a 3rd of the room through the peephole, I thought that in the hidden part you could see about your business. I started with the wooden bodkins, then I asked a more humane guard to bring me some wire saying that I needed to repair the bunk. Immediately after I procured this material I shaped 5 bodkins out of it sharpening the wire against the cement, so not one inside the room remained outside my help. So besides being the room boss I was also the girl of the house.
26th of October was coming again, Saint Dumitru, my name anniversary. A year before I was called and questioned by that suspicious individual I talked about earlier. Now, knowing that one of these days the denouncement storm could be unleashed, I had a dark hunch.
Two or three days before this date some of my comrades came to me and propositioned that I will get their portion of hominy for my name anniversary. I accepted because of their persistency but with one condition : to repay them sometime later. They consulted with each other and came to me telling me again not to refuse them and not to repay them because this would greatly offend them.
I accepted because if I would have refused I would have hurt their feelings. It surprised me that Magirescu was among these as well.
None of my name anniversaries had the same intensity like the 1950 holiday of Saint Dumitru at Pitesti, even until the day I write these words. It was not that common hominy which I savored, but the sacrifice they made for me. But about the hominy now, this weakness cost me dearly later. And what hurt the most was the torture these poor people had to endure for their kind gesture.
The next day the door was opened and a guard appeared holding a piece of paper in his hand, asking who of us is Magirescu Eugen. Turcanu didn’t show up in these kind of situations in order to not give himself away. He only came to the rooms or the cells where the denouncement was already full throttle. Hearing Magirescu’s name, I being the room boss, had to confirm that man is really Magirescu; I got near the door and asked the guard if Magirescu needs to pack his belongings. The guard said no, and this made me suspicious. I came near Magirescu and looked into his eyes. At first he blushed, then he became white as lime. He just didn’t have a voice anymore. After his departure I thought they took him somewhere in a torture cell in order to prepare him for the denouncement. There were cases when others went without their belongings and later the guard came and took them.
The ones inside the room didn’t suspect anything because they couldn’t imagine at all what was happening inside the prison. The secret was so well kept that only those who went through the denouncements knew what’s going on. And when they were brought to a cell to get information, as my case was, they didn’t say a word of what was really going on, because the divulging of that secret was punished exemplary. And the plan foresaw that all of us must go through the denouncements.
I knew that Magirescu had been hired in burdensome activities which were pressing his shoulders and that is why I believed he was taken to the inquiry. He didn’t come back for lunch so I asked Pavaloaia, who slept beside him, to hold his food.
But he didn’t come for the evening meal either, but only at lights out, at about 10 o’clock. As soon as he walked into the room I looked at him and I saw his face was totally changed. Poor man, only he knew the drama he felt inside him. I went to him, because I knew him to be an honest man and fond of the Legion, and I asked him friendly where he had been, what happened with him and why he is troubled. Magirescu’s answer didn’t suffice for me. From that moment on I started suspecting him of foul play, fact which proved to be entirely true. I was sure he was lying to me and all his behavior until this moment was only for appearance’s sake. From that moment on I became distant to him. He, being intelligent and well trained, noticed my change in behavior as well. The next day, after the hominy meal, Costache Pavaloaia was taken out of the room and soon afterward Magirescu, along with a comrade who was first brought into the room a month before. His name was Petrica Cojocaru and he had been a student at Polytechnics in Timisoara. After they had left the room, I was sure that all these people had been in the denouncements already and were being sent by Turcanu to basement room no. 3 with a mission : to extract information. I wondered if others will be called as well but besides the three no one was called.
Three days time they were taken from the room and came back late in the evening. But in order to remove any suspicion, they were taken and brought back only one at a time. I was surprised that I hadn’t been requested, although I had been “denounced” too. I was waiting any moment to be called and I believed only God’s mercy could protect me, because I didn’t want to harm those inside the room by learning information from them. I was also sure that the three had been talking a lot about me, because Turcanu needed to have a clear picture about my standing. I was also sure that the three wrote about all in the room so Turcanu knows how to act against every one of them. I noticed that when they returned in the room late in the evening, their conduct with the others was very changed; they were plotting against me as well, for sure.
I was thinking terrified at how I am going to pay for not squeezing information out of my comrades. I don’t know why, but I wanted with all my heart that all would come to pass sooner because it had to happen anyway.
The attitude of the three towards me and the others in the room strengthened my conviction that they had been in the denouncements, just like me. I don’t know how they did there, but I could already see them named by Turcanu as the torture committee in basement room no. 3.
I asked myself how the reeducation will start in here. At that time I didn’t know how the reeducation in the 4th hospital room started. I only knew that in room no. 2 there were only five of us and almost thirty of them, the numbers clearly being in their favor.
In basement room no. 3 though, the majority were people who hadn’t been in the denouncements, so I wondered what method will Turcanu use on them. Will he take each one at a time to the torture cells where he’ll beat them to a pulp, will he come with a gang of bullies armed with clubs? Turcanu was so sturdy and athletic that he could take a room full of weakened people like us. Only one punch was sufficient for each. I saw this in room no. 2 in Caziuc’s case.
Maybe the reader will ask him/herself where all these people from the torture committee get such strength. The answer is simple. The bullies ate a lot. I watched in room no. 2 how they ate, even making themselves fatter in order to practice their “profession”, while the victims were starved in order to become incapable of physical resistance. Transformed into moving skeletons, they could beat us in every way they wanted. Turcanu and the bosses of the torture committees had special alimentary diets and I saw this in basement room no. 3, when I watched Zaharia, the boss of the torture committee in this room, how he left every day at a certain hour and he got back with a pinkish face – the face of a man who ate abundantly. So in these situations “a club was enough for a whole cart of clay pots”, we being the clay pots and Turcanu the club.
The things I will relate to you from now on are things which I personally experienced and endured.
I draw the reader’s attention to the fact that those sentenced to forced and hard labor were young people with a strong fighting history, with a special responsibility and attachment to the Legion. All those in forced labor, with very few exceptions, had been sentenced to more than 10 years and the hard labor ones to between 5 and 10 years. These categories formed the elite of the young Legion members, with functions, stages of activity and responsibilities in the Legion. This explains why this category was left to be punished last, because for them there was no question of adventure, test, or game concerning their Legion activity.
All these comrades had been educated in the Brotherhoods of the Cross and endured
Antonescu’s cruel persecution. They represented the continuity of the legionnaire activity after the coup d’etat in 1941. They were older than 20; some had even been soldiers in the War, like me, others had been army officers, purged from the army at the date of their arrests and had been continuing their studies in different faculties. For most of them the interrogations were very cruel and they had a big cumulus of information. This is why the communists acted methodically upon them for 2 years.
I told you before how some of these young souls, after the start of the denouncements in 1949, were taken out of their cells to torture cells where for a year they were kept under Turcanu’s club. These comrades were then accused by their torturers out of fear, but accused also by the ones who didn’t have the right to judge them at all. Seeing them naked at the bathroom in Gherla, I remained petrified. But I will tell you more about this later.
*I am not accusing and revolting against anyone, but I feel how those souls killed in tortures scream for revenge when fellow men, indifferent of their political or religious views, treat this phenomena superficially, inventing dates and facts which aren’t related to the drama itself. No one has the right to judge those in Pitesti but Only God Himself and them. You will be judged by Heaven too, you the ones serving an occult or another who slander and accuse, intentionally or not. God will judge you too in His righteousness and according to your deeds in the names of those tortured, who went mad or who were killed. The ones who didn’t suffer hunger, thirst, cold, longing, defeat, haven’t been tortured, humiliated, persecuted and disregarded for the sake of their nation not even for a day, shouldn’t have the right to speak in its name. And those who, for three years, suffered and endured the most horrible tortures, degradations and humiliations, when their conscience and their discernment was raped, killing in them all that had been human, shouldn’t even be discussed. Who could judge them? Who could even place a finger on their wounds or even light a candle for those killed?
Was Corneliu Codreanu’s prophecy that we will get at some point in the swamp of desperation, only a figure of speech?
When you have not been chained, you have the possibility of suicide, if you’re not a Christian, or you can take the sword and hit the one who brought you to despair. So, you can choose death if you want to. But, if you are in chains and on the limit of despair, when you want to die and cannot kill yourself, nor take the sword in your hand and stuff it into the one who is torturing you, because all you have are those chains you cannot escape from, then there is no hope from anywhere. That’s why the one who is torturing you can turn you into a criminal or an informer.
How do you, out of selfish interests and political vices, dare to talk this drama, judging the people who lived it?
There is a saying : “an hour can bring more than an year”. But that day and hour had to come because they were part of the destiny. This day was an ascension to Heaven for some, for others suicide or attempt to suicide, and for others collapse and the passage through the swamp of desperation. Some remained there and drowned – few – and this was because they had faith in their own strength.
The ones who collapsed, but admitted to their helplessness and weakness, keeping their faith and hope in God’s mercy, escaped this swamp bruised and cut, kneeling down, brought down to the ground and still undefeated. And when they finally got out of the swamp, they dressed their wounds with the chrism of faith and hope, shouting : “God! Help us and give us strength to march on forward!” These people lived an experience who no other people in this world ever had. “You are not defeated when you were brought down to the ground, but only then when you gave up the fight”. You are defeated only when your physical and spiritual strength cannot help you anymore. A legionnaire is only afraid of God and this moment.
Brought down to the earth, with our bodies torn apart by wounds, spat on, humiliated, we raised our heads up when the enemy thought he had destroyed us. Stronger, more battle hardened, more ready to fight, ready to take on other ordeals, which the enemy was using to bring us down, again using many other methods.
They defeated crippled and helpless bodies, as the prolonged suffering was more than our limited strength could endure. Satan’s servants were sure that using the physical torture can kill the soul as well, but they were wrong. The soul is undying, because this is how God created it. So, the souls of all who passed through the swamp of desperation and were killed, met with us, the crippled, the wounded, embracing us from upstairs, from Heaven. In this battle, featuring deserters, traitors and cowards, the ones killed and those who went mad because of the ordeals endured, those who didn’t give up the fight wiped themselves of the mud and, with their bodies battle scarred, but their souls washed and purified, looked once more toward “the walls of Troy”.
Our martyrs and our dead didn’t have graves, they weren’t buried in cemeteries where their survivors, where the generations of tomorrow could say a prayer in their memory.
Satan’s servants wanted to forever erase their every trace, because they couldn’t kill their souls. But we, who were young legionnaires back then, didn’t give up the dream and are standing above, on the places history put us on, giving advice to the coming generations. Only they shall believe us, because they weren’t tempted by the spirit of the unclean. And they will put oil on our bodies torn apart in persecutions and interrogations, camps and prisons, in the abhorrent denouncements : only they will understand why we were so hated by our enemies. They won’t know where our graves are but they will still hear the mysterious voice of so many passions this abused and persecuted nation has endured.
They will light sacrificial candles in front of the holy shrines for the peace of all our dead.
The clean honest souls of a young people who didn’t know the clay of sin and corruption, hatred and lust for politics, lust for power, will remember us. These clean souls will be animated by a holy ideal, love for God, for their neighbor and their kind. And Not the lustful, the cowards, the traitors, not those driven by sensual desires, nor those who sold their souls to satan or to any occult will have the right to speak in the nation’s name and lead it.
There is no sacrifice of innocent blood The God of Love and Justice won’t remember. He will choose fearless men from among our kind who will fight using the word, evoking to future generations the hundreds of thousands of sacrifices, so “a country as holy as the sun in the sky” can be built on them. Our weapon shall be the word and using it we will relay our aspirations and passions to those who will come after us.
*One day, at the start of
December 1950, after the hominy was served, the door opened and, like a Mefisto, Turcanu the evil genius entered the room.
Everyone in the room and especially those who heard of him or knew him, remained stunned. They sensed why he had come, seeing that he, who was a political prisoner, just like them, was enabled to enter all by himself inside the room, unaccompanied by an official person.
Turcanu looked around the room like an executioner who was choosing his victim and, stopped in front of Magirescu and Pavaloaia, and asked them where Cojocaru is. He opportunistically noticed me as well, with a look that terrified me, threatening me as his teeth gnashed : “With you I have a reckoning”, and he urged us to get outside. Seeing this order, the ones inside the room were completely confused, not understanding how can another political prisoner order the other political prisoners to get out on such a martial tone. Also they couldn’t understand why we were submitting like lambs.
We got out on the corridor and saw there was no one outside but us and Turcanu. The guards seemed to have vanished. In an hoarse, executioner’s voice he addressed us : “Starting today, the denouncements for the bandits in this room will begin”. Then he rushed at me like a rabid wolf, grabbed me by my neck, slammed me against the wall, raised me back up again and squeezed my neck stopping my breath, saying : “You bandit, can be rehabilitated if you show proof of loyalty and become part of the action which will take place inside this room”.
Addressing to the others three, he told them to come along with the ones who adhered to his plan of action, and to silence any “bandit” inside this room.
Where did you see in this world that a political prison can be administered by a political prisoner who owns the lives of the other political prisoners? Who could understand and even admit to this fact?
Turcanu resumed : “You will hit with no mercy left and right, together with those I will bring, so no bandit can get up again”.
When I heard these orders, I was so scared, as if I was the one being beheaded by the
executioner. And I shouted deep inside my soul : “God have mercy on me and teach me what to do!” The answer was short : “Do what you want”.
I then entered back into the room. My comrades, seeing me among the four, were completely confused, not understanding that we were tortured before. After the denouncements ended, they told me that in the days prior to the denouncements they believed Turcanu will do the reeducations with no violence and only to those who wished for them. To their surprise though, Bogdanovici was missing, the reeducation initiator at Suceava.
Oh, Poor fellows! They didn’t suspect, not even a thought crossed their minds that in a few minutes they will be mowed down by the terror storm of hatred, of lies and distrust.
In the time you smoke a cigarette, Turcanu enters along with a dozen of bullies, some 15, of whom I didn’t recognize anyone. But they were all fattened like ready for sacrifice and held clubs and ox valves in their hands. Turcanu gave them the signal : “Get them, no mercy!”
That moment I was sitting at the bunk to the left side of the door near the wall, and in front of me was Gelu Gheorgiu, who was dear to me because of his kindness and his perfect attire. At Turcanu’s signal, I got near Gelu and told him to get on the bunk and I will get over him, whispering to shout as hard as he can, while I massaged him on his belly and chest. Gelu understood, looked at me and whispered : “Is this how it’s done?” and I replied : “It’s not it, you will see how it is, shout as hard as you can for now”.
Gelu Gheorghiu started the masquerade and was lying on his side on the bunk so his face couldn’t be seen, because he was the only one who didn’t have a bloated and bloody face. When Turcanu gave the matadors the order to leave the room, afterwards, when we looked around the room we were horrified because of what we were seeing : cracked skulls, bloated faces full of blood, sighs and groans of pain.
The moment I was waiting to die for had come and passed, but I couldn’t foresee the conclusion.
Turcanu, with a list in his hand, of course given to him by Magirescu and Pavaloaia, yelled as hard as he could that each “bandit” who heard his name to come sit on the bunk. Gelu Gheorghiu, who had been part of Obreja’s group, was called the second, probably in regard to my fault. When Turcanu looked at Gelu and saw he wasn’t hurt like the others, he asked Gelu who was supposed to take care of him. Hearing my name pronounced by Gelu, Turcanu stretched a club to me and ordered : “So you, bandit, tickled your comrade. Let’s see you now, how you stroke the bandit whom you spared, with this club”.
I took the club in my hand and, with a courage which wasn’t mine, which came from another world, I challenged Turcanu, saying I cannot hit, because it hurts me to do it. Turcanu took the club from my hands, stretched the club to Gheorghiu and told him to beat me with it.
Gheorghiu, a good natured man, who I don’t believe ever hurt someone, answered Turcanu with a courage which quaked the whole room : “I am against violence, I didn’t hit anyone in my life and I won’t hit from now on either, and no one can judge me because I don’t want to hit my fellow man”. Gelu lives today and can attest to that.
He graduated the fifth year in the Bucharest Polytechnics. He was born in Constanta and, being orphaned of his mother, he was raised by his father. He was one of the most shining and kind figures even with all the humiliations and tortures he passed through. During the most horrific tortures, his face radiated kindness and mercy, seeing his comrades tortured.
I was convinced that Turcanu who saw many others refusing to torture their comrades and colleagues, some of them paying with their lives, some remaining crippled, won’t sit with his arms crossed this time either.
And indeed, Turcanu began hitting Gelu everywhere, as if he was hitting a sack of nuts and then, tossing his club away, he disfigured Gelu with his fists. When he stopped, Gelu wasn’t moving anymore. He then ordered Magirescu and Pavaloaia to throw him on the bunk near Reus.
He then rushed at me like an eagle, threw me on the bunk where Magirescu was sitting and ordered the two to beat me because he is tired. Then, my buddies Magirescu and Pavaloaia gave me a friendly lesson, so nothing could distinguish me from Gelu and the others who were beaten, and because my wounds from room no. 2 were healed too. After they served me this generous beating, they threw me on the bunk near Gelu. This scene influenced the conscience of my 40 comrades so much that Turcanu couldn’t even recruit one bully so he can use him against the others. Few moments in my life when I felt so close to my fellow man. The clubs seemed easier to endure. Turcanu instituted afterwards the action and torture committee for the denouncements inside the room, through nomination. I didn’t recognize anyone of these bullies who were part of the tortu