The Swamp of Despair by Dumitru Bordeianu - HTML preview

The Gherla Fortress

The Gherla prsison was situated on the highway that connects the city of Dej to the city of Cluj, on the shore of the Little Somes river. It was built on the time of the empress Maria Thereza of Austria. It’s a fortress   surrounded by a deep ditch, which was filled with water from the Somes river. It had two buildings with one floor each, Zarca and the Section,   containing cells and rooms bigger and smaller.

After 1848, the lords of   Transylvania built a third prison in the shape of an “U”, with a capacity of thousands of inmates, with rooms as well as cells, nets of thick wire, as in Pitesti, and an one meter   corridor between the cells.

On the cell side, at the two ends of the building, 2nd and 3rd floors, you could find big rooms with a normal capacity of 70 people. There had been a time when these rooms were populated with over 200 inmates each. At both ends, on the ground floor and 1st floors, in the south there was the prison kitchen, and to the north the chapel. It is worth noting that this chapel was painted in orthodox style, which proves that it had been built for Romanians only.

When we first arrived in Gherla, the chapel had been dissolved, and the icons, the veil and furniture had been brought to the small chapel in the middle building (the Section). The chapel inside the big building had been transformed into a meeting room.

The prison was very imposing. The locals used to call it “The Yellow House”.

In the south side, close to the prison, there was a cemetery, and right next to it, a smaller cemetery, destined for the inmates who died inside the prison walls. The entrance to this prison impressed you   because of its main gate bridge, where the water ditch used to be.

At the entrance there was the administration building, a one floor building, and from this building, walking on an arch, you could get to the two stonepaved courtyards.

The big building had two   entrances, one to the inner court and another to the   workshops court.

The inner court had a gate leading to the workshops to the south.

The prison was circled with a tall 4 meters wall, which had guard towers from spot to spot, the security being ensured by the armed soldiers in them. Near the wall there was a 3 meters wide space, raked and fenced by a barbed wire fence, 2 meters tall.

When you stepped into the main building, you were impressed by its hugeness and the wire nets through which you could see from the ground up to the 3rd floor. The doors were made of massive wood, enclosed in thick tin, having two strong deadbolts on them, up and down, and a big lock for locking using a key. On the middle of the door, like in other prisons, you could find the large peephole which was used to serve the meals and, on the top of it, another smaller peephole, which was being used to look into the room.

In the middle of the building, in front of the main entrance, there were the stairs which lead you from the ground floor up to the 3rd floor.

 This fortress, the way it was built and fenced, ensured such security that only thoughts could fly out of it.

 The windows 1.5/1 meters had thick iron bars on them.All the ones who went to Gherla, not only in the time of the denouncements, but even before and after that, cannot forget this prison, where so many have been tortured or killed.

 The Feeling of Death

At around the date of 18th of September 1951, we were   transported with the last lot of students in forced and hard labor (the majority were from forced labor) from the Pitesti prison to the Gherla prison.

Because the train station wasn’t far from the prison, from the train wagons we walked to the prison on foot, being escorted by a strong security of guards and soldiers, all armed.

The moment we entered in the prison, with our feet chained, and while looking up to the 3rd floor, something unusual and inexplicable took over my whole being. I felt like I was caught in a strong pliers, which I couldn’t get out of. For the first time in my life I had the feeling of imminent death and an immeasurable fear and terror got hold of me.

 The hugeness of this prison, seen through the wire nets, from the ground floor up to the 3rd floor, as well as the perfect silence all over the place, gave you the feeling that there are no people here, but death is the only master.

This fear of death, which I didn’t have on the frontlines, nor at Pitesti, I was now having in front of my eyes; a fear mixed with horror, terror and dread. The fear of death   concerns death only; but this fear which ruled over me was more than that : it had a   metaphysical nature, it was satan’s possession, who entered in me, since I stopped praying to God.

 Instead of God’s grace, which I had chased away from my soul, I left a void where satan’s spirit nestled. During life, I had only been afraid of God. I wasn’t scared on the frontlines, not even when we got surrounded; this fear I couldn’t make any sense of it.

Fear, horror, terror, dread, inside the physical world they have a reason to exist, but what I felt and lived didn’t.

After they released the chains from our feet, cutting them with the chisel on the anvil, and the rivets from our braces, we were identified, according to the files we had brought with us, and assigned to the 3rd floor, to the last room north side, facing the big room, above the exchapel.

On the corridors as well as in the rooms, you were impressed by the tarnish of the mosaic, which had been tarnished by the   tortured prisoners. In the part of the building where there were only rooms, these rooms had mosaic floors. For sleeping, inside the big rooms, there were two rows of bunks, and in the small rooms, only one row of bunks and an interspace.

 The outset of turcanu and popa tanu

5-6 months after the students arrived from Pitesti to Gherla, during which the denouncements and the work in the workshops continued, here were also   brought other categories of prisoners, having diverse   sentences and specialized   workers, each in his own   handicraft (I stated earlier that all work which was carried out in Gherla’s workshops : carpentry, mechanics, dyeing, buttons, etc., was destined for the soviet army. The work was being lead by the organizational bureau, whose boss was Turcanu).

One good day, at the start of Summer 1952, sitting alone in the room, I was called to the barbers by Magirescu, who was pretending to be a barber; there, being only the two of us, he revealed to me that Turcanu and his closest collaborators : Popa Tanu, Martinus, Livinschi, Caba, Dumitrescu, Pop, Popescu Aristide, Patrascanu, Lica Pavaloaia, and the others left Gherla. To my question, if they are going to be released from prison, he told me he didn’t know anything about this.

Turcanu and his collaborators’ departure was for us, the ones who endured the denouncements, a great day, which we shall never forget. The most of us,   especially those who labored in the workshops, were convinced that the denouncements, won’t repeat in the way they were carried out until then. This is why we also felt a great   spiritual relief.

 Some of us believed they were taken to Bucharest and rewarded for the “work” carried out. But more precisely, no one had any idea what had happened with them. Afterwards, it was rumored they had been taken inside a van during the night.

Some, the ones in the torture committes in Pitesti like : Magirescu(legionnaire), Titus Leonida, Diaca and Dobre (non legionnaires), even though they had been Turcanu’s   collaborators, they didn’t leave along with him, fact which had many in disarray, especially because these ones, probably, didn’t commit any murders.

What happened with Turcanu and his collaborators we found only later in Aiud, in 1956. But we, the medical university lot from Iasi, heard it in Jilava, when we got transferred to Jilava from Aiud, because of some of our colleagues’ trials.

Turcanu, sinister and   controversial figure, even though a brilliant student in Law School, fell as pray (like others had been and others who again would) to his own pride, being driven by a pathological ego, realizing his intellectual value and his will which   trampled on everything; so, in order for him to reach his goal, he didn’t stop from the most heinous crimes and bestialities.

The holy fathers of the   Christian church say that pride is the gravest sin of all sins which man can commit, because this satanic sin darkens the will to discern and kills the feelings of love and mercy  inside the man.

Pride drove Turcanu and his collaborators mad and they forgot that all evil done to your fellow man returns   hundredfold on the perpetrator.

I earlier said that I didn’t fear Turcanu as a killer. I more likely pitied him, considering him to be a victim of communist lies and diversions.

I talked earlier about the relationships between Turcanu and Popa Tanu, the chiefs who disputed the leadership between themselves and the authorship of the denouncements in Gherla. Turcanu was executed though; Popa – not.

And I am sure of the fact that – after the things I learned in cell 59 in Suceava in the time we sat together – that this murderer, Popa Tanu, squeezed himself into the Legionnaire Movement, maybe due to

 Bogdanovici, having subversive goals, and well specified orders. And he is one of those who even after the trial said that the denouncements in Pitesti and Gherla had been carried out by the order of Horia Sima.55

 Why was Popa Tanu used of all the people, in Turcanu’s trial and Vica Negulescu’s trial, I don’t know.

55 Which is a blatant lie! Horia Sima was the leader of The Legionnaire Movement and had been one of its most brilliant men. This was the well known tactic of shifting the blame on the victims’ backs, a communist tactic.And Horia Sima had been long gone, since the ‘40s, murdered in cold blood by the communist sympathizers

But I do believe that only the investigation of this odious killer could shed light on the statements made by the ones in Turcanu’s lot, given in Jilava, after they had left Gherla. He could explain the orders and dispositions received from Nicolski and Zeller best, as well as how so many young men were assassinated, along with Bogdanovici.

The departures of Turcanu and his closest collaborators in Gherla coincided with that of captain Gheorghiu, the prison warden, and that of the odious political officer Avadanei.

Dumitrescu and Marina were convicted, being blamed for what happened in Pitesti and executed afterwards, they say.

It would be desirable not to forget that the only one left alive, being also the one who executed the occult’s plan to destroy the young legionnaires, using the denouncements in Pitesti and Gherla, is general Nicolski, the chief of security between 1949 and 1965.

When I left the country, in 1989, he was retired and   complained that the Ceausescu regime didn’t reward him enough for his work and contribution to the party.

 A thing is undeniable though : after Turcanu left Gherla, the one who controlled and lead the denouncements, was colonel Zeller, Nicolski’s direct   deputy. They say he was later found shot in a Bucharest   cemetery. If he was killed (and didn’t kill himself) it was done at the occult’s orders, by  Nicolski, his disappearance erasing any official trace regarding the denouncements.

What is known also, is that when Turcanu and his collaborators arrived in Jilava, Nicolski and those officials who had been collaborating with him  disappeared from the ministry offices, others taking their places instead. These asked Turcanu and his collaborators to wilfully write statements of how they proceeded during   denouncements, how they acted, what methods they used, the results that were obtained by them and how much time they had to torture each and every young man in order to obtain those results.

After they extracted all of this information from Turcanu and his collaborators, all the blame officially fell in Turcanu and his collaborators’ laps. Their own statements were sufficiently accusing and they were each blamed of all the murders, tortures and methods used in the denouncements. Afterwards, the prosecuting officials were again replaced by others, and their replacements were assigned with the forming of a panel of judges who, in one of the most secret trials, sentenced them to death and executed them.

Turcanu was the one who, using denouncements, made the most complete investigation of the rebellion in Romania, at Pitesti and Gherla. Also, using him, the transformation of some young legionnaires and non  legionnaires could be achieved, into killers and informers, in prison as well as outside   prison.

A young legionnaire (whose name I won’t say, to not expose him), being interrogated by a superior security officer inside the prison in Aiud – Nicolski wasn’t the chief of security anymore then – related that the security officer confidentially revealed to him that Turcanu never   admitted he received order from abroad to start the   denouncements, saying that he himself along with Nicolski planned this. Turcanu honestly believed Nicolski in all the things Nicolski told him; even the promises Nicolski made to him, admitting only later in the trial that he had been deceived. He also said then that, of all the young political prisoners who did the denouncements he was the only one to blame. And if what Turcanu stated is true, then he must be looked upon in a different light. And it is also my strong conviction that, the occult’s plan regarding the denouncements of the young men in Romania’s prisons foresaw from the start the disappearance of some of the political   prisoners involved in this operation, as well as the   disappearance of the officials who supervised it.

Concerning Turcanu’s wife, she divorced him when she found out what he had been doing in   Pitesti. Later when I had been released, being in Suceava, I found out that she received her husband’s death certificate in 1956, sent from Oradea, from a street address number that in reality didn’t exist.

 They did the same thing with me also, noticing my family that I passed away. When my family received the news, they did my burial service at the family tomb. So, being symbolically buried as well, I could consider myself a poltergeist today. And a very inconvenient one.

Something similar happened to my mother’s brother, Vasile   Dascalescu, an ex-member of the Peasant Party, sentenced to 20 years in prison too, for some statements he made against the Russians, in May 1944. Having an outright anti-communist attitude in prison, he was murdered inside the prison in Ocnele Mari.56 I personally saw the death certificate which his wife  received : it had been sent from that city, from a street whose number didn’t exist, fact discovered by his daughter, Elena, who went there, from Falticeni. I know other cases like this as well, from

56 English : The Big Mines

Bucharest and Iasi, of families who received death certificates from the different cities of the country.

After all I have experienced, seen, heard by me and my   comrades, I conclude that   Turcanu was himself a victim as well, being the tool of the denouncements, used by certain Moscow forums supported by Anna Pauker, Teohari, Luca and   Nicolski, for the moral and physical assassination of the young legionnaires, who had been prepared and educated for the fight against any antichristian and antinational evil.

Here are a few names of the ones that willfully collaborated with Turcanu, never taking even one slap and who were involved in his trial, people I personally know :

Popa Alexandru (Tanu), student in Iasi; Livinschi, student in Iasi; Caba, high school graduate from Campulung Moldovenesc.

Then, the ones who collaborated with him because of continuous, intolerable tortures : Dan Dumitrescu, student in Iasi; Pop Cornel, student in Cluj; Popescu Aristotel, graduate of the Medical University in Bucharest; Nuti Patrascanu, student in Bucharest; Vasile (Lica)

 Pavaloaia, student, forestry sub-engineer; Juberian, student in Timisoara.

Of all the people I know who had been part of the torture   committees, I don’t know if anyone was involved in Turcanu’s trial, besides Zaharia Nicolae, the chief of the torture   committee in basement room no. 3, in Pitesti (who we talked about before), Dobre Vasile, student in Cluj, as well as Diaca, student in Bucharest. It was said that in Turcanu’s lot had been 36 collaborators; the number seems exaggerated to me though.

 Popa Tanu is one of the   prisoners who are still alive, were part of Turcanu’s trial, and know the exact number of the ones involved. So, Turcanu took the secret of this monstrous crime with him in his grave. Then there is me and my comrades still alive who are the   remaining undeniable witnesses of the things that occurred then, in the denouncements.

If the things Turcanu stated during his last days and   especially, right before his execution, are true – being the only one who spoke with Nicolski face to face – this represents the incontestable proof that he was the instrument which the occult used from behind the shadows.

Turcanu wasn’t the one to state that he received order from Horia Sima, through Vica

 Negulescu, to perform the   denouncements on the young legionnaires. Why? Because Turcanu wasn’t a legionnaire!

It is worth noting that no political personality from the peasant party, liberals, socialdemocrats or other categories, with or without parties, was involved in the trial with the accusation that they ordered the young legionnaires in his   organization to perform the denouncements in Pitesti and Gherla. The only ones bearing this accusation were the   legionnaires : the legion   commander Vica Negulescu,   Costica Oprisan – superior of the Brotherhood of The Cross countrywide – and other   legionnaire leaders. The setup of this abject trial reached the heights of hypocrisy, of lies and communist diversion, who dissolved the idea of justice shifting the blame on the   victims. Such impertinence, sadism and shamelessness, only a monstrosity such as communism could uncover.

The same lawlessness occurred at Katyn, or in the Tancabesti forest, where Corneliu Codreanu was assassinated along with his 13 comrades in the night of Saint Andrew the Apostle, and the same in 21-22 September 1939, when the slaughter in all the camps countrywide took place.

The denouncements were performed almost exclusively on the young legion members, students,   pupils, workers and peasants. Eighty percent of the young prisoners in Pitesti and Gherla were legionnaire students. I confess it keeping my hand on the cross because I knew them all, legionnaires or no   legionnaires. The other   categories of young people went through Pitesti and Gherla only accidentally, the clear proof of this being that the occult targeted only the young   legionnaires.

 After the Russians left Romania, in 1958, Gheorghiu Dej, under whose command so many evils perpetuated, gave a decree of pardon though to all the   political prisoners, the famous decree of 1964. A decree which, unfortunately, wasn’t done earlier by the Christian

 Antonescu, nor by “the   historians” and old Christian political people of Romania, neither by His Majesty The King of all Romanians, who left the legionnaires, after 1944, in prisons. From them, “the   Romanian” Burah Tescovici took control having their files and the keys to all the cells, so they can be left there to   perpetually rot by the hundreds of them.

 The same “historians” paid for the sin of selling their fellow men though, dying in the same communist prisons.

During the interrogations and statements prior to his death sentence and execution, knowing him like others didn’t, I am convinced that Turcanu realized he had been cheated.

Turcanu claimed he wasn’t a Christian, although he had been baptized and married like a Christian and, on top of it all, he was raised by his mother in the spirit of Christian morals. So, it is possible that these factors may have contributed to his repentance.

My experience gained during the denouncements and in all the prison years tell me that even the most odious murderer,   scumbag and sinner, if he admits his mistake, honestly repents and asks God for forgiveness, can save his soul. What is not possible with men, is possible with God. This is the   impenetrable mystery of   Christianity, of God’s love and mercy, and the reason he saved the world.

And, if Turcanu had pangs of conscience and felt sorry for everything he did, admitting he is the only one to blame of the things which happened at Pitesti and Gherla, asking God for forgiveness, it is impossible that he wasn’t forgiven. I cannot think otherwise.

 So, if the information regarding Turcanu’s last days are true : his refusal to lie, stating that he received an order from   someone to perform those   denouncements and admission of his own guilt, I have the   unshakable conviction that God had mercy on him and forgave his sins.

If his pathological ego was turned into humility and   repentance, why shouldn’t he be forgiven in the last moment of his life, like the robber on the cross?

The same mercy may have   descended as well upon those souls who had been part of his lot, who sinned the same.

 And if I believe correctly and Bogdanovici was saved, admitting to his mistake, thinking of himself as the initiator of the reeducation and guilty, in a way, for the suffering of so many young people, why shouldn’t I believe that Turcanu, having done all those things, was saved in the last moment?

I, as a Christian convinced that some mysteries cannot be   protruded with the mind, I strongly believe that all people can be saved.

The reader remembers perhaps that when I was escorted by Turcanu from the basement room no. 3 to the 4th hospital room, I wanted to tell him for a moment that he is also a victim of some sort. I didn’t dare though, for the fear of the consequences; as possessed as he was he would have killed me there on the spot.

I didn’t hate him though, like I didn’t hate those who acted directly upon me, and I didn’t hate those who trialed and sentenced me to 16 years of detention. Because God

 <<forgives us our debts, as we also have forgiven our   transgressors>>.

 Juberian and Rek

After Turcanu and the others left, the political and administrative leadership of Gherla’s workshops was left in the hands of Juberian and Rek. We could never find out, not even later in Aiud, who passed on this right to them.

Juberian, a young man with real intellectual possibilities, born in Banat, had been a student in Timisoara. I knew him during the denouncements in Pitesti, in room no. 2 on ground floor, at the start of Summer in 1950.

When the five of us had been brought to that room, I remember he was thrown completely   disfigured on the cement beside us.

He couldn’t stand up anymore; I memorized his name from the torture committee chief,   Prisacaru, who announced that he brought “one of the most fanatic legionnaires” inside the room. “Have a look at him, we will cure him of his legionnaire fanaticism for good. And this is only the beginning”, he   continued. Seeing him then and knowing what we’ve been through, it was terrifying for me to think of what is in store for this young man.

Juberian, in his agony, still had the power to memorize the names of those five who were sitting on the cement floor, announced by Prisacaru and especially my name, being thrown right next to me. In those days that followed he wasn’t given any food or water to drink. But even if they gave him, he   couldn’t have swallowed it.

During the time I shared the room with him, a few days, he wasn’t tortured anymore, because it would have made no   difference, so weakened he was. But I did find out from other comrades that after we left, Juberian had been cruelly   tortured and tormented because he was one of those young   legionnaires who didn’t give up easily.

The things that occurred there, until we left Pitesti, and the things I saw with my own eyes happening to him in that room, explain, among other things, why he fell.

 I cannot realize why he was put in charge of the organizational bureau in Gherla.

His image of being disfigured and spread across the cement floor, unconscious, lying beside me, in room no. 2 on June 1959, remains in my mind. It is true that I remember him when he was chief of the organizational bureau the same. There are things I cannot forget. He was dear to me, because I knew him and felt him beside me,   disfigured and not moving, on the cement floor in room no. 2.

In Gherla, when madness could have been fatal to me, Juberian saved me. And as a chief of the organizational bureau,   objectively speaking, Juberian was very correct and right.

About Rek, I only know he was a Romanian. I cannot tell you his origins, in order not to hurt or provoke feelings which have nothing to do with these   confessions.

After Juberian left Gherla, Rek was left as the chief of the organizational bureau until the end of 1953.

As a craftsman, you had things to discuss with Rek, and I noticed, during the time I worked in the workshops, that he was indiscriminate towards all other ethnic groups.

As far as the assassination of Flueras is concerned, I don’t know and I am not sure that Rek and Juberian were directly involved, the physical and moral author being the captain Goiciu, nominated warden of the Gherla prison, instead of Gheorghiu. To emphasize this opinion, I will further relate some events.

 Goiciu and Mihalcea

The 1948 arrest found Goiciu as a warden in Galati’s

 Penitentiary. The prisoners who went there said that Goiciu wasn’t Romanian and that he is bragging he is a friend of Gheorghiu-Dej57, working with him for the communist party at the C.F.R. 58workshops in Galati.

 57 A president back then

58 Romania’s railroads

And, if what he said was true, of course Dej offered that important function to this monster, born to be a murderer, who didn’t have anything else inside, but the inclination to torture and kill people.

Those who knew him in Galati were terrified when they heard of him. He had a tremendous pleasure to kill and torture priests or sons of priests and few of those who went to the prison in Galati escaped alive from his hand. There are eye witnesses, who stood in the same cell with the son of a priest, when he was praying, surprised by Goiciu through the peephole. They say that Goiciu entered the cell, stretched the son of the priest on the floor and crushed him under his feet until he died. He was a brute, a type of proletary with “political” power which he abused of anytime, executing the orders to destroy.

So Goiciu was known in all the communist prisons as one of the most odious executioners and killers. You could clearly read the pleasure to torment and torture on his face. It is said that, while he was a warden in Galati, Iuliu Maniu was brought in the prison, the president of the Peasant National Party, whom he horribly tortured.

At the same time a young   legionnaire was brought there, who had been in the   denouncements at Pitesti. I cannot divulge his name, because of the situation inside the country, and I ask him as well to not make himself known. He had an exceptional intellectual background and a very delicate physical constitution, which made the tortures in Pitesti very hard for him to withstand so he finally gave up. After he gave up though, he was sent to Galati by Nicolski in order to extract information from Maniu and find certain things from him.

And he heard from Maniu all kinds of things : facts, events, regrets, future plans and… something I will tell you   further.

 Even though he had been sent there with an abject task, this man still had the virtue, once he entered the cell where Maniu was, to tell Maniu the purpose he was sent for : “Mister   president, I had been to Pitesti and terrible things are   happening there with the young legionnaires and with other young students. I had been tortured too and I have been sent from Bucharest to extract information from you and   memorize everything you will tell me. So, please tell me whatever you think I should know, so you don’t have to suffer”.

And, for almost an year, during which he shared the cell with Maniu, that young man discussed everything with him.

More over, since he first came into Maniu’s cell until he left Galati, he even gave his tiny slice of bread to him, telling him he is young and can suffer prison better. Maniu accepted his offer very reluctantly and only because the young man insisted so much, and when it was time for them to get   separated, the old man hugged him and, crying, he told him : “I respected Codreanu, knowing his honor, his unbending faith and his political view. But, as a man and Christian I wonder if in the same circumstances, a young peasant party member would have treated Codreanu in the way you have treated me? I, dear friend, only know you from slanders; now I know you for real, this is why I told you what to declare to the people of our time about me. And the things you did for me I won’t forget as long as I live”.

After this emotional scene, the young man still had time to reply to Maniu : ”Mister   president, the things I told you and what I did for you, I didn’t do because of my ego or   political interests. I did it first of all because I am a Romanian, then because I am a Christian, and because I love my country and nation as much as you do. We are suffering inside the same prison for our   political views, for the good and justice of the Romanian people”.

You can get to know people very well the way they really are, when you change their living conditions, when you take away their jobs