CHAPTER II

SIGNS

It was in 1951 that I had the first indications that something of a very disturbing nature was taking place. This was exactly the time at which the experiment reached its paroxysm -- in utmost secrecy. It was completely unknown to those who remained outside the immediate circle of involvement.

I had been condemned, and was serving my sentence in the Aiud penitentiary when one morning I was taken by two officers and transported to the Securitate in Cluj without being given any reason. My anxiety was only natural in a penitentiary regime in which one could never know for certain whether or not his fate had been decided. I was particularly disquieted now by the fact that I had engaged in no anti-Communist activity in Cluj: I had never been there.

My first night in Cluj I spent in a vain attempt to adjust to a cell six and a half feet long and two feet wide. The second night I was taken out into the searchroom and there I found myself in the company of three other prisoners, who had been brought from the prison of Gherla. I knew them. Two were students from Bucharest; the third was a worker. Although we had been tried separately, the two students had been engaged in activities connected with mine. We were placed in an automobile and taken to the depot. At eleven that night we left for Bucharest on a fast express train, guarded by two Securitate officers and a guard-sergeant. Bound in pairs by handcuffs, we were kept in a compartment that was unlighted to prevent our being recognized by other travelers.

It was night. Now and then the moon shone through the car window lighting the faces of the three. They were strange faces. I had passed through many prisons in Romania; I had met thousands of prisoners, but never had my eyes rested on such faces. Beneath the pallor common to all prisoners their faces reflected an exceptional physical weakness. And over the emaciated faces a shadow of terror -- a fixed expression of terror which stemmed from some uncommon experience -- gave all three a frightening appearance. When, late in the night, the student who was handcuffed to me fell asleep from exhaustion and rested his head on my shoulder, I could no longer suppress a reaction to the fear that overcame me; I moved my shoulder to wake him up. His head, illuminated by the light of the moon, appeared to be that of the corpse of one who had died surprised by a horror so hideous that it had accompanied him into the world beyond. In former times he had been a swimming champion and a man of courage.

Speech among ourselves was strictly forbidden. Every now and then our eyes met, and there I could read the same terror that was impressed on their faces -- a terror akin to madness. As we passed through Predeal, the worker, who sat opposite me, asked me unexpectedly, "Your mother is a small dark-complexioned woman, is she not?" His accurate description of my mother surprised me; he had never seen her -- for the simple reason that she had never been in Romania. I did not answer him.

Later he spoke to me again, but this time about another matter. "Have we passed Pirinei?" "We are approaching Sinaia," I answered, convinced though that he was not hearing me and that he was present only in body.

The two students hardly spoke. In the morning we arrived in Bucharest. We were taken into the depot's police office which was an indication that we were to continue our trip. Our escorts left us for a few moments. It was then that one of the two, the one shackled to me, began to extol Communism! It seemed that what he had to say was directed to the other two, not so much to convince as to demonstrate that he could correctly repeat a learned lesson. And he seemed in a hurry to prevent the other two from being first. He uttered the hackneyed meaningless words repeated by the Communists on all street corners, but coming from his mouth they took on for me a profound significance. I was amazed to hear him speak thus because I knew him well and knew how he had felt about Communism. And it was generally true of all prisoners that life in prison tended to strengthen the convictions we had held previously. And then he uttered a flagrant lie -- claiming that there was decency in the officers of the Securitate.

Again at night we resumed our travel toward Constanta -- I recognized the railway line. When the sergeant, a farmer from the Apuseni Mountains, asked with some hesitancy, "Do you believe in God?" the same student hastened to answer that neither he nor any of his acquaintances had ever believed in God. This statement came from one who, I knew well, was educated in the Christian faith. This time again I read terror in his eyes. Again he answered with the same haste -- as though to prevent a statement from someone else that might be disastrous, and his eyes seemed to express the same desire for approval by the other two prisoners. But they only looked into emptiness. The sergeant lowered his head. He certainly had expected a different answer.

"Why were you arrested?" the other student was asked later by one of the Securitate officers. "I was a member of a terroristic organization at the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest. I was so fanatical that during the interrogation I denounced no one -- not even the greatest criminals in the group. " And then, as if feeling embarrassed (or "unmasked" as I was later to learn) he endeavored to correct his statement -- "not even the most responsible of the group, those who led the secret organization. " My bewilderment was shared this time also by the two officers who, as myself, heard perhaps for the first time from the mouth of a political prisoner such a characterization of his own activity. No one could possibly answer my own unspoken questions. The other two were still staring into nothingness. How could I suspect at that time everything they had gone through, conditioning them to make statements of which, a few minutes earlier, I would not have believed them capable?

Then we arrived. In the search room, taking advantage of a moment when the guards were not present, I asked the oldest, "What position are you going to adopt during the investigation?" "We must confess the whole truth. What's the use of suffering torture now that everything is lost? The Communists have won the game and are on the right track. " I did not listen any further. His answer was a non-sequitur; I was trying to develop a posture which would avoid implicating our friends in activities which had been a subject of previous interrogations, and which we could anticipate would be again taken up in the forthcoming questioning. But he was broken.

There followed the isolation, hunger and terror of the unending inquisition. Alone in my cell, completely cut off from mankind except for my stone-faced investigators, I began to forget the three. Every now and then the officers reminded me of them by reading statements concerning matters of which only they and I had known. But my own suffering did not allow me to dwell too long on this; it remained an ominous enigma that troubled me from time to time.

Later on, in the summer of 1952 I again came into contact with individuals who reminded me of the puzzle I had partly forgotten. Other prisoners, transferred from the forced labor camps on the Danube-Black Sea Canal, brought news that increased my suspicions regarding an entire category of prisoners who had once been most dedicated and most faithful defenders of the nation's freedom -- the student body. Accusations were brought against them which to the unknowing observer seemed utterly revolting. And yet the men who told me could not be lying. For they were speaking from experience, of what they had themselves suffered. The "re-educated students," they said, beat them, denounced them, were spies for the secret police, increased the work norms, and tortured any who could not meet them. All these were accusations of an enormous gravity. I wanted to believe that because the majority of these men were simple and untutored they erred, making generalizations on the basis of their own personal experience, for I had known the students in a totally different light.

But further news, instead of refuting what I hoped was not true, actually confirmed aspects which entered the domain of the tragic. This time it was a student who spoke to me. I had known him in years past at the Polytechnical School in Bucharest. At first he would not speak; he was afraid of everyone. But when I told him I came to Constanta from Aiud where, up to a few months previously, nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he loosened his tongue. It was from him that I found out for the first time about the "unmaskings. " All the students who were at Pitesti passed through these "unmaskings. " He told me it was impossible for him to explain, but that something terrifying took place there. They were tortured in such a manner that all -- absolutely all -- students became informers, so that they were robbed of their manly nature and became simple robots in the hands of political officers. They were de-personalized.

"Who did the torturing?"

"The 're-educated' ones. "

"Who were these 're-educated' ones?"

"Other students who preceded us in 're-education', in 'unmasking' as it is also called. "

"Who began that and where?"

"I know neither for sure, but I believe it to be a general phenomenon in all prisons. And wherever it has not yet occurred, it will, sooner or later. It is said that the initiators were three students from Iasi: Turcanu, Titus Leonida, and Prisacaru. "

He stayed a little longer in our cell, but he avoided talking any more. "If they ever hear I have been talking, I am a man sentenced to death," he whispered as he was taken out of the cell.

A month later other acquaintances completely verified what had happened in the canal labor compound. "Beware of the students as you would of Satan in person, even if they come under a mask of friendship. They are perfidious. They have done a lot of evil and some continue in their wrongdoing. "

"Why is it that everybody talks thus about students? What happened to them that they became so depraved? For you know well that they were not like this before. "

"I do not know and I do not want to know what happened to them. I am telling you only that they bite badly -- on the sly. Beware!" We did not know at that time -- and perhaps he is still ignorant of the fact today -- that in the process of degradation, their souls were killed. They had passed through hell.

I learned more from another youth who had passed through the Pitesti prison. He talked to me about the "unmaskings" in a more precise manner. He mentioned students whom I had known and what they had become after they passed through there -- dispirited, broken, transformed individuals. But he could not explain through what kind of inner crisis he himself had gone in order to reach that stage. The ordeal through which he passed was, as he told it, a sequence of tortures truly unique as to length and depth. But what he told me was still inadequate to permit me to fathom the depth of the transformation of soul that had to take place to produce such results. His fragmentary story brought to my mind another case of several years past which struck me as unique.

In February of 1951, on our way to Aiud, the group of prisoners, of which I was a member, were lodged in transit at Pitesti, where we awaited the prison van in which we were to be transported on the last leg of the trip. I was surprised by the thoroughness of the search to which we were subjected there -- much more strict than the one at Jilava. And Jilava was considered the toughest prison in the whole of Romania. Then followed a rigid isolation. I could not see even a single face of another prisoner in the Pitesti prison. Occasionally at night, but more often during the day, indistinct groans reached my ears from beyond the wall separating us from the prison proper. I attributed them to the usual tortures found in all prisons. On leaving, a young man from this prison was added to our group. He was an engineer named Eugen Bolfosu. For the next two days, the time it took us to reach Aiud, he spoke but rarely and then only in monosyllabic answers to my questions. But on his face was imprinted the same terror I later read on the faces of my travelling companions from Cluj. Having arrived at Aiud, during the search the engineer was asked from whence he came. When he uttered the word "Pitesti", he was immediately isolated for several days. Later he was taken out, and I met him in the prison shop. He would riot tell me the reason for his isolation. The Aiud political officers knew what was happening in Pitesti, and the engineer dared not talk lest he suffer the consequences. Or perhaps he was at that time a simple robot who acted only at the command of the "politruks. "

I asked the young man who had passed through Pitesti if he had met engineer Bolfosu previously. He told me they had gone through the "unmaskings" together and that he also had been sent to Aiud a little later, but that before leaving Pitesti they were specifically warned by the prison director not to talk. An indiscretion could cost them a return to Pitesti -- if unmaskings were not to be started at Aiud as well -- and thus a new passing through the awful ordeal. Who could disregard that threat without his flesh trembling?

My detention in the cellars of the Securitate of Constanta ended in May 1953. Following twenty months of inquisition I was sent to the Gherla prison to continue serving my sentence. I arrived there on the morning of May 6. I was immediately isolated, but in an hour or two another prisoner was introduced into the cell. He arrived from Bucharest, where he had been taken for a supplementary investigation, from Gherla, a month earlier. We knew each other. He asked me:

"Have you been here before?"

"No, this is my first time. "

"Beware of the students as you would of Satan. If you do not, you shall experience very unpleasant surprises. And moreover, you will suffer much needlessly. "

"Why, sir, is this the case? What have the students done, or rather, what has been done to them that they have reached such a state? You are not the first person to warn me. "

"Personally I cannot explain it to you. Something has happened to them which for me is inexplicable. And I certainly know them, for it has not been long since I was a student myself. I simply cannot understand the nature of the profound transformations which were forcibly induced. I do know they were tortured; yet torture alone cannot account for their behavior. All of us have passed through the hands of the Securitate and, after some more or less serious lapses, we recovered. But the students persist on an infernal path. It is said they went through 'unmaskings'. What the 'unmasking' consisted of, only time and perhaps the recovery of some students could explain to us. But I am wary, and that is why I advise prudence. "

After fifteen days of quarantine, I was taken to the prison's shop for work. They put me on the night shift from six in the evening till six in the morning. The first prisoner I met there, or rather, to whom I was introduced by a supervisor, was a former student of philosophy. After he asked me the reasons for my condemnation and my place of origin -- inevitable inquiries addressed to all newcomers in any prison -- he told me with an impassive voice, while he avoided looking at me, "Beware of me! I am a student. And this ought to tell you much. Beware not only of me but of all students, especially of those who are your friends. They can hurt you much more because you cannot perceive behind the mask each of us wears the vast abyss that now separates us from what we were not too long ago or what we wanted to be. "

Here, then, was one of them, one of those "unmasked", who put me on guard against himself as well as against others like him or possibly worse. But for him to have done this, there must have yet existed in his soul a vestige of dignity and courage. Did he succeed in his comeback? Did he escape the catastrophe without a definitive mutilation? This was a puzzle which I was only later to unravel.

"Why do you warn me? I have nothing to hide. I serve a sentence for the attitude I adopted against the regime. What importance may details have? And why do you sound a warning even against yourself?"

"Because, if the 'unmaskings' are going to be repeated, I will not be able to keep quiet upon questioning, and I am afraid that you would talk before I do. An unconfessed detail can cost one his life. For by now we have been brought to the point of fearing for our lives. We have become more cowardly than you can imagine. "

I was afraid to pursue the discussion any further. Who could tell me that this was not a subtle trap set for me into which I might let myself fall, the more easily deceived by his frankness? I let the passing of time bring the facts to light. But with this student I made friends rather quickly. Shortly afterwards the ice thawed completely, opening up an exchange of communications without reservation. It was from him that I obtained the first elements of an explanation. For he was, in spite of his youth, a thinker possessing a rare power of analysis.

What happened there at Pitesti could not be described in simple terms. In this, as in many other instances, language is inadequate to express all we want to say. For this reason we often have the impression that something is missing from the whole story. This void can be filled only by the voice of our own soul as we try to live in our imagination what others have lived through in reality.

It is a profound drama touching the most delicate fibers of the human spirit, having origins that transcend the material manifestations of the everyday conflict. Little by little this drama became my overwhelming preoccupation. During the three years I remained in prison and for two more after my release, until 1959, my preoccupation was to penetrate as deeply as possible into the secrets of this phenomenon in order to comprehend it. Investigating discreetly, gathering even the tiniest admissions and hints, listening to the revelations of those who had been victims, only to become torturers themselves later on, I came to comprehend the tragedy that had been consummated within the prison walls of Romania, and to understand how a psychological experiment, as novel as it was criminal and degrading, could, over a period of time transform humanity into inhumanity. Several scores of students with whom I discussed what happened to them and whose confessions of their own experiences and personal ruin I heard, provided me with the basic information. The present work is a composite picture of their tragedy. It has been written to call attention to the "Pitesti Phenomenon," but is by no means an effort to exhaust the subject.

As incomplete as it is -- for the magnitude of the subject exceeds the powers of any single individual -- I bring this book as a witness to my brothers in exile so they may more clearly visualize the hell unleashed over their fatherland and over all the countries engulfed by the Soviet Empire. What happened in Romania could have happened -- probably did happen -- in every other captive country, the authors and perpetrators of the terrors being one and the same people in all lands.

This is a testimony from behind the curtain, from beyond the tomb. I leave to the victims the right to judge.