On the northern edge of the prison building, on the ground floor, there is a
room bearing the number 4. Initially it was meant for the sick; that is why it
retained the name and was known to the prisoners as "Hospital Room Four.
" This room, fairly large, was selected for beginning the experiment for
it was secluded from the cells in which the students were confined.
Here is the description of what happened there given to me by a student who
was among the first victims.
"One evening we were taken from a ground-floor cell, where we had spent
some time, and walked to Hospital Room Four. We were about ten students, all
from 'correction'. In Room Four we found another group of students already
there -- about twenty -- including Turcanu and Titus Leonida. We suspected
nothing untoward, for transfer of prisoners from one room to another was quite
frequent and had become almost routine. After six o'clock, the time at which
the cells of the prison were normally secured for the night, Turcanu stood up
and menacingly posting himself in front of us, began to talk.
"'We, a group of detained students,' he said, 'decided to rehabilitate
ourselves in the eyes of the workers' regime, for we realize that what we did
was against the interests of the working people and Party. We consider that you
are an obstacle to our desired rehabilitation because of your
"anti-workers" attitude. That is why we request you to renounce your
previous convictions and to join our group. If you will not do this in a normal
manner, we will use against you all means at our disposal. We are determined to
carry out the action to its end and will crush any resistance. '
"As I was unfamiliar with what had happened in Suceava, at first I
thought this was a joke in bad taste. I had never heard such an impertinence,
not even from the most fanatical men of the prison administration. I never was
one of the 'strong' ones, and to this day I cannot understand why I was
selected among the first ones to be worked on. You can imagine the answer I
gave together with all those who had been brought with me into Room Four by the
chief of our section. A sane man, we thought, could not utter such stupidities.
So we took his speech as a joke, and began to jest.
"Turcanu expected such a reaction, for he knew quite well the student
mentality and convictions. That is why he was prepared. All those who were with
him in the room when we arrived, remained quiet, waiting. All of them had
handy, hidden under the nearby bunk blankets, a bludgeon, cudgel, post, belt,
or board, supplied naturally by the administration, for it would have been
impossible for anyone to procure them otherwise.
"Our reply gave Turcanu the opportunity to start. He furiously raised
his cap, and then at once, at that signal, the bludgeons and cudgels were
brought out from under the blankets. Every one of them was armed and, without
warning, struck the one of us nearest him. As a matter of fact they had so
placed themselves by prearrangement that each had a victim handy. Taken by
surprise, we were confused. But we came to our senses immediately and began to
defend ourselves -- each as best he could. In desperation, we started to
attack. We were at an advantage, in fact, for we were defending our own skins
while the others struck by command. As they later admitted, they really had not
expected that matters would go so far. We began to disarm them. In the room one
could hear only the whacks of the bludgeons and the groans of those stricken.
In the confusion one could not distinguish the original groups. All were
striking to defend themselves, and the fight turned into a life and death
struggle, in which each man fought furiously to overcome his antagonist. After
a while the situation became less confused. Although they were twenty against
our ten, all those who had attacked us were sprawled on the floor, Turcanu
included. This was definitely not what the devisers of the experiment had
expected, so intervention was needed to prove to us that all opposition was
vain.
"During the entire fight the warden, Lieutenant Dumitrescu, had watched
through the peephole in the door. When he realized that Turcanu and his minions
had been worsted, he brusquely opened the door, and, surrounded by some twenty
prison guards, his leading subordinates and officers of the Securitate, he
entered the room. All were armed with cudgels, even the warden. Silence ensued.
Only a muffled groan could be heard now and then. The director ordered everyone
to stay where he was. Then followed a dialogue between the director and
Turcanu.
"'What is happening here, you bandits?' (The term 'bandit' was the
epithet with which prisoners were addressed by the prison administrators).
Turcanu took a step forward and replied:
"'Sir, we, a group of students, realizing that we had sinned against
the working class, opposing its well being and that of the people, decided to
rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the Party. We therefore considered it
necessary to respect the wishes of the prison administration, to do all that is
asked of us, and to re-educate ourselves in a Marxist spirit, in order to
shorten the period of our detention, and to be of use to the working class
after our release. But when we began to discuss our intentions, the bandits who
are here with us sprang upon us with their concealed bludgeons and tried to
kill us. We defended ourselves as best we could. We therefore beg the
administration to protect us from these criminals and to ensure our lives and
safety. '
"There followed several exchanges of questions and answers in which the
warden, simulating astonishment, asked Turcanu for further explanations. Then
he turned brusquely to us and said: 'So that's it, bandits'?
"That was all! At his signal the guards all attacked us, while
Turcanu's group quickly slipping around behind the warden, left our group fully
exposed.
"Who could raise his hand against a uniformed official? We were already
bruised and exhausted, and we well knew that such resistance meant immediate
shooting.
"There followed a terrible scene, lasting unbelievably for several
hours, during which one could hear only the thwacks of the bludgeons, the
groans of the sufferers, and the profanity of the warden and his henchmen.
Turcanu's group helped the guards every now and then, when some unfortunate
managed to separate himself from the group of those beaten, and tried --
futilely -- to find a hiding place. The guards dealt their blows with all the
viciousness they could muster, venting their spite on us for having defied them
previously.
"Weakened by our designedly inadequate diet, overwhelmed by the number
and force of the guards as well as by the authority they represented, little by
little we ceased our futile but still instinctive efforts to avoid the blows.
By now the guards struck us as they would so many empty sacks. The floor was
full of urine and blood. Prostrate and exhausted by beating, our bodies were
strewn on the floor like corpses on a battlefield. Finally, the guards left the
room. We thought it was all finished. But this was only the beginning!
Turcanu's group took over. We were subjected to an extremely minute bodily
search. Everything that might constitute a protection, even in imagination, was
taken from us. Only our clothing was left us. We were ordered to crawl under
the large common bed. Those who could not move, were dragged by the
're-educators' under whose dominion we would be thenceforth. Many among those
who followed Turcanu deplored what was happening. But the spectacle of what
took place and the alternative of seeing themselves in our shoes compelled them
to continue in the ways of dishonor. They had not believed that things would
reach that stage. Once engaged in the dirty game, however, they could not turn
back because between them and us there now existed a real abyss. But that was
only for a time. Several months later I myself did to others what had been
done to me.
"The plan had been elaborated down to the last detail. It was applied
on an ever increasing scale as new participants were trained. What happened in
'Hospital Room Four' was repeated hundreds of times in other cells, with only
slight variations.
"Immediately after the beating, we were subjected to the 'unmasking'.
"
What the Communist Party perpetrated in the prisons of Romania belongs to
the domain of pathological psychology. According to the Communist mentality, it
was simply a job like any other, which had to be successfully concluded,
regardless. Human nature, moral or social considerations could not hinder the
progress of an important experiment.
In all this tragedy, Turcanu was but an actor, playing under the direction
of those who had designed the experiment and watched it from beyond the
footlights with interest and pleasure. And his original collaborators, who
hoped to benefit by an earlier release from prison, were only instruments in
his hand.
What deters persons of criminal tendencies in normal society is, no doubt, the
fear of punishment by the legal justice that maintains social equilibrium. Such
were the conditions at Pitesti that Turcanu was assured that he would never be
called to account, no matter how many acts of bestiality he might commit,
because the very authorities who were supposed to defend prisoners from
violence by their fellows, had ordered and implemented the sinister plan that
cost the lives of so many students and caused the moral ruin of all the others.
Probably Turcanu himself did not realize at first how far he was expected to
go. He could not have devised the operation himself. Its diabolical subtlety
and ingenuity lay far beyond his own capabilities. He was only capable of doing
what he was told. Those who masterminded and directed the operation wanted more
than mere torturing of the victims. They were determined to penetrate into the
most intimate recesses of the human soul, probing and prodding it, finding even
the smallest cleavages, discovering everything that can be struck, broken,
destroyed in man to leave him only a body made passive and void of volition.
Beasts kill out of biological necessity -- to feed. But the beast-man when
he uses reason to implement his hatred, knows no limit. Only men capable of
both great lucidity and frenzied hate could have decreed Pitesti. That seems
paradoxical, but in the Communist world the paradoxical becomes normal. If
Turcanu is responsible for physical tortures (for which, as a matter of fact,
he later paid), it is others who must answer for the entire process of
destruction. The list of names is long. And it begins with those who destroy
the values within man, who destroyed his equilibrium without substituting
anything in its place. The vacuum gave birth to the disorientation. And this
disorientation unleashed the madness.