In Pitesti prison, the day began at five o'clock in the morning to allow
time for the cleaning and straightening of the cell, which had to be done by
six. This chore obligatorily fell upon the "Catholics", as those
considered more "fanatical" or more resistant to
"re-education" were called. The run-of-the-mill prisoners were put to
work washing windows or doing other menial chores. Those who scrubbed the
floors were compelled to carry "piggyback" at least one of the
"re-educated" and sometimes two or three of them, as prescribed by
the "re-education committee. " Floor scrubbing lasted until six
o'clock when the guards came around to take the head count. Often the warden
himself or officers of the Securitate came to open the cells for inspection. The
inmates were, of course, compelled to stand at attention, while the cell's
leader, always one of the "re-educated", gave a report. Men who had
been so tortured that they could not stand up, were put in the back row and
supported under their arms by the "re-educated" -- doubtless to spare
the warden's feelings!
Following the morning inspection, the cells were said to be "open.
" At this time the students were taken out under guard to "wash"
and to clean "the bucket" -- a kind of wooden container used during
the previous day for their necessities. According to a prison-wide rule of the
"re-education committee" the use of this archaic toilet was
restricted to urination. For other necessities, students were permitted twice a
day to use common toilets in the hall of their section of the prison.
There are some aspects of the life of a prisoner which are usually not
mentioned, for the details are repugnant, but I must allude to them here
because they formed one of the most carefully planned and effective elements of
the program of "re-education. "
The gamut of torment and humiliation to which the students were subjected
was cunningly increased when they went to the lavatory and toilet. The time
allowed one who was in the "state of unmasking" was too short even
for the necessary preparation. It varied from thirty seconds or less to a
maximum of one minute, the exact amount of time being left within these limits
to the discretion of the one escorting the "bandit. " Those who were
unable to finish in the allotted time, were pulled out by the collar, beaten
because they "sabotaged cleanliness", and hustled back into their
cells, where they had to wait either until evening, or, if the incident
occurred during the evening program, until the next morning. When this happened
repeatedly in consecutive trips, the victim had to resort to other means much
more humiliating. The same thing happened in the wash room, where one was
hardly given the time to wet his hands. Of course, this program was continued
with unrelenting thoroughness until the "unmasking" was completed.
This system of degradation was extensively applied in all the Securitate
centers of Communist Romania. As an example I give only one case: In the summer
of 1952 I was under interrogation at the Constanta Securitate. Sometime in
August, Dr. Papahagi was brought into our cell. He used to be the chief medical
officer of Tulcea County. Although he was a member of the Communist Party, he
had just been arrested for "Fascist" activity, supposedly carried out
many years before when he was a pupil in a Romanian high school in Greece! The
guards of the section in which he was confined were all from Tulcea, where he
had practiced medicine for many years, and they knew him well. But nevertheless
he was literally grabbed by his collar and kicked, undressed as he was, by an
illiterate guard from Jurilofca. They gave him less than a minute to use the
toilet. The doctor came back into the cell weeping. To that moment he had
thought I was too emotional when I talked about the inhuman treatment that was
our lot in prison!
Returned to their rooms, the students received the morning's food rations --
a serving consisting of a spoonfull (250 cc. ) of cornmeal soup, called terci,
or the same quantity of tea. Students who were in "position of unmasking",
had no right to eat as everybody else ate. They were forced to eat
"hog-like", using only their mouths! They had to kneel down, hands
behind their backs, or go down on all fours, if such was the command of the
"re-education chief. " In this position, they had to suck up the hot
liquid from the mess-pan placed before them. The result was that the student
ended with his lips burned. There was always initial resistance to this demand
to behave like a hog, but after severe and prolonged torture everyone was finally
compelled to submit.
A "bandit" was not allowed to wash his mess-pan after consuming
its contents. The washing had to be done by licking, because the water
distributed to cells could be used only by those already "re-educated.
" There was no running water in the cells. Trusties brought it in from the
halls in wooden casks or similar vessels. Breakable containers that might give
someone a means of committing suicide were forbidden.
Immediatelv after finishing "breakfast", those under
"unmasking" took their "positions. " Each was obliged to
sit on the edge of the bed, his legs stretched out, his hands on his knees, his
head lifted and looking always forward, without being allowed to turn it in
either direction. Each was constantly watched over by a guard, recruited
naturally from among those who already had gone through "unmaskings.
" The slightest deviation from the assigned position was summarily and
severely punished by the guard, who then reported to his superior, the chief of
the "re-education committee", who in his turn inflicted a
Supplementary chastisement.
The noon meal was served between eleven and twelve o'clock. Bread was
distributed first. When the regular guard approached the cell, or when the
familiar mealtime noise out in the hall was heard, at a given signal, everyone
adopted as natural a position as possible "in order to keep the guard in
the dark with respect to our activities in the cell", even though that
guard had participated in an earlier phase of "unmasking", either on
his own or under the direction of the warden or of an officer of the
Securitate. Every student walked past the bread basket and meal barrel placed
in the doorway to receive his portion. The moment the door of the cell was
closed and locked, the discipline of "unmasking" was resumed. A
"bandit" was not permitted to use his hands while eating his bread.
Often, with his hands tied behind his back and the bread thrown in front of
him, he was forced to eat it kneeling down and using only his mouth. The tiniest
crumb had to be picked off the floor by his tongue or his lips! Sometimes the
method was changed. A prisoner was permitted to use his hands in eating his
bread, but then the nine ounce hunk was broken into two or three pieces, each
of which he had to stuff whole into his mouth.
The rest of the noon meal was served in essentially the same manner as the
breakfast tea, except that at this meal, the torment was greater. In the
morning the tea or the terci would cool a little if one stalled a bit,
even if one was beaten for doing so, but the food at the noon meals, being
somewhat thicker and usually consisting mainly of husked oats, took longer to
cool. The "re-education committee" demanded that each
"bandit" consume his meal as soon as possible; one of its members
placed himself in front of the "bandit" and by beating, forced him to
lap up the steaming food at once. The mess-pan was again cleaned by licking.
Or, on other occasions, any form of cleaning was strictly forbidden, because
the "enemies of the people" need no cleanliness ... After this, the
prisoners resumed their assigned positions.
A slight interruption occurred at five o'clock. The warden or a chief guard
went from cell to cell counting the prisoners. The positions taken were the
same as those of the morning. Those who could not stand alone were placed in
the back rows and were flanked by two "re-educated. " After the six
o'clock inspection, return to the assigned positions on the edge of the beds
was continued until nine o'clock, when the "lights out" signal was given
-- (an anachronous term retained from the times when prisoners could turn off
lights for the night). Under Communist rule, in the prisons of Romania -- all
prisons -- lights burn in the cells all night. When the bell rang out in the
hall, each prisoner had to go to bed, and talking after this time was
punishable according to regulations. But "lights out" at Pitesti was
the beginning of a new ordeal. After thirteen hours of continuous torment, the
victims were allowed to sleep only in a prescribed position that was, perhaps,
more cruel than the others. Stretched on his back, face up, his body out
straight, with his hands above the blanket covering his body to his chest, the
student was not permitted to alter that sleeping position in any way. At his feet,
with a bludgeon in his hands, stood watch a student guard; who in turn was
tormented by lack of sleep and therefore the more antagonized by any resistance
of his charge.
To whom does it not happen while sleeping, involuntarily, to turn on one
side, or to raise his knees? A blow on the ankle-bone given with the full force
of the arm brought the one who had moved again into the "correct"
position. The watcher was obliged to strike a strong blow because he feared not
only the "unmasking committee", but also the one whom he was
watching. I do not mean that the recipient of the blow would request that he be
struck a strong blow, but the watcher himself was apprehensive of being
punished, should he show any pity. For when once a man's resistance was broken,
he began to talk about "everything," and if the watcher did not
strike him hard enough, he in the course of his "unmasking" would
tell that on such and such an occasion he had been let off lightly by his
watcher, who must therefore be a former friend, and must either have made an
incomplete "unmasking" or had a recurrence of bourgeois thoughts and
prejudices. Thus it often happened that watchers were forced back into the
routine of "unmasking" for a second time, merely because someone denounced
them for not having struck him hard enough during the "sleeping
discipline"!
Following the first blow, sleep did not return, and sleeplessness took over.
It was as if they were attending a wake for the dead -- and began usually
immediately or shortly after "lights-out. "
Hours passed snail-paced; the victims tried to stay awake, afraid that they
would turn or make some involuntary movement if they fell asleep, because a
blow received under such circumstances has a terrific psychological effect. And
when it happened that one nevertheless fell asleep, the sleep was not a normal
sleep, but a kind of unconsciousness resulting from total exhaustion. Morning
was expected with relief and return to the rigid position of
"unmasking" came as a blessing!
How many secret supplications were made to Heaven, how many desperate minds
sought to discover somewhere, even in the most fantastic and absurd
conjectures, a ray of hope or a prospect of death! But neither came. For the
time being only physical suffering filled their consciousness; the agony of the
soul would come later. For the sufferers, time had ceased to exist except as a
scarcely comprehended alternation between the light of day and that of the
electric bulb overhead. And yet they resisted. The capacity to endure, that
wonderful weapon of the soul that raised to sainthood so many ordinary mortals,
was here also abundantly manifested.
The students endured and waited. It was a desperate waiting, endless,
unnatural, for in their hearts they had known for a long time that they were utterly
helpless and at the mercy of their torturers. They were convinced that in all
the other prisons too, and perhaps outside as well, the system of decomposition
by torture was being applied to everyone. They knew, too, that it was
impossible to resist forever, for each man saw a former friend, whom he had
known intimately and in whom he had previously had implicit faith, who had
yielded, who had changed into a non-human. Yet, something inside still
encouraged the victims to resist, to resist in the hidden depths of their
minds.
When the patience of the "re-education committee" wore thin or
rather when the unseen experts who directed everything from the shadows judged
that the time had come, there was uttered the terrible question that everybody
expected, from which no one was exempt.
"Bandit, have you decided to make your unmasking?"
Those who were already broken heard that question with a kind of painful
relief and began to talk. They were then put through the entire procedure for
the total disintegration of their souls.
But most of the students, even though they seemed broken, were obstinate and
responded drily: "I have nothing to unmask. Everything I knew I confessed
at the Securitate. "
The "re-educators" considered that answer a defiance. It was only
then that the "real beating" began.
Many were the students who provoked the beatings not only deliberately but
eagerly -- out of despair. The beatings gave them their only hope of dying. For
everyone who preferred death to acceptance of degradation hoped desperately
that during such a beating he might receive a fatal blow that would end his
perpetual torment, and release him from the unbearable burden of life. But the
directors of the experiment knew all of this, and so did the tormentors inside
the cells, for many of them, when in the same situation, had longed and hoped
for a deathdealing blow. They were under orders categorically forbidding such
mercy. No blows were permitted on the temples, the region of the heart, the
base of the head, or any other spot where a blow could be fatal. The physical
death of students had to be prevented in order to kill the soul. The whole
purpose, of course, of the unhuman directors was to extirpate the soul and
replace it with conditioned reflexes. Only thus could they create the
new man needed in the society of tomorrow of which they dream. In the jargon of
the Marxist theory of dialectical materialism, such creation is called
"dis-alienation. "[1]
It is attained by a crucifixion of the soul ending in moral, not physical
death.
When the longed-for death did not come, men craved for the blow that would
make them unconscious, their only way of escaping for even a few moments from
the inferno invented by those who promise mankind paradise on earth.
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1) |
Marx said that men, because of religion, became alienated, in other words,
that they lost their original and correct direction.
"Dis-alienation", then, is the process bringing the individual back
to a form of "reasoning" uncontaminated by religious superstitions
and by the burden of several thousands of years of "slavery. " |