CHAPTER VIII

A ROUTINE DAY

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.


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. "