"I, the undersigned bandit (Name and biographical data inserted here)
unmask!"
Thus began the "declaration" that was to take the student who
consented to make it (and who could refuse?) down the road of degradation to an
enforced, inhuman transformation of character inconceivable to a normal human
being. Until this declaration was made, the student had somehow kept some part
of his personality intact his soul proper was not irremediably affected, or so
the unmaskers thought. He would not yet readily betray those whom he, though
under torture, had managed to protect during the Securitate's investigations.
The real tragedy, however, began immediately following the "outer"
unmasking, and the "prison activity. " It was necessary in the project
to repress any tendency to return to an anti-Marxist equilibrium, which was
based on the following principles of life: faith in God, tradition and family;
trust in the political personalities who led the anti-Communist resistance
materially and morally; friendship; love in its usual worldly sense and love of
mankind in general; and, finally, one's own ego, with its own intimate life and
its anxieties. Such, in fact, were the pillars sustaining the Romanian people,
which was born Christian, you might say. There is no recorded historical date
of a transition from an earlier faith to Christianity, as in the case of most
European peoples. When the fusion of conquering Romans and vanquished Dacians
was consummated, the resulting nation was both Christian and Romanian at the
same time. From the moment of entering history to the present day, with very
few periods of peace in a long chain of painful tribulations, the Romanian
people defended equally their own independence as a nation and their Christian
faith -- a Latin island lost in a Slavic sea.
Attacked throughout the centuries by all nations which it has had the
misfortune to have as neighbors, Romania alone has never nourished any desire
for conquest. Her struggles have been for defense, for inner living, for
getting closer to God. For the Romanian, altar and plowed land blend together.
When no ray of hope, of help, came from anywhere, the Romanian has knelt in
front of the despoiled altar to invoke God's help. Innumerable monasteries,
retreats, and crosses set up throughout the countryside, at almost every
crossroad, are proofs of the place God occupies in the life of the Romanian
people. This faith constituted, and constitutes even today, one of the
strongest supports of the resistance to Communism. Romanians have today
gathered in the shadows of the altar, even though they know it to be the
greatest of risks, whose consequences cannot be guessed at by one who has not
actually lived today's drama of our people.
If the Communists have not bothered the Church officially, it is because
they feared the consequences. Uprisings in the name of one's faith, especially
if supported by a nation in the throes of despair, are much more dangerous than
those of a strictly social-economic nature. So out in the country, the Church
was perforce allowed to function within certain limits, but such toleration
inside the prison walls was out of the question. The churches of the old Aiud
prison, for instance, were transformed into coal-bins (the Eastern Orthodox),
oats-bins for horses (the Catholic) and a wood-shed (Protestant). The priests
not only had no place to officiate, but they were even forbidden to hold
services in the cells.
In Pitesti prison the terror exceeded all limits, as this was the place
where the prime guinea pigs, the students, were brought. The cruelest torments
fell upon the heads of the "mystic" groups made up of the more
intensely religious students, who had been first imprisoned by Antonescu
following the so-called "rebellion" of Jan. 21-24, 1941. Their numbers
were later augmented with numerous freshly arrested students, particularly from
the Faculties of Theology and Philosophy in Bucharest, Cluj and Timisoara
Universities. This persecution of Christian students, in intensity, length of
time and more particularly in method, perhaps surpassed that of the early
Christian martyrs who died in the arenas on crosses or at the stake, in pits
with wild beasts, or as human torches, giving up the ghost in a matter of
minutes. In Pitesti, the martyrdom lasted for months, hour after hour.
What heathen emperors had demanded of the martyrs renunciation of faith,
denial of God and of Jesus -- was forcibly induced in prisoners. A simple
denial, a formal promise not to believe or pray or fight for this
"false" faith, was not enough. It had to be accompanied by a whole
set of proofs, including first of all the ridiculing of the Savior's name by
use of the most insulting epithets. Some accordingly alleged that Christ spent
the first thirty years of His life in India learning to be a fakir; others said
He was a quack, a cheat and speculator in the faith and superstition of the
people, who were kept uneducated by the priests. Some denied His historical
existence. Others presented Him is a utopian socialist revolutionary, initially
animated by good intentions but in the end coveting the throne of Judea; they
said His condemnation resulted from a power struggle between Him and leaders of
the Hebrew people, who were subservient to and thus accomplices of the Romans!
His morals were placed under the microscope, and Gospel references to Mary
Magdalene interpreted to mean the relationship was one of worldly love. The
Virgin Mary, His Mother, was labeled a woman of loose morals who deserved not
sanctification but a prison sentence for adultery. And through it all, the
Leninist slogan, "Christian superstition, the opiate of the people"
was the constant theme.
In order to extinguish the last trace of respect for holy things, ritual
parodies of all Christian ceremonies were arranged, with students of theology
compelled to modify prayer texts, substituting vulgar oaths for religious
phrases. Holy Week and Easter were made occasions of particular vilification by
the O. D. C. C.
The "rehabilitated" were often obliged, if they did not proceed on
their own initiative, to stage spiritual orgies ridiculing Jesus. I shall
relate only one scene of many. It took place in the section occupied by those
condemned to hard labor, at Easter 1950.
"Christ's robe," as the students called it, was improvised from a
few white shirts and bed sheets. Out of the soap used for inscribing
declarations a masculine genital organ was made and the theology student chosen
to play the part of Jesus was forced to hang it around his neck. He was
compelled to walk about the room, receiving severe blows from broomsticks, to
symbolize the road to Golgotha. He was finally stopped by the window. There the
rest of the students had to file past him, making the sign of the cross and
kissing the piece of soap, exclaiming, "I pray to your omnipotence, only
true master of those who believe," etc.
There was only one, a youth named B., who refused to stoop to this
sacrilege. He was only a high-school student, and although tortured for hours
in front of the others in order to force him to do it, he stood firm. Finally
it was the re-educators who gave up, but no one could find out what made them
stop. This conduct was particularly strange, it being the first time the
tormentors had stopped short of achieving complete obedience to their commands.
Could it be that perhaps the tender age of the youth had aroused in their dry,
and at the same time terrorized, souls, a trace of pity? If so, the tender age
did not deter them from bludgeoning B. into unconsciousness several times.
The individual who related this event to me was at the time sharing B's
cell, and he was himself a participating victim. I asked him how he felt when
he saw that a man younger than himself and not having his ideological
background could have the strength to refuse till the end.
"At first, pity," he said, "because of the way he was
tortured; then a kind of anger seeing that he did not give in; and finally
shame and contempt toward myself. At the moment I became aware of the
implications of harboring these thoughts, I experienced a real shock of terror.
If the person who had unmasked me, still in our cell, could have learned my
thoughts at that moment, he would have ripped me to pieces. "
"How could he find out," I asked, "if this was only a
thought?"
"All he had to do was to place me in the unmasking position and ask me
to reveal my thoughts at the time B. was refusing. In the end, I am sure I
would have told ... "
Such travesties of this sort, some even more vile, were enacted in all cells
Sunday after Sunday. Each religious holiday was an occasion for some novel
profanation.
Those who were undergoing unmaskings were watched closely especially in the
evening, because they were then permitted to lie down in bed and might seek
solace in their faith. A far-away look, prolonged staring at the ceiling, a
look of serenity -- any of these was considered sufficient indication of
prayer, and he who was caught in such an attitude was brought back to reality
by a powerful bludgeon on his ankle bones. Next morning the victim so surprised
received from the committee his due.
A simple trembling of the lips was considered the equivalent to praying
aloud. The morning beating was mandatorily followed by a declaration made in
front of all, in which the inmate in question had to admit he erred, that the
"bandit" within him was not yet vanquished, that he had committed an
unspeakable crime, and that he promised never even to think of praying again;
and furthermore that if he should catch someone else seeming to commit the same
crime of praying in bed, he would report him mercilessly and thus help rid
himself of "banditism" sooner.
All students were forced to deny and revile Christianity, whether they
believed in God or not.
The Church had to be denounced as an organization under whose mask of faith
swindles were perpetrated, plots were hatched, extra-marital rendezvous were
arranged with the priest's cooperation, young girls were corrupted, women came
to show off and men to seek bodies. Or the Church was described as the place
where the fight against the Communist Party was organized, where, in the shadow
of the holy icons, arrangements were made for the assassination of the leaders
of the working people, etc. As there were no priests among the students
imprisoned at Pitesti, the O. D. C. C. 's anger was directed against the sons
of priests. Through their mouths must the Church be denigrated; they themselves
must delineate their fathers in the blackest possible terms, so that the others
would have this information from "eyewitnesses. "
Jokes and anecdotes about the clergy, that were making the rounds of
Romanian villages, were now naturally given the stamp of authenticity. The
priest had to be described as a drunkard, skirt-chaser, card player, and thief,
contemptuous of the misery of the people (and especially the peasants), an
inveterate liar who had sold out to the class of capitalist exploiters, had
been an agent of the Nazis or of the former Securitate, and was in fact
responsible for the complete breakdown of village morality.
For all these epithets, proofs had to be found; whoever supplied the
"proofs" had to sound convincing so that his revelations would lead
to other unmaskings. Both those who made the required statements and those who
directed the unmaskings knew that the testimony was absurd, but the more
monstrous these inventions were, the more pleased were the unmaskers. Such lies
made it impossible for those who told them to look parents or friends in the
eye ever again, or step over the threshold of a church, if they ever regained
their freedom. The memory of unmaskings would be a lingering torture after
their liberation.
The second principal element in the destruction of faith was denigration of
the monastic life. Students were forced to say that they heard things
"with their own ears," and saw things "with their own eyes.
" Any monk being discussed had to have on his record at least several
adulterous affairs in the villages near his monastery; the nuns several
abortions! Among the stories told by a student from Moldavia, I shall mention
the following monstrous lies. He said that at the request of a high dignitary
(whose name escaped him!) a small lake in the neighborhood of a convent was
drained. On the bottom were found several hundred skeletons of newborn infants,
who had, of course, been drowned so as not to compromise the convent. All this
was done with the connivance of the Mother Superior and the leading heads of
the Church. If the whole affair was hushed up, it was because the hierarchy
desired it! Nothing was done to stop this lustful life, in fact it was
encouraged, and the only one to suffer was the individual who demanded an
investigation!
As to the monks, it was positively affirmed that they were all spies for
secret American agencies, they would hide parachutists who came to commit acts
of political and military sabotage; they used their monasteries as storage
places for weapons to be used the moment war should break out; problems of
faith concerned them not at all; persons wanted by the Securitate for
anti-Communist activity were given food and shelter by the monks; all in all,
the monks should be considered highway robbers rather than servants of the
people.
In order to make students bear witness to such things, a whole gamut of
tortures was necessary. But in this way, the first stage of the inner
unmasking, that of breaking away from God, was accomplished. Thus, the students
were sufficiently prepared to go on to the second stage, the breakaway from
tradition.
The education of students, structured on everything they had already learned
in the home, was based on the cultivation of a healthy rural tradition on the
one hand, and a historical one on the other. The roots of the past were the
foundation on which the Romanian people leaned in time of vicissitude and
trial. Remembering the past of their nation, Romanians confront the trials of
today with faith and hope for future freedom. Especially in rural environments
one finds even today traditional conservatism so deeply rooted that it is the
peasants or the peasants' sons who give Moscovites the worst headaches.
Coming from such a background, the students in colleges kept unaltered their
rural culture and tradition. Their advanced education merely added the
scientific and historical knowledge needed to bolster their convictions.
Communist propaganda said that the majority of school children come from the
middle and upper classes and that the schools, like other institutions, were
unequivocally in the service of the ruling class. Previous to 1944, say the
Communists, the school was a reactionary institution whose purpose was not to
prepare and educate "the sons of the people," but to prepare the
recruits for the ruling class to assure continuity of the regime in power. If
they thought it not feasible or desirable to denigrate some well-known
representative of the intellectual world, they described him as a rare
exception to the general rule.
The following cliches about the academic system were repeated ad
infinitum: "It was in the service of imperialism;" "It sowed
discord among ethnic minorities; falsified history;" "It altered the
student's soul by a chauvinistic education which neglected every scientific
criterion;" "It ideologically nourished hatred of the Russian people
in the past, now hatred of Communism;" "It supported the Fascist war
of 1941-44;" "It falsified the fact that the Czar helped in gaining
our independence in 1877, presenting the opposite of the truth. " (With
regard to this last, no Romanian student was unfamiliar with the historical fact
that it was the intervention of Bismarck that induced the Russians to withdraw
from our Principalities[1]
in 1880, and that, instead of being thankful for our help in the war against
the Turks, they took away from us again the three counties in Bessarabia! [2]
The students also knew all too well that in 1924 Communist agents attempted an
insurrection in the Romanian province of Bessarabia -- the same Bessarabia that
was to be kidnapped for the third time in 1940, then again in 1944! [3]
The school was also reproached for infecting children with Christian
mysticism, causing religious fanaticism and intolerance; for cultivating
superstition in order to keep the people in the dark and thus afford
reactionaries the opportunity to oppress the people more easily; and for
"deforming history" to create "nationalism. " Beginning
with the elementary school teachers, and going all the way up to university
professors, everything that contributed to the education of youth was
"corrupt, sold out, immoral, and opportunistic. " The main
preoccupation of educators was not quality of education but their own careers,
in particular their political careers, and the school was used as a jumping
board from which to spring to more interesting and remunerative positions.
Anecdotes were presented as fact, jokes were used as irrefutable argument.
If, for instance, a story was told of a teacher "accepting a bribe"
from a pupil for promoting him, it was implied that all teachers did the same
thing. Those most blamed for "indoctrinating" students were, of
course, the university professors. Naturally, explained the Communists, it was
only because of such influential educators that there could possibly be such a
large number of students who opposed the Communist Party and showed themselves enemies
of the people and of scientific-realist-socialist progress!
The attack on learning opened the way for attacks on the creative elements
in art and literature. If the writers did not reflect "social
reality" in their works, it was becausa their education had detached them
from the real problems that had to be dealt with in literature. If poetry was
symbolic, or folkish, or philosophical, the school was responsible for this
also. If a great part of novelists' creations had a nationalistic character, that
proved the guilt of their teachers. Not even Eminescu, [4]
whose memory the Communists did not dare to denigrate publicly, was exempt from
such criticism.
History also came under attack, especially that covering the monarchial
period. The O. D. C. C. had high on its list for destruction all sentiment of
loyalty to the monarchy. Of course, really damaging material was not lacking --
the scandals of Carol II, his ten years of embezzlement of public funds, the
murder of Codreanu and other officers of the Legion in prison, or the massacre en
masse of Codreanu's followers throughout the country on one night in 1939. [5]
The Communists did not think it important to mention that before Carol Romania
had two highly respected and beloved kings; Carol's character and crimes were
attributed to both. To further undermine loyalist sentiment, specious arguments
were cited from Communist history to the glorification of Stalin.
Up to this point, the trials which the student had to undergo following his
outer unmasking (physical torture in particular), were somehow relatively
impersonal, external forces, even when they touched on faith. But now came the
most painful phase of all, and the decisive blow.
The student had to renounce his own family, reviling them in such foul and
hideous terms that it would be next to impossible ever to return to natural
feelings toward them again.
Although the most beautiful pages ever written have been in praise of a
mother, at Pitesti the most offensive of words were uttered to degrade her
name. The prime character which a student had to attribute to his mother during
his unmasking was that of a prostitute; and since only a moral prostitute could
give birth to a moral monster, all students before their unmaskings were,
naturally, moral monsters. I shall give here, almost in his very words, the
forced statement of a student, which he, with agony of the spirit, repeated for
me more than two years after the frightful scene in a main-floor cell of the
Pitesti prison, where the "unmasking of his family" took place.
"I am the son of a fairly rich family in ____ ____. Of course the
wealth amassed by my father is the fruit of embezzlement while he worked as a
purchasing agent for the government. Having so much money at our disposal, we
lived quite independent of one another, more so than you would imagine. My
father, for instance, met a young woman who was married to a fellow government
worker; he lived with her almost openly, sleeping at her place almost every
night. Although he left the greater part of his earnings there, my mother did
not object. On the contrary, she took advantage of the situation to find a
friend for herself -- no other than my father's close associate. This was no
secret to any of us, for before they retired alone, ofttimes they kissed in
front of us and my father left them in peace, for he needed the freedom this
afforded him to spend with his girl friend. My mother's friend had a daughter
of about my age whom I knew better after my mother entered into intimate
relations with him; she also came to see us often. Encouraged by both my mother
and her father, I courted the girl and she did not repulse me; on the contrary,
she seemed to expect my advances. The same relationship developed between us as
existed between my mother and her father, who both encouraged us in our sexual
relations; they said it was only in this way that I could overcome my social
inhibitions. Once engaged in this sort of life, I introduced a student friend
of mine to my sister, and I started inviting him over more often. After a
while, there was no need for my invitations, for my sister brought him over
herself, developing a relationship with him similar to that of the others in
our circle. As a matter of fact, influenced by what she saw at home, she asked
me to find her a friend of mine who was more 'virile. ' Oftentimes in our home
orgies took place in which we all participated, exchanging roles and
intermixing promiscuously in the dark. " I cannot bring myself to put down
on paper the rest of the "testimony" he had to give at the orders of
Turcanu.
When I asked him to try to explain to me why he said these things, he
answered unhesitatingly, but with pain born of grief, that the only motivation
was hope that it would mitigate his physical and moral suffering "in that
hell. "
The father was likewise subjected to ridicule and opprobrium. The son's
degree of guilt was measured by the status, attitude, and the family from which
the father came. Peasant parents were no exception; they had to be portrayed in
most despicable terms so the son would be shown to have inherited the character
and personality of the one responsible for his physical and moral existence.
The father's shortcomings were determined by his occupation. If he was a
simple peasant, then he must have been the servant of the "boyar,"
his informer, the denouncer of the other peasants who opposed exploitation. If
he was a merchant, then he must have cheated on weight, selling cheap
merchandise at high prices, failing to pay the clerks and laborers, beating
them when they demanded their rights, or threatening to denounce them for
Communist activity. If a teacher, he "falsified history," persecuted
workingmen's sons, promoted students for bribes, made use of students as
laborers in raising his cattle or in gardening, or making them work hard in
difficult chores at his home so they could not study properly and were thus
unable to compete with the sons of the wealthy. If he was a magistrate, he had
sold justice for money and condemned workers to heavy sentences on false
charges in order to suppress any social aspirations they might have had. When
he presided at political trials, he was in league with the police and assisted
in condemning unjustly at least several Communists. (The number of active
Communists in all Romania had been only 822, according to the Party Secretary
himself, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej!) Students whose parents were army officers
were given special attention. The slanders contained in Zaharia Stancu's novel Barefoot
or Eusebiu Camilar's The Mist, were almost pathologically exaggerated in
order to demonstrate the guilt of "the military in oppressing the working
class and provoking war against the Soviet Union. "
Among students undergoing unmasking, there were a few, a little older than
the others, who came from the ranks of the military. Having been purged from
the army when the Russians occupied Romania and having no other means of
livelihood, the more courageous went to college to prepare themselves for
another profession. In their unmaskings they were forced to relate fabricated
events so dreadful that they could scarcely have been envisioned by the
imagination of a sick man. The artillery captain Coriolan Coifan, now an
engineering student fallen under the bludgeon of the re-educators, told of
orgies that took place on the Eastern Front, unimaginable pillaging, numberless
assassinations, fantastic rapes, wanton arson of workers' homes merely for the
sadistic pleasure of seeing fires, and executions of women and children who
were guiltless except of having been convinced Communists, "Stalin's
children. "
Blaming parents for their children's faults, they tried to establish a
"family culpability" complex to convince the student that he was but
a victim of his elders, and thus hasten his breakdown. Here is an example to
show how far they went:
When the political prisoners were sent to the Canal for work, their free
relatives were permitted to visit them and bring packages of food and clothing,
for that supplied by the administration was inadequate. A former military man
named Dorneanu, who as a youth had joined the cadres of the Legionary Movement
where he received an education that was staunchly Christian, patriotic and
anti-Communist, received his mother on her first visit to the Canal with the
following greeting: "Get out of here, you whore; it is because of the
upbringing I received at home that I am now at the Canal. I do not want to see
you again. I have no mother!"
Another student who had passed through Pitesti, Enachescu, derived a special
pleasure, while at the Canal, whither he was sent following the unmaskings, in
torturing his uncle, Pitigoi, a former National Peasant Party congressman, now
himself also a slave-laborer. This the nephew did simply to demonstrate to the
camp's administration that he definitively had broken with his family and the
reactionary bourgeois way of thinking. The misfortune of the poor
ex-congressman was thus all the worse for having been put in the brigade whose
boss happened to be his re-educated nephew!
The degree of guilt ascribed to a parent was also determined by the "banditism"
of which his imprisoned son was accused. The greater the contempt in which a
student was held by the re-educators, the more he had to insult his parents,
accusing them of heinous sins. The accusations had to be justified with "irrefutable"
proofs, which oftentimes were so absurd as to have caused laughter anywhere but
at Pitesti. Here is "the story about my father" as told by a
high-school student who at the time of the unmaskings was no more than fifteen
years old. It was told me by the boy himself in the prison at Gherla in July
1953.
"My father," he had said, "had a flour mill in X village in
Muntenia; several peasants from neighboring villages worked at the mill, but
none remained very long because my father replaced them frequently when they
protested his failure to pay the wages agreed upon. In order to avoid being
sued, he never signed contracts with them. He fed them from our leftovers, and
mush from cornmeal like that used to feed hogs, which he raised nearby. They
had to sleep in a stable, without any covering and on a thin layer of straw;
worked 16-hour shifts with no rest other than the noon meal eaten in the mill
at their working places. The work was very hard, consisting of unloading sacks,
carrying them up to the hopper, and then loading the flour into freight cars or
wagons. If father thought they were not working hard enough, he reduced the
small wages they received; and if they protested, he beat them. When a worker
threatened to sue him, he beat him unmercifully and denounced him to the
gendarmes, accusing him of spreading Communist propaganda. The worker would be
arrested and taken away. My father systematically cheated the peasants who
brought in their grain to be milled. In order to get away with this, he made
certain of the complicity of an older mill-hand by giving him his share of the
'profits. ' Scales were so rigged that when weighing in the grain, they showed
less, and when weighing flour out, they showed more, than the actual amount in
the sacks. When an unusual amount of flour was stolen, sand was substituted to
make up for the lost weight. Peasants knew they were being cheated, but could
not oppose him, for he was on excellent terms with the mayor and other
authorities, who refused to permit operation of any but my father's mill in the
village. Part of what my father stole went to the mayor and part to the
gendarme chief; so if anyone complained, the matter went no further than the
gendarmerie of the village. Because I was his only son and the heir to the
mill, father began introducing me to the secrets of his occupation. He showed
me how to rig the scale so it would read falsely, how to add sand to the flour,
how to cheat in the process of drying grain to account for the moisture loss.
"
After the boy related to me the story of his unmasking, I asked him how he
could have fabricated such a story, for he said his father was guilty of none
of the accusations he had invented.
"From the moment I realized I could no longer resist," he
answered, "and that I too would have to tell about my father in the
'unmasking of the family's weaknesses,' as the committee head in our room was
proud to say, it was quite simple. You see, during my childhood I often went to
the mill. In the evenings an old miller, whom I liked, told me stories, among
them that of Prince Charming and the Giant. I learned from these stories how
the Giant always tortured those he caught and put them to work in his mills;
how he fed them and how he beat them. Thus it was quite easy for me to
substitute my father for the bad giant, and tell the story as if it happened at
our mill.
"As for the 'political' slant, namely, that about denouncing his
workers as Communists, or his arrangement with the gendarmes, I knew this
before my arrest from the propaganda spread in villages by the agitators
against the 'well-to-do,' the opponents of collectivization. The interesting
part of it all is that in the same room with me were others who knew my father.
None of them, not one, questioned my story. On the contrary, they affirmed that
they knew these details, for their parents were among those cheated by my
father.
"Every one of us knew we were all lying. But if by lying we could
escape torture, then lie we would! If someone dared say I was lying, he would
not have had the freedom to denigrate his own parents, for either I or someone
else would have unmasked his lie. Even when one fellow who knew my family
became head of the committee and I related -- at his request -- more lies, he
dared not interrupt me. Because when he made his unmasking, I was present and I
heard everything he told about his parents -- lies likewise. Thus we stuck
together in lies and destroyed our souls only because we wanted to save our
bodies. "
Each "confession" was "evaluated" by the re-education
committee, whose members were now inflicting on others what they themselves had
suffered a few months before, and were furthermore stimulated by a maddening
fear lest they be condemned to pass through another unmasking, for any
suspicion that they had been lenient in accepting a "confession" made
too easily or without the maximum debasement of the person making it would be
considered a grave relapse from their own state of "purification" and
punished accordingly. When the committee was at last satisfied that the victim
had done all that he could to defile his parents and himself with the vilest
calumnies, to the truth of which he in his wretchedness would frantically
swear, they judged him ready for the next lesson.
The victim was now stimulated to revile and defame with repeated and
invented lies the teachers and writers under whose influence he had matured,
and especially the political thinkers and leaders whom he had revered and
followed.
Particular care was taken to befoul the reputation and character of three
men of national prominence, two of whom were still alive, incarcerated in
Communist prisons in which they would soon die, while the third, whose name the
Communists most feared and liated, had at that time been dead for more than a
decade. The three were: George Bratianu, who had been the head of the Liberal
Dissident Party and was highly esteemed for patriotism and foresight; [6]
Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party, on whom, in the time
between the Russian occupation and his imprisonment, had been centered the
hopes of all Romanians for eventual liberation from the Communists; [7]
and Corneliu Z. Codreanu, the educator of an entire generation of young men, to
whom, after he was murdered in 1938, his spirit was ever present: he still
lives in the heart and soul of all whom he inspired by his teaching and
example. [8]
Each student, as part of his unmasking, had to give "lectures" in
the most opprobrious and filthy terms about the men whom he had most venerated,
accusing them of every conceivable vice and crime. Since the students were
young and had only imperfect recollections of Romanian political history before
their own experience began, the "lectures" were often ludicrous,
containing accusations that were chronologically impossible or politically
preposterous, based on a confusion of one man with another or of one event with
another that happened years before or later.
Since Codreanu, the founder of the Legion, had had a moral and spiritual
influence that transcended his political leadership and endured, undiminished,
after his death, and since the elite among the students had dedicated
themselves to the principles and ideals of the Legion, all the old slanders
that had been contrived by the leftist and crypto-Communist press in his
lifetime were endlessly repeated and, if possible, improved upon, and his
living followers who had taken refuge in the West were similarly traduced and
"presented in their true light. " [9]
In this unmasking, of course, everyone lied with a straight face and without
the slightest trace of embarrassment. The lying not only served the purpose of
Communist propaganda by heaping filth on the men who represented everything
that was great and true in the culture arid history of the nation, leaving in
the mind a void that would be filled by Soviet "internationalism,"
but, more important for the purposes of the experiment, it made the victim
habitually and almost automatically subordinate truth to the most monstrous and
absurd falsehood. The victim, now accustomed to sinking ever deeper into the
quagmire by a kind of conditioned reflex, and conscious that he is destroying
himself, despises and hates himself for his submission to what he cannot
resist. He has thus been made ready for the final disintegration of himself:
his "autobiography. "
|
1) |
The autonomous principalities of Walachia and Moldavia were united in the
person of their ruler when Alexander Cuza became Prince of both in 1859, but,
at the insistence of the European powers, separate governments were
maintained in the two principalities for some years thereafter. Romania
became a kingdom in 1881. |
|
2) |
When Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877, Romania, although she had
painful memories of the Russian occupation in 1853, which had been terminated
only by Austrian protests and pressure, allied herself with Russia, permitted
Russian troops to pass through her borders and base themselves on her
territory, and sent into the field her army, under the command of Prince
Charles. The Romanian troops compensated for the overconfidence and military
ineptitude of the Russian forces, and thus made possible the Russian victory
in 1878. Romania recovered some territory from Turkey, but Russia demanded
from her ally the retrocession of Bessarabia, which had been a part of
Moldavia since 1856 and had a population that was almost entirely Romanian.
The Great Powers, who were most interested in forcing Romania to repeal
provisions in her Constitution that restricted the power of resident Jews to
control the country by financial manipulation, moral corruption, and
political infiltration, abandoned Romania, which had to yield reluctantly to
Russian demands and cede part of her territory to the erstwhile ally whom she
had saved, if not from ultimate defeat, certainly from a prolonged and
difficult war. Even then, Russia delayed withdrawal of the troops that she
had brought into the territory of her ally during the war, and her claims
were not finally settled until 1884. The conduct of Russia at this time was
such that the Prime Minister of Great Britain, although himself a Jew
residing in England, felt constrained to remark that "in politics
ingratitude is often the reward of the greatest services. " |
|
3) |
Bessarabia was part of Moldavia since 1367. In the Sixteenth Century,
Moldavia was subjugated by the Turks, who, in 1812, ceded Bessarabia to
Russia. Southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia under the Treaty of
Paris in 1856 and so became part of Romania, which, as has been described in
the preceding note, was forced to cede the territory to Russia in 1878. After
the Jews destroyed the Russian Empire in 1917-18, Bessarabia first declared
itself independent as the Moldavian Republic and then reunited itself to
Romania in 1920. The Jews resident in Bessarabia and trained Bolsheviks
brought in from the Soviet attempted a revolt in 1924, but without success.
In 1940, King Carol, ignoring the protests of the Legionary Movement, of many
other patriots, and of his own army, supinely yielded to a Soviet demand and
surrendered Bessarabia. The territory was regained by Romania in 1941 and
remained a part of the nation until it was occupied by Soviet troops in 1944;
it was formally ceded to the Soviet in 1947. |
|
4) |
Mihail (Michael) Eminescu, who was born in 1850 and died in 1889, has been
compared to Byron, Heine, and Leopardi, and is generally regarded as the
greatest of all Romanian poets. In his biography of Eminescu, Professor Miron
Cristo-Loveanu says of him, "He unites and embodies the whole
intellectual genius of his country. " An English translation of some of
his poems was published at London in 1930. The almost universal veneration
accorded Eminescu by the Romanian people made it impolitic for the Bolsheviks
to denigrate his memory openly. |
|
5) |
See Cronologie Legionara, Munich, 1953, p. 182, which records for
the night of Sept. 21-22, 1939, the murder of 252 Legionaries throughout the
country, a few from each county plus others from three detention camps and a
military hospital. (Tr. ) |
|
6) |
He was especially known and respected for his strenuous efforts to prevent
King Carol's capitulation to Soviet threats in 1940. He is not to be confused
with his relative, Dino (Dinu) Bratianu, head of the Liberal Party, who
promoted the treason that ended in unconditional surrender to the Soviet in
1944; he, too, died in a Communist prison. On the political history of
Romania and the character of the men who were prominent in it, for good or
evil, see Prince Sturdza's The Suicide of Europe (cf.). |
|
7) |
During the first years of the Soviet occupation, the young king was kept
on the throne as a useful figurehead and there was a pretense that the
occupation was temporary. Maniu was permitted to maintain an attitude of
independence, and he was widely believed in Romania to have influence with
the government of the United States, which, they fondly imagined, favored
"democracy" and "self-determination of peoples," as
stated in the propaganda disseminated from Washington. Maniu himself may have
entertained such illusions; he was elected to the Romanian Senate, arrested,
given a theatrical imitation of a trial, and sentenced to imprisonment for
twenty-five years. On Maniu's character and career, see the work by Prince
Sturdza cited above. |
|
8) |
On Codreanu, see above, and the work by Prince Sturdza, in which his
career and the activity of the Legion in the climacteric years of Romania's
history are recounted in detail. The original text of Prince Sturdza's book
contains some fine appreciations of Codreanu that are omitted in the heavily
censored translation, but enough remains to illustrate the greatness of the
man. (Tr. ) |
|
9) |
One must remember that the young Legionaries who vilified Codreanu in
their "unmasking" venerated him as the father of their highest
ideals, so that their "lectures" were for them much more than lying
defamation of a great man and made them guilty of an ultimate blasphemy. (Tr.
) |