The length of time it took a student to become "rehabilitated"
varied from case to case. There were some, though these were the fewest, who
gave in after only a few days. Others resisted three or four weeks. But for the
most of them it required two or three, or even four months.
Once the student had passed through the whole unmasking, he became a docile,
pathologically fearful creature, willing and even eager to carry out the most
fantastic orders. To verify the degree of his re-education, he was sent,
flanked, naturally, by someone a little more "verified," to
participate in the unmaskings of former colleagues in other cells. What
tortures he had undergone he now must apply to others in order to demonstrate "by
deeds" that he had indeed broken with the past.
Not everyone among the re-educated was charged at once with the re-education
of others. In order to qualify as a "pedagogue," the student had to
meet certain conditions. The students who were eventually to direct the
re-education of others were chosen at the start of the unmaskings, and were
slated to work on fellow members of their own category[1]
when the time came. But those whose past was too strongly anti-Communist, were
denied the privilege of becoming teachers even after they had completed their
pedagogic training. Turcanu would give them the following explanation:
"I know my merchandise; the bandit within you will never be cured. You
are encysted within yourself and only pretend to be re-educated; but in your
subconscious you await the moment when you can go back to what I took you away
from. You will never be able to rid yourselves of the sinful concepts that
poisoned your soul. In spite of what you now appear to profess, you still
believe in that other, maybe contrary to your will ... "
Although this statement later proved to be correct in many cases, it was
designed to excite craving for the office of pedagogue; for paradoxically, it
was from the most ardently anti-Communist students that Turcanu eventually
chose the "pedagogues" who turned out to be the most cruel of all the
enforcers of the unmaskings. True, the majority of them are no longer alive,
some having died in later years as a result of injuries or maladies contracted
during their own unmaskings, some having been shot when their existence became
inconvenient and they were no longer useful. Here are some examples:
A long time after unmaskings were dropped from the prison routine, as I was
walking one day toward the washroom with a whole group of detainees in Gherla
prison, I noticed on the body of a youth ahead of me red, hideous scars like
vertical furrows, up and down his back. I asked a student whom I had known
earlier whether he knew the cause of that strange deformation. He replied:
"That is Cornel Pop, who was a fifth-year student in medicine at Cluj. The
marks on his back were left by unmaskings. He was among those pressed the
hardest, for he was one of the main hopes of the group of which he was a
member. " The speaker's face was convulsed with sadness mixed with fear.
Even though he was a run-of-the-mill prisoner, any reference to Pitesti made
him tremble. Cornel Pop was considered in Gherla prison as one of the most
dangerous spies and denouncers used by the director, Goiciu, especially among
prisoners of Macedonian origin; for Pop had had a particular fondness for them
before his arrest, and had formed friendships which he now exploited for the
benefit of the Communists. The educators had completely converted him. First a
victim and then one of the most savage of sadists, his usefulness was
eventually exhausted, and he was shot after a mock trial before a Communist
military tribunal.
Similarly infamous for their complete conversion and zeal as re-educators
were:
Constantin Juberian, also from Cluj; law student; shared the same fate as
Pop, after same trial;
Nuti (Ion?) Patrascanu, from Constanta; student in medicine at Bucharest;
either disappeared or still in prison;
Ion Bucoveanu, from Bucharest; fifth-year student in construction
engineering; freed;
Coriolan Coifan, from Turnu-Severin; former artillery officer, later student
in construction engineering; famed for the vigor and accurate aim of the kicks
in the stomach he administered to his pupils;
Eugen Magirescu, student in education at Iasi; perhaps one of the most
tortured of students during unmasking; today probably dead.
Diaca, student in medicine at Iasi; in the habit of boasting that he was
criminal by nature, but actually very much occupied with problems of higher
mathematics; often imputed to himself the commission of crimes, maybe real,
maybe invented. He did beat many prisoners so badly that they urinated blood;
freed, he later was arrested anew and sentenced to 25 years.
Hentes, a high school student from Targu-Mures who underwent his unmasking
at Gherla; together with Ludovic Reck, former secretary of the Communist Youth
in Transylvania and an agent of the Securitate during the Antonescu regime, he
killed the former Socialist congressman Flueras in June 1953 in a ground-floor
cell of the Gherla prison by beating him with sacks filled with sand. Flueras
was about 70 years old.
Florin Popescu, from Pitesti, who specialized in torturing the floor
sweepers, whom he forced to kneel on walnut shells, or, lacking these, on sharp
grains of sand, whenever it seemed to him that the floors weren't scrubbed well
enough.
This transformation into torturers seems explicable in the case of those who
had no clearly defined attitudes at the time of their arrest, and who quickly
gave in during unmaskings; but what can explain such a total change in those
who at first most tenaciously resisted? To what can be attributed their obvious
malice and malignancy after they took charge of unmasking others, especially if
they had not been made chairman of an unmasking committee or even accepted into
the O. D. C. C. ?