Under the direct supervision of Colonel Zeller, the students from Pitesti
were divided into several categories on the basis of the severity of their
sentences, their physical condition, and especially their relative
trustworthiness.
Those considered unfit for work, the irrecoverable tuberculosis cases, were sent
by van to Targu-Ocna prison, ironically called a "sanatorium," where,
of course, there were invalids transferred from other prisons. Immediately on
arrival all prisoners were subjected to unmaskings, under the direction of Nuti
Patrascanu, a medical student from Bucharest. In this case the approach used
was different from that of Pitesti. There were no beatings, except when other
methods failed. But these methods were much harder on the sick and the infirm.
Those chosen to undergo unmaskings were confronted with the following
ultimatum: "If you want to get medicine, you have to undergo your
unmasking, you bandit!" Anyone refusing to cooperate was faced with
confinement in a dark cell, devoid of fresh air, or a reduction to half
rations, or both.
"Look, bandit, your health is imprisoned here. If you choose to undergo
unmasking, you shall receive the medicine you need, get well, and go home
before the end of your sentence. You could see your mother, family, live
freely, and continue your education. You must choose between life and death.
Only you can decide ... " Even though the value of the medicine was
questionable, to the sick it held out a promise of miraculous powers
exaggerated in their minds by the fact that they could not get it, and the knowledge
later that such medicine was denied them accelerated the progress of their
destruction.
This state of affairs caused a dramatic reaction. Virgil Ionescu, a law
student from Bucharest, who had partially undergone unmasking in Pitesti, tried
to commit suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor blade, in order to end
his suffering. He was discovered and bandaged, but only after losing a large
amount of blood. This case was reported to the administration, but unmaskings
continued nevertheless. The other students went on a hunger strike and warned
the director that they would not quit until the prosecutor was brought to the
prison, told about what went on, and asked to put an end to the unmaskings; but
they were ignored.
One Sunday morning, a soccer game was being played on the sports field near
the prison, with a goodly number of civilians watching, among whom were many
Securitate officers -- part of the force guarding the hydroelectric works being
built at nearby Bicaz. Only a narrow strip of land, on which ran a railway
line, separated the prison from the soccer field, and when the students noticed
the gathering at the stadium, they assembled in the cells facing the game and
from the windows began to shout, "We want the prosecutor! We want the
prosecutor! They are killing us! Help!" The prison personnel were not able
to shut them up right away and spectators at the game were intrigued by the
shouts for help which they could clearly hear.
This incident became the talk of the town for a while, and the Securitate officers,
following several indiscretions of prison personnel, came in and questioned the
director. Others, especially civilians, informed the prosecutor of the Bacau
tribunal. And the commandant of the Securitate, probably on his own initiative
without instructions from the Party, ordered an investigation into the matter.
It turned out to be only a formal inquiry, and the prisoners were then promised
that no one would touch them and the guilty parties would be appropriately
dealt with. But though the beatings and the blackmail stopped, and unmaskings
for all practical purposes terminated, those who had tortured the students went
absolutely scatheless, continuing to make life miserable for the prisoners and
at the same time to hold the best positions in the prison.
In the Ocnele-Mari prison the unmaskings did not become any milder. In the
large prison population there, in addition to the "political
detainees," there were a great many "criminals," who were
included with the political prisoners because their crimes, for the most part
minor ones, were considered to have political overtones. (These crimes included
possession of firearms, attempting to flee the country, cursing prominent
Communist personalities, etc. ) The greatest proportion of them, though elderly,
were able to hold tools in their hands, so the Directorate of Penitentiaries
opened a large furniture workshop in which all those capable were obliged to
work. This arrangement precluded the rigorous isolation possible at Pitesti and
prisoners could meet more freely and exchange either information or rumors from
the interior of the prison, particularly while in the workshop.
The arrival of students changed all this. All the work in the corridors was
taken care of by students; the kitchen, watchmen's duty, distribution of meals,
the shower room, laundry room, etc. became the responsibility of the students,
a fact which created envy and later hatred on the part of the common criminal
prisoners who up to that time had had the benefits of these jobs. Gradually the
entire life of the prison's interior fell under the control of the students.
They circulated freely along the corridors, entered cells whenever they
pleased, under pretext of house cleaning or any other excuse, eavesdropping by
cell doors and recording anything discussed inside, especially if the cells
were occupied by more important political personalities. They mixed unnoticed
among groups in the courtyard when outings for fresh air were permitted; they
were to be found everywhere, their ears peeled, gathering information for the
"dossier" of those to be put through the unmaskings.
The first victims were chosen and isolated in the small cells of the
prison's north wing. Among whom were: Atanase Papanace, a prisoner for three
years but still not tried or sentenced; the lawyer Mateias from Fagaras; the
worker Gheorghe Caranica, a prisoner since Antonescu's time, held for over nine
years and although he had served his time, the Communists would not free him;
the lawyer Nicolae Matusu, former secretary of the Peasant Party in Greece and
a refugee in Romania during the war, etc. There were about ten in this first
group of victims.
The re-educators, as they later admitted, did not expect resistance from
these people, considering their age. But they were indeed surprised. Not only
did those men resist, but the other inmates heard about the situation very
quickly, and reacted. Prominent personalities, such as Professor Mihai
Manoilescu, former cabinet minister; Solomon, Gheorghe Pop, Petre Tutea, Vojen,
and others, immediately warned the prison's administrator that if the tortures
were not stopped, they would all declare a hunger strike resulting in mass
suicide. Because there was contact with the outside world through visitors or
through incoming common prisoners, the directorate of unmaskings was worried
lest information about the atrocities get out. As a result, he ordered that
re-education through violence cease.
A somewhat unique case is that of the camps for extermination by slave
labor, established at the Danube-Black Sea Canal.
[1]
Here, the principal means for extermination was the brutally hard work. In its
name the greatest abuses were committed, as if for a mythical ruling deity, and
the greatest crimes perpetrated. The behavior of the re-educated students sent
here by Colonel Zeller for "verifying the sincerity of their
conversion," is here recorded.
The Peninsula Labor Colony was the pompous name for one of these
camps which nurtured crimes against human beings, crimes committed by the use
of methods as bestial as those in the extermination camps of Communist Russia.
The Colony was opened in the fall of 1950. In an open field on which the
thistles grew and where in the past grazed the sheep of the Valea-Neagra
village, on the edge of the Siut-Ghiol lake, the first barracks were built by
common criminals and "pioneers," after first surrounding themselves
with three rows of barbed wire.
Under the supervision of armed-to-the-teeth troops, there arrived from
various prisons throughout the country massive transports of those who, for the
next three years, were to fight hunger, cold, wet ground, and especially the
viciousness of the Communists who stood over them while they dug a simple hole
in the ground several miles long, for no other purpose than that of burying in
it several thousands of exhausted bodies ...
From Pitesti were sent about 300 students, all of whom had passed through
re-education and were under sentence of less than ten years. When the first
contingent of students arrived the colony numbered over 3,500 political
prisoners. The students were quartered in barracks No. 13 and No. 14, each
barrack having a capacity of 150-170 prisoners. The students were put by themselves
as a precaution, so they would not make contacts which could
"deteriorate" their condition, especially in the evenings after work,
because once inside the barracks, administrative control was next to
impossible. A quartering of students in scattered groups throughout the various
other barracks in the camp would have weakened not only the foundation of their
new convictions but also their shock potential, on which the Communists were
counting greatly at the beginning.
The living conditions and routine at this canal camp were totally different
from those at Pitesti prison. In place of the hermetically closed cell,
supervised by the administration through a peephole in the door, here you had
barracks simply partitioned into four sections, each holding forty beds each.
Prisoners left in the morning from an open area outside called the
"plateau. " All work brigades assembled there and one could talk more
or less freely with other inmates -- quite a contrast to the strictness and
permanent isolation maintained at the Pitesti prison. Although the
administration's orders forbade mixing of the brigades while preparing for roll
call, in practice the measure remained ineffective, for several thousand
prisoners stepping out of barracks in the half-dark of early morning could not
be efficiently controlled. Also the spirit of solidarity, which prevailed at
that time at the canal among the prisoners, demanded a measure of foresight in
the administration to prevent an immediate contamination, an inverse shock, as
the students knew nothing, absolutely nothing of what was going on in other
prisons.
In addition to the two special barracks reserved for students, there were
three reserved for Legionaries who were considered dangerous to the colony's
discipline and who were subjected to a very rigorous control and surveillance.
These barracks were designated as A, B, and C, and were closely watched because
the solidarity of the Legionary group was only too well known. Another barrack,
designated O, held all those prisoners who were being punished for acts inside
the "camp. " They were almost all headstrong, insubordinate, and were
in permanent conflict with the officers there and the political officials sent
by the Ministry of the Interior.
In the two student barracks, a climate of terror like that at Pitesti was
maintained to the greatest extent possible from the very first evening. Some
time was allowed for observing the students' first reactions. The shock was
supported quite well, at least so the experimenters thought, as the students
did not falter in their habit of blind obedience.
The first mission entrusted to the students coming from Pitesti was that of
overseeing work on the construction site. Students were named brigade leaders,
in other words, made directly responsible for the output of those in their
charge. They were ordered, first, to increase the amount of work to be
accomplished, and second, to see to it that "bandits" were killed
slowly by cumulative physical exhaustion without anyone's being able directly
to prove premeditated extermination.
Many of the students fulfilled their "mission" with zeal. From
among the names of those who will not be easily forgotten, I give here several
that are representative: Bogdanescu, chief of all students at the canal and
first brigadier; Laitin; the Grama brothers (one of whom later hanged himself);
Enachescu; Cojocaru; Climescu; Stoicanescu; Lupascu; Morarescu; etc. In
addition to their contribution to the construction of the canal, the students
had to continue the work of unmasking other prisoners. For this they resorted
to a new method which, besides producing the desired results, was supposed also
to test the feasibility of applying the system under different conditions. This
method, broadly, was as follows:
After the evening roll call, when in the camp's interior any kind of
movement was strictly forbidden and the guards walked their beats armed, the
individual in question was discreetly asked to step out of his barracks and
invited to follow the person waiting for him, who was none other than a student
from barrack No. 13. Usually the student covered him with a blanket so he could
not see where he was being taken. All of this took place under the eye of the
guards who pretended to see nothing. The only ones permitted to walk between
barracks after lights-off were the students charged with bringing in victims.
Once the prisoner arrived at the students' barracks he was subjected to the
known torture methods. But here in the camp one could not ignore the fact that
the victims yelled. At Pitesti the prison's isolation made it an ideal place,
but at the canal camp the proximity of the other barracks created a great
inconvenience. But this difficulty was resolved by the use of an old method
quite dear to the first police of the Communist regime in Russia. To cover the
shouts of the victims, a group of students was constantly engaged in -- making
noise! They would sing in loud voices (no large earth-moving machinery could be
brought into the camp to provide a racket) not exactly songs but what amounted
to frenetic shouts of joy, changing melodies, and explosive yells, in order to
cover up the agonized yells of the tortured victims inside the barracks.
Many were the victims of unmaskings at the Peninsula and some of them paid
with their lives for the mistake of accepting a student's invitation. One among
the victims in particular, whose case shook the entire "colony," was
Dr. Simionescu.
Dr. Simionescu was a distinguished figure both in the old Romanian political
circles and in the medical societies. Professionally very well prepared, he was
one of the best surgeons in Romania before the war. He was a man of deeds; he
occupied no definite position in the hierarchy of officialdom.
Arrested in 1949, he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for having
"plotted against the legal social order"!!! Although he had actually
been in the past an active member of the Cuzist Party,
[2]
he was arrested for having kept in touch with a group of political
personalities in the National Peasant Party. He was sent to Aiud to serve his
sentence where, in the spring of 1951, I shared the same cell with him for a
while. At the beginning of March he was with a large group of us prisoners
brought by van to the canal, where he was to continue serving his sentence at
labor, even though his age was too advanced for it.
I, who am endowed with a quite robust physique, was astonished that the
elderly doctor never complained, not even when we were obliged to unload wet
dirt from freight cars in bitter cold or freezing rain. After a short stop at
the Poarta Alba camp along the canal, we were sent on to the Peninsula camp on
May 5, 1951. The presence of Dr. Simioneseu in the camp was immediately
noticed, for he was the only "cabinet member" to have arrived up to
then. (The Communist puppet directors of the Romanian prisons, in their
simplemindedness, referred to all former high government officials as
"cabinet members," and they extended the designation to the doctor,
even though he had been only a highly respected professional man. ) The
re-educators turned him over immediately to Bogdanescu. They could not forget
that the doctor was a member of the generation that had constituted a permanent
stumbling block to Communism in Romania.
One evening he was invited into the students' barracks, and it was at this
time that his Calvary began. I could not learn exactly which tortures were
inflicted on him that night; the doctor himself related nothing. But the traces
left could not be hidden, for the next morning, before the brigades went to
work, the doctor went to the infirmary with three broken ribs, and his whole
body was black and blue, with here and there globs of coagulated blood. At the
infirmary, in addition to the regular personnel, the camp's director,
Lieutenant Georgescu, was present; for no medical diagnosis was accepted as
correct unless it had been approved by one of the political officers.
The physician asked Dr. Simionescu about the cause of the lesions only as a
matter of form for he, as well as everybody else in the camp, knew very well by
whom and how they were inflicted. Simionescu replied briefly, without much
detail, that he had been taken to barrack No. 13, where he was tortured by the
students for reasons unknown to him. Then Lieutenant Georgescu, who had thus
far watched the examination in silence, intervened. He, whose duty it was to
maintain "legality inside the camp", shouted:
"Bandit, you are the victim of your own convictions! Those whom you, as
a cabinet minister, were charged to educate, have beaten you! It is a pity you
escaped so lightly! Get to work now and don't let me catch you here again, for
if I do, I'll break your legs as well!!" Naturally, the camp's physician
dared not recommend any kind of treatment.
From that instant, Dr. Simionescu was practically condemned to death. He was
tortured in the students' barracks night after night; he was subjected day
after day to toil beyond his strength in the special brigade supervised by
students. His body was enfeebled by so many beatings at night; and when at work
he could not perform the labors his tormentors demanded, the students beat him
into unconsciousness right under the eyes of the Securitate's guards. He was
old enough to be the father of any of the students who tortured him.
Another and more subtle form of torture was also applied to Dr. Simionescu.
He was forced to deceive his own family. At the canal, unlike the other
prisons, prisoners were allowed to communicate with their families under
certain conditions. There was a permanent shortage of foodstuffs, and in
keeping with the Communist principle that "the enemies of the people must
not feed on the backs of the people," the food distributed by the camp's
administration was so insufficient that the inmates were subjected to a slow,
methodical starvation that could be relieved only by the packets of food that
prisoners were allowed to receive from the families outside. This provided a
simple and easy means of keeping the slave-laborers under perfect control, for,
of course, the precious privilege of receiving such indispensable nourishment
was granted only to prisoners who fulfilled their labor norms and obeyed every
caprice of the administrators and guards. The arrangement had the further
advantage that it placed a great burden on the impoverished families of the
prisoners, who had to support their loved ones with goods taken from their own
meager rations. The added hardships and sacrifices thus imposed on the families
were, of course, not unpleasing to the Communists.
Dr. Simionescu took advantage of this privilege or "benefit" as it
was called. So his torturers forced him to write home the appeals they
dictated. He was even visited by his wife after a time. Throughout this visit a
representative of the political officer was present. The doctor had to lie,
saying that everything was fine, that no one should worry about him -- and he
was doubtless glad to keep up the spirits of his wife, who did not even imagine
that she was seeing him for the last time!
From the parlor the doctor was taken directly to the students' barracks.
There he was forced to crawl under the "brigadier's" table, while
above him Bogdanescu, together with the re-education committee, feasted on what
his wife, through hardship and privation, had managed to bring him from home.
"You have sucked long enough the sweat of the working people, bandit!
When you were banqueting, the workers were shot because they fought for a piece
of bread. Is it not so, Mr. Minister? From now on it is your turn to suffer in
order to pay for the sins of yesteryear. " The derision was, as usual,
followed by a beating, which was all the half-starved man received for the food
brought him by his wife who had, by the way, been reduced to the utmost penury
by the confiscation of all their property.
His anguish lasted quite a long time, until in despair he decided to cut the
thread of his life. In keeping with his principles, however, he wanted to die,
not by his own hand, but at the hands of his torturers. So in broad daylight,
at work, although exhausted by beatings and lack of sleep, and brokem by labor
and unspeakable humiliations, he dared advance toward the line of uniformed
guards and try to cross over to the other side. But where? In broad daylight
and in the middle of a zone full of watchful eyes? Any of the Securitate
soldiers could grab him by the sleeve and bring him back. He could hardly walk.
Thus, he did not run. The gesture was premeditated and it was consummated as he
had foreseen. For the mission of those guards was not to preserve lives, but to
liquidate as many as possible, especially when they were given a
"legal" opportunity. When Dr. Simionescu reached the danger zone, a
short burst of shots was heard: a Securitate man had emptied his automatic
pistol into the doctor, who had collapsed only a few yards from him. Several
men went to pick up the victim and bring him to the working area. He was still
alive, and could have been saved. But this was not to be. He was finished off
before the watching students, who, in their turn, were astonished by what they
were witnessing for the first time. The doctor's body was carried into the
center of the encampment so all the "bandits" could see and take
notice. Then it was hauled to the Navodari cemetery for burial among his former
companions-in-agony killed by bullets, hunger, or torture -- without a service
for the dead, without a cross, without a candle, just exactly in accordance
with Communist custom.
The soldier who shot Dr. Simionescu was rewarded with a bonus, a promotion,
and a furlough!
Dr. Simionescu's death could not be kept secret, as was that of so many who
were killed in prisons. Many outsiders knew what went on in the canal labor camps.
Contacts between prisoners and persons from the "greater prison" (as
the canal laborers called the Communist-occupied country outside) was
inevitable, because quite frequently outside technicians and engineers either
sought the technical assistance and advice of their confreres in the camp or
used the brawn of inmates without "professional qualifications,"
which included lawyers, priests, doctors, and other well-educated men. Many
outside even had in the camp a brother, a father, a colleague or friend; or if
they had none of these, they saw in the prisoners their own brothers, i. e.,
people like themselves. That is why the help of those who were still relatively
free was unquestioningly given, materially and morally, with all the risks that
this involved. And not a few men ended up behind barbed wire, side by side with
those they had helped.
One such person, either directly or by letter, informed the doctor's family.
Someone came and claimed the body. Someone else, it seems, requested an
audience at the Ministry of the Interior to get an explanation of why he had
been shot to death. The authorities could not pass this off with a casual
explanation, and shortly thereafter, a colonel in the Securitate, Cosmici,
accompanied by his colleague Colonel Craciunas, arrived at the canal to begin
an investigation. Here, as is normal Communist practice, you have superiors
investigating their own subalterns, who had faithfully carried out orders
issued by the very Ministry of which the investigators were a part and which
had ordered the whole experiment in the first place!
Several persons were called into the office and interrogated quite
summarily, more often than not on matters quite unrelated to the matter in
hand. Then the colonels departed for Bucharest to report their findings.
At the beginning of September, or perhaps the very end of August, a group of
about ten students from the canal camp were selected to be sent somewhere. It
was learned later that they went to the Ministry of the Interior for
questioning in connection with Simionescu's death, but the students, who had
been told to bring all their baggage with them, jumped to the conclusion that
they were to be freed before the end of their sentences for behavior conforming
to Communist expectations, especially since they recalled the semi-official
promise given them at Pitesti. At the gate they were put in chains! This was a
special mark of attention enjoyed only by those sentenced to more than fifteen
years, or prisoners who were apprehended after escape, but the students took
the chains as being just another cover-up, concealing an intention to liberate
them, and so left the camp somewhat joyfully.
But the sight of chains on those departing students signaled a change which
could have been foreseen by the prisoners better initiated into the mysteries
of Communist logic. When a change is in the making, even one of minor
importance, there are clear preliminary indications, the most obvious one being
that the officials in charge are removed. In Communist theory it is axiomatic
that as an ideology, Communism is infallible, and errors, when committed, are
due to opportunism or the incompetence of the individuals called on to apply
the "Party Line. " Such being the case, the one who pays the piper is
naturally not the one who issued the orders, but the one who carried them out
and life-long dedication to the Party will avail him nothing. If Molotov could
not master all the working rules of Marxism in fifty years,
[3]
what can one expect of less talented and less experienced individuals?
Invariably, when any project or policy that is initially applauded as a triumph
of Communist genius and planning, is changed, the blame for the change is laid
on the shoulders of the individual who had the misfortune to carry out the
orders. The scapegoat idea is so deeply embedded in Communist practice that it
is considered a law. And this pattern was, of course, observed at the
Peninsula.
The first obvious indication of coming change was the removal of Georgescu,
the administrative head though perhaps the man least responsible in reality,
who was sent to a post of lesser importance, but not otherwise punished. He was
replaced by another prison director, Captain Lazar, a militia officer notorious
for the terror he imposed at the Fagaras prison, where former army officers
accused of collaboration with Antoneseu or of having joined anti-Communist
brigades were imprisoned, together with practically all of the old regime's
police force. Each of the prison directors had a favorite means of punishment
and Lazar chose -- the beating pole.
Other changes followed at the Peninsula, as if by magic. Students were taken
out of barracks No. 13 and No. 14 and scattered throughout the other barracks.
The special work brigades which had inaugurated a terror theretofore unknown
were disbanded, and the re-educated students were removed from positions of
trust which they had held. But the change was even more far-reaching than this.
Lazar himself became a different man. In contrast to his brutality at Fagaras,
he now appeared to be a civilized man with whom one could talk!
He rejected carloads of carrots and pickles destined for the prisoners' diet
on the pretext that one cannot accomplish work with undernourished men.
Sanitary conditions became tolerable; working hours were reduced; production
quotas were reduced to more reasonable levels. Except for those who were always
disposed to interpret the course of international politics by the degree of
"the soup's viscosity", no one considered this change as indicating a
permanent new era, for what Lazar did was on orders from Bucharest. But this
change was truly amazing and unique, for no other director, either before or
after him, ever showed a similar attitude. And as an irony of fate, his own
daughter fell in love with a prisoner and did everything in her power to
influence her father to behave humanely.
The disbanding of the brigades headed by re-educated students and the
replacement of director Georgeseu produced an evolution of the Pitesti
experiment along novel lines. It is quite possible that the initiators of the
experiment might have decided to test the "re-educated" under
conditions different from those under which they had undergone their unmasking
at Pitesti. The memory of those conditions was kept fresh in the minds of the
re-educated students by a sub-group completely loyal to the political officers
at the canal. Each group seemed to alternate in dominance, through conditioned
reflexes established at Pitesti. But what happened among the students
thereafter deserves particular attention because it discloses totally
unforeseen aspects of the human soul -- at least of the souls of those who for
more than two years had been transformed into something other than human
beings.
Escaping from the terror of their former milieu, from that closed-in hell in
which they reciprocally tormented each other; seeing that the administration no
longer supported those in charge of maintaining the atmosphere created at
Pitesti; and finding that on the contrary they were looked upon with a
significant "lack of understanding," -- the students gradually began
to change their own attitude toward both their colleagues and the other
prisoners. Little by little, where before even the thought was impossible, some
began a process of self-examination, of critical analysis, or, as it was said
back home, a digging out of the problems covered by the ashes of terror.
Timidly at first, then with greater daring and in increasingly greater numbers,
the students gradually began to see things through their own eyes and to draw
logical conclusions without quailing in fear of being suspected of thinking
other than as ordered.
This process was prolonged and quite painful. It seemed like a returning
from Hell, on the way out of a hideous, deformed world -- a return from other
shores, or an awakening from a long nightmare that left visible marks on body
and soul. They were like blind men beginning to see; they feared the light,
were suspicious of it, considered it unreal, impossible. But as a dam is slowly
eroded by the water escaping from a fissure, so their doubt was gradually worn
away and slowly replaced by a love of life, of honesty, of dignity, the beast
of yesterday reverting to manhood.
The wide diversity of character among the victims accounted for the wide
range of time taken by their recovery. Some who had suffered less and were
naturally more pliant regained their old selves almost immediately. But for
others the comeback was most difficult -- much time had to pass, month upon
month, their wounds being too deep to heal rapidly. The deeper contoured
structures, which had yielded with great difficulty and shown the greatest
resistance during the unmaskings, also retained the most stubbornly the alien
shape that had been imposed on them. Moreover, the students suddenly expelled
from barracks No. 13 and No. 14 and scattered among the other prisoners found
themselves in radically changed circumstances. They also had to reckon with
some of the political officers and the stool pigeons who served the Communists
without being forced and even without being asked, all of whom saw in the
students' possible comeback a danger to their personal "careers,"
(even though a decrease in the number of informers would normally have enhanced
each one's value). In any case, a whole host of different attitudes bristled
and clashed under the horribly unnatural conditions of a slave labor camp.
But in many of the students, little by little, the wounds of the past whose
scars would perhaps remain forever, began to heal, bringing a certain
self-control, but not forgetfulness -- that would never come.
But the Communists will not give up. They will only change the application
of "re-education" and perhaps improve the methods.
[4]
|
1) |
A total of 11 camps, according to Ion Carja's Intoarcerea din Infern
... pp. 12-14. -- Editor. |
|
2) |
See above,
It is noteworthy that while the party to which the doctor belonged
was emphatically patriotic and nationalistic, he was convicted of association
with members of the most "democratic" of the political parties, one
whose leaders had on several occasions sought "negotiations" with
the Soviet. (Tr. ) |
|
3) |
Scryabin, better known under his Russian alias of Molotov, was one of the
leading agents of the Jewish revolution in Russia, having begun his criminal
career as a Communist conspirator in 1906, and held positions near the top of
the Soviet government ever since the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II. He was a
member of the triumvirate that succeeded Djugashvili (alias Stalin), but was,
with his confederates, replaced by Khruschev in 1959 and exiled to Outer
Mongolia. Thus at the time that he missed his footing, he had more than fifty
years' experience in the Bolshevik terrorist organization, forty of them near
the top of the managerial hierarchy. It is to this that the author here
refers. (Tr. ) |
|
4) |
It is not unlikely that the sudden change at the slave-labor camp was made
to determine the degree of permanence of the re-education in individuals of different
characters. (Tr. ) |