After an isolation period

It was towards the end of December 1962, when Colonel Crăciun was preparing the offensive against the political prisoners in Aiud. The winter was hard. I was in cell number 75, (…) with Marcel [Petrișor], Grigore, Dr. Popescu and a painter.

A few days later Grigore and Marcel were taken away and put in solitary confinement. They were taken to solitary confinement just before curfew. It was a calculated moment. (…) There was speculation about the state of tension the prisoner was in: “Will he or won’t he take me to solitary confinement tonight?”

Grigore and Marcel, who were unhappy, returned a few days later. They were disfigured by cold and exhaustion. Grigore was more whole, but Marcel, who was long and lanky and had just escaped from an extermination cell in Jilava, was broken. According to their testimony, the urine in the tank of the cell was frozen.

(Testimony of Nicolae Zârnă – From the Resistance Documents, No. 6, A.F.D.P.R., Bucharest, 1992, pp. 279-280)