Aiud – The fortress of death (en)

In the Aiud re-education camp, all the methods tried out a decade earlier in Pitești were used to overcome resistance, but with greater sophistication and perhaps more subtlety. Although there was no lack of physical aggression (those resisting re-education were subjected to an extremely harsh regime: hunger, cold, isolation, chains, etc.), beatings were not used. And beatings were not used, not because the soul killers had become more humane, but for quite different reasons. In Pitești, all the targets were young and all had just been arrested. So they were all physically strong, and in order to bring them to […]

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After the first actions of the new commander of Aiud, we, the prisoners of this prison, immediately realised that he had come there with a precise mission. We felt that something was waiting for us, but we did not know what it was. We had all kinds of thoughts. Some “analysts” with more prison experience did not exclude from their calculations the possibility of starting a re-education campaign, because after the “Pitești experiment” re-education had become a kind of obsession of the prisons. And they were not far wrong, for re-education was not to begin for another four years. For […]

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At the end of November 1948, the regime in Aiud suddenly deteriorated. The foreign Jewish and Hungarian Communists, as we later found out, had called for the murder of 30,000 Romanians in order to create terror in the country and implement their programme of revolutionary reforms. But they were opposed first by Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu and then by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s “mob”, as they called it. Then they said: “We can re-educate them in the dungeons to share our ideas”, and resorted to arrests without mercy. All the prisons were full. But in March they arrested Pătrășcanu and his friends, mostly Jews, […]

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From February 1945, the so-called war criminals arrived in Aiud. First a few groups of senior and junior officers, then non-commissioned officers, enlisted men and ordinary soldiers. The war criminals were the elite of the Romanian army that had fought against the invaders of the homeland and against communism. Through the perfidious game of the Judeo-Masonic forces, they were guilty of fighting against the Soviet people, the working class and the high materialist-dialectical conception of life, etc. They were declared war criminals by a deviation and extension of the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Soviet people was not represented […]

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Taking advantage of the indecisiveness of the warden, we obtained permission to celebrate Easter with a religious service in the prison yard, at the Nicador’s roadside cross, attended by all the prisoners, including the ordinary prisoners. Only war criminals were not allowed to go out into the yard. However, with the help of friendly guards, those on the other side of the T who could not see the Liturgy of the Holy Resurrection were placed in cells overlooking the roadside Cross. All our priests, together with the official priests, Orthodox and Greek Catholic, who were still functioning, prepared the Resurrection […]

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After half a year of this regime, the prisoners began to die on their heads. One by one. First, the oldest. Their age didn’t allow for such an effort. The phenomenon of death manifested itself as follows: a swelling of the legs began, which gradually increased, the stomach and the face began to swell, as if one were being pumped with air. It was dystrophy, oedema. The heart, weakened, powerless, could no longer pump water out of the tissues and so death came. I don’t know how many people died in Aiud at that time. Probably half of the 5,000 […]

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If it were written above Dante’s Inferno: “Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate!” (“Leave all hope, you who enter!”), above the entrance to this dungeon was Aiud Main Prison. Considered the most severe in south-eastern Europe, it was very similar to the one described by Dante in his book ‘Inferno’. The cell block was a T-shaped building with four floors, each with 78 cells and two large lounges. Inside the prison, there was another prison called Zarcă – a building with a ground floor and a first floor, with a total of 70 cells – built by order of the Empress […]

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For the political prisoners of Aiud, 1950 was perhaps the most difficult period in the prison’s existence. Apart from the large rooms, the 312 cells were filled to capacity with more than 2,400 prisoners, eight to a cell, lying directly on the floor so that not an inch of space was left unoccupied. From time to time, politicians from two or three cells would be taken for a walk in the yard, keeping a certain distance between them so as not to come into contact with each other. On either side of the cell entrance were two blackboards, similar to […]

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The years 1955 and 1956 are marked in the history of Aiud by events whose cruelty penetrated the prison walls and became known to outsiders. Tension had reached a very high level and, as there was no room for so much suffering in the pattern God had created for human beings, an explosion was imminent. The guards would burst into the cells and take one prisoner at a time without explanation. The beatings were severe and often the victim was left lying on the floor in a pool of blood. On one occasion, one of the beaten men grabbed the […]

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The year 1958 brought a change in the management of the Aiud prison. Kohler, the Jewish fighter in Spain, was replaced by the Romanian and illegalist Gheorghe Crăciun, a Securitate colonel. A Romanian replaces a Jew. Will the prison regime improve? According to national communist theory, it should be. It is said that the Romanian secret service has put an end to the cruelties and abuses of the Jewish and Hungarian secret services. But reality will not listen to theories, and things will develop as they are. And the first signs of a new direction are coming. One day, while […]

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In order to make the regime that will be applied to us from now on even clearer, the biggest search I have ever seen (i.e. endured) in a prison is organised. Simultaneously, on all floors, the operation began with an unprecedented number of guards. Where did so many come from? A search? Oh no! In fact, it was the most barbaric form of prisoner robbery. Almost all of our meagre luggage is confiscated, and all of the rags that we have obtained, who knows how and from where, to protect our lungs and bones from the unrelenting cold in our […]

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It was no coincidence that the last person Colonel Crăciun gave the floor to that night was Father Stăniloaie. Those who conceived and carried out the re-education, who knew the psychology of the prisoners well, were aware that if people could be made to renounce their political convictions, their personal pride and, in general, all the vanities of this world, they could not be made to renounce God in the same way. Therefore, a concession has been made to them. Or they were given the illusion that a concession was being made to them, allowing them to keep God, and […]

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Tase Rădulescu finished reading with a trembling voice and tears in his eyes. The silence that had prevailed during the reading was prolonged and seemed to intensify. The people, withdrawn, were stunned by what they had heard. Colonel Crăciun, after gazing triumphantly for a few moments from the rostrum on which he stood over the speechless room, broke the silence and addressed the audience: Well, what do you say? I address myself in the first place to those of you who are stubbornly refusing the opportunity offered to you. Take the example of your great poet, Radu Gyr, who has […]

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One fine morning, shortly after the rumour had spread that re-education had begun, the door of our cell opened and one of those polite and educated platoons, who we had already heard had doubled the guards in the corridors, asked us, somewhat awkwardly, which of us wanted to go to the club. We looked at each other confusedly and all looked questioningly at the platoon leader. One of us ventured, “What do you mean, the club?” “What, you don’t know?” the platoon leader asked, feigning surprise. “There are rooms in the prison where you can meet other prisoners from other […]

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And yet! Despite the zeal of Colonel Crăciun and his conscientious objectors, despite all the diabolical methods they devised to break the resistance of a people driven to the brink, Aiud did not only experience collapses in these times of emergency, but also ascents, real peaks of resistance and dignity. It is enough to recall the exemplary behaviour of two figures who are considered symbols of strength of character and human dignity: Professor George Manu, who preferred to die rather than make the slightest compromise, and Prince Alexandru Ghica, who with aristocratic stoicism resisted all the sometimes furious attempts of […]

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When, almost two years ago, at the urging of some friends, I decided to tackle the Aiud re-education and present it as I knew it and as I received it, I did so in the hope that this testimony of mine would contribute in some way to restoring the truth about what this Aiud re-education and all other such criminal actions initiated and controlled by the authorities in the communist prisons actually were. This is all the more so because even at that time there were indications that the “good people” in the Romanian secret service and other structures of […]

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On another occasion I said that the re-education in Aiud was a continuation of that which had taken place in Pitești more than ten years earlier, in the sense that here they were trying to complete what had begun there: the total and irreparable compromise of people and their ideals. Of course, because the two experiments took place in different historical contexts, and because the people on whom they were carried out were different, there were a number of differences between them, in addition to the obvious similarities. In Pitești, for example, where the subjects were all young, recently arrested […]

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I now return to my Easter story. I prepared for the feast. I purified my soul as best I could, deaf to insults, impervious to blows, armoured against hunger, warmed by an inner prayer. On the night I knew it was Easter night, at twelve o’clock in the morning, I heard the bells of Aiud ringing. Their roar was very… spiritual. I mean, it wasn’t a roar like you’d hear next door, it crackled through the walls. It was like a message from the outside world, this world celebrating the resurrection of the Lord. And we sang “Christ is risen”. […]

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The FDC activists from Vaslui, the workers from Ișalnița and others, who had been sent to various prisons throughout the country, were brought to Aiud in the autumn of 1942. Major Munteanu had to carry out the work of “re-education”, through moral and physical pressure, in order to make the legionaries either distance themselves from the ideal of the legionary struggle, which was an act of moral compromise, or ask to be sent to the front for rehabilitation, which meant admitting their guilt to Antonescu in the act of 21 January 1941, an act of compromise of the legionary movement. […]

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Caught up in the whirlwind of spiritual life in the cell, we don’t notice enough that the food here in Zarca is terribly poor. There is nothing substantial in the various soups we are given. We only tasted cabbage, potatoes or beans, but pieces or grains of these did not appear at the bottom of our rusty scales. As for the guts or the scraps (our only proteins up to now), they have disappeared completely. And this regime is getting harder and harder. Of course, it seems obvious to us that the Zarca is different from the rest of the […]

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