Description of Gherla prison

Gherla Prison is located on the road from Dej to Cluj, on the banks of the Someș River.

It was built during the reign of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. It is a fortress surrounded by a deep moat, which receives its water from the Someș River. It had two one-storey buildings, the Zarca and the Section, with larger and smaller cells and rooms.

After 1848, the lords of Transylvania built a third prison in the shape of a U, with a capacity of thousands of inmates, with rooms and cells, thick wire netting, as in Pitești, and a one-metre corridor between the cells.

On the side facing the cells, at the two ends of the building, on the 2nd and 3rd floors, there were large rooms with a normal capacity of 70 places. There was a time when there were over two hundred prisoners in these rooms. At the ends, on the ground and first floors, there was the prison kitchen to the south and the chapel to the north. It is noteworthy that this chapel was painted in the Orthodox style, which proves that the prison was built for Romanians only.

When we arrived in Gherla, the chapel had been dismantled and the icons, the canopy and the furniture had been placed in the small chapel in the central building (the section). The chapel in the large building had been converted into a meeting room.

The prison was very impressive. The locals called it the “Yellow House”. There was a cemetery on the south side, close to the prison, and a smaller cemetery next door for prisoners who died inside the walls.

The entrance to the fortress was impressive, through the bridge of the main gate, where the water moat used to be.

At the entrance was the one-storey administration building, from which a vault led to the two cobbled courtyards.

The large building had two entrances, one to the inner courtyard and one to the courtyard with the workshops. The inner courtyard had a gate to the south that led to the workshops.

The prison was surrounded by a 4 metre high wall, which was guarded from place to place by armed soldiers. Next to the wall was a 3-metre wide space, surrounded by a 2-metre high barbed wire fence.

Entering the large building, one was struck by its immensity and the wire mesh through which one could see from the ground floor to the third floor.

The doors were solid wood, clad in thick sheet metal, with two strong bolts at the top and bottom and a large key lock. In the middle, as with all prison doors, was the large window through which food was served, and above it was a smaller window through which you could see into the room.

In the middle of the building, in front of the main entrance, were the stairs leading from the ground floor to the third floor.

This fortress, as it was built and fenced in, provided a guard through which only thought could fly out.

The 1.5/1m windows were fitted with thick iron bars.

All those who passed through Gherla, not only during the debunkings, but also before and after, cannot forget the prison where so many were tortured or killed.

(Dumitru Bordeianu – Confessions from the Swamp of Despair)