From the terrible sufferings of Confessor Niță Cornel
I remain like this, thinking of freedom and the coming judgement; of the punishment of the criminals who have made it their life’s work to destroy man as he was created by God; to replace him with another who, at least according to Țurcanu’s words, will be the Marxist man, the Marxist creature…
I’m asleep… but not for long. Movements and whispers that seemed bizarre to me disturbed my sleep!
On the cement, two metres from my feet, through the half-open poplars, I saw Țurcanu’s head. In his hands he seems to be holding the neck of a victim. Next to him, Pușcașu, Steiner and Gherman. From time to time they too bend over the victim beneath Țurcanu’s body.
The terrorised man’s muffled screams pierce my ears. Suddenly I hear his head hit the cement. A shiver runs down my spine. My vision blurs. I tremble.
I kept hearing the banging of his head against the cement.
The two beside me, I can feel, are terrorised by the same shudder I’m feeling.
I lift my head slightly. Turcanu, with his hands on the victim’s neck, pulls him up. His eyes were staring deathly, his mouth was red. After a while, he shakes him violently. I hear the terrorist’s voice, mostly whispered, but threatening.
– Niță, speak, Niță! Die by my hands, bandit, if you don’t confess!
Țurcanu is disfigured. His eyes glow with rage. He purses his lips and then lets his victim fall back to the cement.
Niță – now I know his name – takes his place about two metres to my right. I see his face for a few seconds. He’s probably the youngest one here. He’s a legionnaire, I remember, when we were assigned to the prices.
Now I know exactly how dangerous it is to talk to the outside world! A secret known by two can kill one or both of us. The position you have to be in does not allow you to give the slightest sign, to somehow agree that something needs to be hidden. Niță, of course, was hiding something that was known to another, and he did not have the strength not to reveal it.
I dread to think that the man might die here at the hands of Țurcanu…
Anyway, the secret is partly revealed to me:
– You killed two Soviet soldiers, Niță and you don’t want to admit your crime. You took the lives of two fighters, for our good and happiness.
Niță keeps banging his head on the cement. I can hear his thunder, his gurgling in Țurcanu’s handshake. Despite all the fear I feel, I manage to calculate that it is very unlikely that Niță, now in his twenties, killed the two Soviet soldiers Țurcanu speaks of in the first months after his “liberation”.
It’s been more than five years and Niță is still fifteen. Of course, the Russians could have been killed later, in 1947-1948! But in the months following the ‘liberation’ of Romania, I learned that many Soviets had been killed….They had been caught raping ten or eleven year old girls, or mocking in a group, women well past the age at which they could express their lust.
Fathers and sons would strike out in rage until they took the life of the one who had dishonoured their daughter or mother.
The Soviets were killed for other reasons as well: for looting, for the destruction of houses built after years of hard work; they were killed because they were always seen as enemies and not as liberators; they were killed because, with the help of the Soviet army, a political and social system alien to Romanian nature was imposed on our country; they were killed because of the same feeling that the Romanian people had for centuries towards the Russian armies – first Tsarist, now Communist – that came to our country under the same pretext of liberation. Țurcanu has found out, or even suspects, that Niță has also killed Russians. He has no proof, because if he did, he would expose them. And yet he believes he must take his own life! For this robot, judgement will be passed according to the laws he learned from those who took his soul… Niță’s torture continues; it must be more than an hour since it began…
Suddenly, Niță lets out a scream, trying to free himself from Țurcanu’s grip. Then I hear his head hit the cement…
Quiet!… it’s all over!
It’s not true, he’s not dead! …but why don’t you hear anything?
After a few minutes, endless minutes, a muffled voice from a chest exhausted of strength, of life in suspension:
– No, I don’t know anything….
There is dead silence. I can hear my heart beating loudly….
Will these be his last words?
Says a man next to Turcanu, his voice shaking:
– He’s dead, he’s not breathing.
My head is spinning, I’m not myself anymore, I’m afraid of myself, I’m afraid of everything around me.
Suddenly Țurcanu comes running to the door, knocking loudly on the window. His gaze is fixed on the doorknob, his eyes wide, wide, frightening. In the corridor, the guard’s footsteps grow louder. Țurcanu knocks impatiently on the door. The guard turns the key in the lock. They talk, but you can’t hear anything. The guard always stays in the corridor; he doesn’t want to enter the room, or maybe he shouldn’t.
Then Țurcanu and two others drag Niță out. The footsteps are lost in the corridor.
(Grigore Dumitrescu – Debunking)