How the “re-education” action began in Suceava prison

Preparing the ground and the atmosphere. Young people were handed over to the old commissars, left over from the time of King Carol II and the Antonescu regime. They had to prove their loyalty to the communist regime…

They all had a “bug in their head” for which they could be arrested. In order to keep their posts, they resorted to senseless bestiality against those arrested. Some of the detainees were beaten to death during the investigation.

These bastards were joined by the new cadres. They were officers, fresh graduates of the NKVD security schools in Moscow. They were all thoroughly demonised.

The prisoners were subjected to a strict starvation regime. Their physical strength, and then their mental strength, was reduced to a minimum.

From the investigation stage on, the Security Service probed the ground to see where the “weakest thread” lay. Which beings could be corrupted. Who was stupid, not well trained, gullible and easily deceived.

The first was a student called Stoian Ion. The second was Mărtinuș Alexandru…

They manipulated various people by introducing them to the students’ rooms. One of these people claimed to be a great liberal dignitary. He claimed to know the secret treaties between the great powers. This ‘dignitary’ said that Romania had been sold to the Russians for 50 or even 100 years. There is no hope but to keep our heads down, turn left and keep our mouths shut…

A lawyer, Buceg Albert, and a person called Nicu Bogza, both of whom claimed to be contemporary legionnaires of Captain Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, told the young students:

– The fact that we are still alive today is due to the fact that in the Vaslui camp we made declarations of dissociation from the Iron Guard. Those who refused were all shot.

While the legionnaires were being machine-gunned on the outskirts of town, the military band was playing in the centre of town to cover the machine-gun roar.

The dead were not guilty. There was no judgement… The only reason they were shot was their refusal to distance themselves from the Iron Guard.

Some of the students in the prison were left with the idea that the authorities expected them to dissociate themselves from the legion. This was the atmosphere that prevailed long before the charges were brought.

The shock of their arrest, the tortures, the scientific regime of starvation, the rumours, the news and the stories, treated with unimaginable diabolism, disturbed some of them, made them nervous. Cowardice began to rear its ugly head. Betrayal was in the air.

(Octavian Voinea – The Massacre of the Romanian Students, by Gheorghe Andreica)