“I am a man sworn to tell the truth from the land of barbed wire”
Born in Craiova in 1924, Cicerone Ionițoiu is today unanimously regarded as one of the most important survivors and witnesses of the Romanian Gulag. His contribution to the documentation and understanding of recent Romanian history is impressive: the ten-volume dictionary, Victims of Communist Terror. Arrested, Tortured, Imprisoned, Imprisoned and the three volumes suggestively titled Tombs without Crosses are just some of the works signed by Cicerone Ionițoiu – works that, in retrospect, can be interpreted as a conscientious process of mise en scène of what was probably long in preparation for those interested in the post-war destiny of Romania and the region – this gripping and moving exercise in ego-history that is the first volume of the Memoirs.
Indeed, having just reached the respectable age of 85, Cicerone Ionițoiu seems to have found the necessary rest and temperature to transcribe his own drama, so far reflected in the drama of those he (re)remembers with both passion and objectivity.
However, “From the Land of Barbed Wires” is not so much a memoir or a textbook on recent history as it is an admirable and exemplary attempt to (re)discover that generation which, as the author himself says, “had no youth” and which, after 1944, chose “the path of Golgotha”: “I belonged to a troubled generation that hoped that life would take its course in an atmosphere of understanding, where problems would be solved in the light of day, where good would prevail over evil, in a framework where truth and justice would be the goal of earthly life”.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the suffering of that generation, all the more so because, 20 years after the 1989 revolution, Romanian society is still finding it difficult to get used to the “strong air of normality”, to use the words of Andrei Pleșu. But this is the challenge of Cicerone Ionițoiu’s life’s work – to find that normality where “problems are solved in the light of day, where good prevails over evil”.
How did you become involved in the PNT?
I was there when the Romanian territories were taken and when refugees from Bessarabia and northern Bucovina came to the student halls of residence in Bucharest. I studied in three faculties: Letters, Science and Law. On 1 December 1943 we commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Great Union. The atmosphere was fiery, people were enthusiastic. I was there. It was there that I saw Maniu for the first time, carried on Coposu’s arm. Talking with several colleagues, I became attached to the PNȚ, where I stayed forever. In the spring of 1944, the Cluj incident took place. Hungarian students spat at Bishop Hossu and attacked Romanian students. A big demonstration was organised in Bucharest. I took part in the first one. We were at the Faculty of Law and we were told that Marshal Antonescu would receive us in audience. We were among the 17 in the audience. It was the first time we had represented a group. When Antonescu came to shake our hands, we all took two steps back. The hall was full, every dean in the country was there with a student. He had a sense of humour: “I salute you!”. He told us directly that the situation had deteriorated. Then, after the 23rd of August, I was elected president of the National Peasant Students of Letters.
In September 1945, the NKVD picked you up off the street. What exactly happened?
I was kidnapped by the Russians, by Captain Vasily Petrov, in the middle of the night, taken to the NKVD and tortured for a week. Then I told myself that these things must never be forgotten. If I escape, I will make them known. With the help of Maniu, who intervened with the Allied Control Commission, I managed to escape. Two months later, I organised the 8 November demonstration and was arrested a second time.
“I’ll show you history!”
In the book, you describe in detail the demonstration of 10 May 1946, a counter-demonstration of nearly 10,000 students to what the Groza government was then organising in Victory Square. You coordinated protests and rallies on several occasions.
I was involved in the distribution of manifestos, which we copied in a shed during the day and carried in letterboxes and on motorbikes at night, and I took part in the rallies. After the 10th of May, when we students sent a clear message that it could not be about the “attachment” of the Romanian people to the “liberators”, came the 15th of May, at the Romanian Athenaeum, when Maniu decided to organise a kind of commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 1848 revolution. Foreseeing that this commemoration would not be possible in 1948, he did it two years earlier… An attempt was made to infiltrate agents provocateurs. Recognisable thugs from among the students (Mircea Sântimbreanu, Mihai Gafița, Grigore Filipescu, Barbu Câmpina and many others) were sent, and trucks carrying CFR workers armed with spears arrived. The commemoration went ahead, even though there was a big fight at the entrance. And despite all this pressure, Maniu and Mihalache did not give in, Mihalache even decided to go home.
As a result of their participation, they were sentenced in absentia.
Two years. I was called by a benefactor, Rădulescu recommended himself, he told me he was an agent, a law student, sent to follow me and catch me: “Be careful, those who are arrested are beaten to death. I warn you. Disappear where you can, or bad things will happen”. Then I went to the mountains with four others and stayed there for almost a year. In the meantime, the election campaign began. We left the mountains and campaigned in the Severin district. You know what happened with the gross falsification of the results. Fictitious lists, the arrest of the leaders of the party organisations in the villages so that no lists could be submitted, protocols with the results reversed. All under Stalin’s advice: ‘It doesn’t matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes’.
In 1947, after a whole series of three-stage arrests of many peasants, especially from the youth organisation, those arrested pointed to me as the person responsible for all the manifestos that had been multiplied and scattered. I was betrayed by Paul Sava, the future actor, who was my friend and with whom I had slept. He handed me over to the Securitate. I was arrested and taken to the Ministry of the Interior. The chief investigator, the famous Alexandru Nicolschi, said to my face: “You are a poor boy. Why did you go to Maniu when Anton Alexandrescu (a former peasant who had joined the communists) was there?” I told him that I was protesting against the abuses that were taking place in the country, against the theft of the elections and against the kidnapping of Basarabia and Bucovina. At that moment he rushed at me with his fists, knocked me down, played with my legs: “I’ll show you history! I’m going to make history so that it can never be changed again!
I woke up all wet, (they must have thrown buckets of water to wake me up), and then I swore that as long as I lived I would fight against communism and for the knowledge of the truth. From then on the action began. That’s when I realised I had to fight.
Ten years in prison
More arrests followed… At the age of 40, you were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Oradea, Jilava, Peninsula, Poarta Albă, Aiud.
Another 10 years of persecution followed.
I was also persecuted in France.
What were the particularities of each prison? In Râmnicu Sărat, for example, I know that the prison was called “the prison of silence” because you were not allowed to speak. In this sense, what was in Jilava, for example, that was not in Aiud?
In Jilava it was almost a death sentence by asphyxiation. The cells were extremely overcrowded, for example there were 280 people in a cell measuring 6 metres by 10 metres. The windows were nailed shut… no air could get in. During the day they brought us rags with boiled water, and we couldn’t breathe because of the fumes. One day one of us fainted. We carried him out on the mat. In the evening, when it was time to put him in before the count, I sat in the doorway with Remus Radina and said to the guard, “We’re not putting him back. We assumed that they would come and force us to put him back”. When the sergeant came and ordered us to take him away, I replied that we were not murderers and that we would not put him back to death – “You’re not putting him back?”, – “We’re not putting our hands on him, you take him and kill him there. We are not doing that”. Then he called the commander, who came, swore at us, saw that he couldn’t do anything with us, called the blacksmith, who put us in chains and put us and the other one in an isolation room where there was water on the floor over a palm’s width. That also saved us. We spent three nights in the cold, in the heat of July.
Jilava was a kind of transit?
Yes, in Jilava we were in transit. We passed through it three times. From there we were sent to the farthest prison on the canal. To lose our trail.
In Jilava you met Nicolae Maromet, a really sinister character.
Nicolae Maromet was a guard. He beat people with a club and had a predilection for the head. On 10 December, the day of the human rights anniversary, he entered the cells shouting: “Do you want the UN to get rid of you?” After that he beat everyone up. He had come to run the prison after the former Bukovina teacher Loghin Berezovschi, apparently an illegal communist, who was then thrown out for his lenient treatment of prisoners. In fact, he was sent to prison for it. Well, Nicolae Moromete came from the village of Valea Ungureni, near Argeș. He had been a caretaker for General Victor Dombrovschi. Coconeț kept him in the Bucharest City Hall until 1947, after which he ended up in Jilava. He had a saying of his own: “Well… I’ll… guarantee you the right to… die!
When did you learn about Khrushchev’s secret speech?
Seven years later, in the autumn of 1963. I was imprisoned in Jilava and we were made to read it as a test. We commented on it, condemning the crimes of Stalin and the regime. When they saw our pro-Khrushchev stance, they took it away from us after a few weeks, saying: “We gave it to you for something else…”. They wanted us to condemn Khrushchev, not Stalin.
“Only I’m allowed to hit!”
What was it like on the peninsula? Some say it was an extermination camp. There was a lot of work and very little food.
It was perhaps the first large forced labour camp. Wheelbarrow work, digging… It was established in 1949 and functioned as an extermination camp. It was commanded by a former porter at the port of Constanta, Platoonier Dobrescu, and was notorious for torture on the job. Ion Ghinea, for example, beat and coordinated forced labour with the exhortation “give until you die”. In ’51, Dobrescu was replaced by another porter, Zamfirescu. He rarely and hard. He also liked the cold. In winter, you’d wake up in the cellar in a shirt and the prison outfit. After him came a driver, Tiberiu Lazăr. He had been trained in Gherla and Făgăraș. He had another very strict rule: “Only I am allowed to hit”.
It was extermination up to a certain point. We worked with the yoke behind our necks, and when we were exhausted we put on rags and towels, tied them to the horns of the wheelbarrow and pushed with our hands until we fell. The food was very limited, specifically measured to extermine us. So were the beatings. Some of the torturers from Pitești were brought in. They formed special brigades and tortured Doctor Simionescu, Pițigoi, a former peasant national deputy. And Sică Enăchescu, one of the student torturers in Pitești, Pițigoi’s nephew, asked them to put his uncle in his brigade so that he could torture him. This Sică Enăchescu, after his release from prison, was allowed to study medicine and became a doctor in Mizil after ’64.
Did you know about the re-education experiments in Pitești when you were taken to the Canal?
Yes, I did. Well, they took one or two of them at night from all the different brigades, tortured them in the brigadier’s room or in the big room, where they all had to be beaten, to tell them to get rid of the rottenness inside them. The most serious incident took place on 21 June ’52.
The date of the war with the USSR.
Yes. They took about 15 men from a brigade that had protested against Lie Pompiliu. He had beaten a peasant, a man called Chandru, who had fought back. They immediately took Chandru and took him to the colony, and at night they took the 15, took them to the brigade of 13 students and there they tortured them horribly, until they were disfigured. They beat them, woke them up with water, and after playing on him with their feet all night, they took them out to work at 5 o’clock in the morning. What else could they do? But there were some of us, maybe a few of us, who refused to work all the time. We stayed in the prisons… we went on strike here, as well as in Poarta Albă, on the peninsula, and Remus Radina was the initiator.
“I had blind faith that someone was protecting me”
Did you have personal contact with the people of Pitești?
I dealt with Lie Pompiliu, who had a mixed brigade, half peasants and half intellectuals. He made us work at night. I never did my duty, because doing your duty was a step towards death. And then, one night (I also had a heart condition, the doctor told me I had an enlarged and transversely deviated heart), I got sick and fell down the railing. Lie Pompiliu came and pulled me up by my legs. I recovered from the shock, jumped up and ran after him. After that I didn’t work any more, nor did the others. In the morning they took me to the colony, to the political officer Chirion. They beat me and put me in the dungeon for seven days. Then they took me to another brigade, led by a peasant from Maramureș, called Pop, almost illiterate, who turned out to be a very nice man. I stayed there, rested for a while and then they took me to the construction site. I told them that I didn’t work, that I couldn’t work in this extermination regime. They left me alone. In this brigade I found Professor Victor Jinga, the Rector of the Commercial Academy in Brasov. We became friends, we found common acquaintances. One day the brigadier told him this: “Tell Mr. Ionițoiu that I’ll give him a parcel, I’ll give him a letter, I won’t ask him for a rule, just don’t take it out on me, I don’t know what to say”.
Have you ever attempted suicide? Have you ever thought about it?
No… I thought I had to get out because I swore to myself that I would make it known what was going on there. I’m a man who swore to tell the truth in the land of barbed wire.
But weren’t you afraid that you wouldn’t be able to get out?
I had blind faith that someone was protecting me. There was also something that gave me hope in ’52. Together with a very good friend of mine, Constantin Ionascu, we managed to send out a warning signal about what was going on. There was a certain mafia that helped us to get in touch with the civilians. We had won the trust of the construction supervisors, who brought us newspapers about the political situation. I managed to send papers with the names of the torturers, the names of the tortured. I even announced the death of Dr Simionescu and Dumitrache.
How did the rescue “mafia” work?
Some of the engineers from the colony’s technical office, who were also prisoners, had won the trust of the civilian guards. Through them, they were able to obtain newspapers and then send letters to the families and bring the necessary medicines to the seriously ill.
How long did the “Mafia” operate?
I was involved with them through Constantin Ionașcu and Sergiu Macarie from 1951 to 1953, at the Năvodari and Ovidiu shipyards.
What was a day’s work like?
At 5 a.m., the alarm clock would go off at the canal. Between 5.10 and 5.15 we had to go to the toilet. Then they brought us coffee with a quarter of a loaf of bread. Lunch. At 5.50 they’d take us to the gate. They would round us up and call the brigades that were going to Mamaia, Ovidiu or elsewhere. The cars would arrive, they’d pick us up, and we’d be escorted to the construction sites. There we worked on the yoke. At lunchtime they would bring us a meal. I ate cabbage because I said I’d never eat cabbage again. Spinach wasn’t on the market in the spring. We had it. They gave us spinach for lunch and dinner, so we all turned green. In the autumn we had cucumbers. They brought them in from export. From Bulgaria. Sour cucumbers, sour carrots. They’d make us goulash, carrot soup, we’d get so sick of it. At noon and in the evening, until they ran out of barrels. About two months.
And on the building site, work. Very hard, exhausting work. Many preferred to work to get paid. But the parcel, which weighed 5 kilos, didn’t cover the effort. The man was attached to the slightest possibility of knowing something about the family. It was only later, after two years, that they began to give permission to those who spoke spontaneously, the so-called norm breakers. The overworkers. At one point, they even gave the family speakers 4 or 5 rooms in which to lock themselves and their wives up to talk.
In Aiud?
There was isolation like in Râmnicu Sărat, but with a difference. În Râmnicu Sărat you were alone in a cell for 6-7 years, whereas in Aiud there were 4-5 more in the cell.
It was work in the workshops. Those who enjoyed a more permissive regime worked in the workshops. They would give you an extra pound or half a pound of food. Or more substantial food instead of the lukewarm juice. When the spoon stick was in the harpacaș or, very rarely, when we got beans, it was a hearty meal.
In Aiud, the beating was sacred. They would give all sorts of reasons: that you didn’t sit on the chair, that you fell on the bed.
You’d be sent to the Black Forest.
For sleeping on the edge of the bed, they would give you seven days in ‘neagra’.
“Out of 80-100 prisoners, 15-20 became informers.
What was daily life like? How did you get along with others?
The people outside, the so-called “free” people, worked 8 hours, we worked 12 hours. The norm on the outside was much lower. And we had supervision. Brigadiers and timekeepers were always watching us and shouting “Kill them all!
You worked in all kinds of weather, rain, snow?
Yes, we did. It didn’t matter. Even at minus 20 degrees. And when it rained on the site and you had nothing to cover yourself with. Only the guards had raincoats. We didn’t. You’d get soaked to the skin, and in the evening you’d take your clothes off, if you could take them off at all. There was a terrible smell of wet, sweaty clothes, so you’d put on something else (we had two sets of clothes) and get under the covers. You fell asleep shivering. The curfew was 10 pm.
Were the ordinary prisoners in the same place as the political prisoners?
There were ordinary prisoners in the White Gate, but most of them were kept separately. In some brigades they had put some common law prisoners in to get informers.
How many informers were there in a brigade?
Of the 80-100 prisoners in a brigade, 15-20 became informers. Under various pretexts. They were promised a transfer to a brigade with easier work, they were told that their sentence would be reduced by parole. But there was no question of parole. It was always additional. No one from the canal was ever released at the end of his sentence. Always, when you were nearing the end of your sentence, a paper would come with another 12 months, 24 months. And you stayed there with the other prisoners.
Were you able to keep in touch with your family while you were in prison?
Never. I only got one 5kg parcel… my mother brought it. But I was in the hole at the time. I never got to see her. That was the only contact.
How were you received by your family after your release? There are cases of former political prisoners who are ostracised by their own families because of the social implications of being a political prisoner. The kind of accusations: “I’m being discriminated against at work because of you, or the child can’t go to university because of you”, etc.
I was very well received by my family and relatives, who were even witnesses in the trial… It also happened that the investigator, who wanted to accuse me, had found a so-called relative and brought him to trial. The lawyer asked him to identify me on the witness stand. And then he said: “I know him, I spoke to him near the fountain at Băilești station”, he pointed to another person, about three people away from me. They all started laughing.
How did you and your colleagues in the PNȚ perceive Ceaușescu’s succession?
To quote a proverb: “the same old hat”… We knew that Ceaușescu had been involved in the peasant uprisings against collectivisation, that he had fired cannons at the peasants in Suraia and that he had been very tough in Dobrogea. He was a bit violent. After ’90, I went to check out a story that was supposed to have happened in 1958, in the village of Nămoloasa. A farmer had jumped in front of his car with his hair. Ceaușescu stuck his head out of the window and shouted: “I am Ceaușescu!”. “You can be anyone, I’ll break your head!” A few days later, all the villagers were taken to the outskirts of the village and eight of them were executed. With machine guns. That’s what happened.
You thought that this regime would collapse, when most people had already come to terms with the idea, or lived with the belief that the communist order was eternal. You were optimistic.
I thought it was impossible, but we never talked about such things in a group, only in private, either with Coposu, Diaconescu or Ionescu Galbeni. I wanted a restoration and a return to the democracy of the interwar period, when there were political parties, the royal house… even though a large part of the Romanian elite, whether political, cultural or academic, had been exterminated in the Romanian Gulag.
There is an episode in the book in which you recount how your wife was almost desperate when you told her that you were having trouble getting a passport to leave Romania…
The problem was that after 1972 a trial was being prepared against the PNȚ. I’m talking about Coposu, Diaconescu, Coconeț, who was also killed, which led to a halt in the investigation and the preparation of the trial. The PNT tried to regroup after ’64. I was only in contact with 2-3, so I knew about the others… I knew about Coposu, I knew that he was being followed by the Securitate… Coconet was my contact with Coposu and Diaconescu and Ionescu Galbeni… they met at Coconet’s house. There were discussions, recorded by the Securitate, and through them they tried to stage a new trial. I think that’s why Coconet was murdered, thrown from the 5th floor. Then I spoke to Coposu, and I said: ‘We have to continue the struggle in spite of this’. He said it was very difficult. I told him that we had to tell the West what was happening and that I would go to the West to do it… I began to ask for a retrial of the cases in which I had been wrongly convicted. I wanted to go to the West not only to fight for the PNT, but also to make the drama of the Romanians known.
“I am interested in who are the guilty and who are the victims”.
Let’s go back to September ’79. Tell us about the exile.
There was an active exile, but it was infiltrated by agents provocateurs, by secret informers who organised attacks, kidnappings… a constant struggle between foreign security and the exile… The second volume of the memoirs will cover the period of exile from 1944.
What can we expect of the second volume?
It will be a volume about the Romanian exile that has been active since the peace treaty. There will be letters exchanged between Iuliu Maniu and Gafencu, who represented Romania at the treaty. Then I will refer to the beginning of the Cold War between East and West, the period after 1948, when infiltration from West to East and from East to West began. I will talk about the paratroopers until 1953, the reorganisation of the exile, the espionage attempts, the creation of networks, the new Romanian National Council.
And your exile will be present, you understand, in the third volume?
Yes, in the last volume. If the second volume will have about 600 pages, in the third, in 1986, I have already written 500.
When you arrived in Paris in 1979, how was Romania perceived?
People abroad said: Romania is bad, people have nothing to eat, they are suffering. I said: I am interested in who are the perpetrators and who are the victims. That’s why I started working. From the second day of my exile. I worked during the day and wrote in the evenings and at weekends.
I read that you washed windows during your first year in Paris.
Yes, then I became a warehouse manager in a company, until it closed down, then I was put on technical unemployment, then I reached retirement age, and as a pensioner I received more than before… When I arrived in France, they told me I had to settle for refugee aid, but I knew my wife and daughter had to come. They came a year later, together with Radina and Borcea, on a list requested by King Michael.
Did you keep in touch with King Michael?
We met several times until 1988. Then I went to the Versoix house with Dumitru Ionescu, the president of the political prisoners in Switzerland. There he saw Seraphim, who is not even worthy of being called a bishop, with some acolytes. They were singing Christmas carols. He had been sent to the West for several years by the Securitate. The whole exile knew that he had been infiltrated. And since then I’ve had no contact with the royal family.
You managed to escape with several microfilms. In addition to the memory that helped you in this whole process of recovering history, you managed to preserve an entire archive through these microfilms. How did you manage to collect them?
I collected them by going to the building sites. I would talk to people, remember the events, and in the evening I would write down the names of those involved. I knew the torturers from prison. For Doina Jela’s Black Dictionary I gave more than 2,000 names of Securitate officers. There are many who now confirm that my lists are credible sources.
What was/is your relationship with Paul Goma in Paris?
Good relations, as before. But he is only interested in the Basarabian problem and his opponents in the field of writing. We took part in several actions and demonstrations together.
“I returned to the country at Coposu’s call”.
In 1983 you founded the Year of the Political Prisoner and two magazines.
In 1983 we organised several demonstrations in Paris, but we also published, together with some colleagues, some books that we sent to several heads of state and journalists: The Black Book of Romania (in Romanian, English, French and German), Le drame de la Roumanie, Tombs without a Cross (volume II; and also the first volume in French) or The Persecution of the Christian Church in Romania.
From 1980 to 1985 I edited The romanian struggle and from 1986 to 1990 Deșteaptă-te române. Moreover, the PNȚ was the only political party in exile that worked in an organised way, with a programme. The others did not want to form political organisations. I founded the PNȚ, with branches in America, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. About 100 members. I was elected General Secretary.
How did you keep in touch with Coposu in exile?
Hardly at all. But I knew what to do.
You sat in the same dock as Corneliu Coposu.
Yes, at the first trial in 1947, when they sentenced me to one and a half years and him to two years. They left him in Aiud because they wanted to use him in different trials after Maniu’s conviction. He did not agree to appear as a witness in any of these trials.
Neither did you. What was Coposu like as a man?
A very prepared man, a real politician, full of strength, energy… destroyed by prison and tobacco. I remember an episode from 1949. On 30 August, I went to get food to prepare for Aiud. I was followed by a man called Costea from the Securitate. I thought he was going to arrest me, so I jumped over a car, fell on my head and, covered in blood, went to see Coposu’s sisters. They gave me one of his shirts. I swam in it, it was so big.
Who called you in December 1989?
Coposu himself. I got a call: “Come to the country urgently, we need equipment”. I came straight away, I got a fax machine and other things, Air France gave me 200 kilos. I arrived in Otopeni on the first plane that landed on 6 January.
What was your first impression? It has been 10 years since you left. What was the first thing you did?
On 10 January, I registered my first political party, the PNȚCD, with the court. Then I went to see the reality. I followed the victims. I went to Timișoara, I got the lists of those who had been hospitalised, I went to Brasov, to Sibiu, to Cluj and then to Bucharest. We collected material and published the first album of the 1,243 dead in the so-called revolution, in reality a coup d’état.
“I have 14 years before I turn 100”
Why didn’t you stay?
How could I stay when Ion Lup, the secretary general of the PNT, was an informer, when the second secretary, Valentin Gabrielescu, was also an informer?
What did Coposu say about this situation in the party?
I told him that we had to deal with these infiltrators. It was also very difficult because they were targeting leadership positions. Coposu said “we don’t have the people”. I told him: “We don’t have them now, but we won’t have them tomorrow”. I left the country, even though six districts wanted to put me at the top of the list for the parliamentary elections. I refused. Just as I had refused in 1997 when I was offered the post of deputy minister. They made it conditional on my renouncing my French nationality. I said no. I couldn’t do that. These people saved me once. I’m both a French and a Romanian citizen.
You were always on the move…
I came and went a lot. During the miners’ war, Coposu called me at night and said: “We don’t know what’s going on. Go abroad immediately and keep in touch so that you can warn them”. There were rumours that Rațiu and Cîmpeanu had been arrested at the airport. I didn’t take the plane from Bucharest, I took the train to Budapest so as not to attract attention. From there I went to Paris. But all the time I was where I had to be, in contact only with people who mattered in the party. In fact, the 1992 congress was organised by me. There were 69 of us in the provisional leadership. Since Coposu refused to run, they chose between eight candidates. Rațiu came out, but I knew from the start that he wouldn’t do very well in the presidential election.
The PNTCD is in free fall. Isn’t that a painful observation?
They’ve been taken for a ride by Miluț. None of the old Tatarists who were active, programmatic and ideologically conscious are there any more. Milut gave some money, it’s true, a lot of money, to renovate the headquarters, and since then he has appropriated the party and its logo.
You took part in the extraordinary congress of the PNTCD on 26 September. What was decided and what do you think will happen to the party?
Sîrbu was elected party leader and Doru Năsui first vice-president. Only the programme and the statutes have been decided. We have not yet decided who we will support in the elections. But I had the feeling that the party was being revived.
You knew Ticu Dumitrescu well. Why do you think he attacked the PNTCD?
We had a very good relationship until 1964. He even stayed in my house when he came to Bucharest. But between 1964 and 1990 I never heard from him. There was a special episode in 1997, when he started to attack the PNTCD. He wanted a leading position in the party. First vice-president. At any cost. But I had agreed with Coposu that the Association of Political Prisoners would not play politics. It was a professional association to promote the rights of prisoners. If he’d given that up, he could have been elected to the party. Well, this episode made me a little sad. I went to see him in his Senate office. He showed me the files he had on some NCDP members. I said, “Make them public.” He said: “This is not the time!” And I replied: “So you want to blackmail?”
When do you think the outcome of the communist trial will be reached?
In 2004, together with seven other people, we opened the Criminal Trial of Communism in Romania. While others were talking about a moral trial, we opened a criminal trial. We have submitted the documentation, a very serious documentation, we have received the minutes, but nothing else. We are waiting. We have time, “knowing that the longest night is still daylight”.
You have read the Tismăneanu report. What do you think of it?
It’s pretty well documented. But I have another problem. A big one, and one of principle. The fact that Tismăneanu did it is an insult to political prisoners.
What do you think of Doru Mărieș’s efforts to find out the truth about the events of 1989?
It seems to me that he is doing a very good job, many people should have done it…, I tried to do my best.
People talk more and more about the reluctance of recent generations to condemn communism. Beyond this indifference, and also because of the social context, there are still voices that suggest that things were better before. What message do you have for these nostalgics?
Even in France, after 2000, people talk less and less about the political victims in the East. They used to be more interested, they helped us more. But we have to put our own house in order. In Romania, freedom of expression has changed a lot. But that’s all. Nothing is being done. What’s more, the mafia of the descendants of the old ones continues. My message is simple. A nation that ignores and forgets its past is slowly disappearing. The fact that this manipulation of history after 1945 is so easy to overlook is a great crime. Whatever the ideology of the present, it must not be forgotten that this period was a national crime, a genocide committed against the Romanian people. But… I can contradict them both objectively and subjectively. First of all, less than two weeks after its publication, I was told that this memoir was first in the non-fiction category and second in the memoir category in terms of sales. The book is selling. Who is buying it? You? Besides, I still have 14 years to live and plenty of books to publish.
“On 29 July 1964, four of us were shouted down and taken with our luggage to a room in the gate of Fort 13, where we found another 15 to 20 prisoners, some of whom had been given their civilian clothes, which were mouldy and tattered. Release was certain… In the afternoon, around 3 p.m., we were taken outside to sign a payroll. We received 65 lei, the price for working on the crates. Others in the provinces also received C.F.R. tickets, all the way home. At another table there were other signatures… I asked one of them what he was asking for, and when he replied that it was a statement that he would not say where he had been and what he had seen, I left the queue and said to the captain: “I am not asking for this because I have not asked to be released, and certainly not on parole, after you have not told me why I was arrested innocently. On the contrary, I will tell everyone where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. Why, are you ashamed of what you have done…”. When my colleagues were leaving, I was given my release certificate and I also filled a truck with about 40 released prisoners who were taken to the end of tram 17″.
(Interview by Adrian Spîrchez – Cultural Observatory no. 494, October 2009)
[1] Cicerone Ionițoiu – Memoirs. From the land of barbed wire, Polirom Publishing House, 2009, pp. 267-268