Dr. Ioan Simionescu (en)

Ion Simionescu was born on 30 September 1894, in the family of the priest Ion Simionescu from com. Erbiceni – Iași. He graduated from the Infantry Military School. He fought in the war and was decorated with the orders “Steaua României” in the rank of knight and “Coroana României” in the rank of officer. Graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in 1926. After obtaining his doctorate, he was appointed, by competitive examination, as a doctor at the Mixed Hospital in Chilia Nouă, Ismail County (now in the Republic of Moldova), from 1927 to 1934, during which time he specialised in […]

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It was a clear summer morning and the camp seemed deserted. Almost everyone had gone out to work, and inside the wire there were only two or three brigades that didn’t come out until 5 o’clock in the afternoon: the night shift, an interior construction and maintenance brigade, and half of the student construction brigade, who for some reason I can’t remember had also stayed inside. Those of us who went out on the second shift were sent out in the morning between 11 and 3 to patrol the interior and help with the construction of the barracks.

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One Sunday morning we were rushed to the set for the count. Using the same trick they used when they couldn’t get the “count”, they kept us in the sun and hungry for a long time. Then they ordered us to sit down. At some distance from us, while prisoners from other brigades[1] were walking around freely, an ambush took place. Through the dust and the crowd I saw a group of men dragging one of them towards Brigade 13. Everyone on the plateau was ordered to go to the barracks. We new arrivals were told to go to the […]

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…The day after the incident, I was working at one end of the site and was facing the team where Dr. Simionescu was working. I noticed that he had asked his supervisors for permission to go to the toilet. He went to the toilet cubicles with two other people. The latrine cubicles were located in a more remote part of the compound and had doors that were only half a man’s height, reaching up to his waist. Dr. Simionescu entered one of these cubicles and pulled his trouser belt visibly over the door of the cubicle. His two attendants also […]

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…Some data about the shooting of Dr. Simionescu, data later completed by Raica Aurel, eyewitness. Autumn 1951, October-November. In the Peninsula colony, the brigades of re-educated students know no rest. The kneeling of all bandits is still a desideratum. There are still many of them, and Bogdănescu and his men are determined to be constantly active and vigilant. One evening, Dr. Simionescu, the undisputed leader of the 22nd, is brought into the brigade for disciplinary reasons. He was not a legionnaire, just a nationalist, and he had to know a lot. And not so much current information as old, compromising […]

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A leader of the nationalist generation after the First World War and a member of the Goga-Cuza government in 1938, Dr. Simionescu was best known professionally. A professor of surgery and a famous surgeon, he managed to save lives even in prison (in Jilava, for example, he operated on a phlegmon with generalised sepsis with the aid of a broken window). Doctor Simionescu was apparently arrested because of his contacts with personalities of the Peasant Party. (He had nothing to do with the legionnaires; since 1924 he had been one of those, along with Dănulescu, who had remained loyal to […]

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…The political officer Chirion committed other crimes. He transferred Dr. Simionescu to the brigade of the torturer Bogdănescu to be killed. Dr. Simionescu, a native of Turnu Măgurele, a former Minister of Health, had been the leader of the 1922 generation. His fault? He had told another prisoner the news that he had probably heard from a snitch: that Charles de Gaulle had come to power in France. The rumour spread through the camp and the political prisoners had put high hopes in General de Gaulle. Chirion often spread false news to demoralise the prisoners. Doctor Simionescu was tortured day […]

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