Ioan Simionescu – Holy unmercenary in the communist dungeons
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 Cuza and had therefore not gone over to Codreanu). Transferred from Aiud, after a short stay in Poarta-Albă, he arrived on 5 May 1951 at the Peninsula Labour Colony, where, as in all the places of detention he had passed through, he had won the admiration of all for his extraordinary strength of character.
Bogdănescu wanted to turn him into an informer and concentrated all his efforts on him. Re-education began from the very first night. The next day, Dr Simionescu presented himself in the infirmary with three broken ribs and black marks and coagulated blood all over his body. Cursed by the camp director, Lieutenant Georgescu, who was present at the consultation, Dr Simionescu realised that he could expect nothing from the authorities. Night after night, the torture continued in barrack 13. Forced by his re-educators to ask for food parcels at home, he had to lie to his wife and tell her that everything was fine. The food package was also opened in barrack 13, and the re-educators who had pushed Dr Simionescu under the table cursed him (quoted from D. Bacu):
“Enough of the sweat of the workers, you bandit. When you were on the bench, workers were shot for fighting for a piece of bread. Isn’t that right, Minister? Now it’s your turn to suffer to pay for your past sins”.
When the doctor felt that he had reached the end of his tether, he decided to commit suicide. And he did it in front of everyone by throwing himself onto barbed wire. This is the version given in D. Bacu’s book. Others say that Bogdănescu, angry at the lack of success in re-educating Dr. Simionescu, one day lost his head and pushed him into the barbed wire, and that only then did the doctor call out to the guard: Shoot!
The two versions are not antinomical, because in any case the murderer of Dr. Simionescu is his torturer, who either pushed him with his hand or made him do it himself.
It was impossible for Canal to keep such a death a secret. His wife found out and made a fuss at the Ministry of the Interior. Apparently they would have arrested her too, but it was too late to suppress the news, especially as a Western radio station (Voice of America, B.B.C. or Free Europe) would have devoted a programme to Bogdănescu’s murder. So Dr Simionescu’s death would have saved dozens and dozens of lives, because it didn’t take long for the re-education to stop. But even without this victim, the Pitești experience had become vulnerable from the moment it was expanded. The absolute secret could not be kept in a completely isolated prison like Pitești, except in Gherla, which had a factory, and certainly not in an open place like Peninsula. Screams could be heard from barrack to barrack. The inmates eventually found out what was going on in barracks 13 and 14, and none of them left their barracks after curfew, nor were they lured out by any student. There were also occasional family visits. Contact with outsiders was also maintained through the free technicians.
It is therefore probable that Dr Simionescu’s death merely accelerated a process that would have occurred in any case, namely the filtering of news of re-education to the outside world.
(Virgil Ierunca – The Pitești Phenomenon)