Paul Limberea – a man who became a “wreck” because of his imprisonment

One evening the door opened and a guard whispered to me to take my bag and follow him. I rejoiced, wished those who had stayed good luck and did it all without a murmur (…).

I was taken to the guardhouse, where some of my colleagues and friends had been taken.

We were not allowed to speak. I looked at them with pity and sympathy. I saw again Cîrciumaru Tudorel, Baciu, Rădoi, Ivănescu, Ispas, Voiculescu, Paul Limbera and others whom I knew had been arrested. Next to them were several women, a student and an old man, their former hosts, as well as brothers, friends, parents, all arrested as instigators or accomplices.

They were unrecognisable: weak, old, crumpled and exhausted after seven months in a cell. They looked at me with surprise. None of them had expected to see me here. Tears were streaming down their cheeks. In fact, we were all crying. Poor Limbera, my good friend and colleague, had a shaved head and his beard was trembling. He had been big, strong and bony.

Now he was a wreck. He would have needed more substantial food, but the rations he received in prison were not enough, so he died too. I managed to exchange a few words with him, very hard, but I managed. Some of those who guarded us were people in the true sense of the word, with good hearts, people with whom we could communicate.

Paul was depressed, he felt he was dying. His eyes were sunken in their sockets, his lips were puckered, his nose was hanging over his mouth, and every now and then he would sigh deeply. He spoke softly, afraid to break the silence of the prison. He asked me when I was arrested if I knew anything about his parents, what I knew about my fiancée and other colleagues in the prison. I could hardly answer him.

From here we were loaded into a van and taken to Calea Rahovei prison. It was November 1948.

(Gheorghe Bâgu, Confessions in the Dark. Re-education at Pitești, Technical Publishing House, Bucharest, 1993, pp. 26-27)