Tache Rodas – the man who went through four re-educations undefeated

Tache Rodas had also been sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour during the Franco dictatorship. He was released following a conditional amnesty. After 23 August 1944, he was again interned in a concentration camp and then released.

Arrested again in 1948 and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

When he was to be released again, his old 15-year sentence was reactivated.

He was released again following a decree releasing Greek citizens from prison on the promise of repatriation.

Tache Rodas was also a Greek citizen, his father being of Greek origin, who was repatriated immediately after the decree was issued.

All he had left in Ploiești was his dear mother, who was waiting for her son to be released from prison.

Tache Rodas escaped from prison after a hard and prolonged struggle with the Security Service, who tried to arrest him…

There was no way he could go to Greece. The Security Service delayed his departure until 1958, when the second great persecution broke out. He was arrested, sentenced again and released in July 1964.

In 1949, in Târgșor prison, he refused all the re-education torturers who tried to offer him re-education and was immediately placed in solitary confinement.

The Security Service forces, through their agents, in particular Stoian Ion, followed his hardline attitude in Târgșor prison, and so he was sent (in complete secrecy) with several of his comrades to Pitești prison, at the hands of Țurcanu, to be dehumanised.

From Pitești he went to Gherla, where he was again dehumanised.

I don’t know if there have been other people who have gone through all four “re-educations”, Târgșor, Pitești, Gherla and Aiud, to endure all the trials and come out with a clean face. Tache Rodas achieved this feat.

(Gheorghe Andreica – Târgșorul nou. The imprisonment of minors 1948-1950, Printeuro Publishing House, Ploiești, 2000, pp. 119-120)