The Aiud re-education, the continuation of the Pitești re-education

On another occasion I said that the re-education in Aiud was a continuation of that which had taken place in Pitești more than ten years earlier, in the sense that here they were trying to complete what had begun there: the total and irreparable compromise of people and their ideals.

Of course, because the two experiments took place in different historical contexts, and because the people on whom they were carried out were different, there were a number of differences between them, in addition to the obvious similarities. In Pitești, for example, where the subjects were all young, recently arrested and therefore physically robust, and with excellent morale because they were all strongly anchored in an ideal in which they firmly believed, methods of extraordinary ferocity were used against them to overcome their stubbornness. Through constant terror, almost all of them were stripped of their personalities in a matter of months and turned into veritable robots who would do whatever was ordered without a murmur. One unfortunate man who had the misfortune to pass through this hell told me that in the evening, when they were ordered to prepare for the torture session, they all, with the docility of trained animals, took a sock from their leg and stuffed it into their mouths to stifle their screams. Moreover, some of them were so dehumanised that they no longer had to be taken by force by the executioners to have their heads stuck in the dirt trough, but were simply ordered to “get in the trough” so that they could go and stick their heads in their own urine and excrement like real automatons. This was in Pitești. In Aiud, however, there was no need to be so harsh, because the people here had neither the physical nor the moral resistance of those in Pitești. Most of them were old men, physically and morally exhausted by their long imprisonment, and therefore much more vulnerable than those in Pitești. Here, only apparently milder measures such as isolation, cold, starvation, denial of medical care to the sick, promises of release, blackmail, etc. were enough to make people surrender. And many did. Some did so decently, with a kind of shame, reluctantly giving up their past and their dreams. “What do you want, my love, I can’t go on. Forgive me. It was my destiny,” one of them replied to an intransigent man who blamed him for the fall. Others did it with a fierce indifference, as if it did not concern them and their lifelong struggle, and still others did it with a kind of bitterness (the sensuality of the collapse I mentioned), with hatred even against themselves and especially against those who did not do as they did.

There is another difference between the two experiments. In Pitești, in addition to the main purpose of re-education, which was to physically and mentally maim the victims and kill their ideals, the aim was also to obtain information about what the re-educated subjects had concealed during the Securitate investigations. To this end, in the first phase of re-education at Pitești, known as “external debunking”, the victims were subjected to rigorous investigations into what they had not told the Securitate. The information obtained in this way was centralised and sorted by Țurcanu, who periodically passed it on to the Ministry of the Internal Affairs. This method proved to be very productive, as more than half of the arrests made by the Securitate in the period 1950-1955 and even later were based on information obtained from those under investigation during the external demolitions. In this way, the Securitate gained valuable information about the resistance groups still at large and was able to plan its arrests according to the danger and importance of the groups. Some of those targeted by the Securitate were left at large to be tracked down in order to discover new links until 1958-59, when they were finally arrested. In the Aiud re-education, this phase of “external debunking” did not exist, because by that time (1962) the resistance movements in the country had been crushed and the well-organised Securitate now had other means of informing and monitoring the citizens. And then, in Aiud in 1962, the aim was quite different from that in Pitești in 1949-1950. Here it was a question of killing consciences and irreparably compromising people who, given the circumstances, should have been released. For these reasons, Aiud placed particular emphasis on the second phase of re-education, which in Pitești was called “internal debunking” and in which the subjects were forced to discover or invent their greatest and most terrible vices and sins at their own expense and at the expense of their loved ones. Most of the people in Pitești, for example, even those who had no sisters, raped their sisters, all the mothers were whores and incestuous, sleeping with their own sons, and the fathers had to be excretes, depraved and drunkards. It didn’t matter that it was all nonsense and none of it true.

What mattered was that they had to be said once, twice, nine times, in front of others, until even the person who had invented them began to believe that they were true. It’s a good thing that the Aiud police officers in charge of the re-education were well aware of what had happened in Pitești and how people react when put in extreme situations, because they used the methods tested in Pitești. As I have shown on another occasion, at Aiud they first worked on the personalities, the spiritual leaders, who were examples for the great mass of other prisoners to follow. By speculating on their weaknesses, frailties and fears, they managed to get some of them to make aberrant statements, which the weekly “Timpul” now publishes as undeniable truths. Just like in Pitești, they have invented all kinds of vices and sins, each one more terrible and unbelievable, at their own expense and at the expense of the Legionary Movement and its leaders.

According to these fabrications, all Legionaries necessarily had criminal instincts and hooligan tendencies, they were all drunkards and troublemakers, causing chaos wherever they went. In these accounts, all their actions and activities were distorted and portrayed in reverse to what they really were. All the legionary labour camps were, according to these apostates, nests of debauchery and orgies, and ideal places for future assassins to perfect their training.

Here, for example, is what is said about the Carmen Sylva camp: “The place where this camp was organised was donated by the family of the very rich Movilă. Among those who visited the camp were a large number of ladies and young ladies from high society who, out of curiosity, wanted to meet the young “crazy” people looking for fun. A series of gallant adventures ensued, especially with many of the legionary chiefs, who were not in great demand.

If this was also a way of perfecting closer cooperation between the legionaries and the bourgeoisie, it is no less true that in the camp, and especially here at Carmen Sylva, the training of future assassins was perfected. In previous episodes I have reproduced at length several such absurd statements, so I consider any further comment superfluous.

(Demostene Andronescu – Re-education at Aiud)