The death of Doctor Simionescu
…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 entered the cabin, flanking him…
Less than a minute later, Simionescu shouted out of the cabin and took off at a fast pace, running towards the “Tașaul moustache”.[1]
At a certain point, the two came out of the cabin and sat quietly waiting, seeing the doctor’s belt on the door. When the doctor did not come out, one of them looked over the door into the cabin and saw that it was empty. He said something to the other and then they looked nervously around the yard to see Simionescu. They saw him running away, quite far away, more than the distance between the pursuers and the “Tașaul moustache”. They began to shout:
– Look, he’s running away! Look, he’s running away!
The soldier on the parapet didn’t aim to shoot, but sounded the alarm. Then a sergeant arrived in great haste, took off his boots to be lighter, climbed up the sentry post and took the machine gun from the soldier’s hands.
After taking aim, he fired two shots and Dr. Simionescu fell dead. Then the alarm was sounded throughout the camp.
We prisoners were forced to lie face down on the ground. While we were lying on the ground, I heard Brigadier Bogdănescu say to the sergeant who had shot Simionescu:
– You killed him, sir!
-Yes, but I’m not guilty. You are guilty! (…)
On the Sunday before his death, Simionescu’s wife brought her husband a large parcel of food. This parcel was divided among Simionescu’s torturers, and the rest of us were told:
-“You guys have no right to eat from this alms…”
(Testimony of Vasile Mocanu – Testimonies from the hell of the communist prisons, by Gheorghe Andreica)
[1] The Tașaul Moustache was an earthen embankment used as a railway embankment that ran along the Tașaul Lake.