The death of the student Niță Cornel

It was towards the end of February 1950 when one day a young student with a child’s face was brought into the room. He must have been 19-20 years old1. His name: Niță Cornel.

He was taken directly to the “re-education fires”, that is to say, to terrible tortures with the rest of us.

We spent the whole night under terrible tortures inflicted by Țurcanu himself or by his team of more than thirty torturers, all of us “brainwashed” and turned into docile robots with no will and no initiative other than that imposed by Țurcanu.

The floor was splattered with blood, the clothes of the tortured – the same.

The opening time passed, the porridge was served and we were forced to stand with our hands in our pockets, staring at the light bulb, without making the slightest movement to the right or left.

Țurcanu left the room, but in a minute or two he came back like a storm:

-Well, pay attention. We are in control. When I shout, everyone will stand up.

After a few minutes, the first guard opens the door and says to Țurcanu:

– You’ve entered the station! He hadn’t even finished saying it when the door opened wide and two men in civilian clothes and two men in military clothes, both with high ranks, entered the room.

I recognised the civilian at the front, who looked like the head of the “delegation”, by his face (he was a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and their pictures were hanging everywhere).

His name was Iosif Kishinevschi, of Jewish nationality.

The second civilian was Alexandru Dumitrescu, the third in military uniform was General Nikolschi, and the second in uniform was the head of security in Pitești.

– Well, what’s it like? asked Iosif Kishinevschi mockingly.

At that moment the young student, who had been brought into the room only the day before, jumped up from his seat next to the desk and said to Iosif Kishinevschi:

I am the prisoner Niță Cornel. How can this be? Don’t you see? And he pointed to the others. We are being tortured.

Only then did I dare to look at the faces of those being tortured. They were simply disfigured. Their faces were swollen, their eyes swollen and black from the blows. Some still had blood coming out of their mouths. It was a terrible sight. I was also tortured. I must have looked like the others.

– Are you complaining that you were beaten? That’s nothing. You were brought here to be killed! Say ‘thank you’ for the ‘humane’ regime we’re giving you!

With that, they all turned and hurried out of the room to avoid any reaction from the tortured.

We were all stunned by the reaction and the “faces” of these inspectors. The fear of the tortured reached its peak.

We had no one to complain to. We felt lost.

Țurcanu quietly closed the door of the room after the inspectors, then he looked cruelly at Niță Cornel and began with the most vile and despicable curses in his repertoire.

-Take off your clothes immediately!

So poor Niță was stripped naked. His hands were tied behind his back by two of Țurcanu’s robots. A thick wood was placed between his hands to hold him up, and the two lifted him to the level of the upper floor until he hung there in the most painful position.

Then Țurcanu took a thicker club (about the size of my hand) and began to beat Niță.

Then he turned to the others, who were watching in horror, and said:

– This is what will happen to him who dares to tell.

Țurcanu struck his face with increasing ferocity.

With each blow on the cheek, his head was tossed to the right or left, and it seemed as if his flesh-dried throat would break and he would fly away, rolling.

I heard his facial bones crushed by a harder blow. I heard a dull, muffled sound like the cracking of a thin walnut shell. Another blow knocked several teeth out of his mouth.

His eyes were bleeding, ready to pop out of their sockets, horror and fear written all over them.

He began to vomit blood and a trickle of blood dripped from his ear. I can’t tell how long this martyr’s ordeal lasted, as each moment seemed like an eternity.

At one point he dropped his head, signalling death.

Even so, his head lolling lifelessly, he was struck several more times until one of those holding him up said to Țurcanu:

– He is dead.

-Fuck him! What if he’s dead? One legionnaire less.

The lifeless body and the tender face of the child, crushed to a terrible pulp. Blood and flesh mixed together, now lying in the middle of the room. But Țurcanu’s lust for torture had not yet subsided, and he stood watching like a beast, ready to tear others apart.

Get a blanket!

On the spot they brought a blanket, wrapped the body in it and carried it out into the corridor, where the guards took it away.

(Gheorghe Măruță – Testimonies from the hell of the communist prisons, edited by Gheorghe Andreica)

[1] Niță Cornel, born on 31 May 1927, was 23 years old at the time.