The demolition of idols
One fine morning, shortly after the rumour had spread that re-education had begun, the door of our cell opened and one of those polite and educated platoons, who we had already heard had doubled the guards in the corridors, asked us, somewhat awkwardly, which of us wanted to go to the club.
We looked at each other confusedly and all looked questioningly at the platoon leader. One of us ventured, “What do you mean, the club?” “What, you don’t know?” the platoon leader asked, feigning surprise. “There are rooms in the prison where you can meet other prisoners from other cells, talk to them, play games or read.”
The temptation was great. Most of us were book lovers, some of us even avid readers, and now, after years of not seeing a printed word, we were being offered the opportunity to read. I found myself murmuring: “And lead us not into temptation,” because I knew this was the beginning of the fall. At first you make a seemingly innocent compromise, and then you can’t stop. After we had waited for a while, the guard told us to think carefully, he would be back in 10 minutes. And he left for another cell, leaving the door to our cell ajar. After he left, one of us, Horia Gherman, suddenly decided: “I’m going to see what this is all about. I have nothing to lose. If I don’t like it, I’ll ask to be taken back.” . Knowing him as I did (he was proud, hated detention and had no scruples when it came to his own interests), I was sure he would never come back. And I wasn’t wrong. I never saw him again, but I had heard that he was one of the leaders of re-education. Another one of us joined him, and when the platoon leader came back, they went with others from other cells to the so-called club. In the evening, before closing time, they were brought back. They told us in detail what had happened. They were taken with twenty or thirty other prisoners, all from the cell, to a specially equipped room with tables and benches in an adjoining building and left to talk freely, unsupervised. There was not much reading that first day, although there were a few pamphlets of communist propaganda and literature on the tables. The next day the story repeated itself. The two were taken away again and brought back in the evening. And so on for several days. Until one evening they did not come back.
A guard came and took their luggage and we haven’t seen them since. I found out later that they were taken to another section, where a special regime was set up for them, and they underwent a kind of re-education training with political officers.
This first attempt to draw people into re-education ended with modest results for the re-educators.
In fact, they didn’t expect anything spectacular. It was just the beginning, and it was natural that people were reluctant. They just needed to get a few people on their side to train for future actions. And they had succeeded.
As soon as this first phase was over, we “resisters”, those of us who had refused to go to the “club”, had our regime tightened. Most of us were isolated, either in the Zarca or in certain special sections of the mobile phone. From time to time, political officers or simply their subordinates would pass by our cells and ask if any of us had changed our minds and wanted to go out to the club. And every time one of us would give in. But it was not by these methods that the re-educators succeeded in breaking the moral resistance of those who preferred to stay in prison rather than escape. At the time of their nefarious deeds, they had a “secret weapon” that none of us knew about. They had previously succeeded in destroying our idols without our knowledge.
The process was not new. It had been used successfully in Pitești. There, before the re-education began, all those who were considered the leaders of the student body, those who had some authority (moral, intellectual or simply hierarchical) over them, were rounded up and, in just a few months of continuous torture, transformed into real human wrecks who mechanically did what they were told. They were then clubbed and taken into the midst of those whose idols they had been, in order to re-educate them.
In Aiud the same thing was done, only the methods used were different: blackmail, threats, promises and, above all, the creation of problems of conscience. I already mentioned in the last chapter that personalities, that is to say those who, by virtue of their political, intellectual or moral position, had an influence on the other prisoners, began to disappear from our midst. Thus, almost legendary personalities such as the priest Dumitrescu-Borșa, Victor Biriș, the prince Alexandru Ghica, Niculae Petrașcu, Victor Vojen, the poet Radu Gyr and many, many others were taken away and taken around the country (to towns, construction sites, markets, etc.) to learn about the “achievements” and the “well-being” and “happiness” of the people. Some of them were even taken to Bucharest, to the centre, where influential people with important positions in the party and state apparatus spoke to them. Some of them were openly told: You have to admit defeat. You wanted to do something, but you took the wrong road, the road of murder and betrayal (who said anything about murder and betrayal!) What you wanted to do, or said you wanted to do, we are going to do. A country, as you used to say, “like the holy sun in the sky”.
Now we want to regain our independence from Moscow (it was at the time of the denunciation of the Valev plan) and for this we need peace, consensus (note the historical roots of consensus). The West, which we want to get closer to, demands that we liberate you. And we will do so, but only after we have neutralised you.
This must have been the sound of the speech given by one of the party and state elders to those who had to be persuaded to commit suicide. And such a speech convinced some, but not others. The latter, including the imposing figure of Prince Alexandru Ghica, were brought back to Aiud and left to the “care” of Crăciun. But we will not deal with them now, but with the others, those who fell; not to blame them, but to explain the psychic mechanisms of their fall and, above all, to highlight the effects that their fall had on the other prisoners. And since I know the case of the poet Radu Gyr better than anyone else, I will recount it.
It was the summer of 1962. Re-education was taking its natural course, without much success. One day the door of the cell I was in opened, and this time I was ordered to go to the club. I didn’t have much time to wonder, because the guard who opened the door seemed very excited and in a hurry. I went out on the gangway (I was on the third floor) and noticed that all over the cell, on all floors, doors were opening and people were eager to get out. We were taken for a long walk to a room in a building next to the cell block where several hundred prisoners were crowded together. People had been brought there from all the wards, the barracks, the cell block and even the factory. The vast majority, however, belonged to the so-called “resistance” category. At one point a guard announced at the door:
“Silence, here comes comrade commander!”
In fact, after a few seconds at the door, he appeared, full of himself as usual, accompanied by his staff, Colonel Crăciun. In his hand he had several sheets of paper folded in such a way that it looked as if he wanted to draw attention to them.
After ordering us to take our seats on the benches, he looked over our heads for a few seconds and then, to our astonishment, began to recite a poem by Gyr. He recited it correctly, without stumbling, with calm intonation and without emphasis. It was obvious that he had learnt it especially for this performance. When he finished, he looked around the room again and asked, “Well, did you like it? Beautiful poetry, isn’t it?”. And to emphasise the point, he repeated the last verse, this time with more composure:
“You are not defeated when you bleed, even if your eyes are in tears. The most bitter defeats are the renunciations of dreams”.
– “Well,” he said, looking triumphantly over us, “you know that old Gyr has given up the dream. He had no time to savour the effect of the blow, which he had so skilfully prepared, for the reply shot out like a boomerang from a corner of the room:
– “So he’s defeated. What’s the matter? Some die in battle!”
Colonel Christmas was taken aback by the reply, he started to reply, but realising that he might end up with his prestige tarnished by an argument with the ruthless interlocutor he had identified, he gave up. Looking around the room again for someone to read the letter to, he stopped at the former secretary-general of the Bucharest Student Centre, Tănase Rădulescu. Rădulescu had been imprisoned in Russia for several years, and when he returned home in 1955 he was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour for his past political activities.
A man of integrity, a great admirer of Gyr, whom he also knew personally, he was considered one of the most hardened ‘resisters’ to re-education. Staring at him, Colonel Crăciun said: “What do you say, Tase? (he liked to call prisoners by their first names). Are you going to read the letter?
The man agreed and, obviously excited, took hold with trembling fingers of the sheets of paper he had been leafing through, anxious to get to his signature. After examining it carefully, he concluded to himself: “Yes, it’s Radu Gyr’s signature”.
“Read it!” the colonel urged him. And with a trembling voice, Tănase Rădulescu began to read. As we would later realise, after hearing other such ‘self-demonstrations’, this letter from Gyr was typical. The re-educators had imposed certain points to be dealt with. First you had to give some details about your marital status, then the circumstances of your entry into political life (in Gyr’s case, into the Legionary Movement), then you had to pontificate in the strongest possible terms about your past and all your previous beliefs, and categorically dissociate yourself from them.
The legionaries had to condemn the memory of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the peasants had to glorify the treachery of Maniu and Mihalache, the liberals had to slander the greatest exploiters of the country, the Brătien family, etc. Then you had to praise the Communist Party and the achievements of the regime against which, like the criminal you were, you rose up. Finally, this sinister farce called ‘self-demonstration’ had to end with a promise to the people and the working class that you would spare nothing… etc.
In Gyr’s letter, all these points were dealt with methodically, as if to set an example for those who would follow. Throughout the reading there was dead silence in the hall. But I could hear the creaking beams of a fortress I had thought impregnable.
Indeed, after reading Gyr’s letter, the ranks of the ‘resisters’ began to thin. And they will continue to dwindle in the days and months to come, as we witness the demolition of more idols.
The following night, in the solitude of my cell, I remembered the words of a friend. His own, or chosen by him from some book:
“Don’t make idols out of people that are still alive”.
(Demostene Andronescu – Re-education in Aiud)