The doctor who carried his cross like Christ

One Sunday morning we were rushed to the set for the count.

Using the same trick they used when they couldn’t get the “count”, they kept us in the sun and hungry for a long time. Then they ordered us to sit down.

At some distance from us, while prisoners from other brigades[1] were walking around freely, an ambush took place.

Through the dust and the crowd I saw a group of men dragging one of them towards Brigade 13. Everyone on the plateau was ordered to go to the barracks.

We new arrivals were told to go to the laundry and stay there. Suddenly I heard a terrible scream from the bedroom. It was the cry of a man being tortured.

In a state of rebellion I left the laundry room because the guards (also prisoners) were not there. I went into the bedroom and this is what I saw:

On the bed at the back of the bedroom was the man who had been dragged away earlier by that team of bastards. Some were holding him by the legs, some by the hands, and some were beating him from both sides with broom handles, shovel handles and whatever else they could get their hands on.

The one who stood out in beating the kidnapped man was Pertie Paul – the room leader. This Pertie Paul was a young man of medium height with a shameful face and was beyond cruel.

He boasted loudly that he was the leader of a nationalist-peasant formation.

I was noticed… On the spot several re-educated men rushed towards me, cursed me and tried to catch me. I quickly ran back into the laundry room and closed the door from the inside…

I soon found out that the person being so cruelly tortured was the famous Dr. Simionescu, a leading hero of the 1922 generation, then almost 60 years old.

***

One day, on the way to work, we had to cross the distance between the brick kilns.

I saw how Dr. Simionescu was pushed under a large beam and then beaten with cudgels so that he had to carry it alone on his back.

It seemed to me then that this hero of the generation of 1922 was like Jesus Christ climbing the cross on Calvary…

(Testimony of Vasile Mocanu – Testimonies from the hell of the communist prisons, by Gheorghe Andreica)

[1] The action took place in brigades 13-14 of the Peninsula camp.