The ordeal of the martyr Niță Cornel

The climax of this Calvary, however, was the punishment of poor Niță Cornel on the evening of 28 February 1950, a moment which, with its tragic end, led to our removal and dispersal to another section.

The evening show was over and, after closing time, Țurcanu again mobilised his team for operations. He had to extract some statements from the young man from Bacău, who had not yet been persuaded to tell everything he knew or suspected.

After a few questions, accompanied by the usual threats, Țurcanu, seeing that the answer was unsatisfactory, turned the crowd against him. He threw a few punches and pushed him into a circle of six or seven torturers, who attacked him with fists and feet, bouncing him from one to the other like a ball, until he fell, dazed. They poured water over him to wake him up and gave him a little time to decide whether he wanted to talk or not.

He had to say what he knew about the killing of a Soviet soldier in his part of the country and whether he had been involved in this political crime. There must have been some information about Cornel’s involvement in the affair and Țurcanu wanted to get confirmation from him, but the poor boy either didn’t know or was afraid to say anything, but he stubbornly refused to say anything and would only say: “I don’t know anything!”

When they saw that he wouldn’t talk, they began to beat him on the soles of his feet without taking off his shoes. The blows he received through his shoes were much harder, because the pain was mainly in his head; then they hit him again with their fists until he became unconscious again.

Țurcanu was furious when he saw that he could not get a word out of him. He had never seen such resistance from any of the ones tortured before, and here was a 19-20 year old boy receiving the cruelest of beatings with only the slightest groan of pain.

We who had witnessed this scene of horror, which had been going on for several hours, had our souls in a state of suspense, not knowing how far the terrible maltreatment of a human being could go.

But the bestiality of the executioners surpassed all imagination in the torture they inflicted on the poor child.

After giving him a little time to recover, during which Turcanu paced furiously, thinking of a new method of mutilation, we hear him give the order to have his hands tied behind his back and beckon to Vasile Pușcașu, the beast who had the greatest strength of all, to lift him up.

Pușcașu climbed to his feet on the edge of the bed, grabbed his bound hands, twisted them and suspended him in the air in a position that suggested the image of the crucifixion.

The poor child, with his head completely buried in his chest, still had the strength to utter a heart-rending cry as his arms were twisted, and then struggled desperately for air.

Around him, four or five torturers were beating him with clubs, with terrible sadism, over his head, over his legs, in a hellish lust for the destruction of life.

After a few dozen blows, some with the tip of the club in his stomach and chest, they let him fall from a height.

He collapsed inert, face down, unable to move from his position. They untied his hands, which were flailing about his body, his knuckles completely smashed, and after pouring another cup of water over his head, dragged him onto an iron bed in the middle of the room.

He could barely breathe. After a while he became delirious. He must have been bleeding internally. He kept talking, and the men around him made fun of his nonsense.

Țurcanu grimly commented on the “bandit’s” stubbornness and pounded his fist on his chest to make him talk:

– I will show him, bastard! Does he think he’s playing with me? He’ll see who’s the toughest!…

He was boiling with envy that “HE, ȚURCANU” could be so confronted!

The curfew had been ringing for a long time, and we had all gone to bed without sleep.

The watchman who had stayed on duty was supposed to give Cornel some overnight care.

But there was no need, because shortly afterwards he fell into a coma.

Obviously alarmed and not knowing what to do, the watchman plucked up courage and woke up Țurcanu, who got up and let Gherman and Nuți Pătrășcanu, who were medical students, give him artificial respiration, which probably hastened his death.

I had pulled the blanket over my head, pretending to be asleep, but I was terrified underneath it, watching this terrible scene: a man whose body was crushed by the blows, whose arms were completely dislocated, dying, being mistreated until the last moment of his life, with these breathing movements that now seemed so grotesque.

When they realised he was dead, they began to panic.

Gherman, Roșca and Pușcașu ran around him in a panic, trying to wipe away the traces of violence, washing the blood from his body and legs, but the bruises, which were now more pronounced, could not be concealed.

Only Țurcanu remained seemingly calm, walking towards the door he had knocked on to inform the militiaman.

The cynical words with which he announced the death of the poor victim are engraved in my heart:

– “Chief, tell the doctor that the heart of a ‘bandit’ has stopped beating!”

The doctor came and, after checking his pulse, they put him on a stretcher and took him out of the room. They passed my bed by the door, where I lay curled up in horror, with the blanket over my head, lest I should be discovered to have witnessed this scene, which would have filled even the hardest of hearts with horror.

(Justin Ștefan Paven – My God, why have You forsaken me? Reeducation – Room 4 Hospital, ed. Ramida, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 52-56)