The trial and sentencing
One morning, around the beginning of April 1952, the platoon leader came and shouted: Ciolacu Nicolae, put your coat on. He grabbed me by the collar of my coat and led me through a corridor. There were several people with their coats on their heads, holding on to each other. I grabbed one man’s coat, but I wasn’t allowed to see who was in front of me. When the line was complete, we were ordered to start, and the platoon leader grabbed the first man by the collar of his coat. They walked slowly, groping, because no one could see where they were going, the corridor was long and unlit.
As we walked out the door, the holy light suddenly burst through our coats. After six months of living in the windowless, reinforced concrete basement rooms by light bulb alone, I could only now appreciate how sacred and precious daylight is. The van was waiting for us outside the door, and as soon as we arrived, with our coats over our heads, we got into the van. This is how we Romanians arrived in our country, worse than the prisoners in the Siberian camps. Inside the van it was pitch black, but there was a small curtained window that moved and let in a ray of light. For a moment we could see each other and recognise each other. They were all my comrades and hosts from Sinoe Commune, Tănase I. Vlahbei, Tănase C. Vlahbei, Tănase G. Vlahbei, all three of my cousins. Then Sima Dimcica, Iancu Dimcica, Timu Pasota, Stere Manciu, Mircea Juruc, Stila Peștereanu, Iancu Gicu, Nicolae Sicu and Dumitru Ghioca.
Throughout the winter of 1951-52 I was alone in the cell, while the other comrades were at least two in the cells and better informed than I. They knew that we would be taken to the military court in Constanța for trial. They were happy that we were going to trial and that we were getting rid of the cellar and the investigations, but I was gloomy, depressed. My situation was different from theirs.
I was part of the organisation of the famous bandits, brothers Nicolae and Dumitru Fudulea and Gogu Puiu, that’s what the red beasts called us. My comrades asked me: Why are you so depressed? Because I know I’m going to be sentenced to death. My comrades disagreed, they said: If they have put you among us, they will not sentence you to death.
I ended up in court. They put the van at the back of the courthouse, with its back to a door. And as soon as he got out, he was led into a courtroom. There wasn’t a soul in sight. How many brothers, sisters, mothers, husbands, fathers would have wanted to see their loved ones? But how could Satan, incarnated in communism, have increased our suffering? The only way was to keep us apart and, above all, to keep secret where we were and when we would be sentenced.
They put us in this room, not too big, with camouflaged windows, without an audience. They put us in a box. The court consisted of about six or seven people. All dressed in smart khaki military uniforms with shiny epaulettes. Once simple workers, tinkers, shantymen, crane drivers, porters in the port of Constanța, without a book, they became judges, and we were in the box, hungry, poor, beaten, scared. Some of us were the best housekeepers on the Balkan Peninsula, with grandparents who were celnici (rulers), great shepherds and herdsmen.
After a while two more civilians appeared, the prosecutor, a small man, and a lawyer, ostensibly to protect us. But he mainly accused us. Behind the box, on a bench, sat a security captain as an assistant. These were all the spectators at our trial. When the trial began, the following were displayed in front of the bench: my gun, the 200-round automatic, and the two magazines from which they took the cartridges and laid them out on the table. There was also Stere Gima’s rifle from Ceamurlia de Jos, with the cartridges on the table, which they blamed on me. Everything on the table was proof to them that I had a whole arsenal of ammunition. The trial began and the president gave the floor to the prosecutor. He spoke in an exaggerated agitation for an hour and more. He waved his mouth and kept pointing at the witness stand, at the weapons table, at the court, accusing us of conspiracy against public order, of organising a fascist gang and of sabotaging the whole of Dobrogea. But the bandits were discovered by the working people, who understood that they would not be able to build a happy life, led by the P.M.R., until these vipers of the gang organised by Nicolae Ciolacu were destroyed. This gang, armed with automatic weapons, began its work as early as 1948, sabotaging the party in the socialist realisation of the government and counting on an armed conflict between the imperialist states and the Soviet Socialist Union. At that time, the bandits would have participated as partisans in the fight against the Soviet army. The imperialist spy centres contacted the remnants of the former legionary movement in order to propagandise the people to disobey the measures taken by the state authorities. They wanted to organise a coup to take over the country.
Finally, he asked the President and the honourable court to impose the death penalty on these bandits who had worked against the country. He asked for the application of Article 209 of Law 16/1949. The prosecutor had become a kind of rabid, mad, angry, jumping up and down, always asking for the death penalty. He created such an eerie atmosphere in front of us and the court that we thought he was taking us straight from the dock to the place of execution. We in the dock looked at each other as if we were about to be shot to death in a cruel tragedy. Who among us could still believe that we would not be shot, when not so long ago our comrades had been executed by firing squad after trial, or had been killed right where they were caught if they resisted. And then there were the 40 Dobrogean people who, in March 1950, were taken from Gherla and Aiud prisons in a van in the middle of the night, disappeared and died in a terrible drama. At that time we were sure that these atheists, who don’t know much about books, would execute us, just as they executed those I mentioned.
None of us thought of our wives, our households, our parents, other close relatives or friends, but only of what would become of our children, whether they would die of hunger, cold or some other misfortune, or perhaps survive. This dark thought broke our hearts, not for our own deaths, but for our children. The president of the court began the interrogation.
Stere Manciu over there, where do you come from, as if he didn’t know where we come from; you made some statements, do you support them? You have the last word.
Tănase Vlahbei followed, asking the same question: From where you come from, you have the last word. They all followed with the same question and that you have the last word. I, for example, had experienced persecution, beatings and imprisonment.
My comrades, some of them younger, didn’t even know what the police were. They had never been arrested. But now, when they saw each other at dawn, each of them had the last word, without compromising himself, trying to talk in such a way that the court would grant him mitigating circumstances or, if possible, release him.
Some of the comrades tried to soften the hearts of those on the bench by saying Comrade President, Your Honour, I admit that I was wrong, but when the collective registration began, I was the first to register. I helped the collective a lot with my arms, with my work, so I’m asking to be released and to work in the collective. Another said: I admit that I was wrong about the Party, but I brought two horses, a cart and a plough to the collective, I helped the collective a lot with my arms, with my wife, with my cart, with all the work in the fields, I ask to be released to work for the collective in the fields. And everyone tried to say something to get mitigating circumstances.
My turn, the president: Nicolae Ciolacu, From where you come from, have you made any statements, do you support them? You have the last word.
I told him: Comrade President, Your Honour. I do not support all the statements. I didn’t have two guns.
The President interrupted me: Do you have anything else to say?
I replied: I am guilty as far as the party is concerned. Let me receive the punishment I think I deserve. (I meant that I was guilty in relation to the Communist Party, but not in relation to my Romanian people).
The President gave the floor to the lawyer. Counselor: Comrade President, Your Honour. The prisoners in the dock stand by the statements they have made. They admit to the serious acts of which they are accused. There is also the corpus delicti before the court. According to their statements, they are collectives, they worked in the fields and they insist on extenuating circumstances. If they can be granted them. The court should do its duty to the Romanian People’s Republic and give them the punishment they deserve. The panel rose and went into a deliberation room.
Behind the box there were some sofas and we were told to sit on them. We came out of the box and sat down. The security captain came up to me and said quietly, “You’ve been fucking around, why didn’t you acknowledge the Security Service statements? We’re going to make you a travelling angel from now on”.
What could I say, I was just thinking about the terrible things that were waiting for me. The jury came in and sat down, we stood up and waited for the verdict. The full court conferred and ordered us to leave. The van was at the door where we left it, got in and drove us through the city streets. It stopped in front of a big, high, thick gate, which opened and the van drove into the courtyard of Tataia prison. The door of the van opened and the comrades began to jump out. I expected to be not the first, but not the last, but about in the middle. About six of them jumped out and I was getting ready to jump too, I lifted my leg but the platoon leader, who was standing at the edge of the van, grabbed me by the leg and pushed me back with all his might, swearing at me: “Fuck you, bandit, stay down. All the comrades jumped down, the door closed and the van left the prison yard and drove through the streets of the city. I thought, God, where are they taking me?
They took me back to the Security Service station, to cell 12, where I had been all winter. The days passed slowly, they didn’t take me out for investigation and I didn’t know what would happen to me. After two weeks, one morning the platoon leader took me upstairs, with my coat over my head, to a larger room, furnished, lit, with mats on the floor. At the table were two officers, the captain, the “friend” who had promised to make an angel of me, and another officer. They asked me to sit down. I sat down and they began: Hey Ciolacu, why have you grown a beard? I had to justify it to them because my beard was dangerous for them. During the interrogation they told me that I was waiting for the Americans to come. And when they arrested me, the security found my Bible, the Holy Scriptures. That’s why I found an excuse and answered them: I want to become a priest if I am released. Then they asked me: Hey Ciolacu, do you want to shave? Again they got me into trouble if I said: If I said yes, they would have told me I was lying, and if I said no, they would have said: oh, you want a beard. So I said: whatever you want. A barber came and cut my hair and shaved me. The platoon leader took me back to the cell and we stayed there for a few days, waiting for the result.
One morning the platoon commander came and took me without my coat and glasses and took me to the yard. There was a small car, a van, and I got into it. The driver, a platoon officer and an officer came, they in the front and me in the back. The van had curtains on the windows, and as I walked down the street the curtains would move and I could look out into the street like this, more stealthily. Ah, God, lots of people on the street, people moving about freely. Men, women, children, cleanly dressed, going about their business. I thought how precious freedom is. It is for freedom that we suffer, and we want those who come after us to be spared the suffering and terror we endure. I thought, where will they take me now? Maybe they will take me to some commune in Babadag, where they will have found, through some treachery, other hosts with guns. Of course, the pretext was to shoot me, and again I was overcome by nerves, no matter how strong you are, but it is impossible to withstand so many shocks without falling ill. But thank God I got through it all.
Finally, the van stopped in front of the Tataia prison. It entered the courtyard and a fat platoon officer came to pick me up and take me to his barracks. He searched me thoroughly, opened a door and took me into the prison yard. Many rooms were lined up and he took me to room number 10. It was a large room with three rows of bunk beds and to the left about ten beds without bunk beds. My comrades were there, but I didn’t notice them because there were about seventy prisoners. Most of them were from Ialomița and had been sent to the military tribunal in Constanța. About five people jumped up from their beds and came in front of me. They surrounded me and started questioning me: Hey brother, where are you from and what’s new out there, what do you know? I, who was always alone in the cell, didn’t know anything and didn’t answer them, and since I didn’t know any of them, I kept silent. But suddenly Tănase I. Vlahbei came and took me away from the people of Jalisco, to whom he said: Please leave him, he’s one of us. He took me by the arm and led me to a bed. Look, this is your bed.
Sit down and be quiet. My comrades surrounded me and asked me how I was and whether they had been informed of my sentence. I told them that I had not been sentenced, and they were all a little worried. Everyone thought that Ciolacu would probably be sentenced to death. I was also thinking about the Security Service captain who had threatened to make me a travelling angel because I didn’t support the statements I had made at the Security Service. And now, here at the Security Service, I was going through days of emotions again. Every time the door opened, I jumped and waited to hear my name.
One day, around ten o’clock in the morning, the door opened and the sergeant shouted: Nicolae Ciolacu, come here. The platoon leader went first, and I followed. He took me to the clerks’ office and told me to sit there and wait, against a wall. There were over thirty clerks in the office, mostly women, typing away on typewriters. I looked over at the clerks and what I could see. Next to one of the typists was the small, plain-clothed prosecutor who nervously accused us in court and demanded that we be sentenced to death. After talking to the clerk for a while, he came straight to me and asked my name, then my parents’ names and more. I answered all his questions slowly, breathlessly, so that I could hear the verdict sooner. But the prosecutor was in no hurry at all, he spoke each word slowly and deliberately. He began to list:
The Military Tribunal of Constanța, in accordance with the law, etc., etc… sentences Ciolacu to 25 years of hard labour and civil degradation for the crime of conspiracy against the security of the Romanian People’s Republic.
I couldn’t breathe, there was no end to all the laws, articles and paragraphs. Finally, this litany was over, I could breathe again and I can honestly say that I have never had greater joy in my life than when I heard that I had been sentenced to 25 years hard labour and not to death.
There are people who suffer terribly when they are sentenced to only one month in prison, which they could not escape with all the expenses incurred with witnesses and lawyers, but there are also people who rejoice when they receive 25 years hard labour and escape the death sentence.
There are moments and states of mind that fate and destiny create for us. When the platoon leader took me out of the room, my comrades commented that if it hadn’t been for the weapons on display at the court, I might have escaped the death sentence, but that’s the way it is, whether I escape or not. When the platoon leader took me back to the room, they were waiting for me impatiently. I hadn’t even entered the room when they jumped up and asked me what sentence you had received: 25 years hard labour, I told them. They were all happy that I hadn’t been sentenced to death.
(Nicolae Ciolacu – The Dobrogea Outlaws)