The unfolding of Doctor Ion Simionescu’s murder at Canal labour camp
It was a clear summer morning and the camp seemed deserted. Almost everyone had gone out to work, and inside the wire there were only two or three brigades that didn’t come out until 5 o’clock in the afternoon: the night shift, an interior construction and maintenance brigade, and half of the student construction brigade, who for some reason I can’t remember had also stayed inside. Those of us who went out on the second shift were sent out in the morning between 11 and 3 to patrol the interior and help with the construction of the barracks.
This time I was assigned to the gate. My job was to pick up the stone or sand wagon brought by a civilian from the sentry at the gate, drive it to the construction site and unload it. About 20 men in my brigade did the same. We were dead asleep. We’d come home from work in the Canara quarry at 7am, have our black coffee and go to bed, which was 8am after we’d unpacked. At 11 o’clock the next day we went out to the chores, half a brigade at a time.
We were leading a pair of red-haired, fiery horses to the foundation of a hut when suddenly a well-built man, once robust, now thin and red-haired, appeared in front of me, wearing a green conical hat with a brim, one of those hats worn in the country by forest rangers.
– Stop, young man, the man said, raising his hand to the horses. Then he continued in a soft voice, with a pleasant timbre, a surprising thing in the camps, where people become mute and their speech unconsciously becomes harsh:
– This cart goes to the lime kiln, past the kitchen, he added.
I still held the horse’s reins and looked at this man. I knew all the men who worked on the construction inside, firstly because almost all of them were farmers from the Apuseni Mountains, and secondly because I had worked with them on the chores for over a year. There were two or three older people among the students whom I knew, but I did not know them.
– What brigade do you belong to, I asked him.
– The students, he replied, and came over to me.
I suddenly saw a broken sadness in his eyes, which he instinctively tried to hide with his eyelids, which he had closed a little tighter, but he could not wipe it away. He held out his hand and told me his name:
– I am Dr. Simionescu.
I had known for some time that Dr. Simionescu had been brought to our camp, but I had not yet met him. At first, I was told, he had been assigned to a brigade working on excavations.
– I was in this brigade for a week. The political officer told me that this was where I belonged, among the young men to whom we old men had given the wrong political education.
In a few words, Dr. Simionescu confessed the tragedy to me. A few names of mutual acquaintances from the camp immediately established our trust.
– I feel like I’m going mad. The most terrible mockery is made of me, and every evening I am forced to listen to the insults hurled at my generation without having the right to defend it. I am also subjected to violent harassment, and on the construction site I have to do the most physical demanding jobs, which is a real torture for me, given my age and my physical capabilities.
– Stop talking, you bandits, shouted a young boy we knew by sight; he was one of the closest collaborators of the political lieutenant Chirion, a real beast.
Doctor Simionescu turned away from the wagon, looked at the hooves of the horses that were leaning heavily to start the wagon, and then his eyes met mine again. Beneath the sadness that overshadowed him, I felt the vibration of a warm, generous soul, of an apostle of a great faith, which he had unreservedly dedicated to our nation through his science and his national vocation. At that moment I had no idea that this would be my first and last meeting with Dr. Simionescu.
Less than two weeks had passed when, one morning at six o’clock, when the shift had arrived at the Canara quarry where our brigade was working overnight, the terrible news of Dr. Simionescu’s murder reached us. The killing of a man in a camp causes a deep moral depression in the people. It is as if they are all sinking inwardly, their voices are lost, and in their eyes there is only emptiness. The awareness that a similar end is possible for everyone is so overwhelming that no one dares even to fix a promising hope for the next day. This is what our brothers looked like when they entered the Canara compound that morning, when the terrible news was brought to us, and this is how we set off for the camp, enveloped in the deathly veil of a doomed destiny against which we could do nothing. According to what I learnt at the time and later, when some of the re-educated students had recovered from their wanderings (they were there at the time), the death of Dr. Simionescu, one of the three leaders of the generation of 1922, happened as follows:
The student brigade worked on the construction in Tașaul. A so-called social group of buildings was being built on the edge of the lake. The construction site was surrounded by barbed wire, and in addition to the Security Service soldiers stationed at the four corners of the construction site, there were also intermediate soldiers who had no fixed posts and could move along the route they were guarding. The construction was in various stages of completion. Dr. Simionescu was working in a pavilion where he had to carry materials such as mortar, bricks, plaster, water, etc. to the students working on the scaffolding. In the evening, a meeting was held in the students’ brigade to deal with Dr. Simionescu, whom Bogdănescu, that lighioana in the form of a man, tried to force to admit the existence of a premeditated plan of the Romanian nationalist fighters, according to which these people intended to sow in the souls of the youth criminal ideas of intolerance towards other nationalities, Semitic hatred, anti-communist, anti-Soviet, anti-scientific, anti-progressive, etc. attitudes. It seems that the meeting was extremely agitated and that Dr. Simionescu was mistreated worse than on any previous evening. In the morning, when he came to work, we were told that Dr. Simionescu appeared transfigured, extremely tired – he had been kept on ‘trial’ until 3 o’clock in the morning – and apparently unable to control himself. He had undoubtedly suffered a moral shock which had to some extent disoriented him.
Some of the students in the work group, who were the most hardened and had rich and notorious records from Pitești, Târgșor or even within the Peninsula camp, continued unabated with their moral terrorisation of the doctor. In fact, this was one of the usual methods of re-education. They had to hold on to his head in every way, to create guilt obsessions and multiple complexes, so that the man would surely be driven to despair. When the man reached this point, he had only two solutions: either to surrender to the moral torturers, in which case he would have to admit that all the criminal accusations made against him were true, and he would inevitably have to join the gang of re-educators, or, as a second solution, to commit suicide.
When we were in prison, the second solution was not available to us because we had neither the physical means to end our lives (knife, rope, etc.) nor the possibility of going out on the security line. In the Canal, and in all the camps, we had all these possibilities. In addition, the re-educated students and the administration, which stood behind them with inspiration and tools, had considerably widened their scope for crime.
Doctor Ion Simionescu, about whom the people of his town and the eminent men of his generation spoke only in superlatives when they spoke of his character, his scientific ability, his civic, ethical and Christian qualities, not to mention his proverbial patriotism and humanitarianism, could never reach the first solution. He was too deeply rooted in the high values that he had cultivated with passion and conviction throughout his life. The political officers and students under his care were aware of this. But for this very reason, and also because Dr. Simionescu’s Christian faith, deeply rooted in his being, could not allow him to commit suicide, the criminal group had to bring him to this point or commit the crime themselves. On that hot summer day, as the soldiers were pirouetting at their posts under the glare of the Dobrogean sun, as noon approached, more hastily than usual, the political officer arrived on the scene, and with him another officer from the Security Service battalion command. The guard was immediately changed and everything returned to normal. However, in the tall building where Dr. Simionescu’s group was located, the students harassed him more than ever. All sorts of accusations were hurled at him, in the most trivial language, and he was pelted with pieces of brick, dry mortar, pieces of wood or planks. Dr. Simionescu went about his work. His eyes were filled with tears. He knew that he was alone, absolutely alone among these little monsters, so transformed by the filthy criminal hand of the Communist Party. How could he not have wanted to warn them all the time of their downfall and of the dangerous trap into which they had fallen!
I was only able to find out two or three names of the students who were in the torture group. Unfortunately, I have also forgotten them, and I remember only one of them, Ioan Olteanu, a former teacher at Tg. Mureș, who, after graduating from high school, enrolled at the University of Cluj. Even after the surviving students had recovered, they were reluctant to mention the names of those among them who had done too much evil.
At one point, when the students saw that Dr. Simionescu was not reacting as they would have liked, one of them hung a rope from a beam under which the doctor was supposed to pass with the materials. At first the doctor walked under the rope without seeming to notice. The students immediately began to mock him.
– What, you don’t see the rope, you bandit? said one.
– It’s for you, pig, added another. You don’t deserve anything else, after all the misery you’ve brought to the Romanian people in 25 years of darkness.
– Why don’t you hang yourself, if you’re a man of honour? said another. Then we’d think you were a man of honour. But you’re afraid of getting hurt, you bandit!
These verbal attacks, dirty and scandalous, could not fail to touch the very depths of the soul of this noble and honest man, who was deeply aware that all his life he had tried to do nothing but be useful to society and alleviate the suffering of the people.
One of those students, one of those who had also killed in Pitești, boldly approached Dr. Simionescu when he was again near the noose of the rope hanging over some cupboards, and when the doctor approached he gave him such a push that he dropped the buckets of mortar from his hand and pretended to put the noose around his neck. It is not known whether his gesture went as far as to strangle Simionescu. However, the hasty change of guards and the appearance of the two officers mentioned above suggest that the crime was premeditated.
When Doctor Simionescu saw their murderous intent, as other young men immediately joined the first, he, shaken with fear and terror, rushed out through one of the doors closest to him. Not knowing at once what to do, where to go and whom to address – naturally he had in mind an armed representative or official of the camp, but certainly not Brigadier Bogdănescu – he ran towards the wire where the soldiers were standing guard. It was obvious that the man was desperate, that he was fleeing from a serious threat, especially as he was shouting to be rescued. I was told that Dr. Simionescu was calling for help.
No sooner had he got within five metres of the line, which could not be crossed without the risk of being shot, then a soldier outside the line fired several shots at Dr. Simionescu, killing him instantly. The soldier apparently did not even give him a proper warning before killing him.
The murder of Dr. Simionescu was certainly premeditated. He had to be killed by any means necessary. Since other murders had taken place in this camp and in others, it could be seen that the Security Service organs were radical whenever a person exerted too much influence through his prestige around him, on the basis of the cruel repression of all polarising forces. The warning zone of 5 metres from the line was only valid if a prisoner tried to sneak up to it, but not by shouting, and then it was midday.
With the death of Dr. Ion Simionescu from Turnu-Mâgurele, the nationalist generation in the country has lost a force of the highest order, a man enlightened by the principles of broad humanitarianism, a citizen of integrity and a doctor whose benevolent hand will not be forgotten by thousands of former sufferers from the lower part of Muntenia, from the east of the Olt.
(Ion Cârja – The Canal of Death, Cartea Românească Publishing House, 1993, pages 355-361)