It would be untrue to say that the unmasking came upon the students all of a
sudden and without warning. There were indications of what was to come, none of
which foretold just what would happen, but which psychologically laid the
groundwork by weakening resistance and creating apprehension. In this
preparatory stage, the role played by the prison administration was of the
utmost importance. Well ahead of the time that the trained shock groups were
introduced into the experiment, director Dumitrescu himself used by guards or
the suggestive method. The students were led to believe that something
monstrous was happening, something was hanging over their heads that none could
escape because it was inevitable.
All students knew that "something" was going on; even though the
rooms in which unmasking were gradually taking place were isolated from the
prisoners' cells, stifled screams, groans and shrieks could occasionally be
heard. Nobody could learn whence he or she came; no one could find out what was
happening. Little by little, the conviction grew within each student that
eventually his turn would come. This waiting, this nerve-wracking uncertainty,
was deliberately induced on orders of the political director.
Sergeant Georgescu, an exemplar of unmatched brutality among the guards at
Pitesti, took care, every time he had the opportunity, to give the prisoners
grounds for anxiety.
"You bandit, I beat you, but I also feed you. But just you wait, and
see what is in store for you after while ... " And he would point in the
direction from which the groans could be heard. All this contributed to
increased tensions, of course, and is well summed up by the following account
by a student who was among the first to undergo unmasking in the series that
began on Dec. 6, 1949:
"We expected the outbreak while under a dramatic tension. We had no
fear in the usual sense for we knew we could expect anything from the
Communists even before we were brought to Pitesti. Most of us in my cell were
prepared to go through any kind of suffering; we were so sure we would not
break down! But, still, we were fearful, with a strange uneasiness. We did not
know just how they would do it; we could not guess the day it would all start,
or who the torturers would be. And then it seemed that we wished, were even
impatient, to go through the coming trial, whatever it might be.
"The climax came, however, when we least expected it, and what was more
tragic, from those we least suspected capable of such treachery. "
The tactic of prolonged anxiety followed by total surprise and the shock of
what could not have been anticipated or imagined was always used, and it never
failed.
There was another psychological factor that prepared the destined victims
for what was to happen. The great majority of them were oppressed by an
unexplainable sense of resignation that seemed to create a climate for
accepting any kind of torture as a sort of deserved punishment for some
imaginary sin. Not one among the students who talked to me about this could
identify the source of that feeling. One, who had a thorough medical training,
attributed it to physical weakness from insufficient food combined with a
subconscious conviction that resistance was doomed to failure from the start.
Without their realizing it, the students were going through a kind of
transition from the world they had known into one in which life itself was of
minimal importance, an expendable accessory.
The final element was the shock of utter surprise when the victims found
themselves in the midst of their unmaskers at the critical moment when the
attack was suddertly unleashed. The unbelievable shock probably created in them
a state of quasi-hypnosis.