One day in April 1951, after almost everyone in Pitesti prison had undergone
unmaskings, the procedure was abruptly terminated by order. The prison thus
assumed the aspect of any of the ten penitentiaries existing in the
"Romanian People's Republic" at the time. A new period had begun.
Already massive shipments of prisoners were leaving regional penitentiaries,
and the large prisons, bound for the slave-labor camp at the canal mentioned
above -- veritable human herds driven toward a great slaughterhouse.
From among the students, with the exception of the inept and those who were
needed for further educational labors, those who were under a sentence of 10 years
or less were sent to the canal, where they were promised much. At the same
time, new transports of condemned students continued to arrive at Pitesti,
among whom were many high school students.
Up to this time, the 15 and 16-year-olds had been isolated at Gherla; now
the natural patriotic inclination of the high-schoolers was to be exploited in
the foulest possible manner. Some means had to be found, evidently, to destroy
their native patriotism with a spectacular and definitive breakdown. Since Communist
justice does not condemn on the basis of the infraction committed but according
to the presumed potential of the victim in hand, the sentences pronounced
against these children, in the majority of cases, would have dishonored the
most inept or corrupt magistrate in a civilized land.
The approach used in this campaign against patriotic adolescent students was
serpentine: they were induced to "join" the "Legion of Michael
the Archangel. " The poor students did this in good faith, thinking they
were in fact becoming members of the organization through which Codreanu had
educated the youth of Romania in Christian ideals and knightly manhood.
From among the Legionary students who had formerly led the cadres of the F.
d. C. ("Brotherhood of the Cross," the Legionary Movement's
high-school group), the O. D. C. C. selected those considered completely
"re-educated" and ordered them to begin organizing the youths into
Legionary groups just as though they were outside prison. No detail of this
deception was overlooked. Everything was based on the principles followed when
Legionary groups operated underground, and meetings were held "in the
strictest secrecy. " The high-schoolers responded completely; their
adherence and loyalty was warm, sincere, and total. The preparation lasted
several months and by the summer of 1951 they were considered ready to be taken
to swear allegiance to the Archangel.
Among the first victims of this satanic game were high school students sent
to Pitesti from the canal work force for disciplinary reasons. Here is how the
student, O. C., forced to "prepare" the high school students, told
the story long afterwards:
"One day, into the cell in which we were locked following our
unmasking, several young high-school students were introduced in order that we
might prepare them according to the order received previously through Turcanu.
This order was categorical: Establish their membership, at any cost, in the
Iron Guard (synonymous with "Legionary Movement" and "Legion of
Michael the Archangel"), so that 'the greater the height, the deeper and
more definitive the fall!' The effect of the unmaskings to come was thus
assured.
"I took this assignment with pangs of remorse, even though the human
being within us all had been killed. Who could refuse? From the moment the high
school student came in, the cell took on the aspect it had before the
unmaskings; we acted as though nothing had happened and continued to behave as
we had outside the prison in underground activity. The education began
according to the rules: take advantage of their inclination toward Christian
faith. So we taught them psalms and prayers; we discussed theology, counseled
them, taught them how to fast. What seemed more monstrous than the destruction
of our own self-respect, was our being made to eat their food when they fasted!
This, to demonstrate to the re-education committee that we were really cured of
the Christian sickness for good. As for patriotism, we stimulated their natural
inclination by teaching them patriotic and Legionary songs, and instructing
them in the laws and conduct required of any youth wanting to join the
movement.
"When their preparation was considered adequate, they were moved to
another cell, where they felt the first hailstorm of the 'unmasking' bludgeons.
"The new victims were passed through unmaskings by others than we who
had 'educated' them. The 'educators' were kept in reserve for more difficult
moments, should they arise. When, with all the tortures to which he was
subjected, a high-school student refused to talk, the head of the committee,
with a diabolical satisfaction, would bring in the one who had 'prepared' him,
for a 'confrontation. ' It is not hard to imagine the collapse produced in the
soul of a boy less than twenty years old when his counselor, his model of
honor, courage, and integrity but a few days earlier, turned out to be his
betrayer. "
My second example is the story told by one who had been one of the young
victims. "Even now," he said to me, "after having passed through
the unmaskings, and knowing the dirty motive behind this inhuman staging, I
cannot yet believe that N., who 'recruited' me into the 'Legionary Movement,'
did everything only because it was ordered by the re-education committee. There
was something in his teaching other than simply the following of orders -- an
inner compulsion, perhaps subconscious, but sprung from the soul, that changed
everything in moments of truly soulful exaltation. One day, alone in our cell
at dusk, a heart-breaking sadness came over his face and he quit talking, his
eyes turning away to look through the bars at the twilight hills out there.
Many times I asked him to tell me the reason for his sadness but he never would
say; when I insisted he would look at me for quite a while, painfully,
imploringly, then would turn away and look in another direction. Nearly always,
after I questioned him, he would start talking about the new man, the truly
Christian man capable of healing wounds not only of the body but of the
Romanian soul. There was so much warmth, even passion, and such sincerity in
his words, that I am convinced that these moments constituted for him the only
means of escape from the infernal cycle into which he had been pushed against
his will. And who knows? Maybe he imagined himself really free and that what he
said was not intended to destroy a soul but out of pure love to help it. In the
toughest moments of the unmasking, even when he was face to face with me and
behaved as ordered on that dirty mission, I could not hate him.
"Later, after the unmaskings, when danger had passed and we could talk
more freely, I was the first one to try approaching him and try to establish a
friendship I fondly wanted. As he had lost much weight due to the lung trouble
he contracted, I offered to share the little food I received, but he refused
any help. He even refused to talk to me. I read in his eyes the same
heart-breaking pain I saw in the cell at Pitesti whilst he was trying to
prepare me to orient myself into a life that would follow the insane drama then
unfolding. For two years following this silent encounter he avoided meeting me,
although we worked in the same workshop, on the same shift. I believe his
anguish was probably much greater than mine. After this, he was isolated, and I
do not know if he lives or not or whether he was cured of his infirmity
inflicted during the unmaskings. I would give a lot to be able to talk to him
just one single time, if only to convince him that in my heart he remained
forever as he was in those moments while we were together there in our cell.
"
Similar accounts were given me by several individuals. Particularly
significant, I think, is the fact that almost all high-school students who
passed through this unique experience, when given the opportunity to turn
around and objectively look at the past, clearly distinguished between the
definitely demonic and the humane, Christian and Romanian aspects of that
preparatory phase; between the crushed and terrified prisoners who, acting by
reflex, cozened and betrayed them, and the profound truth of the lessons they
had, for whatever motive, given the victims.
From among the high-school students tortured at Pitesti or Gherla will
emerge true personalities matured by suffering, capable of facing the long
darkness to which the Romanian people are now subjected. They will be able to
sustain, in the inhuman isolation of Communist slavery, the hope of a new
generation.
Thus was the cycle completed. The labor of re-education was bearing its
fruit. What had happened to all those who, out of the hope of saving their
country and perpetuating the concept of free men, had sacrificed everything --
absolutely everything? They had been changed into a mass of imbeciles by the
fear born out of torture and despair; by the uncontrollable conditioned reflexes
that the bludgeon had implanted; by reciprocal hatred; by quivering dread lest
at any time, for any reason or none, from any motive, plausible or otherwise,
they might have to repeat the unmasking. The personality of each individual had
been made to disappear, leaving room for the robot. To speak, to do, to react,
to command -- it all became simple. Conditioned reflexes appeared at the
slightest excitation; external reality was obliterated, forgotten, on command.
The only thing that remained and was painfully present in body and soul was the
anguish. In order to avoid physical and moral pain, man changed himself
feverishly into an animal. What had been moral certainties before the collapse,
became odious dangers, an unbearable nightmare from which one must escape at
all costs.
That is why one confessed imaginary crimes, in order to spread the ash of
forgetfulness over the past, over reality, to complete the dissolution of the
self, that could be only the source of inner suffering, and to substitute for the
forgotten past a fictitious one, untrue but pleasing to those who conducted the
experiment of "human metamorphosis. "
The tendency to falsify, imposed at the beginning by the methods of
re-education, becomes later on a kind of necessity in itself. Through a mixing
of intelligence with animal reflexes, of the false with the real, of cynicism
with obligatory fanaticism, a person finds that he can exist only in a
fictitious world where everything has been inverted.
Collective madness becomes reality. All commanded vileness and crime will be
pursued in its name -- willingly and eagerly pursued. This madness will be
sustained, nourished persistently, not haphazardly, but systematically, by a
certain logic -- paradoxical, but calculated -- so that it can be used any
time, anywhere it may be found useful by its masters. That is the triumph of
Communist science.