Sighet Memorial Penitentiary and Pitesti...

I've realised with a certain amount of shame that I have never written a post about the Sighet Memorial Penitentiary in Sighetu Marmatiei, N. Maramures. Having visited it no less than three times and having been profoundly moved by what I saw, my only reasoning for this apparent 'lapsus' is fear of failing. Failing to do justice to the memories of the victims of such unspeakable suffrance and cruelty in the hands of such unspeakable brutes, by my paltry words. Words are so superficial, insignificant. The lives of those lost were not. I am not a writer and do not have the ability to pour the feelings that flooded me in that place of horror on to paper here for you to absorb. Having never suffered such atrocities, how could I possibly write of them. Perhaps the photos of the memorials out in the courtyard will do the job for me. Art expresses what words cannot.

Here is a history of this prison taken from the official website, though the photos are mine.

'The prison of Sighet was built in 1897, as an ordinary law prison. After 1945, the repatriation of former prisoners and those deported from the Soviet Union was done through Sighet. In August 1948 it became a place of imprisonment for a group of students, pupils and peasants from Maramures, some of whom still live in Sighet. On 5 and 6 May 1950 over one hundred dignitaries from the whole country were brought to the Sighet penitentiary (former ministers, academics, economists, military officers, historians, journalists, politicians), some of them convicted to heavy punishments, others not even judged. The majority were more than 60 years old.

In October-November 1950, 45-50 bishops and Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic priests were transported to Sighet. The penitenciary was considered a "special work unit", known under the name of "Danube colony", but in reality was a place of extermination for the country's elites and at the same time a safe place, not possible to escape from, the frontier of the Soviet Union being less than two kilometres away.

The prisoners were kept in unwholesome conditions, miserably fed, and stopped from lying down during the day on the beds in the unheated cells. They were not allowed to look out of the windows (those who disobeyed were punished by being forced to sit in the "black" and "grey", lock-up type cells, with no light). Finally, shutters were placed on the windows, so that only the sky was visible. Humility and ridicule were part of the extermination programme. (photo left, in memory of Iuliu Maniu)

In 1955, following the Geneva Convention and the admission of communist Romania (RPR) to the UN, some pardons were granted. Some of the political prisoners in Romanian prisons were set free and some transferred to other places, while others were kept under house arrest At Sighet, out of around 200 prisoners, 52 had died. The prison once again became an ordinary law one. However, political prisoners continued to appear in the following years, and many were kept secretly in the local psychiatric hospital. (photo right: cell door; photo below: prisons throughout Roumania during the regime)

The rehabilitation project was assigned by competitive tender to the UMROL company from Cluj and Stelid company from Baia Mare. The work lasted until 2000. As the century old building was ruined and full of damp, the rebuilding of foundations, insulation and roof was needed, and the internal wall (which had been re-painted since the 1950s) were whitewashed. Each cell became a museum room, where, first in a provisional form, later definitively and following a chronological order, objects, photos, documents were placed, creating the environment and documentation of a museum hall.'

(Photo left: Candles in Memory) The Civic Academy Foundation was formed in 1994 by the poet Ana Blandiana, her husband Romulus Rusan and 175 others. Their objective: to create from this horrifying place a project of civic education. The results are outstanding. Overwhelming. Deeply moving, not only from standing in the cell of Iuliu Maniu (that just breaks me in two), hearing doors slamming, seeing the photos, identity cards, prison clothes, chains and shackles... but the memorials in the courtyard bring me to my knees if I'm still standing by then. Please visit the official site for a better vision of such a place. (Photo above right: memorial wall - name upon name of those who perished here)

The sculpture, 'Convoy of Martyrs', represents 18 prisoners. Their view of the horizon ends with a wall symbolising a violent finish to open-mindedness and freedom - just as communism limited and ripped apart the lives of millions of people. It is one of the emblems of the museum.

Speaking of this memorial prison brings to mind the so-called Pitesti 'Re-Education' Centre, north of Bucharest. It seems unbelievable to me how many Roumanians are ignorant of its existence, and therefore how shameful (and yet how typical) that a film, 'The Genocide of the Souls' 90% finished, was blocked from completion. The director, a Roumanian, needed $183,000 and hit brick walls from every angle. He was promised funding, but it of course never arrived. See HERE for further details, shocking interviews and videos. To add insult to injury, the building where the atrocities of the Pitesti Experiment took place was privatised and two thirds of it demolished. For those of you who don't know, to quote Aleksandr Soljenitsyne, the Pitesti experiment was the "most terrible act of barbarism in the contemporary world".

In Roumania between 1949 and 1951, the destruction of society's elite was almost complete: intellectuals, diplomats, priests, officers, magistrates, policemen, and politicians of the "bourgeois-landowner regime" were  imprisoned; the most industrious peasants were deported to forced labour camps. Collectively and individually, they were all labelled "enemies of the people". It then remained to annihilate the unpredictable social force of youth. For the latter, the Pitesti Experiment was 'invented' (termed "re-education" by the Securitate). The most barbaric methods of psychological torture were applied to "re-educate" young prisoners with the objective of making them reciprocally humiliate, physically abuse and mentally torture each other. Victims were transformed into executioners; prisoners were tortured by their own friends, by their fellows in suffering. The purpose: "re-education" through physical and mental destruction, the transformation of young people into atheists, into informers against their friends.

Ultimately, the majority of those "re-educated" ended up admitting they deserved all manner of abjection and that they could only be partially rehabilitated. They themselves became the torturers of new inmates. For the slightest hesitation, they were subjected to torture once more.

This diabolical depersonalisation and moral assassination commenced in December 1949 at the Pitesti Penitentiary, and continued, at a lower intensity, at Gherla and Targu-Ocna. The Pitesti Experiment is regarded as unique in the panoply of methods designed to destroy the human person.

Having met people who know survivors of Pitesti has made it all the more real to me. How I wish I could hold them all and make those unbearable memories disappear. It's not just a script anymore, not just witness statements in a book. And it all happened here. Here in the country of my heart along with a mass of other horrors. What is all the more appalling is the ignorance of many Roumanian people that it ever happened, not to mention the total and utter ignorance outside Roumania. Of course such documentaries and films on this subject should exist so it is never repeated. What on earth is the government thinking, blocking such necessary education, not to mention homage and respect to the victims, whether they survived or succumbed? With the archives supposedly opening up (and I say 'supposedly'), the old taboos becoming more addressed as time passes, it's exactly the time. For heaven's sake! Don't decapitate memory any more than it has been already. This country has seen the near death of its elite, its intellectuals, its culture and its pride - for the love of God, don't do the same with its memory.