Pitesti Human Experiment (1949-1951)
Pitesti Prison was built sometime between 1937-1941 and operated until 1977 in Romania. It was a political prison for students who were against the communist regime in Romania.
To see the timeline of communism in Romania you can click on the doc below.
The re-education that took place inside the prison was like no other. It was considered by some historians as the worst known acts towards humans on written record.
“one of the most terrible experiments in dehumanization that our epoch has known”. Francois Furet ~ Historian
"The most terrible act of barbarism in the modern world" Alexander Solzhenitsy
The goal of reeducation was to make you hate the things you value and love the most in your life. The communists wanted to reeducate the most devout Christians(students) who were just as convicted to their faith as the communists were to advancing their party. They wanted them to become completely obedient to the party. It was an attack on their soul. In order to re-educate and change one’s personality. They would associate everything the students loved and valued with pure evil. The term “re-education” was cleverly named as it was not a lie, but so the man on the street believed it to be something it wasn’t.
“1949-1951 “The Pitesti Experiment”
The experiment was designed to reengineer the human soul by using methods of torture to destroy the prisoner’s psychologically so they would become absolutely obedient to the communist people’s republic. They would break bones, use red hot irons among other methods of physical torture. Methods of torture were also spiritually and psychologically sadistic. This was how they associated your faith to all things evil.
“The beginning of the unmaskings”
The rumor circulated, around the unmaskings, a day or two before their start, that on the night of December 10, Turcanu Eugen, Popa Alexandru, said Tanu, Martinus, Cantemir and three others whose name I did not find out, were taken out of prison and taken to a latch on the bank of the Arges, where they were told that that night they would form the team that will shoot all the legionary bosses in pitesti prison. Asked if they agreed, they all replied that they were ready for this deed.
They were then taken to the place where the execution was supposed to take place, they were distributed weapons and bullets, waiting for the victims to come. Those who directed this staging were convinced that Turcanu and his team were determined to execute any order they would have received. The first step was taken; all that remained was for the prepared tool to begin executing the plan.
Before December 10, they were brought to room "4 hospital", which I also mentioned, about 30 students, among the peaks, most of them legionnaires, as well as Turcanu's group: Popa Tanu, Martinus, Livinschi, Leonida, Prisäcaru, Cantemir, Virgil Bordeianu and some students from Câmpulung Moldovenesc.
Turcanu and his group were not discovered to have been re-educated, on the contrary, they were gossiping Bogdanovici and those who had joined thereeducationinSuceava, with the intention of dragging those in the room by the tongue, to see in what waters they were bathing.
As everything was directed, Turcanu caused a scandal and began the scuffle between his group and the other students. During the scuffle, a window broke. This was the signal for the administration to intervene. The door was knocked on and the next moment, director Dumitrescu and Lieutenant Marina, with about 30 guards, entered the room. Director and political officer Marina fired pistols into the ceiling, and the guards, with chimes, coming from the ox and centimetres, pounced on the students to make one of his cups.
It was no longer known if they were living people or corpses. It was not enough so, but those who were not educated in the corridor were taken out, and Turcanu's group and the guards began again to beat them so badly, that there were only puddles of blood on the ground.
The legionary students, chosen from among the peaks, were then taken to the death cells on the head of the T and tormented by Turcanu, over a year, with the most terrible and wild tortures.
Here are some names of these martyrs: Pop Cornel, Mägirescu Eugen, Popescu Aristotel, Pavaloaia Constantin, Patráscanu Nuti, Caziuc, Voinea Octavian, Soltuz Laurentiu, Juberian, Parizianu Gheorghe, Strächinariu Constantin, Dan Lucinescu etc. This explains the collapse of these comrades, with the exception of Parizianu. They cannot be judged: when you accuse someone, you must be in his position, and when it comes to torture, to honestly confess if you could have endured the supplication that the one you arrogate to your right to judge has endured.
As of this date, director Dumitrescu and Marina have not exercised their role; the one who was running the prison was Turcanu.
He had double keys to all the rooms and cells of the prison. I've seen him dozens of times, with the tuft of keys in his hand, authoritarian and fearsome, beating horror even in the guards.
The unmasking in Pitesti lasted from December 10, 1949 to September 1951. These young people who have been isolated, only God knows what sufferings they have endured, and they are also given the opportunity to commit suicide.
On December 10, 1949, the administration and the guards in Pitesti prison disappeared from the stage. The only actor who played the play was Turcanu. Only he locked and unlocked, only he gave orders to the guards. He and his masters, General Nicolskiand Colonel Zeller. Nothing moves without them knowing what's going on. On the night of December 10, 1949, many of us, from the other wards, heard noises, but we could not understand what was happening.
“Methods of torture”
The tortures were well dosed and ceased when the inmate was on the verge of death.
They were varied: beating, starvation, the obligation to sit in a fixed position 17 hours a day - the legs stretched horizontally, the hands on the ganunchi and the bust at 90 degrees - at the slightest movement the supervisor intervening with the bat; they were forced to drink urine, to eat the messes inthe tinetawhere they made their necessities; forced to drink water with a lot of salt and then let it dry out of thirst, and many others, invented by the sick mind of the torturers.
Those who gave in were obliged to make their
"unmasking", that is, to say everything they did not declare at the ancestry, to betray the inmates who helped them in prison or the guards who had a human behavior. Also, for the destruction to be complete, in front of everyone in the cell, everyone had to mock the memory of what was most important to him.
For example, someone loved his mother or wife very much. In front of everyone, he had to defame them, to make the most obscene and absurd statements against them. Anything that was bright and good in the consciousness of the one who was still had to be defamed and filled with mud.
“For the theological students”
The theological and godly students - the "mystical bandits", as they were called - were forced to apostate, to deny God, blaspheming everything related to the Christian faith. On Christmas or Easter, on the songs of carols or the Prophet, they were forced to sing texts with obscenities and indescribable insults against the Savior and His Mother. At the same time, they were forced to make blasphemous processions. To perform
"liturgies" with the miseries in the matter of necessities and then to "share" with them. Some were "baptized" by immersion in the hardaul with feces. I think these are enough to figure out the Satanism of re-education.
After the inmate made his "unmasking", in order to prove that he had re-educated himself, he had to, in his turn, become a torturer and convince another, to deny himself "of all the bourgeois rot" and to adopt the communist ideology. This led, under terror, to a real brainwashing. The tortured ones, no longer able to endure the continuous torments, having no possibility of suicide, being closely surpavegheati, gave in and turned into robots with a hardened heart, becoming of the victims, the horses. Even after they arrived reeducated they did not escape terror, because at the slightest sign of solidarity with the tormented, they passed again through the torture mill. Thus, living in a permanent terror, suspecting each other, they collapsed continuously with no possibility of recovery.
“One last satanic method”
Another satanic aspect was that everything you hid and represented a fulcrum on the path of inner collapse tormented you so much that you asked yourself to expose yourself, feeling through this a relief, as after a confession, although these confessions were used against you. A very strange process took place, producing mutations in the personality of the tortured one, who came to deny the previous concepts and to adopt what Turcanu imposed on him, with the conviction that it does him a good. In this process of brainwashing "his mind is enlightened" he lived something like a relief, he "understood" everything he had rejected before and he started with all conviction to bring the others to the same stage of 'enlightenment'. For us, who have not gone through such demonic states, things are incomprehensible.
Most of them tortured others being themselves under the empire of terror, without the mutations we talked about above. The system was designed so that under continuous torture were very rare the cases of those who resisted to the end, generally making compromises, bigger or smaller, according to the structure and resistance of each one.
Here some good resources for more information on the Pitesti Prison. I plan on making several blog posts on this topic and on Romanian Communism.
- The first time I had heard about the Pitesti Prison was during the summer of 2021. A friend of mine recommended “The Martyrmade Podcast” and the episode titled The Anti Humans.
- “The Anti Humans” book written by Dumitru Bacu. Bacu was Romanian born in Greek territory, went to Romania for his university education and there became a member of the anti-Communist organization that flourished in that nation before and during the tragic and fratricidal Second World War. He was a political prisoner in Pitesti Prison and this book is his firsthand experiences of what he went through.
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