crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
joined. In 1967, a commander in the secret police related a similar scene, not forgetting to add that he
had not taken an active role in it: “We took the prisoner for the investigation and we asked him to take
off all his clothes. After that, under threat of being shot if he did not admit his criminal activities, we
took him into the cellar of the kitchen next to the prison. There he was thrashed until he was bleeding,
according to the instructions of the chief investigator. I saw the prisoner once again after about two
hours, they were bringing him back, he was almost unconscious. He was bleeding, his flesh was torn,
and he was screaming at the top of his voice. The chief investigator held that being thrashed when naked
had particular psychological effects for the investigation.” 8
Another method used, according to the declaration of the same officer, was to tear out hair, by
rolling one lock of hair after another around one’s finger: “I was witness to this when an officer tore out
a third of the white hair /of the prisoner/, from around his ear, in one single session”, he told. 9
The method of constraint used in most cases, according to the depositions of former officers of
the Secret Services, was punishment applied to the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. The
prisoner was bound and a bar of iron was passed through the ties. Hanging from this bar, the prisoner
was struck with a strap of leather until he fainted – a procedure that the investigators called cynically
rôtissoire. The inventiveness of the torturers knew no limits and the victims did not resist the means
used. Aurel Florian, former social democrat militant, 10 explains the torments of one of his cell-mates
until his death during the investigation: “The torturers surpassed themselves to find punishments! They
pulled out his nails, they beat his testicles, they burnt his body with their cigarettes. Once, when they
took him, blood was pouring from his feet, it made pools: they stabbed him in the thighs and put salt on
the gaping wounds. Each day they came to take him, put the handcuffs on him, bound his feet and put
an iron bar between the hands and feet, a bar that they fixed between two desks. Hanging like this, they
beat him senseless. It was clear that he would not survive. More than one week had passed since his
arrest and his body was covered in bruises. During one night, they came to get him once again; it was
for the last time. I learnt later that the torturers, drunk, had burst open a testicle, they had put salt on it
and then they beat him to death.”
Information about the brutality of the arrests and ways of investigation went beyond the prison
walls, but also the borders of the country. In the exiled Romanian press they wrote: “Arrests are usually
made at night. Under the pretext of having received a complaint, several policemen, dressed in plain
clothes, proceed to make a detailed search of the person’s home to find … arms. As they don’t find
anything incriminating, they make deceitful excuses, saying that it was probably a false accusation and
nevertheless asking the citizen to go with them to the police station for a short declaration. Taking the
statement sometimes takes months and years, without the family having news of the person who had
disappeared, forgotten somewhere, in the Securitate cellars or in some prison. The most usual criticisms
are to have listened to imperialist radios or to have read books that have been published in the capitalist
world. For the first step of the investigation, the prisoner is treated gently. They are promised a pardon
if they make a full and honest declaration. In the second step, however sincere the declaration is, they
are beaten and tortured for not having divulged everything. They are beaten with an iron bar on the soles
of the feet, subjected to the manège under the surveillance of trained dogs or placed on burning steel
plates to convince them to make full testimonies. In this way, the torturers include the denunciation and
the implication of as large as possible a number of people in the circle of the accused.” 11
Extremely brutal means were only abandoned for a brief period of time in the history of the
Securitate. For example, three years after Stalin’s death and at rare times, when international protests
put the regime in a difficult situation, in particular after Romania was made part of the United
Nations Organisation in 1955, there were temporary improvements in the treatment of prisoners in
the concentration camps and prisons and the causing of deaths during investigations was avoided.
The effects of these measures did not last, and the machine of the Securitate, dedicated, through the
selection and training of its agents, to brutal repression, went back to its old habits.
8
Ibid., p. 349.
9
Ibid., p. 350.
10
Interview carried out in April 1992 in Tîrgu Mures, where Mr Aurel Florian, who, at the time of these writings, was the head of a local
subsidiary of the Social-Democrat Party (which has no liaison with the present government party; it was only later that the party took the
name of the traditional political formation of Romania between the wars).
11
The journal România, V/55 (January–February 1951), published by the Romanian National Committee, New York.
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