crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
It has been held that in 1980s there was no use of this arsenal of specific methods by the Securitate.
Nothing of the sort. The case of the engineer Gheorghe Ursu, has become famous. He died after being
tortured in the cells of the secret services on 17 November 1985 for having written a diary in which he
made fun of the Ceausescu spouses. 12 Actually all dissidents from the 1980s have related that they were
subjected to brutal investigations, the only difference with respect to the Stalinist years being milder
conditions of detention. There was also recourse to excessive violence, borrowed from the Stalinist
arsenal, against the rebel workers in Brasov, on 15 November 1987. I have collected more than 50 testimonies
concerning the how the investigation of these workers took place. One of the workers arrested that day
told us: “I didn’t think that I was capable of enduring such a thrashing. I fell, but that didn’t stop them
beating me, they even beat my feet. After that, they lifted me up, tied me up, hands behind my back, to
the ring fixed to the wall and they continued to beat me for hours and hours. I think I fainted, because
they threw water onto me to bring me round; they untied me and ordered me to write. I couldn’t write, I
was trembling too much. I was so shaken that I couldn’t even slap them in the face. I was taken to cell 4,
in the basement; and the following day we were all taken out into the hall and lined up. Comrade Cebuc,
the party representative, came accompanied by some generals: Let me see that … the devil take you, you
have brought shame on Brasov. They passed in front of us and spat in our faces. I lost at least twelve or
thirteen kilos in seven or eight days. I was beaten every day and they stopped me sleeping. The officers
who dealt with me behaved badly. An educated person does not kick you in the stomach, and doesn’t
beat you with the legs of a chair until they break. We had the impression that it was an experiment that
they were playing out a violent scene from films that they had seen. In Bucharest, bad treatment was
rather traditional. They beat you in the kidneys, only in the kidneys. They tied you up, blocking you in
a certain position and they didn’t beat you with rubber sticks, they were too soft, but with chair legs. Or
they liked to squeeze your fingers in the door until the blood spurted out under the nails …” 13 Two of
the imprisoned workers died shortly after they were freed and most of the people investigated, although
young at that time, suffer from kidney, stomach and liver problems due to the internal injuries provoked
by the violence of the Securitate agents.
The Securitate and its officers maintained the same violent behaviour particular to the political
police; they just lessened it slightly because it was no longer possible to keep it secret. In the long term,
the practice of violence by the State directed against its subjects, in order to maintain the power of the
communist politico-military body, was a way for the despotic authority to go forward in daily life. By
around 1989, the Securitate had long become a banal evil.
12
The Black Book of Communism, under the coordination of Stéphane Courtois, Editions de Humanitas, Bucharest 1998, p. 775 (Addenda).
13
The testimony is by the worker Gheorghe Gyerko, from Brasov, of Hungarian nationality. His wife Eniko also told what the family had to
suffer: “All the ordeal of my family started on 19 November. In the evening, my husband didn’t come home. A few days later, two officers
came to our home, announcing to me that my husband was detained and that the things in the house were to be impounded. They prepared
a report and forbade me to sell or to damage the now public items, because they were to be auctioned. After two weeks, my husband was
brought back by two agents of the Securitate. He was very weak, his face was drawn.” After their possessions were taken away, the
Gyerko spouses were deported to another town, having an obligatory domicile in a home for single people. The same experience was
shared by 60 of the participants in the anti-communist revolt of the Brasov workers (see Marius Oprea, Stejarel Olaru, The unforgettable
day: 15 November 1987 – Brasov, Polirom, Iasi 2002, pp. 113–114).
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