Before I conclude this record, I shall mention another kind of unmaskings,
identical in scope with those at Pitesti and Gherla, but conducted with a variation
in method. The main feature of these unmaskings was the fact that there was no
effort to dissimulate the administration's participation in them -- in fact
they were openly conducted by the prison personnel, though through prisoners as
instruments.
In the spring of 1950 a special room was prepared at Jilava in one of the
barracks in the courtyard for use in torturing prisoners who were awaiting
trial.
The method was very simple. A guard, usually part of the outer watch,
accompanied by the head of the "secret" section, entered a cell and
called out the name of the prisoner to be investigated. In the corridor, the
prisoner's head was covered with a hood so he could see nothing, The guard then
took him by the arm and led him through the courtyard and into that specially
prepared room.
Here, his eyes still covered and with the guard's grip still on his arm, he
was subjected to a stringent inquisition usually based on information gathered
in his cell by informers introduced for that function, or through the
indiscretions of his various friends in other cells, or directly from the files
being compiled at the Ministry of the Interior for his eventual trial.
Identification of the interrogators was difficult, for the only means of
recognition was by their voices, and the victims naturally supposed they must
be facing officers sent from the Ministry of the Interior. Eventually, however,
they learned that their questioners were merely other prisoners almost
exclusively chosen from among "former" members of the Communist
apparatus.
Presumably these old Communists had sinned by agreeing to become informers
for the Romanian Securitate during the government of Antonescu. Their leader
or, in any case, the one conducting the investigations and directing the
torture, was named Mihailov, a Bessarabian seemingly of Russian origin,
arrested for having denounced several of his fellow-Communists during the War.
Among his collaborators at Jilava, assisting in the "investigations,"
the meanest and also the most savage was one by the name of Pascu, a mechanic
by occupation, and a Communist arrested for the same reasons as Mihailov. I had
occasion to meet him several years later, after he was sent to Gherla, where he
continued to serve the prison's administration as informer. That was why he was
charged with the surveillance of the communal bath, a quite comfortable and
especially convenient spot, where he did nothing but oversee those who bathed,
and could eavesdrop on every word spoken. Another participant at Jilava was a
Hungarian mechanic, Buchs, who was sent to Aiud in 1951 and there was quite
discreet, behaving relatively well. (It is possible that the Securitate's
promises, later broken, had opened his eyes. ) In addition, it was reported
that a simple worker, rather retarded mentally, was used particularly to
conduct prolonged beatings. The team of "investigators" numbered over
ten, but only those I have just mentioned were definitely identified.
The first discovery that the investigators were not political officers was
occasioned by an interesting coincidence. It so happened that before
ex-Lieutenant Z. of the Medical Corps was taken out of his cell for another
interrogation, Mihailov had been replaced. So in the barracks room, where
Lieutenant Z. expected to hear Mihailov's voice, the questioner had a voice
quite different. Already cruelly brutalized and being an independent spirit (in
fact, this is why he was sent off to Archangel while he was still a prisoner of
war in Russia), he became so irritated that he snatched off the hood covering
his head. To his stupefaction, seated at the investigating table were not the
Securitate officers he expected to see, but ordinary prisoners; and the person
who had always led him from his cell and now stood at his side was just a
uniformed prison guard!
The atmosphere that prevailed at Jilava was totally different from that at
other prisons, especially because no one there had yet been sentenced and all
imagined they would be liberated before the Communists had time to try them.
[1]
This explains in part the courage of various prisoners who refused to make
"confessions" when taken before Mihailov. It seems also, however,
that the Ministry of the Interior was not very insistent, for when word got
around throughout the isolation cells, they "closed" the O. D. C. C.
office at Jilava, though not before scores of "political detainees"
had been tortured into bloody pulp.
It could be that there was no direct connection between the unmaskings at
Pitesti and what happened at Jilava, but the coincidence in time and some
similarity of method make it impossible to deny that there was some
coordination toward a previously well-determined end. It should be remembered
also that Pitesti, an execution penitentiary, and Jilava, a stockade for the
Ministry of the Interior, were the two prisons closest to Bucharest; in other
words, the most accessible to those who wanted to maintain close supervision
and rigorous control.
If I mention the inquisitions at Jilava, pallid in comparison with those of
Pitesti, but brutal and sadistic, it is only to show that a single intelligence
planned and directed the use of prisoners to torture their fellow prisoners.
Jilava was evidently a part of the experiment.
[2]
|
1) |
In the early 1950's, many Romanians believed the propaganda put out from
Washington! (Tr. ) |
|
2) |
If we had more detailed information about the procedures at Jilava, its
function in the experiment, as a "control group" or otherwise,
might be clearer. (Tr. ) |