In the midst of the presidential elections, and with feelings running high, Romania’s historical community has been rocked by a bitter debate over the involvement of fascist prisoners in the regime of torture that took place at Piteşti prison between 1949 and 1951. Historians at the centre of the controversy have received death threats from their critics on the far right and the discussions have revealed deep cleavages around the memory of fascism and communism.
The ‘Piteşti Experiment’, in which roughly 1,000 prisoners were forced to torture each other into insanity – and sometimes to death, – has become the quintessential example of the evil of Romanian communism. Led by Alexandru Bogdanovici and Eugen Ţurcanu, who had been imprisoned for their involvement in the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael, prisoners incarcerated at Suceava apparently volunteered to run a ‘reeducation’ program for themselves and other prisoners. They formed the Organization of Prisoners with Communist Convictions (ODCC), confessed their past crimes and beliefs, studied communist literature, and persuaded other prisoners to do the same.
Ţurcanu was transferred to Piteşti prison in December 1949 and given use of Hospital Room No. 4. Here he and other members of the ODCC began an ‘experiment’ on other legionary prisoners. Torture would begin suddenly and brutally, lasting day and night for weeks on end. They would regularly beat the victims with clubs and whips, force them to eat and drink their own feces, crucify them, sodomize them while screaming blasphemies and jump on victims until they died. When prisoners begged to join the ODCC, Ţurcanu made them confess their anti-communist thoughts and actions before others, accuse themselves of immorality and then join him in torturing other prisoners.
