Radio România Internațional

Tag: prisoners

  • Soviet prisoners in Romania

    Soviet prisoners in Romania

    Romania took sides with Germany in World War Two. On June 22nd, 1941, jointly with Germany, Romania began military operations against the Soviet Union. However, we need to say the Soviet Union had been the aggressor state, the year before. In June 1940, in the aftermath of two cession ultimatums the Soviets issued to the Romanian government, the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Romanian territories of the east and the north. Among other things, just as it would happen in any military operation, there also were prisoners.

    Over June 22nd, 1941 and August 23rd, 1944, the Romanian Army captured 91,060 Soviet soldiers. Of them, 90%, that is 82, 057 military, were sent to Romania, in 12 concentration camps. According to the dictionary compiled by historians Alesandru Duțu, Florica Dobre and Leonida Loghin “The Romanian Army in World War Two”, of those who were detained in concentration camps,13,682 who were of Romanian origin from Bessarabia and Bukovina were released. Other 5,223 died, while 3,331 escaped.

    On August 23rd, 1944, Romania pulled out of the alliance with Germany and on Romanian territory there were 59, 856 Soviet prisoners, of whom 2, 794 were officers, while 57, 062 were NCOs and soldiers. Considering the prisoners’ ethnic origin, 25, 533 were Ukrainians, 17,833 Russians, 2,497 Kalmuks, 2,039 Uzbeks, 1,917 Turks, 1,588 Cossacks, 1,501 Armenians, 1,600 Georgians, 601 Tartars, 293 Jews, 252 Polish, 186 Bulgarians, 150 Ossetins, 117 Azeri, as well as other several dozens of ethnic groups, in smaller numbers.

    Documents reveal the Soviet prisoners in Romania were treated in accordance with the existing international legislation. Early into the war the living conditions were dire, and it was because of such conditions that most of the deaths were reported. Yet they improved rapidly, the reports compiled by the Romanian Army’s control commission mentioning the progress.

    The Soviet prisoners were confined in concentration camps, accommodation, food, hygiene and medical assistance conditions were provided for them, they were interrogated and were given the chance to work.

    Colonel Anton Dumitrescu took part in the act of August 23rd, 1944, himself and four NCOs being the ones who arrested Marshall Ion Antonescu and vice-Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu.

    In a 1974 interview stored in Radio Romania’s Oral History Center, he recalled how, prior to his arresting Antonescu, he was sent to gather intel on the center of Soviet prisoners in Slobozia. The Romanian intelligence service had found out the Germans prepared that center as a launching site of the operations against the Romanian army, should the latter defect.

    ”In Slobozia there was a big centre with Russian prisoners. The Germans had garnished the entire camp with Vlasov troops. The Vlasov troops were the Russians who, led by general Vlasov, had taken sides with the Germans. And, in German uniforms, fought against the Russians. However, from the intelligence I had, the Germans wanted to be sure about that center should something happen with us, with the Vlasovs taking sides with the Russians and fighting against us.

    I had been in contact with the Vlasovs in the Caucasus when, indeed, those people in no way wanted to surrender because the Soviets would have killed them. They were dead set on fighting. The entire region there was teeming with refugees from Moldavia and from Bessarabia and I did not see any Vlasov whatsoever.”

    Engineer Miron Tașcă used to work in Braila, at the French-Romanian plant, with a mixed, civilian and military production. In 1995, he reminisced the Soviet prisoners who worked at the Braila-based plant and what happened with them, after the Soviets reached Romanian territory.

    ”We, during the war, at the factory in Braila, also worked with a series of prisoners. They were treated very well, they did not work on the machines, they did manual jobs, downloading and uploading stuff, and cleaning. Those prisoners, the Soviets set them free, took them and brought them back to Russia. The moment they were taken, they also knew they had to leave.

    One of them, who told me he was an Uzbek, said he no longer wanted to return to the USSR. He asked me to go at all lengths to keep him there, he was a hard-working, silent and quiet boy. Of course, something like that was not possible. Prisoners were investigated, numbered, completely taken over, and that’s when he also left, the poor thing. But he was the one who under no circumstances wanted to return. Others did not want to return either, likeminded people, that is. Perhaps they did not know what was in store for them, but he, from the very beginning said he did not want to return. “

    A student of the military school during the war, Catrinel Dumitrescu, in 1998 said that, prior to seeing Soviet military after 1944, he had also seen them as prisoners:

    ”I had seen Russians before, they were prisoners. There were, in our country, about 10-20 Russian prisoners who were free to work. They were accommodated with the gendarmes post and worked in the cleaning of roads, of roadside ditches, they called in at private residences and did menial jobs there, they received food and suchlike. After August 23rd, 1944, the first ones to flee, not to the East but to the West, were those Russians! ‘Cause they knew what was going to come. “

    Soviet war prisoners in Romania are a less well-known chapter in Romanian modern history. It is that kind of chapter that still takes its time to reach public consciousness.

  • Political prisoners in Ploiesti between 1948 and 1964

    Political prisoners in Ploiesti between 1948 and 1964

    About 350 political detainees, mentioned in official documents, appear in the archives of the town of Ploieşti, an important industrial and oil center, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. Most of these people were arrested, imprisoned, tried and tortured in the citys iconic buildings, which ordinary people passed by every day without suspecting anything. Starting from the history of the place, but also from the need to know the tragedies that his hometown went through, historian Lucian Vasile wrote the book “The ones we forgot. The communist repression in Ploieşti (1948 – 1964).“



    The detainees presented in the book were selected based on their connection with the town of Ploiesti. At the time of their arrest they either lived in Ploiești and belonged to that community, or were investigated by the local political police and imprisoned there. But regardless of that, their tragedy is the same as that of all victims of the communist regime, a regime eager to annihilate real or imagined enemies, based on accusations that were most times invented. Historian Lucian Vasile tells us more about the political prisoners in Ploiesti: ”They were from all social categories. This seemed to me the most interesting thing because almost half of the political prisoners were from the working class or were poor or middle-class peasants, that is, exactly the categories that the regime claimed to represent. This shows, in fact, the degree of rejection or attachment of the Romanian community to the regime imposed after the Second World War. Most of the detainees were young because they were seen as the most open to doing what they were asked. They had no family obligations and no children, something that usually influences the way people respond to pressure.”



    Unfounded accusations, abusive arrests, no official indictment or trial, but most of all, torture and inhumane conditions of detention have made many prison survivors reluctant to talk about what happened to them. For some of the survivors in Ploieşti, Lucian Vasile was the one who took on the writing of their story. One of the most impressive people was Martha Koppes who, in the early 1950s, had an extremely interesting meeting with the Securitate, the former political police. Lucian Vasile: ”Martha Koppes was, in my opinion, the bravest woman I met in my research. She was not the only one with an impressive story, but she had a great personality. She did not go to prison, but she came from a mixed Romanian-Dutch family, her father being an important industrialist from Ploiești. In the 1940s, while living in Bucharest with her husband, she was contacted by the Securitate and her collaboration was discussed. She was forced to collabotare, for the sake of her parents, who were already old, wanted to leave the country and had already been harassed by the political police. Martha, in particular, was supposed to keep everything a secret. She was supposed to provide information from the Dutch Embassy where she had been working for two years, but she managed to make it look like she was playing the Securitate game without actually doing it, in order to get her parents out of the country. Some unusual circumstances pushed her into the arms of the Securitate and she had to sign a very atypical commitment, which she later denied. She eventually managed to leave the country and so have her parents. Unfortunately, she could not win the whole game, as her husband remained captive in Romania and they eventually got separated because of the distance.”



    Given that many of the political detainees in Ploieşti, in the first years of communism, were young people or students, they could not escape the hardest experience of that time: the re-education that started at the Pitesti penitentiary and later spread to other detention centers. The detainees were forced to torture each other, to denounce all their previous beliefs and the people close to them. This also happened in the late 1940s to some students from Ploieşti who had printed anti-communist manifestos. Lucian Vasile tells us what happened to them once they were imprisoned in Pitesti: ”Everything turns upside down so many times that you dont know what is normal and what is abnormal, who is the victim and who is the aggressor. But this is also a story of survival and trust because even in those absolutely terrible conditions the four friends still trusted each other and refused to hit each other.”



    Released under a pardon decree in 1964, most of the detainees in Ploieşti and other prisons, continued to be monitored and harassed by the Securitate until the fall of the communist regime. (EE)