RRI Live!

Listen to Radio Romania International Live

Unearthing communist crimes

The burial places of many victims of the communist regime had been, for dozens of years, unknown.

Unearthing communist crimes
Unearthing communist crimes

, 05.12.2016, 13:39

The burial places of many victims of the communist regime had been, for dozens of years, unknown. But as the communist regime collapsed in 1989, the Romanian society initiated a series of actions in a bid to find the victims of communism, buried in unknown or God-forsaken places.



Historian Marius Oprea is the one who in 2006 set up and ran the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes. Oprea and his team initiated forensic archaeology campaigns, with 4 or 5 such campaigns being run each year. Ten years on, we talked with historian Marius Oprea about the outcome of the campaigns ran by his institute. Marius Oprea authored several volumes on the Securitate, one of the communist regime’s retaliatory instruments. One of his volumes was turned into a documentary film, entitled Four Ways to Die.



With details on his fieldwork, here is historian Marius Oprea: “In the early 1950s during our searches across the country, we fond many places where people had been shot dead and then buried by the Secret Police, with the place not being marked in any way. Apart from that, we also made searches in detention places, namely in Aiud, Periprava and Targu Ocna. Next year we will also expand our fieldwork to concentration camps in Balta Brailei, in Salcia, Frecatei and Agaua, where we found several mass graves. We will analyze the bones of the people buried there. It is a difficult job as we start off from documents and testimonials and then find something else on the field, 50-60 years after those crimes had been perpetrated. We often find it hard and sometimes impossible to spot the places where the people killed had been buried, because constructions were erected over them, just as it happened with the people killed in Cluj, at the Securitate headquarters. In other cases, such sites have simply vanished from people’s memory. We haven’t always found out where the mass graves were, but our success rate is over 60%, which is relevant for what we do.”



We asked Marius Oprea how many victims have been unearthed so far: “We haven’t worked out their exact number, but I can say we found 50 of the people executed for having put up armed resistance against the communist regime. We found 70 other people shot in penitentiaries. We don’t know their exact numbers as in many cases the bones got mixed up. We don’t know for sure if all the bones we found, like those we found in Sighet, belong to former political prisoners. This remains to be established by forensic investigation. As soon as we discover skeletons of people killed by Securitate, for whom we have documents and whose identity is known to us, we call criminal investigators. We’ve had an excellent collaboration so far, although there were gaps in our work together, mostly in the early days of our work, when criminal investigators didn’t quite get what exactly we did. For them, such cases had for long been classified, being rated as sheer manslaughter cases. But we did not give in and insisted that such cases should not be rated as simple manslaughter cases but as crimes against humanity. And that’s how in the long run, the ruling of sentences was possible, for Ion Ficior and Alexandru Visinescu. I only hope that the punishing of those guilty of crimes against humanity during the communist regime will continue. We gather direct material evidence, that is the bones of the people who were killed.”



Executions were carried out by shooting, which was the standard procedure at the time. Marius Oprea gave us details about their staging: “There were several types of execution, most of them disguised as standard procedure for attempted escape from secure escort. This means that the detainees were taken out of the Securitate facilities for so-called reenactments. In reality they were taken off the van and shot by machine-gun. Some of them would even get an extra bullet in the head. Others were just shot from behind, such as a 74 year old, semi-paralyzed man, who was shot like that after he was taken out ‘for a stroll’. His ‘guilt’ was that he had given grapes to some partisans. We also found some of those people’s bones, and in their stomachs there were grape seeds, as the grapes the old man had given them was their last meal.”



Behind every skeleton there is a story, and the documentary called “Four Ways to Die” tells stories about the life and death of four people whose only guilt was to have stood against communism. Marius Oprea: “It was one of the Securitate practices to instate fear through various means of excessive violence. People from the victims’ villages would learn about the latter being killed and thus their resistance to collectivization was broken. I estimated that some 10,000 people fell victim to such executions, including people sentenced for various felonies, but in the case of whom the Securitate decided the sentences had been too mild. Under the pretense of carrying the inmates from one penitentiary to another, the Securitate was simply killing them. 16 detainees transferred from Constanta to Timisoara, for instance, were killed on the road, somewhere near Lugoj. We also found 5 detainees transferred from Gherla to Timisoara for a so-called additional investigation, in which they never took part. Only their coats came back to Gherla, and we found the minutes validating the return of those items.”



Marius Oprea believes that a national programme would be a necessary last homage paid by Romanian society to the fighters for freedom who were killed in the field and buried without a cross.






RRI
The History Show Monday, 28 October 2024

Securitate and the KGB parting ways

The most feared institution of the Romanian communist state was the political police known as Securitate, created on the model of the NKVD, which...

Securitate and the KGB parting ways
Vasile Luca
The History Show Monday, 21 October 2024

Vasile Luca

From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1989, the Red Army imposed communist party regimes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. They...

Vasile Luca
Gheorghe Gheorghiu –Dej şi Petru Groza /
The History Show Monday, 14 October 2024

The Romanian Communist Party and the Agrarian Reform

According to the Marxist-Leninist theses about means of production, property had to be common, owned by all those who used it and created added...

The Romanian Communist Party and the Agrarian Reform
Bricul Mircea foto mapn ro @Capitan Gabriel Chiriloiu
The History Show Monday, 07 October 2024

The Romanian military fleet in WWII

The history of the Romanian military fleet begins in the middle of the 19th century, when, after the union of the two principalities of Moldova and...

The Romanian military fleet in WWII
The History Show Monday, 30 September 2024

Ana Pauker

Ana Pauker is one of the most conspicuous figureheads in the history of the communist regime in Romania. Ana Pauker played a crucial part in the team...

Ana Pauker
The History Show Monday, 23 September 2024

Nicolae Titulescu and the Romanian diplomacy in Europe in the 1930s

  The diplomacies of countries that gravitate around the powerful ones, always have the mission of being one step ahead of events. They must...

Nicolae Titulescu and the Romanian diplomacy in Europe in the 1930s
The History Show Monday, 16 September 2024

The early days of BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting

In the world of radio broadcasting, the BBC needs no introduction. The BBC is one of the landmarks without which the history of radio broadcasting...

The early days of BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting
The History Show Monday, 19 August 2024

Restored Romanian monuments in Bessarabia

  On March 27, 1918, Bessarabia, stretching between rivers Prut and Dniester, united with Romania after it had been annexed by Russia in 1812...

Restored Romanian monuments in Bessarabia

Partners

Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român
Liga Studentilor Romani din Strainatate - LSRS Liga Studentilor Romani din Strainatate - LSRS
Modernism | The Leading Romanian Art Magazine Online Modernism | The Leading Romanian Art Magazine Online
Institului European din România Institului European din România
Institutul Francez din România – Bucureşti Institutul Francez din România – Bucureşti
Muzeul Național de Artă al României Muzeul Național de Artă al României
Le petit Journal Le petit Journal
Radio Prague International Radio Prague International
Muzeul Național de Istorie a României Muzeul Național de Istorie a României
ARCUB ARCUB
Radio Canada International Radio Canada International
Muzeul Național al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti” Muzeul Național al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti”
SWI swissinfo.ch SWI swissinfo.ch
UBB Radio ONLINE UBB Radio ONLINE
Strona główna - English Section - polskieradio.pl Strona główna - English Section - polskieradio.pl
creart - Centrul de Creație Artă și Tradiție al Municipiului Bucuresti creart - Centrul de Creație Artă și Tradiție al Municipiului Bucuresti
italradio italradio
Institutul Confucius Institutul Confucius
BUCPRESS - știri din Cernăuți BUCPRESS - știri din Cernăuți

Affiliates

Euranet Plus Euranet Plus
AIB | the trade association for international broadcasters AIB | the trade association for international broadcasters
Digital Radio Mondiale Digital Radio Mondiale
News and current affairs from Germany and around the world News and current affairs from Germany and around the world
Comunità radiotelevisiva italofona Comunità radiotelevisiva italofona

Providers

RADIOCOM RADIOCOM
Zeno Media - The Everything Audio Company Zeno Media - The Everything Audio Company