{"id":13573,"date":"2022-10-11T12:02:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T10:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wobblyride.com\/?p=13573"},"modified":"2022-11-22T12:47:39","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T11:47:39","slug":"memorial-sighetu-romania-communist-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wobblyride.com\/pl\/2022\/10\/11\/memorial-sighetu-romania-communist-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting the prison museum in Sighetu Marma\u021biei – a look into Romania’s dark communist history"},"content":{"rendered":"

While most people travel to the\u00a0<\/strong>Maramures<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0region of Romania to experience its peaceful and serene rural life, visiting The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance in Sighetu Marma\u021biei is a sombre experience. The former prison is a testimonial of the darkest pages in Romania\u2019s modern history.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the 1950s, almost 200 of the most influential politicians, intellectuals and religious leaders were imprisoned in Sighetu Marma\u021biei, a small town right next to the Ukrainian border (which back then was a border with USSR). Today, almost 90 cells on three floors host an exposition telling the history of Romanian communism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly few people know about the Memorial in Sighetu Marma\u021biei, considering that the Council of Europe announced it as one of the three most important commemoration places in Europe, together with Auschwitz and the Peace Memorial in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are interested in the history of Eastern Europe and the communist times, or if you simply want to understand Romania and its past better, you should pay a visit to the Communist Memorial in Sighetu Marma\u021biei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the ways to survive the terror of imprisonment was to write the underground poetry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A chessboard made by the inmates of Sighetu prison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Artyku\u0142 zawiera linki afiliacyjne. Je\u015bli zam\u00f3wisz co\u015b za ich po\u015brednictwem, nie zap\u0142acisz ani grosza wi\u0119cej, a ja otrzymam niewielk\u0105 prowizj\u0119, kt\u00f3ra umo\u017cliwi mi dalsz\u0105 prac\u0119 nad blogiem. <\/em> Dzi\u0119ki za wsparcie! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communism in Romania<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not possible to understand Romania today without learning about its history. And in the 20th century, this history was pretty dark. Alongside Albania<\/a>, Romania had one of the most oppressive communist regimes in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some people called it a country of prisons, where over 2 million people were politically persecuted. The regime didn\u2019t save the youth that protested against indoctrination and participated in the life of opposition organisations. In the Sighetu prison, high school students accounted for 2 % of political prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The communist government of Nicolae Ceau\u0219escu aimed to control every area of citizen\u2019s life with widely used surveillance. The dictator\u2019s aim was to make Romania \u201ethe only country on earth able to know what every single one of its citizens is thinking\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The methods used by the Romanian communist government were so utterly cruel that they even shocked the USSR\u2019s secret services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pite\u0219ti Experiment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Especially shocking was the so-called Pite\u0219ti Experiment or Pite\u0219ti Phenomenon that took place from 1949 to 1951. A journalist Virgil Ierunca described it as \u201ethe largest and most intensive brainwashing torture program in the Eastern Bloc\u201d. The inmates of the Pite\u0219ti Prison, mostly students who protested against the communist regime, were forced to torture the other prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was supposed to \u201ere-educate\u201d them, dismantle their value system and change their personalities so they abandon their past beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since many inmates were orthodox Christians, the guards ordered them to mock the baptism ceremony using urine instead of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cruel torture methods<\/a> included feeding inmates with human faeces, burning their bodies with cigarettes and beating them with clubs and whips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn<\/a>, the Russian novelist and Nobel Prize holder who himself experienced torture in a Soviet Gulag, said the Pite\u0219ti Experiment was \u201ethe most terrible act of barbarism in the contemporary world\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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