The Corrupt Communist Regime and the News Media

In his cold war classic, Red Horizons, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest defector from a communist regime, wrote that “the Romanian revolution of 1989 was the first one in history to have been started by the news media and won by the television cameras.”

The misery and starvation subsistence that Romanians had to endure for decades, while the media, political apparatchiks and the Ceausescus rolled in the lap of luxury, finally exploded into revolt.

The people did not have arms; they had been confiscated decades earlier. But the revolt leaders, as Pacepa described it, “were able to mobilize virtually the entire citizenry by seizing the television station, making it their headquarters, and then broadcasting their fight against the hated dictator live, day and night.”

But even so, the revolution would have never succeeded had it not been for the military forces who had joined the people’s revolt. The proletariat had had enough suffering and misery during the quarter of a century of Ceausescu’s oppressive communist regime.

Despite his “large, vicious, well trained, and heavily armed security force,” and despite his underground bunkers and tunnels, he lost his total control of the nation in a few days. The self-described “mother and father of the nation” were whimpering during their arrest while attempting to escape by helicopter.

The shoemaker and his uneducated wife, who awarded herself degrees she never earned from schools she never attended, were finally deposed, summarily tried by a military tribunal, and sentenced to death by firing squad. The media was no longer there to lionize their diabolical tyranny.

For decades after World War II, the communist propaganda machine of the most oppressive regime in Eastern Europe was kept alive and enhanced through forced communist education, parades, posters, publications, poetry, art, the dear leader’s cult of personality marches, a well-oiled propaganda machine, books, pamphlets, and the powerful official Romanian media that churned out tons of lies, disinformation, and manufactured history.

After the much-hated dictator Ceausescu and his wife were hurriedly executed on Christmas 1989, the very next day a suspiciously “independent” newspaper Adevarul (The Truth) published, for the first time for the repressed population, the painful reality of the vicious and corrupt regime they had just survived. People stood in lines for hours to buy the paper. After all, they were used to standing in huge lines every day to buy food that would help their families survive another day.

When Gen. Pacepa defected to the U.S., rumor had it that Ceausescu had a nervous breakdown and wanted him killed immediately. He did not want the rest of the world to find out the depth of his crimes against humanity.

Ceausescu ran a police state that Soviets would have envied.  All telephones were fitted with a “high-tech microphone,” and people had to submit samples of handwriting in case they decided to publish unauthorized hand-written pamphlets that would embarrass the regime and reveal the truth.  All typewriters had to be registered with the police.  Letters and packages were opened and read. Package contents were checked; many were confiscated as contraband and used by the loyal apparatchiks as spoils of war. Nobody bothered to reseal correspondence or deliver mailed packages that were emptied of western goods and stolen. Informers had to work hard to follow their marks’ every move. And yet, this type of spying seems juvenile and pales in comparison to today’s technology that spies on us and causes the erasure of any modicum of privacy we think we have.

While people starved and stood in lines for hours on end each day to buy food, Ceausescu’s son, Nicu, a pathetic and worthless drunk, broke unopened Johnny Walker Black Label bottles against the wall in his parents’ fancy home when he got bored, laughing when broken bottles splashed liquid on the walls, the expensive carpets, and furniture. The house maids had to clean any evidence of his outrageous behavior.

Sadly, Pacepa remarked that, even though the evil dictator and his wife were gone, the system that brought him to power and enabled him to stay in power was very much alive, ready to produce another Ceausescu when necessary. And the media was there to help.

Unfortunately, people were temporarily lulled into a false sense of freedom, security, and peace. Giving them better living conditions and the food they wanted for almost three decades, went a long way to quell any dissent to the new “free” regime. Pacepa wrote then, “In the absence of any organized opposition and democratic framework, Romania’s communist structure of government remains essentially in place…”

That is how, overnight, the former communist handlers, in the confusion and vacuum of uncertainty that ensued after the dictator’s execution, became rich beyond their dreams, and made fortunes stealing money and state property and selling it to the highest bidders before anyone woke up to take account of the theft. It was eventually stopped but not before the massive plunder underway became permanent.

December 1989

 

The Martyr Who Immolated Himself

The dark pages of history have recorded the selfless sacrifice of millions of faceless and often nameless heroes buried in native and foreign lands, quickly forgotten by the collective memory of their brethren whom they protected and saved so that they can have a better life, a brighter tomorrow, a happier future.

Occasionally the hero has a name; he/she commits such a solitary act of bravery and courage that it defies description. But the ultimate self-sacrifice sometimes is quickly forgotten or even scorned.

In 1969 Czechoslovakia, Jan Palack, a 21 year-old student set himself on fire on the steps of the National Museum in Prague in order to protest the USSR military intervention in his country.

Jerzy Popieluszko, a Catholic priest who sympathized with the labor group “Solidarnosti,” was assassinated in October 1984 by the Polish police.

Chris Gueffroy of the German Democratic Republic, a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union, was killed while trying to climb the Berlin Wall in order to flee from communism. Nobody ever tries to flee from capitalism. He was literally the last straw in the west’s desire and campaign to demolish the Wall of Shame built by East German communists in 1961.

The future president of Czechoslovakia, the writer Vaclav Havel, was sentenced to nine months in prison in February 1989, a victim of his anti-communist thoughts, ideas, and writings.

Author Mircea Brenciu dedicated his book, “The Martyr,” to a hero who may have changed the course of history with his act of defiance and bravery.  His self-sacrifice on March 2, 1989 in Poiana Brasov, Romania, helped initiate the end of 24 years of Ceausescu’s brutal communist dictatorship. Yet he is largely unknown today to his own people and to the West.

Mircea Brenciu asked rhetorically in his book dedicated to the most incredible brave man, Liviu Corneliu Babeş, “Why don’t Romanians love their authentic heroes?”

It is understandable why that was the case prior to the “fall” of communism. “Securitatea [security police] had ears everywhere, even when you were quiet, you were a suspect.” Unfortunately, “many of the torturers of yesterday and their replacements can be found today in key political, social, cultural and especially financial positions,” added Brenciu. It is clear why there is so little mention of the most tragic Romanian martyr.

Christianity in general considers suicide unholy and many priests refuse to bury such deceased in holy ground.  Only God can give the right to life and only God can take it away.

The Orthodox Church considers suicide an act of cowardice, not of heroism.  According to the young priest I spoke to on my trip to Poiana Brasov in 2015 to pay my respects to a Romanian hero, Babeş is an apostate and not worthy of praise.

A small monument is located a few feet from a small wooden church in the meadow where Babeş sacrificed himself to bring attention to the rest of the world to the plight of the desperate Romanian citizens living under the boot of communism.

There is a street that bears his name in Brasov, there is a metal cross on the bottom of the ski slope where the end of the tragedy unfolded, the type reserved for road accidents, and a modest monument in Poiana Brasov with the bronze effigy of the martyr created by the artist George Jipa.

Liviu Corneliu Babeş (1942-1989) made the ultimate sacrifice on March 2, 1989, several months before the December revolution that toppled the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. On a very crowded ski slope in Poiana Brasov where skiers from the West were vacationing, Babeş chose to set himself on fire, protesting the atrocities committed by the Ceausescu regime.

Brenciu wrote how, in a cathedral stillness, the crowd witnessed in shock and horror the unimaginable act of a skier on fire, gaining speed, not making a sound, as the smell of burnt flesh filled the air. At the bottom of the slope, Babeş fell, his body licked by the flames fed by oxygen and the clothes soaked with gasoline.  From underneath his smoldering clothes, he pulled out a sign that read, “STOP MURDER! AUSCHWITZ=BRASOV.”

Brenciu described how two tourists from Scotland, who happened to be very close to where the skier collapsed, covered his smoldering body with coats, in an attempt to put out the flames. Douglas Wallace was subsequently interviewed by the Sunday Times on March 12, 1989. (Burnt Alive: the Suicide that Shamed Romania)

When the ambulance arrived, Babeş was still alive, the barely audible labored and pained breaths the only witness to his intense pain and suffering.  According to Brenciu, the stretcher carriers, dressed in white but with police uniforms underneath, and with menacing looks, shooed the crowd away.  They were not there to help the immense suffering of the dying Babeş; they were there to cover up the incident. They announced loudly to the crowd that this man was mentally ill and there was nothing to see. Perhaps the crowd would have believed him, had it not been for the yellowed paper sign Babes carried with him that spoke clearly why he immolated himself.  “One of the residents of the concentration camp called Romania broke the silence, but the price was his personal sacrifice,” said Brenciu.

Nobody knows the last indignities this dying hero had to suffer while in custody of the so-called “saviors.” The Romanian word for ambulance is “salvare,” [salvation]. Their mission was quite different, to get to the bottom of his sacrificial act that dared to destroy the harmony of Poiana Brasov, of the fake reality created for foreign tourists that aimed to give them the false impression that Romanians lived in excellent conditions in Ceausescu’s “most humane and wise political regime possible.”

Mircea Sevaciuc explained that Liviu Cornel Babeş “was buried by communists and Securitate.”  After the revolt in November 15, 1987, Liviu was never left alone. He had sent a letter to Free Europe, asking for a better life for all Romanians. Since that time, a friend said, “He was afraid to walk in the streets. One day he told me at work – they want to get me but they won’t succeed because I am going to set myself on fire.”

 

Babeş’s widow, Etelka, and their daughter, were not left in peace to mourn the loss of their beloved husband and father.  Her apartment, located in one of the drab concrete apartment high-rises, was constantly watched by the Security Police. They came and searched everything and confiscated any notes and sketches he may have left behind. An amateur painter and sculptor, he had a small collection.

One day a friend accompanied Etelka to the cemetery where Babeş was buried.  They were followed by a Security Police officer who did not bother to disguise his obvious spying. Even in death, the communist police state did not leave her Cornel alone because he had the courage to sacrifice his life in such a public way in order to expose communism and its paid torturers and informers who robbed the masses of their humanity and freedom under the false pretense of “social justice” and equality.

 

 

 

Cetatea Fagarasului and Communist Punishment

Cetatea Fagarasului entrance (Photo: Ileana 2015)

We found Cetatea Fagarasului half-way between Brasov and Sibiu, an hour drive off the beaten path for foreign tourists. I would venture to say that we were the only overseas visitors on that drizzly morning. The fortress was surrounded by a fosse populated by black and white swans, perfect sentries for a castle that was often under Ottoman siege. Weeping willows lined the street leading to the entrance.

I thought we were going to see a 14^th century fortress but I discovered one of the many prisons Ceausescu had used around the country to punish those who disagreed with his regime and dared to protest his reign of terror.

Fagaras Fortress was built between the 14^th and 17^th centuries. The fortress was preceded by a wooden fortification and earthen wall dating from the 12^th century. In the 16^th century the fortress was transformed into a castle. Gabriel Rakosi I and Gabriel Bethlen, Transylvanian princes, decorated it according to Renaissance models in the 17^th century.

Moat with Swans (Photo: Ileana 2015)

The Fagaras Fortress, surrounded by a two-meter deep water moat (“fosse” in Old English) fed through a channel from the Olt River (since 1676 from “Superior lake”), was so impenetrable that, although attacked countless times, it was never conquered.

Scaffold (Photo: Ileana 2015)

The now green exterior courtyard had a medieval scaffold, which had been used for the last time in the 1970s. There was a carriage and a blacksmith’s shop with iron tools and bellows.

Access to the castle was made through two bridges (one pedestrian) and three consecutive lifting gates. On the northern side, built on wooden pillars, there were two powder houses (1667-1676). A boat and six swans were mentioned in 1656. Surviving on daily ration of rye bread, the swans multiplied to nine and four chicks by 1676. During our visit I saw two pairs of swans, a black and a white one.

One of the many inner courtyards (Photo: Ileana 2015)

 

The museum archives described how one Turkish historian, geographer, and traveler, Elvia Celebi, who crisscrossed the Ottoman Empire for 40 years, actually participated in the siege of Fagaras Fortress in 1661. He wrote that the Turks led by Ali Pasha, after setting fire to the citadel, were met with resistance from many soldiers and inhabitants gathered from the surrounding area. The Ottomans had to withdraw after 14 days of siege.

Gabriel Bethlen had a Hussars’ fortress built in 1623 in the northern part of the fortress, by the moat. The Ottoman sieges must have destroyed the Hussars’ fortress because it was never mentioned in any records or inventories after 1676.

Inner courtyard of the communist prison (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

According to museum archives, “After 1696, the fortress became a garrison for the Austrian army, then for the Magyar army, and after that for the Romanian army. Between 1948 and 1960 the fortress was a communist prison.”

Torture cell with tools (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

At the base of the Prison Tower was the jailer’s house. Records in 1632 mentioned 12 leg cuffs, 14 handcuffs, a tree trunk, an axe, leg iron weights, and a hangman’s broadsword. Under the jailer Ambrus Janos the inventory of his torture chamber swelled to 54 pairs of leg chains. By 1676, there were three dungeons in existence. One of the castle towers housed an Iron Maiden, a particularly cruel form of punishment. The unfortunate human was trapped inside an iron suit fitted with spikes which pierced his body, avoiding vital organs, but allowing for a slow and agonizingly painful death through blood loss.

Prison tower (photo: Ileana 2015)

The cells, where anti-communist fighters from Fagaras Mountains and other parts of the country were held between 1948-1960 when the fortress was a prison, were cold and dark. The treatment of political prisoners was beyond brutal. National Geographic mentioned that “During the brief moments when their cell doors were opened, they scratched messages on the walls” which are still visible today.

Faces of some of the victims (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

The museum exhibited photographs of those imprisoned and killed, original 1960 documents of peasants’ obligations to turn in a quota of everything they produced or grew, documents of rationed consumption, rationing of clothing and shoes, rationing of consumption of meat permitted only on Saturday and Sunday for a total of 250 grams weekly, with a supplement for those who actually worked in a factory, and the empty promise that bath soap and powdered detergent would be distributed soon. This rang similar to the current rationed consumption and dire economic situation in Venezuela where Hugo Chavez’s socialism has destroyed the once self-sufficient economy.

Passage to one of the jails (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Before the socialists took complete control of the country, the Directive NKVD 2-6 of 1947 made sure that any farm would be unprofitable to farm or rent to farm in order to facilitate collectivization. If the peasants offered more resistance to collectivization, they were to be forced to turn over to the communist party a higher quota of what they produced.

A poster from that era stated, “Long live the Soviet Union, the liberator of the Romanian people.” The Soviets actually destroyed every freedom and the wealth and comfort that the Romanian people formerly enjoyed under the monarchy and imprisoned them into a terrifying concentration camp unlike any other for 41 years.

“Let us promise anything asked of us, but, when the moment will come, let us remember that the communist honor is to not fulfill these promises,” said V.I. Lenin in his “Empty words about freedom.”

The massive propaganda was directed from Moscow because the Romanian commies did not have experience yet. Under their guidance, the Romanian Communist Party started a campaign of constant agitation and mobilization of the population, and non-stop manufactured crises.

The “enemies of the people” were identified during public meetings, press releases, and public trials. Dailies, magazines, newspapers, posters, journals, brochures, and pamphlets continued the indoctrination. An entire army of community organizers were released to agitate the masses.

A massive campaign to destroy the national memory, to falsify the past, and to rewrite history and the present began. The press pushed communist utopia non-stop. “The political police, under Soviet control, began a societal surveillance by agents and informers,” according to museum archives.

Monument dedicated to anti-communism fighters (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Once the urban population and the elites were subjugated, next came the peasants’ turn; they had been pretty much left alone until 1949. The commies made the peasants’ livelihood very difficult by forcing them into obligatory back breaking quotas and by controlling their commerce with agricultural products. The communists eventually destroyed the peasants’ individual property rights. Small farmers were constantly demonized, beaten, threatened, tortured, and imprisoned until they relented to become part of the communist collectivization agricultural machine.

In Tara Fagarasului which is the larger area surrounding this fortress prison in Cetatea Fagarasului, the social order was totally and systematically destroyed. Eighty percent of the population was considered well-off farmers, wealthy farmers, and middle peasants.  More than 1,000 locals suffered in forced labor camps, were deported to communist prisons around the country, and thousands of family members were discriminated and maligned socially and economically. 

The wealthy farmer was labeled “chiabur,” from the Turkish word “kibar,” meaning “a good steward.” The farmers were demonized and the word “chiabur” was successfully used by communists as a label to justify repression against private land owners.  The manufactured word “chiabur” was not unlike the bogus term of “white privilege” being floated by the main stream media and academia in our own country.

The first communist president, Gheorge Gheorghiu-Dej, was advising the apparatchiks involved in the land confiscation, that they should confiscate land in such a way that it did not look like nationalization, but at the same time, they should not leave the land owners much, “just enough to buy a cigarette,” and to pay them for their tractors scrap metal prices. “For better combines that do not need much repair, we should pay them 5 percent more.” (Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej speech on March 26, 1959)

Gheorghiu-Dej continued, “If a rich landowner protested, he can be shot on the spot, to let all know who would dare not to turn in their quotas what will befall them.” (Instructions to all member of Securitate, 1948)

I still remember, as a child, being forced to wait in long lines with my parents to view this man’s body in state when he passed away. The entire country was supposed to mourn his passing even though they hated his guts for what he had done to the country.

To justify the existence and establishment of the terror state, enemies had to be found. If none were found, enemies had to be invented, said one of the Soviet community organizers and agitators, Tzvetan Todorov. In 1951 forced deportations spread ethnic Swabians and Romanians around the country, especially those who opposed the regime and collectivization. Many were sent south in Baragan and Basarabians were deported to Fagaras. But an armed resistance developed in the Fagaras Mountains in Transylvania.

As part of the same Directive, NKVD 2-6 of 1947, all parties had to be unified under one party, making sure that all key positions would be occupied by the secret (Soviet) services.

Weeping willows, a fitting tribute to those who died (photo: Ileana 2015)

 

Cetates Fagarasului, the medieval fortress, saw the incarceration between September 1950-April 1960 of over 4,000 former employees from the Information Services, State Security, military judges, policemen, diplomats, and those who helped the anti-communism fighters. Prisoners were jailed without due process and without sentencing. Because of the harsh and inhuman imprisonment conditions, 166 generals, officers, clerks, workers, and peasants died there.

 

I dug up a tiny rock from the inner courtyard for my friend who collects stones from different parts of the world. I washed it carefully before packing it, wondering how much blood of innocents tortured or killed in battle or in prison had washed over these rocks over the centuries.