After the arrest from the Securitate, where I was beaten in so many ways that it’s hard to believe, I found out that if you don’t react or concentrate on the beatings you receive, you get over them a lot easier. I used to think about something else than the fact that I was being hit. For instance, I saw how the blood blenched out of me on the wall when they knocked me and I wondered: “Is that my blood?” But I soon received another knock and the confirmation that it was indeed my blood. But I went further: “Yes, it’s my blood. Yes. It will last some more.” But it was almost as if I didn’t feel the knock anymore… Almost. I don’t know… But I had this belief that I will get over it easier.
No matter how terrifying the Piteşti phenomenon was, they couldn’t get everything out of us. There were certain things... It was already routine for us to only declare what we had heard before, what had already been declared by others. We simply reconfirmed things, but we didn’t give out any new names – as much as we could, because some of us couldn’t resist; they had too many pieces of evidence and they confronted us. Sometimes they would confront each other: “Which one of you lied?” They had to beat each other up and in the end they would find out who had lied or had refused to give away information.
But we were so hungry that we preferred to eat the soup, as bad as it was, as plain soup, and not with the faeces in it. And we ate the faeces before lunch came... We cleaned them up from the kettle, because they would end up in our stomachs either way. I can’t say that it became a habit, but it happened often. So we didn’t have the loathing anymore for the faeces... Sometimes, if you wouldn’t give in while they were beating you, they would say: “Give him something to eat...” We knew what that meant. “Who used the kettle for necessities? You got out of eating them. Give them to this other one.” And they made you eat them. It happened even more frequently with urine, but it was interesting that the faeces didn’t harm you, while urine did. If you drank urine you either got diarrhoea, or... But, in any way, it ruined your stomach.
I found out that if you don’t concentrate on the beatings you receive, you get over them a lot easier.
Emil Sebeşan
photo: Arhiva Centrului de Studii în Istorie Contemporană
photo: Arhiva Centrului de Studii în Istorie Contemporană
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Emil Sebeşan was born in Simeria (Hunedoara County) on March 16th, 1926. He was a member of the youth organization of the National Peasants’ Party since he was 19 and opposed the communist regime from the first days of its establishment. He was arrested 38 times, the last one on March 18th, 1949. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his anticommunist activity and served his time in the prisons of Timişoara, Piteşti, Gherla, Poarta Albă and Peninsula. He was one of the victims of the so called „Piteşti phenomenon” and was tortured in the Piteşti prison between December 1949-February 1950. He was set free on March 16th, 1954. He only managed to finish his studies in 1989, shortly before he retired.
