Alexandru Zub

"So, I must say that, at one point, I was called in a very suspicious manner, at the beginning of March, by means of a written telecommunication, to the Academy in Bucharest (the Institute was subordinated to the Academy) I was summoned to appear at the Academy on March 7. I asked around, but couldn't find any plausible explanation for this request. The professor I felt closest to, Dimitrie Dărlescu, who was the vice-dean of the faculty, a very respectable modernist, couldn't tell me anything. He came up with a hypothesis that it could be the case of a scholarship abroad (there were also such possibilities). The idea of a scholarship in Egypt or somewhere else was also floating in the air. I had indeed refused this during my studies because I wasn't interested, but this perspective was now becoming real. A scholarship abroad had now become possible, as part of a research endeavor for a young employee. And most of the people I asked thought it was unusual because no one had experienced something similar. And so it happened that, on the night of March 6, before the end of the day, I got on a fast train in order to arrive in Bucharest the next day. We had only advanced a few hundred meters. We had just gotten outside the city when I found myself being asked to identify myself and to get out of the compartment, in a very discreet and civilized manner. On the corridor there was another man waving a pistol around. He warned me not to make any careless move because I had to follow him. I started negotiating with them, telling them it must be a mistake, that I had an important meeting the next day and so on. They told me that the misunderstanding would for sure be cleared up, and that, if so, I would soon be able to continue on my mission. But as soon as we arrived at the first station and the train stopped as usual, I was blindfolded and forced into a car. Suddenly, they stopped calling me 'mister', and any sign of politeness disappeared. They wouldn't talk to me anymore, and my protests were futile. Of course, I quickly realized we were heading back to Iaşi. They drove the car around, so I wouldn't realize where we were going, we could have been anywhere, but I obviously realized I was being taken back to Iaşi."

"Prison was a totally different experience than being in the custody of the Securitate, at least in the first phase of the detention. We were administered a very strong shower from the very beginning, so we would realize we were entering another world, another reality. I have to confess that, after the ceremony of getting undressed and handing over any object we had in our possession, which was not allowed in the prison environment, we were all thrown together - this very large group - into a room with no light and no means of ventilation. It was practically an oven. It was a hot summer day in July. Of course, we started screaming, however in vain. We were held there for as long as they considered it to be bearable, and only then were we allowed to get outside, one by one, and we were placed in various cells. I ended up in a building with several hundred cells one next to the other, which were meant for a single person, but in fact 12-13 or even more persons were detained in a cell. It was terrible. The hallway door opened and I saw the cell. It was exactly the one where I happened to be locked up. There was a small hole with bars and several people screaming for air, they looked dreadful, in a state of complete despair. I saw naked bodies, sweating, with bumps on the head because of the infections and the lack of hygiene over a long period of time. They had been detained there for a long time, without any assistance."