- In this tour you can see dynamic panoramas describing the following spaces:
- (Right click on the room's title to place it on the map)
- Ground floor
- Room 13: The repression of the Church
- Room 16: Intellectual life in prison
- 1st floor
- Room 39: The communization of education
- Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
- Room 42: Masters and works beyond bars
- Room 43: The repression of literature (writers in prisons)
- Room 51: Poetry in prison
In this tour you can see dynamic panoramas describing the following spaces: (Right click on the room's title to place it on the map) Ground floor Room 13: The repression of the Church Room 16: Intellectual life in prison 1st floor Room 39: The communization of education Room 40: The destruction of the Academy Room 42: Masters and works beyond bars Room 43: The repression of literature (writers in prisons) Room 51: Poetry in prison
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4. The Repression of Culture, of the Church
Room 13, ground floor: The repression of the Church
Room 43, 1st floor: The repression of literature (Writers in prisons)
Room 42, 1st floor: Masters and works beyond bars
Room 39, 1st floor: The communization of education
Room 40, 1st floor: The destruction of the Academy
Room 51, 1st floor: Poetry in prison
Sala 13, Parter
Represiunea împotriva Bisericii
Sala 43, etaj 1
Represiunea împotriva literaturii (Scriitori în închisori)
Sala 42, etaj 1
Maeștri și opere după gratii
Sala 39, etaj 1
Comunizarea învățământului
Sala 40, etaj 1
Distrugerea Academiei
Sala 51, etaj 1
Poezia în închisoare
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The tactics employed to destroy the Christian churches active in Romania differed from one case to the next. The purpose was nevertheless the same: uprooting faith and imposing dialectical-materialist atheism.
Overall view of Room 13: The repression of the Church
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View of Room 13: The repression of the Church
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Detail of Room 13: The repression of the Church, where the former prison cell’s windows were replaced by icons on glass, made by artist Mariana Macri
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In the case of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the majority faith and with the status of national church, decapitation was used. The leading hierarchs were replaced, some of them dying under suspicious conditions, others arrested and receiving “mandatory domicile” in monasteries. Over the years, over 2,000 priests were arrested, many of them on the grounds of… spreading mysticism, holding sermons against the dialectical materialism or opposing the Socialist system!
Photo: Sandu Tudor (22 December 1896, Bucharest – 17 November 1962, Aiud prison), mug shot. Founder of the “Lit Pyre” spiritual resistance movement. Arrested in 1949, he is sentenced to 5 years in prison. Re-arrested in 1958, alongside other fifteen group members. After an agonizing investigation, a political trial is set up for them at the Bucharest Military Tribunal, and they are accused of having been part of a clandestine organization. Sentences run from 5 years in prison to 25 years. Father Daniel is sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security prison for “plotting against the state order”.
Detail from Room 13: The repression of the Church
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The Greek-Catholic Church (United with Rome) was outlawed in October 1948.
Priests were arrested. Bishops were initially imposed forced domicile in Orthodox monasteries and were eventually taken to the Sighet prison.
The church functioned clandestinely, with other prelates designated in pectore to replace the ones arrested, and the new ones were, in turn, themselves arrested.
Photo: Roman and Greek-Catholic bishops at the Apostolic Nunciature, Bucharest, 1943. Detail from Room 13: The repression of the Church
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The Roman-Catholic Church had a status of tolerated, but not officially recognized church during the Communist period. Since it had “connections with foreign countries”, it was considered an “imperialist hotbed”, a “nest of spies and traitors” etc. A series of political trials resulted in the penal conviction or expulsion of the staff of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bucharest. Bishops and priests were arrested and sentenced to long years in jail. Many died in captivity.
Photo: Vladimir Ghika (25 December 1873, Constantinople – 16 May 1954, Jilava prison). Theologist, monk, diplomat, prince, confessor, writer. He was arrested on 15 November 1952 and sentenced to 3 years in a maximum security prison for “accessory to the crime of high treason”. He died aged eighty, on 16 May 1954, in Jilava.
Detail from Room 13: The repression of the Church
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Protestant and Evangelical churches was also placed under strict surveillance and persecuted on the grounds that they were supposedly “organised from abroad”. The communists could not tolerate any activity, including religious, over which they could not exert complete control.
In the communist prisons, clergy of all denominations continued their mission, overcoming both confessional barriers and the obstinacy of their gaolers. Oral accounts reveal many examples of genuine ecumenical fraternity.
Detail from Room 13: The repression of the Church
Documents & images
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As the communist system became entrenched, the Party imposed a Soviet Proletkultdirection direction in every field. Libraries and bookshops were purged of the politically “inadequate” titles (over 8,000). Nothing could be published, acted or performed without approval. The first measures involved the liquidation of any connection with European and local traditions.
Detail from Room 43: The repression of literature
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Numerous cultural figures were thrown into prison, and others were banned from publishing. It was a case of cultural genocide, whose consequences persist even today in the public mentality.
Overall view of Room 43: The repression of literature
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Some of these tragic experiences can be viewed in this room: a list of banned writers, the prison records, as well as personal items.
Detail from Room 43: The repression of literature
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Lucian Blaga, Alice Voinescu, the entire batch of the “Noica-Pillat” trial, young poet Constant Tonegaru, are just a few of the case studies illustrating the intense repression of writers, ranging from censorship to imprisonment and death.
Detail from Room 43: The repression of literature
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Detail from Room 43: The repression of literature
Documents & images
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The arts suffered the same restrictions and repression as literature, and artists were kept under surveillance, arrested and imprisoned whenever they went against the regime, either in their private lives or in their work.
Overall view of Room 42, 1st floor: Masters and works beyond bars
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Cinema, being an art form subsidised by the state, was most vulnerable to the effects of censorship.
Numerous films were banned, after various censorship committees had cut them to ribbons. The Reconstruction, a masterpiece by director Lucian Pintilie, ran only four weeks at a single cinema, before being banned in Romania and for export, which prevented its participation in major international film festivals. Dan Pița and Bujor Nedelcovici’s movie The Sand Cliffs was personally banned by N. Ceaușescu during his famous conference of Mangalia, in August 1983.
Another notorious case was the banning, in September 1972, of the Bucharest-based “Bulandra” Theater’s show of Gogol’s The General Inspector, after which director Lucian Pintilie was unable to work in Romania for years, going into a self-imposed exile in the West.
Detail from Room 42, 1st floor: Masters and works beyond bars
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Constantin Tănase and Mărioara Voiculescu in the theatre, Dimitrie Cuclin and Erich Bergel in music, and Corneliu Baba and Nicolae David in the fine arts: these are just a few of the major artists who were banned, supressed or jailed, especially during the dark period between 1945 and 1964.
Detail from Room 42, 1st floor: Masters and works beyond bars
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A panel in this room shows the classic monuments destroyed by the communists, as well as banned traditional songs, whose performance could lead to a prison sentence.
Detail from Room 42, 1st floor: Masters and works beyond bars
Documents & images
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By means of terror, the communist regime repressed any act of opposition. The adult generation filled the prisons and was decimated in the labour camps. For the new generation, the most perverse methods of indoctrination in the spirit of Communist ideology were invented.
Overall view of Room 39: The communization of education
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From the very first years of Sovietisation, a large part of Romania’s educators – from country teachers to university professors – were sacked, assigned to manual jobs, sent to labour camps, or imprisoned. Those who remained and those joining the teaching profession had to adapt to the “new times”, becoming tools to propagate “Marxist-Leninist education”.
Overall view of Room 39: The communization of education
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An individual devoid of any past, forced to gaze smiling into a “luminous future” that never arrived. This room describes the nefarious process whereby the citizens of Romania were subjected to depersonalisation over the course of half a century, a process whose effects can still be felt today. At the same time, it is a homage to those who opposed this process, paying the price of their dignity with the loss of their liberty and sometimes their lives.
Detail from Room 39: The communization of education
Documents & images
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As early as September 1944, the Romanian Academy was vehemently attacked in the communist press (“Scânteia”, “România Liberă”, “Victoria”), which demanded its “democratisation” and the “purging of reactionary elements”. However it resisted until June 1948 when, by Presidential Decree no. 76, it was transformed into the “Academy of the People’s Republic of Romania”, with the primary objective “of increasing the material and cultural standards of the people”.
According to the decree, “the Romanian Academy (…) becomes a state institution” (article 1), which “will carry out its activity in accordance with the requirements to strengthen and develop the Romanian Peoples’ Republic” (article 2).Overall view of Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
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The older members of the institution were expelled en masse, and only a small number were accepted into the new academy, which was filled with figures loyal to the party.
Detail from Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
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Scientist C.I. Parhon, who had signed the decree to destroy the old Academy while he was President of the Grand National Assembly, was appointed Honorary President of the new Academy.
Detail from Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
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Members of the Romanian Academy (1943)
Detail from Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
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A large number of the expelled academicians were not even left alone to live out their lives in poverty: after a short while they were arrested and sent to prison, where many died.
Photo: Alexandru Lapedatu, member of the Romanian Academy, president of the Academy between 1935 and 1938. Arrested on the night of 5/6 May 1950, he was sent to Sighet, where he died on 30 August 1950. He was 74. Detail from Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
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Ion Nistor, member of the Romanian Academy, president of the History Department between 1929 and 1932. He was arrested on the night of 5/6 May 1950 and jailed in the Sighet penitentiary until 1955.
Detail from Room 40: The destruction of the Academy
Documents & images
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The poetry transcribed in this room – an infinitesimal part of those thought, transmitted and memorises in the prisons of communist Romania – were at the same time ways of communication, means of expression and of intellectual, mental and political resistance.
Born without pencil and paper, transmitted from cell to cell through the Morse alphabet tapped into the wall, these lines were exercises of mental gymnastics, of spiritual unloading, of human solidarity, of spiritual raising, of ascesis through the acceptance of anonymity.
Overall view of Room 51: Poetry in prison
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The authors for some of them are still unknown, for others famous authors have been found, but we preferred to mix them without giving names, like in the vanity-devoid moment of their birth, when those who memorised them were as important and necessary as those who composed them.
This room brings homage to the detainees who suffered and who became poets through suffering, generating this amazing plant, able to sprout in the dark: prison poetry.
Detail from Room 51: Poetry in prison
Documents & images