Eugen Țurcanu

Țurcanu was born either in Păltiniș,[1] Dârmoxa (today part of Broșteni), or, according to his own assertion, Câmpulung Moldovenesc;[2] in any case, all three are in Suceava County. Țurcanu had five brothers; his father was a forester. He studied at the Dragoș Vodă High School in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, where he joined in December 1940 the Frăția de Cruce organization, part of the Iron Guard.[3] He was active in that organization for about a year, and participated in the January 1941 Legionnaires' rebellion in Câmpulung. His links to the Legionnaires were in fact rather vague, but exploited to the hilt when he was used as the chief scapegoat for the actions at Pitești and Gherla prisons. After 1941, when Țurcanu was 16 and the Iron Guard was suppressed, there is no further record of his participation in activities of the Guard or its youth wing.[4]

While still in high school, he fell in love with Oltea Saghin, the daughter of Lazăr Saghin, a lawyer and a Guard commander from Câmpulung. The two got married and had a daughter, Elena, named after Țurcanu's mother.[5] After the King Michael Coup of 23 August 1944 he began to flirt with Communism; in 1945 he joined the Union of Communist Youth, and two years later the Romanian Communist Party.[6][3]

One of his victims later remembered him as "a handsome man, out of the ordinary...with brown hair tending toward blond...when he frowned, you were terrified...his well-proportioned body seemed that of a performance athlete. When he punched or slapped you, he knocked you to the ground. When he got mad he was so crude that he destroyed everything in his path, like a ferocious killer. Moreover, he was unusually intelligent and had an extraordinary memory... But he was so Satanized you didn't know what to think of him..."[7]

For almost three years he took courses at the University of Iași Faculty of Law, becoming a member of the local Communist organization's politburo and being sent to Bucharest to pursue a career in diplomacy. However, his past was uncovered and he was arrested on 25 June 1948. Through sentence nr. 137, handed down on 5 February 1949 by the Iași Military Tribunal, he was sentenced to seven years' correctional imprisonment for Legionary activity.

Cross at the memorial to the Pitești Experiment

Țurcanu was first imprisoned at Suceava. There, a group of prisoners detained for their past Iron Guard sympathies, led by Alexandru Bogdanovici, started various initiatives meant to win the favour of the Communist authorities. Among these was the preparation of a memorial addressed to the party leadership promising a full cessation of political activity in exchange for their release, and the founding (with Țurcanu's involvement) at the beginning of 1949 of Organizația Deținuților cu Convingeri Comuniste (ODCC, "Organization of Convinced Communist Detainees").

He was transferred to Pitești prison on 22 April 1949 and, once there, tried to attract the notice of prison director Alexandru Dumitrescu, with whom he only managed to speak at the beginning of June, when the latter was inspecting cells.[8] After discussions with him, Țurcanu was recruited as an informer to the prison management, in the process benefiting from a much more favourable treatment than that accorded to ordinary prisoners: extra food, freedom of movement inside the prison, etc. He coordinated with the local Securitate officer, Ion Marina;[3] in turn, Marina was in constant communication with Iosif Nemeș, the chief of the Operations Service, and with Colonel Tudor Sepeanu, the head of Inspection Services at the Securitate's Directorate for Penitentiaries.[9]

During the summer of 1949 Țurcanu identified, with the help of his collaborators, those detainees who served as leaders or role models for the others; the prison administration isolated these men in a separate section. The idea of applying violent treatments on prisoners appeared after discussions with director Dumitrescu in November 1949. Subsequently, Țurcanu directly participated in the beatings of several hundred detainees. Many of these were nearly killed as a result of the beatings administered by Țurcanu and his acolytes. One of his victims was Constantin Oprișan, who was cruelly beaten dozens of times by Țurcanu.[10]

On 18 August 1951 he was transferred to Gherla Prison, where he continued his activity as torturer on a reduced scale until that December. On 19 December he was transferred to Jilava Prison.

Țurcanu and the group of torturers he led were tried in September–November 1954; the head judge was Alexandru Petrescu, who had also presided at the trials of Iuliu Maniu and of the Danube-Black Sea Canal saboteurs.[11] The indictment, drawn up by a military prosecutor, claimed that the activities of the accused came about following an initiative by Horia Sima, whose alleged intention was to demonstrate to the West that detainees were mistreated and killed in Communist prisons, in order to compromise the regime and the Romanian government. Țurcanu was accused of having become head of the Câmpulung Frăția de Cruce in 1945, then of having founded the "National Liberal Christian Youth" (Tineretul Național Liberal Creștin), later joining the Union of Communist Youth. The indictment recognized that some prisoners died, including Corneliu Niță, Eugen Gavrilescu, Gheorghe Șerban and Gheorghe Vătășoiu, but also Bogdanovici, "who had been subjected to one of the most horrible extermination regimes".[12]

On 10 November 1954, Țurcanu, together with a majority of his fellow defendants, was sentenced to death. He and sixteen accomplices were shot on 17 December, and his death was recorded at Jilava town hall on 5 October 1962. In 1957, the regime partially admitted its own involvement in the Pitești Experiment by imprisoning lower-level officials and employees of the prison, including its director, Dumitrescu. Securitate Colonel Sepeanu was arrested in March 1953 and sentenced to 8 years in April 1957, but was pardoned and set free several months later.[13]

• Bordeianu, Dumitru Gh (1995). Marcel Petrișor (ed.). Mărturisiri din mlaștina disperării. (Cele văzute, trăite și suferite la Pitești și la Gherla) (in Romanian). vol. I-II (II ed.). București: Editura Gama.
• Mureșan, Alin (2007). Pitești. Cronica unei sinucideri asistate. Institutul de investigare a crimelor comunismului în România (in Romanian). Iași: Polirom.
• "Final Report" (PDF) (in Romanian). Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. 2006.