Women Behind Bars in Romania by Annie Samuelli

Author:Annie Samuelli [Samuelli, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135210779
Google: 9dBQAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-04-08T05:45:02+00:00

* The “Damp Place” was previously described in “Swallows v. Sparrows.”

* According to Rumanian peasant custom older women were not called by their Christian names alone. “Nana” is the equivalent of “Auntie.”

It was April 1956, when I left the “Damp Place,” anxiously hoping to be with my sister at the end of the journey. If I were, she knew I would bring a gift from my travels, if only a piece of rancid bacon, but little would she expect to hear how narrowly I had escaped ignominy.

“Stop, and I Shoot.”

One glorious April dawn, after months at the “Damp Place” where I had been transferred from the penitentiary for a supplementary interrogation and to be a witness in some hypothetical trial, eleven of my cell-mates and I were harshly ordered to collect our belongings and file into the corridor. After the tortuous formalities attending departure from one prison to another, we were rushed to a covered truck closed in on all sides by metal sheeting.

Four armed warders blocked the narrow entry. Practically no air or light filtered in. The hour-long drive seemed endless as the truck lumbering over roughly cobbled roads, flung us around the floor we were endeavoring to sit on. On reaching the station where the railroad van was parked on a remote sideline, we clambered down, retching and dizzy.

Slowly picking up our bundles, we halted to stretch our stiffened bruised limbs and provide suffocated lungs with deep breaths of the cool air. But such a respite was not allowed. Warders with cocked tommy-guns were fencing in the empty shunting yard.

“Who told you to stop? Get a move on!” shouted the Commanding Officer. “Loiterers will be shot instantly!”

Shoved and pushed about, we approached the railway van. Its entry stood on a level with our shoulders and climbing in was no joke. Balancing on a heap of bundles, clutching the side of the iron door, we propelled ourselves up, collapsing on the dirty floor. When the last had scrambled in on all fours, the van guard hustled three into a cabin intended for a single occupant, and nine, including myself, into another intended for six. Protests were of no avail. The door was locked and bolted.

Similar previous experiences did not stop me from having a fit of claustrophobia until we finally managed to settle ourselves in. First we got rid of the luggage, fitting it into the rack above our heads. Four women wedged in together on each of the two parallel wooden benches; the space between them was so narrow that their knees interlocked. The ninth sat sideways on the floor in front of the door.

The bench under the small oblong window, which was covered with a wire grating and fixed wooden slats, had a handled lid over a hole representing the lavatory. As the contents flowed down on to the railway track beneath, the lavatory was permitted to be in use only when the train was moving.

At eight o’clock sharp, the train rumbled off. Thank God, the van had been hooked on to a fast train.

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