Romania's Sighet prison once held some of the country's most renowned members of the country's anti-Communist movement. This year it celebrates its twentieth year as a museum dedicated to honouring the people who died for their beliefs, and to remind visitors of what can happen when democracy is not protected.
Watch the video and answer the questions below. Decide if the statements are True or False.
1. Teodor Stanca visits the museum twice a year.
a. True
b. False
2. Ana Blandiana founded the museum with her husband.
a. True
b. False
3. The prisoners wrote down their poems on the prison walls.
a. True
b. False
For transcript and answers see below.
Transcript and Answers:
From the end of the Second World War, Romania's Sighet prison was home to political prisoners who opposed Communist rule. Twenty years ago, as the iron curtain came down, each cell was adapted to make up a museum known as 'The Memorial of the victims of Communism and of the Resistance' the first of its kind in Europe. Teodor Stanca experienced the horrors of political detention first-hand. Back in 1956 he headed up a student movement calling for more freedom; he was imprisoned, denied food, humiliated and forced to work. To honour the memory of those who fought against totalitarianism, he visits the memorial centre every year.
'The feeling of having achieved our aim was very important for each of us. We asked the question, 'if they free us tomorrow, would we do the same thing that sent us to prison? Most of us said yes.''
Amidst the grim prison routine, poetry was one means of release. With no paper or pens, verses were transmitted from one cell to the next using Morse code, a poignant fact for Ana Blandiana, who founded the museum with her husband Romulus Rusan. Her books were banned under the dictatorship of Ceausescu, Romania's last Communist dictator, and she believes the country's current struggles to establish a rule of law partly lie in its dark past.
'Understanding what took place, the repression, we felt for more than 50 years you can understand the hangover from this period of totalitarianism in Romania, and why the state faces difficulties.'
In Romania, more than 600,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons between 1945 and 1989. However the extent of the suffering has only just started to come to light.
"In the West, we had a glorious memory of communism, the Spanish Civil War, the Popular Front, anti-fascism, resistance to Nazism etc. Here it was the exact opposite. People talk only of terror, torture, misery, so I was faced with a tragic memory instead of a glorious one. So we see that there are two different memories in Europe."
The Sighet museum has welcomed a million visitors through its doors, and as it celebrates two decades in the making, it's a constant reminder that freedom needs eternal vigilence.
Answers:
1. b
2. a
3. b
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