The two students hardly spoke. In the morning we arrived in Bucharest. We were taken into the depot’s police office which was an indication that we were to continue our trip. It was then that one of the two. the one shackled to me. began to extol Communism! It seemed that what he had to say was directed to the other two.
So much to convince as to demonstrate
He could correctly repeat a learned lesson. And he seemed in a hurry to prevent the other two from being first. He uttered the hackneyed meaningless words repeated by the Communists on all street corners. But coming from his mouth they took on for me a profound significance. I was amazed to hear him speak thus. Because I knew him well and knew how he had felt about Communism. And it was generally true of all prisoners that life in prison tended to strengthen the convictions we had held previously. And then he uttered a flagrant lie — claiming that there was decency in the officers of the Securitate.
Again at night we resumed our travel
I recognized the railway line. When the sergeant. a farmer from the Apuseni Mountains. asked with some hesitancy. “Do you believe in God?” the same student hastened to answer that neither he nor any of his acquaintances had ever believed in God. This statement came from one who. I knew well. was educated in the Christian faith. This phone number list time again I read terror in his eyes. Again he answered with the same haste — as though to prevent a statement from someone else that might be disastrous. and his.
“Why were you arrested?”
the other student was asked later by one of the Securitate officers. “I was a member of a terroristic organization at the Faculty[3] of Letters transplantation: giving the gift of life in Bucharest. I was so fanatical that during the interrogation I denounced no one — not even the greatest criminals in the group. ” And then. as if feeling embarrassed (or “unmasked” as I was later to learn) he endeavored to correct his statement — “not even the most responsible of the group. those who led the secret organization. “
My bewilderment was shared this hong kong data time also by the two officers who. as myself. heard perhaps for the first time from the mouth of a political prisoner such a characterization of his own activity. No one could possibly answer my own unspoken questions. The other two were still staring into nothingness. How could I suspect at that time everything they had gone through. conditioning them to make statements of which. a few minutes earlier. I would not have believed them capable?