My grandfather-in-law was a soldier in Romania's infantry in 1942-'45. I was talking to him about what he did during the war. He never fired a shot in combat. He belonged to a unit assigned to a Wehrmacht detachment to guard a small oil field. He said it was about 50/50 Romanian soldiers and German soldiers (not Nazi SS). The field was so small it didn't draw attention from Allied bombers, so the Germans and Romanians just kicked back in their trenches and bunkers making sure the workers continued pumping oil and keeping the facility safe. They mostly played football (soccer) and had target practice on the game animals that wandered too close (fresh meat for their rations). They drank together with the Germans, played games of all sorts. The Romanians and Germans totalling about 120 all became good friends over the years together at the oil field. Then comes 1944 when the orders were, "We are no longer aligned with the Reich, we have joined the Allies. Arrest and capture any and all German soldiers you come across". My grandfather-in-law (GFIL) was confused but obeyed orders. The German soldiers received the same message regarding Romanian soldiers. What did they do? Standing in the same trenches and bunkers shoulder -to-shoulder with the German Heer (Wehrmacht)? They arrested each other and sat out the rest of the war no different than the prior years together. "How do you shoot your friend?" my GFIL said to me. When the war was over it seemed that Romania, the Soviets and the Germans had forgotten about this small detachment of troops and the two oil pumps. They stayed at the oil field until 1946 and then split up. The Germans found their way back to Germany and the Romanians, removing their uniforms and acting like oil workers just became oil field workers... ... for those Romanian soldiers who fought side-by-side with the Germans were considered a threat to the Soviets and THEY would have been sent to the topic of this video. They forged their identification papers and got rid of anything that would link them to the military prior to 1944. He was able to defect from Romania in the 1950s and come to the US. After the fall of the USSR, he returned to Romania to locate his family (who did not defect with him). Most of his family survived, but Ceausescu came down hard on many of his friends and other family members who didn't conceal their fighting alongside the Germans. Those were tortured and executed.
@@jon9021 He was in his late 90s and had a sharp mind (pneumonia finally got him). The stories he would tell about his time in the Romanian military in WWII were wonderful to listen to. I kick myself for not recording his stories on video or even just audio, but he would speak with such detail that you felt like you were there, back in the early 40s with him and the German troops overlooking a small field with a couple oil pumps. I miss him a lot, but the photos he had shared coincided with the stories. It WAS fascinating.
Thank you for sharing your story. It's heartbreaking to think of all the many horrors that accompany war and the aftershocks from their impacts on humanity.
I am Romanian and honestly I knew about the experiment from a history class with my teacher, who introduced it to us, even though, unfortunately, it was not included in the school program at all. I feel proud that our history teacher presented the reality of Romania to us without being guided by what the textbook says, which does not even mention such a thing. I hope more people know about this event.
@@sallyintucson You are not allowed to teach the whole truth, nor even discuss it, because communism in Romania, especially in the early, vicious years, was predominantly led by members of a certain ethnic background with a deep hatred of christians. Discussing such things would inevitably lead to antisemitism.
My grandfather was imprisoned for 14 years and he passed through Pitesti more than once during this long period - main period of his active life. He was released when he was 45 and talked every day about the years spent in prison, about the many fellows he lost there. From all the tortures he was exposed to, the hardest was in Pitesti where he was forced to live for 6 months in a small metal box, in complete darkness, where he couldn't stand. They gave him only a little piece of dry bread every day and a very small amount of water. This reeducation didn't work on him and they took him out after 6 months because he was dying. The muscle mass reduced almost completely and he had serious issues but he survived. He came out of this pretty sane, mentally, emotionally, like a monk. He was very kind and very wise after these terrible times he had to face. Unfortunately, in the absence of any therapy and still caring the big wounds, he was drinking. And he died of cirrhosis. I will always be grateful for the legacy he left to us, I am very proud of him and I understand how deeply the horrors of the last century imprinted on my family lineage. What happened in Romanian communist prisons is at the level of all the other atrocities that took place last century. Thank you for bringing to the world more awareness on this subject, in my adolescence I was very frustrated for seeing that only jewish people can talk and be understood about the holocaust, very little is known about the other holocausts that happened and nobody is taking the blame. Only us, normal people, need to clean the deep emotional and mental darkness that was inflicted in us generationally.
@Ioanabadea I am so glad he lived to become a grandfather so that there was a voice for the unspeakable horror that humanity can inflict on each other. His courage and strength are an example of the beauty that is inherent in all of us. Considerening that he remained a kind man after all of that, and without therapy ( though honestly I don’t know how a therapist would be able to address something so evil fro outside) his story through the generations carry those seeds. Thank you for telling this part of his story, whie it show humanity's depravity, it also shows that if we are true to who we are adversity doesn't have to destroy the divinity inherent in each of us.
you don't need to compare one tragedy to another in order to make a point, especially when that tragedy in question is the frickin holocaust... i don't think you're fully aware of the extent of horror those people endured and the amount of damage it caused to think our prisons are comparable to that. may your grandparent rip though, we're lucky to live better times.
Thank you for highlighting the Pitesti experiment. As someone from Pitesti, it’s horrifying to know such atrocities happened here. The horrors are outrageous, and it’s important that they’re never forgotten.
@drea7421 It’s always Trump “would” do something. The left is the side using this language and talking about unlearning and re-education. The right never talks like this, not ever. Do not make this a both sides argument. And if you’re so confident that you’re right, please provide an example like the person did that you disagree with.
It's sick that Simon's talking about beatings, sleep deprivation and starvation and THEN he goes "OK, now here's the really bad stuff!" You know things are bad when even some in Romania's Secret Police were like "We're going a bit too far here, lads"
@GS-dn4gn I'm certainly not saying that he made light of any of this, considering the type of topics that Into The Shadows covers, he's always very respectful about it.
It was, and it was broadcasted on national television. It was called "memorialul durerii" - the memorial of pain. It was a whole series, it was brutal and eye opening, shattering, for the ones to acknowledge it, the "nostalgia" for the communist period.
What makes the Pitesti Experiment different from other prisions or reeducation camps is that it was distroying the fabric of human relations to a level where you were left as a pure piece of meat. Camaradery and sense of community bring strength in the darkest hours, but in Pitesti you were left alone brutally beatean and tortured by your friend/sand betrayed in the most abject way. There are no words to describe this tornment
I mean it failed. Clearly. They did that while they were forced to but once the prisoners were released they immediately ''betrayed'' the state. I'm guessing that's the real reason it was shut down. Also there's a chance the higher ups actually didn't know the details. In Romania there is this mentality of hiding from the truth or rather it was more prelevant when I was young. So if presented with stuff they don't like, the powerful would likely not even look at it.
@@HaggisMuncher-69-420Islam is just as brutal as communism... Or even worse because the satanic islamic fanatism is far worse than the godless ideas of communists
@@Dapryor Romanian revolution (Romanian: Revoluția română) was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world
I’ve heard about The Pitești Experiment in 1990, after the Revolution. I lived in Târgoviște a town 55 kilometres away from Pitești. We were left speechless and aghast at the sophistication of the torture inflicted on the prisoners. We knew already about the Danube-Black Sea Canal and TransFagarasan and other cyclopian enterprises where the dissidents (intellectuals, priests or simply those opposing collectivization) were tossed out to wither away and disappear. Thanks for covering this painful story.
I am glad Simon and Co. are talking about Romania under communism. The atrocities of the Ceausescu regime is often underdiscussed in the context of the Cold War and Authortarian regime Ceausescu's regime would almost be comedic if it wasnt so horrific.
Only thing is the Pitești Experiment happened under Anna Pauker, Teohari Georgescu and Vasile Luca who were the worst of the worst. Ruthless and feral Moscow puppets in the Romanian Workers Party. As a sidenote, Pauker's husband was deemed as a liability by the party and thus removed (yes, that kind of removed) and upon being informed of her husband's fate, Pauker reportedly said 'If this is the wish of the party then so be it.'
Make no mistake, Ceaușescu's regime wasn't a really in the park, but this horror is before him gaining all the power. This is designated as the Stalinist period of Romania and it used large scale torture and horrific abuse that didn't happen afterwards on such demonic scale and so atrocious. This is truly the most horrific time in Romanian modern history, people should take notes , it's seems unreal but it was all too real and there were (a handful of) survivors that lived to tell the tales. It's truly unspeakable
This was before Ceaușescu, when the country was under direct occupation by the Red Army. The worst atrocities happened in the 50s under that occupation.
Keep in mind this was NOT under Ceausescu, but way before, in the years of the bolsevic j..wes that were in power at that time. They were fiercely anti christian and anti romanian
... And guess how they recruited the "Securitate" officers... My father was one of them. He had graduated the university with full 10 (the highest possible grade). They came to his workplace and asked him to join. Not only did he refuse, but he punched their lights out. A few days later he received an order to go and work on some communist grand project as unqualified worker. Next day the same guys he had beaten up came back to him with the same paper. This time he signed. What choice did he have? To leave his wife and two sons behind and dissappear in some work colony or to join the regime... But the worst thing is that everyone in power today is either related to the "Securitate" people or former Securitate.
The idea behind the torture and humiliation wasn't just for the prisoners to confess to their imagined crimes but to also denounce their families and friends, who would then also be locked up and so on. Turcanu was only a tool back then. There's no denying he committed countless atrocities for which he deserved his punishment, but there were others who masterminded the whole thing and allowed him to do everything he did and nothing happened to them. Prison beatings and torture was still a custom in Romania even after the Pitesti Experiment ended, though not to that extent. There were many who beat up or killed hundreds or thousands of innocents in Romanian nothing ever happened to them. Even after the fall of Communism those who came to power had their back and they never spent a day in prison. They lived their lives in comfort without a care, some of them still do...
@@DukeOnkledwhen communism came to Romania it gave huge power to the lower classes. Suddenly, all kinds of scumbags were policemen and they started using their new-found powers to terrorize the elites, the middle class and everyone that had a grudge against. So, it was, indeed, the Soviets who brought communism here, so they were like the orchestrator of all this, but the most horrific acts were committed by Romanians against fellow Romanians.
@@DukeOnkledthe gouvernment still stayed the same after the fall of communism,so it was the same people who allowed and orchestrated these "experiments",except now they call themselves "social democrats" instead of communists
Humans will always be like this sadly. The ability to other people seems to always be around. Look at how it was during Covid. Those Covid Ian maniacs wanted to round up anyone that did not get their fake jab.
What was also bad, was the way romania treated its disabled, absolutely disgusting, keeping disabled young adults constantly in the dark and children that were in care living in squalor to name a few.
probably similar though in any other iron curtain country , but i like also how everyone today focuses more on the goosesteppers from ww2, but will turn a blind eye, downplay, and even advocate for such a system still , because "right side of history" or "real communism hasn't actually been tried " something
After watching this video, I wanted to know more about Ceaușescu, and had a long reading to do. I did read his French Wikipedia page. It is said 52% Romanian respondents believe they lived better during the communist period than now. What is your two cents about all that?
@@nathalie_desrosiers Only the boomers, the ones that are satisfied with just working and having a place to live, and food. The regime was devastating to any artist, musician, philosopher, queer, different religions, etc. the propaganda was very efficient and very deeply rooted in the daily life. They sound exactly like the ones crying after the nazi regime. Despicable people!
@@nathalie_desrosiers my dude, wikipedia is bs; yes, members of the regime did live better than the others, and everyone had an appartment in the city - because they were expelled from their homes and forced to work in industrial areas. The nostalgic ones miss their youth and the simpler times, because after the revolution we took in every single cultural aspect from the west, no matter if it was a good or a bad thing (aka before : life was predictable, now : drugs and them kids with their loud music)
@@nathalie_desrosiersit's bs.people in romania have a deep hatred for communism,to the point where you could be found dead in a ditch for drawing communist symbols.there are very few people who miss communism,and those are ex-securists (state-police-like organistation that would live like kings while the masses suffered,who would falsely accuse many,including their friends and family,of "spreading capitalist ideology",in order to boost their own salaries)and ex-communist party members,who got rich by robbing the country while causescu was getting exectuted.to this day,most millionares in romania inherited their millions from those thieves).there are also very few still-brainwashed elders,but they stay inside and watch teleshopping all day.because of that,there are no pro-communists parades in romania,unlike,let's say,spain.ask any romanian above the age of 40 about their memories from communism,and they'll all say the same things.food was so rare,it might have as well not existed,winters were so cold because of ceausescu's no heating policy,the f*cking walls would freeze (my grandma's apartment still has huge cracks in the walls,and they were caused by the ice that formed on them during communist winters),sleepping in the same room with your entire extended family so that you wouldn't freeze to death during winter,brutal labour-camps,etc.
So I have to wonder if Orwell had heard anything about this (even if only just rumors) when he wrote and published 1984. The bit where you break the victims by forcing them to torture their comrades runs an eerie parallel to Room 101, and "Do this to Julia, not me!" (Quote paraphrased due to not wanting to look it up.)
Possibly, although that particular tactic has unfortunately been used by plenty of other regimes and groups. Humans have always been depressingly creative in coming up with ways to inflict suffering on each other, as shown by the fact that in most religions with some kind of afterlife duality the descriptions of hell tend to be much more graphic and detailed than descriptions of heaven.
1984 (the novel) was published in 1949 - so it might be the other way around... but also goes to prove Orwell's vision was right on point on what could happen in a totalitarian regime.
This happened all over the communist prisons in Romania. The Museum of Communism in Sighetul Marmatiei describes some more of these psychological torture tactics. A good read if you're interested in the experience of those imprisoned is "The Diary of Happiness" by Nicolae Steinhardt. Thanks for your interest in this part of history.
If there's anyone interested in the subject, there's an adaptation on Netflix called "Intre chin si Amin", which means "Between struggle and Amen". It's very graphic and pretty hard to watch, but it perfectly depicts the horrors those people had to go through.
A lot of this sounded familiar from the book "Tortured for Christ" by Richard Wurmbrand. He was imprisoned in Romania from 1948 to 1956, and then from 1959 to 1964. I went back and checked. He was moved around to different locations over the years, and at one point he does mention Pitesti specifically.
Back when i worked in TV as a broadcast tech, i had a couple of special editions where survivors were invited. Hearing them and seeing their faces when they described the horrors was not easy. The worst part is that most of the guards got away with it. Once the "experiment" was deemed too horrific and the officials were afraid that leaks of the Pitesti prison would reach Radio Free Europe, the location was locked down and was replaced with the "canal" (Danube-Black Sea Canal) site, where the victims were worked to death. As sick joke. kids & grandkids of some guards and officials that kept the "experiment" functional are now politicians on the local and national scene.
Who's to say that such acts of brutality are still going on today in places like North Korea or even China? When you put literally anything (e.g. ideological purity, religion) above human rights and decency, you get hell on earth.
The prison was turned into a museum in 2014 with the help of private funding and was designated a historic monument in 2023. The Romanian government has nominated the facility, along with four other prisons used during the communist era, to be included as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
All countries had messed up people, and sadly all do. Unfortunately after WWII we've been left to the soviets/russians by US & UK just like they do with Ukraine now. The russians put in charge the most messed up people.
Not Eugen Țurcanu invented the system of torture at Pitești prison. The so-called "reeducation program" and the young age of the incarcerated proves that Nikolsky (his real name was Boris Grunberg, a Transnistrian resident) was in fact the coordinator of the systematic torture and unimaginable abominations that happened at Pitești Penitentiary. Eugen Țurcanu had the power of a warden with the acceptance of the prison's communist management over the inmates, he was ruthless and violent, but not a "reeducation program" planner.
Da, s-a procedat la o tortura continua, ziua batai, supusi la umilinte fizice (unele nu pot fi descrise), siliti sa-si inghita terciul clocotit, sa-si manance fecalele, sa bea sare cu apa, iar noaptea sa stea nemiscati, pe spate, izbiti cu tevi de fier la cea mai mica miscare. Psihic, erau obligati sa-si faca demascarea, adica sa se lepede de familie, de parinti, de neam, de Dumnezeu, sa-si tradeze prietenii, sa devina delatori. Au trait efectiv iadul pe pamant. Scopul era sa-i transforme din opozanti ai regimului comunist, in agenti tortionari si in informatori ai Securitatii. Unii au fost trimisi in alte inchisori, pentru a reedita demascarea detinutilor prin teroare si tortura. Nu va faceti iluzii ! “UN POPOR CARE NU-ȘI CUNOAȘTE TRECUTUL E CONDAMNAT SĂ-L REPETE”. (NICOLAE IORGA)
It has always saddened me the amount of terrible things that one human being can do to another. I enjoy your videos they are deep interesting and certainly make a person think. Thank you Simon ✌️😊
There's a channel called Shrouded Hand that covers things like this but doesn't do so in an exploitative way, some things he's talked about still haunt me just hearing about them
@@cloudbloomI've once seen a documentary with interviews with the survivors of the "experiment". I cried, it's unspeakable what they did and made the inmates do themselves, through torture. It's demonic. The mock religious ceremonies included human feeces, and I don't want to say more... It's unspeakable
@@Onora619 plenty of people today who are quite naive and are "learned" , after all some still openly advocate for such a system because " real communism was never tried" , yet history shows otherwise.
@@Onora619 i learned, you can gain back that "Feeling" of innocence while not having it. You can train your brain to feel certain ways despite not experiencing said thing. been havin' lots of fun with that lately.
War didn't do what these people did. In war, apart from the inherent horrors of it, many times heroism, comaradery, indestructible bonds form, just like in prison, under a brutal regime, in the face of hardship, people come together. These people attacked those very bonds, the fabric of all the good in humanity, aiming to destroy it.
I simply can't comprehend how humans can be so incredibly cruel to each other. I understand wanting to hurt somebody who may have personally hurt you but going to these lengths to destroy people you've never even met before that time at a molecular level is just evil. There's no other way to describe it.
In the end, this is the truth of evil, not only in what it does in trying to destroy everything you are to turn you into what it is, but in how it fails. Those that died are gone, those who survived are not broken, and the regime has passed away into a cautionary tale of history. Evil is weak and fallible, the power of the good in humanity is inexhaustible and relentless, as evil would have you think of itself. Humanity is on a rough road, but it is a road to paradise, and we will not be stopped.
More and more elderly people (Romanians) are now becoming nostalgic about the olden days, including my father. It's a sentiment led by 'euroscepticism' which more often than not is a weak facade for populism and xenophobia. Thank you, Simon for shining a light on the horrors of the communist regime. My generation is still wiping the aftermath.
The generation that also lived in the age before communism and was highly educated is almost gone, or pretty much no longer that influential in the social space. Coming from their behind is the generation that grew up in the 1950s, the '60s or the '70s, which were heavily influenced by the communist way of life triumphing over "the bourgeois" one, despite being heavy listeners of Radio Free Europe and smuggling tapes with rock music from the West. I think we must not sweep events under the rug just like that and see the communist regime in its full nature, the way it was: a terrorist one, imprisoning everyone in their own country and leaving them no way to express themselves. We must keep the memory of this alive so that it will never happen again in the future.
I think you have it the wrong way. Whether it's right or wrong in it itself, I think the reason Euroskepticism is flourishing in so much of Europe is because a lot of people intuitively sense that things aren't going in the right direction and that their society/identity is under threat. In Germany, a German woman went on social media and insulted a migrant who was involved in gang raping a 15 year old German girl and ended up being given a longer sentence than he was. And you wonder why Euroskepticism is flourishing...
Thank you for making this video. I am disgusted by what had happened and that this took place in my country. And I am ashamed that I didn’t know about it until now. It's outrageous that we're not taught about this in history at school.
When I started watching your serious channels I would wonder what kind of amazing degrees you must have because you seem to know everything about everything. Then I started watching Brain Blaze. Needless to say now, I wonder how you're not an Oscar winning actor.
Simon is old, very old. Some say older than 3000 years. Yes. He was there. He witnessed everything, thats how he knows. I know he looks rather young for that age but thats because hes only midway through his lifespan. He has so much yet to see. Epic battles like Neo vs Agent Smith, Luke vs Anakin, Ellen Ripley vs Miss Universe... And so much more. As for an oscar, he's been told Hollywood is waiting for Morgan Freeman and David Attenborough to pass on before he is eligible for one. Oh, and did you know? He kicked a helmet once......
Simons brain is very big Simons brain is very wrinkled Simon knows the past is the worst. He knows that you should never write down your crimes. He absolutely is in awe of police and their investigations. Simon is the President of the Pedro Lopez fan club. Simon has only 1 YT channel. Welcome to the Whistleverse. Please take your vessi's off, put your feet up and grab a drink. Simon will smash out a super fast into and get right into it, it's what makes him different than other channels. He is a stickler for sticking to the script.
I believe today they call it "Enhanced Interrogations" and all countries did it and some still do it today. You should do a Gulag video or maybe Guantanamo Bay. I heard there was a nice island in Russian where it was an all you can eat resort.
If I don't hear the word "lengthy" mispronounced as "lengthly" at least once a day I feel as if my life is lacking in Simon, somehow. Thank goodness he has so many channels to choose from! Hugs
I never heard of this awful experiment before. The Romanian people has suffered a lot because of the communists. Now I think they are a happy people living in a beautiful country. Thank you for sharing this interesting story.
Thank you for a very condensed account of that horrible and shameful episode. My father, as his friend Ticu Dumitrescu, went through re-education, but in Gherla (Pitești was, as the name says, the experimental phase, where many were killed -and this was not the aim of the experiment-, while the “mature” method was later applied in other prisons), and his accounts correspond to the facts presented by you. Nicolschi (who was Russian, btw) died of old age, unrepentant, in a very luxurious house, located 5 min. away from my parents’ apartment. My father, who had first met him in very unpleasant circumstances, would see him regularly in the street.
I cannot recommend a podcast about this topic enough. It's the "martyrmade" podcast and the episode is called "anti-human" for.very good resaon!!! I must warn you its the darkest podcast I've ever listened to in my life. He does a deep dive into the mostly eastern European post ww2 atrocities by communists. It goes way past even the worst things you can think of. Also there's a great book called "the bloodlands Europe between Hitler and stalin" that is very similar but was mostly during war time. It sounds insane but it gave me a glimpse of understanding of how some people chose to be nazis including some well known groups still in the Ukranian army. I warned you
This was an excellent video. I'm romanian and I can tell the summary at the beginning is also very accurate, as for the experiment itself, ive read a book about it last year and Simon covered every aspect in that book. Sadly this doesn't get taught in highschools Now that I think about it, the absurd horror of Sàlo doesn't sound so fictional anymore... this "experiment" reminds me of that grotesque movie
I’m Romanian, thank you for covering this horrific topic, it’s important that we don’t forget the past, as we don’t want to repeat it… the memory of those who died still lives on.
This is as Orwellian a story as I've ever heard. Being an American, it is very similar to our own history of Guantanamo Bay, America's private torture chamber in Cuba. But this wasn't attached to WWII, we aren't that lucky. Gitmo is *contemporary* history but the way it was "handled" was about the same as Pitesti at 13:52. Sure, some actors were prosecuted but the bulk of those responsible were quietly reassigned, in particular, the upper officers. They discreetly retired. And the prison? It's still there. Obama used closing it as an election platform in 2008: and it still stands. An ugly truth that proves that America is NOT a shiny, spotless place.
The worst thing of Pitesti is that it went much further and is unique in that aspect in human history. The usual torture just goes like breaking the body for intel. Yet it does not break the mind. Well, Pitesti broke the fabric of the human connection, of the human spirit. There is nothing worse.
It is NOTHING like American history. You young progressive clowns have absolutely NO IDEA about how fortunate you are to live in the USA. That is just absolutely crazy. Things get much much much worse than in American I can assure you my young friend.
I teach 1984 every semester in a university, for the last 12 years and I was thinking the worst part of this was realizing how every year it felt less fiction and more reality.. now I know, the book was more of history book, mixed with fiction..
I would point out that it wasn't so much "playing both sides" as it was a corrupt government and Nazi German "persuasion" that led to Romania being allied to the Axis powers and then becoming a communist state. The country wasn't as interested in Germany's war, nor did they have the obligations that drew them into WWI as allies of the Ottoman Empire, Germany NEEDED the countries oil reserves among other resources and had been bribing/buttering up many powerful individuals against the King at the time. When the German tanks rolled in, those on the side of the Coup let them do as they pleased, those who didn't were persuaded to fall in line. By the end of the war the country was greatly weakened by being pumped dry and the Russians having felt miffed by many countries hesitance to adopt their 5-yr plans and offers of Communism took advantage of the situation by assisting the rebels to retake the country from the Germans, knowing that it wasn't the people that chose to join the Reich, but then turning around and demanding the country pay reparations. That further destroyed the country and forced Romania to take the Russian's "helping hand," cementing Communism and Nicolae Ceaușescu's rule going forward. I will say that despite so much pain, misery, and trauma he caused; Ceaușescu did at least making efforts into paying off the debt that Romania has been saddled with by Russia and Germany (which conveniently for Russia ballooned from their initial $300million into nearly 1.2Billion in assets). In the end the country was co-opted into a war they didn't really want to be in by an outside supported coup (not unlike what we'd see from many players in the following Cold War), pumped dry, "saved" by Russian, and then betrayed and trapped into a spiral of being plundered, stripped, and used for the many decades. It may not defend the horrific things that were done, nor does it excuse anything in this video; but hopefully it provides some context to this discussion and it's history. I think many people forget that "history is written by the victors" and that tends to muddy the waters when you're trying to sift through so much history. I will point out that on this side of the European divide you'll find that many countries tend to be welcoming/friendly to other Eastern Europeans (perhaps not their countries/politics/government, etc.), due to the interesting history of the region as a whole. I think that subtle distinction between a country as a singular "entity" and the individuals that exist within he geo-politically defined borders of a "country" are at times vastly different than may appear. (see @hjognathansaegal3156's & @moog012's posts for further examples of how the individuals were during that time)
Thanks for reminding me. It was, indeed, one of the most horrendous treatments of the political prisoners in the whole communist block. A small correction (at 2:10): Romania went under soviet occupation, and the soviets gave the communists a free hand to do whatever it took to gain power and remove their adversaries. The communists, in turn, boycotted any government that did not have key portfolios under their ministers (such as internal affairs or defense) as well as a communist prime-minister. Eventually, the government became fully communist. Initially, the government was supposed to be entirely communist, but King Michael tried to oppose this through the so-called "Royal Strike" - where basically he refused to sign any law adopted by the government unless the government was replaced with a national union one. The King also had the support of the US and the UK, who refused to recognize the said government. The communists decided to back up a bit, accepting two ministers (from the Liberals and the Peasants respectively) as ministers without portfolio and the US and the UK recognized the government. With that issue solved, parliamentary elections were organized in 1946, and while the National Peasants Party was the favorite, the communists won the election. There has been massive voter fraud, abuse, violence against people voting the Peasants or the Liberals (or any other party not allied with the communists). It is said that the Peasants Party won, but the results after the ballot count have simply been reversed, in favor of the communists. Given the situation, Petru Groza, the communist prime-minister of Romania at the time, blackmailed the King into signing a poorly and hastily written abdication decree, proclaiming the Republic in the very same day. The soviets knew exactly every single thing about these events, and even orchestrated (or helped orchestrate) most of these events. And the Pitești experiment was no exception. Started in Pitești, the torture methods were applied in many other prison camps like in Jilava, Aiud, Râmnicu Sărat, Sighet, Gherla etc. Just to get an idea of how cruel, these methods were: the inmates were initially left in a chill environment, where they could freely speak with each other (of course, with torturers infiltrated among them). They all would start speaking about what they did as members of the democratic parties or anything they were (priests etc.). Then, all of a sudden and without any warning, the torturers would start beating the inmates in the cruelest way possible. This was just the "greeting" for the inmates. Basically, every single person was a victim and an executioner at the same time. The Pitești experiment had a catch, though: nobody had to die, especially in the Pitești camp. Or the death shouldn't be attributable to the conditions inside the camp. One incident involving a suicide at Pitești endangered the whole experiment. The other incident that caused the authorities to stop everything was that Romania was getting ready to be part of the UN in 1955. Of course, as Simon said, the communist authorities tried everything they could to minimize the awareness of the whole thing. And as the events managed to stay so low profile, they partially succeeded.
There is a movie called Martyrs which is extremely similar to this, but this is so much scarier because it really happened. Martyrs is the scariest movie ever made in my mind, but this is just different...
This was horrible. What is it with Romania and terrible experiments? I saw on YT years ago Romanian tests on babies and toddlers. They were testing on babies and toddlers how they were affected with zero emotional interaction during the most important developmental part of their lives. The times when this interaction is crucial. The youngsters were devoid of humanity and looked like blank faced old people. I really wish I had not seen it. The looks on those kids faces are etched into my memory forever.
Hi! Great work, I’m always glad when someone is covering a topic about România. Here are some reading rules for anyone interested: Ș= sh as in shadow Ț= first sound in czar Ă= like “a” from “a monkey” Â= I don’t know how to explain, pls help Ce/ci= c is like ch in chair Ge/gi= g is like j in jar Che/chi= ch is like a strong “k” Ghe/ghi= gh is like g in garden
Nicolschi was not punished like this guy say. He didn’t “avoid execution and did only prison time”. He died well thanks of old age before anything happened to him, I think of heart attack. Plus, he had a very strong reason to humiliate and break the spirits of those who were religious Christians and do all those inverted mock religious rituals. Guess why.
I’m so glad this is being covered. I always thought it was terrible that it was forgotten next to all the other Soviet crimes. I read the anti humans and it was truly was one of the most deprived event I’ve read about .
Similar thing happened in Bangladesh. Although not too graphic, but similar methods were adopted by the Sheikh Hasina regime. You can replace Romania's communism with India's influence, in case of Bangladesh. If anyone dared to speak against the brutal policies taken by the Sheikh Hasina regime in favor of Indian government, were put down, arrested, tortured. Abrar Fahad was brutally beaten to death because he protested against the river share policy taken by the government, which acted largely in favor of India. Countless people were abducted in "Aynaghor" or "Mirror Room". Their family wouldn't even know if the abducted people survived or not. It was a hell on earth.
Pitesti is my hometown, I am so glad you are speaking about what happened there 70 years ago. All those who defend communism make my blood boil, "well ACKTUALLIE that wasn't TRUE communism!".
Ask any neomarxist or neocommie where they think they'll be in the new communist structure, most of them will say that they will be a "poet" or "propagandist" or other soft jobs. No, buddy, you're going STRAIGHT to the coal mines. Neomarxists are just lazy people that want handouts.
What's sad is that this is far from the only time human being have treated other humans so horribly. As I was listening, I thought the descriptions sounded strangely identical to some of the tortures committed against "prisoners" at the Khmer Rouge S 21 prison under Pol Pot, not too many years after this in fact.
@blessd24 The left, fake news, Mexican rapists, Socialists, communists, transgenders, gays, social media, NBC, ABC, globalists, immigrants, Haitians who eat dogs, muslims, Democrats, Antifa, BLM, The Deep State, WHO, NATO, UN. That's just off the top of my head. There's more. Oh! democracy is now an enemy as well.
My good friend, who's also, by far, the biggest patriot and admirer of The Gipper, immigrated legally from Romania. This place is one thing he just won't talk about. In high school, I had heard of a Romanian "prison" that contained horrors to rival those of Unit 731 or the Morality Police in post-revolution Iran. I, admittedly, had a hard time wrapping my head around the absence of humanity shown, given, or even expected.
Learned about this back in school. I love that more channels and the world is becoming more aware of my country and it's history. Saddened by no one pronouncing Romanian words correctly 😢
reminds me of "Martyrs", the movie from 2008. What an horrible fate to those who suffered these monstrosities.... really dark chapter on human history.
I am Romanian. My grandma's family went through monstruosities like this. I am just proud that after all of this nowadays it is actually a decent place to live in (despite all of the downsides).
This new use of stock footage to tell the story is tacky. It's much more powerful when it's just Simon talking with occasional historic images or maps.
Because the truth about evolving, within the confines of biology, humanity , and astrophysics is that it is ALWAYS a process of deterioration, and never one of improvement.
That "s" with a comma underneath is pronounced "sh", also there's no emphasis on the "i" at the end of Pitesti ( Might be hard if you're not a native but try not to pronounce it as Pitesht-E")
This video is an extremely brief summary of the event at Pitesti. You did not tell of the triumph of faith over the horrors that happened there. This kept most people there sane. And Pitesti was one of the prisons that tried to destroy the soul. There was Aiud, Suceava, Gherla, Târgu Ocna, Târgşor, Braşov, Ocnele Mari, Peninsula, Sighet, Râmnicu Sărat, Galaţi, etc.Many saints emerged from them proving that faith is stronger than atheism. The result? The victory of human soul over the communist ideology.
As a Romanian I thank you for bringing this important piece of historical information to attention, especially in an era of creeping communism sympathy in the west
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
My grandfather-in-law was a soldier in Romania's infantry in 1942-'45. I was talking to him about what he did during the war. He never fired a shot in combat. He belonged to a unit assigned to a Wehrmacht detachment to guard a small oil field. He said it was about 50/50 Romanian soldiers and German soldiers (not Nazi SS).
The field was so small it didn't draw attention from Allied bombers, so the Germans and Romanians just kicked back in their trenches and bunkers making sure the workers continued pumping oil and keeping the facility safe.
They mostly played football (soccer) and had target practice on the game animals that wandered too close (fresh meat for their rations). They drank together with the Germans, played games of all sorts. The Romanians and Germans totalling about 120 all became good friends over the years together at the oil field.
Then comes 1944 when the orders were, "We are no longer aligned with the Reich, we have joined the Allies. Arrest and capture any and all German soldiers you come across".
My grandfather-in-law (GFIL) was confused but obeyed orders. The German soldiers received the same message regarding Romanian soldiers. What did they do? Standing in the same trenches and bunkers shoulder -to-shoulder with the German Heer (Wehrmacht)?
They arrested each other and sat out the rest of the war no different than the prior years together. "How do you shoot your friend?" my GFIL said to me.
When the war was over it seemed that Romania, the Soviets and the Germans had forgotten about this small detachment of troops and the two oil pumps. They stayed at the oil field until 1946 and then split up. The Germans found their way back to Germany and the Romanians, removing their uniforms and acting like oil workers just became oil field workers...
... for those Romanian soldiers who fought side-by-side with the Germans were considered a threat to the Soviets and THEY would have been sent to the topic of this video. They forged their identification papers and got rid of anything that would link them to the military prior to 1944.
He was able to defect from Romania in the 1950s and come to the US. After the fall of the USSR, he returned to Romania to locate his family (who did not defect with him).
Most of his family survived, but Ceausescu came down hard on many of his friends and other family members who didn't conceal their fighting alongside the Germans. Those were tortured and executed.
Very sad! 😢
Fascinating…thank you for sharing.
@@jon9021 He was in his late 90s and had a sharp mind (pneumonia finally got him).
The stories he would tell about his time in the Romanian military in WWII were wonderful to listen to.
I kick myself for not recording his stories on video or even just audio, but he would speak with such detail that you felt like you were there, back in the early 40s with him and the German troops overlooking a small field with a couple oil pumps.
I miss him a lot, but the photos he had shared coincided with the stories. It WAS fascinating.
God rest him in peace! Proof that no matter what the brass orders, friendship and fellowship overcome all. So basically you're one of us (🤭)
Thank you for sharing your story. It's heartbreaking to think of all the many horrors that accompany war and the aftershocks from their impacts on humanity.
I am Romanian and honestly I knew about the experiment from a history class with my teacher, who introduced it to us, even though, unfortunately, it was not included in the school program at all. I feel proud that our history teacher presented the reality of Romania to us without being guided by what the textbook says, which does not even mention such a thing. I hope more people know about this event.
You were lucky to have a teacher who taught you the whole truth!
@@sallyintucson You are not allowed to teach the whole truth, nor even discuss it, because communism in Romania, especially in the early, vicious years, was predominantly led by members of a certain ethnic background with a deep hatred of christians. Discussing such things would inevitably lead to antisemitism.
I wish we had teachers like that here in the US. I’m glad you got to learn this
History should be learnt from not buried.
The REAL Romanian horror story is just how many have come to the UK to scrounge and commit crimes ! ❤️🇬🇧❤️
My grandfather was imprisoned for 14 years and he passed through Pitesti more than once during this long period - main period of his active life. He was released when he was 45 and talked every day about the years spent in prison, about the many fellows he lost there. From all the tortures he was exposed to, the hardest was in Pitesti where he was forced to live for 6 months in a small metal box, in complete darkness, where he couldn't stand. They gave him only a little piece of dry bread every day and a very small amount of water. This reeducation didn't work on him and they took him out after 6 months because he was dying. The muscle mass reduced almost completely and he had serious issues but he survived. He came out of this pretty sane, mentally, emotionally, like a monk. He was very kind and very wise after these terrible times he had to face. Unfortunately, in the absence of any therapy and still caring the big wounds, he was drinking. And he died of cirrhosis. I will always be grateful for the legacy he left to us, I am very proud of him and I understand how deeply the horrors of the last century imprinted on my family lineage. What happened in Romanian communist prisons is at the level of all the other atrocities that took place last century.
Thank you for bringing to the world more awareness on this subject, in my adolescence I was very frustrated for seeing that only jewish people can talk and be understood about the holocaust, very little is known about the other holocausts that happened and nobody is taking the blame. Only us, normal people, need to clean the deep emotional and mental darkness that was inflicted in us generationally.
Îmi pare așa rău, Ioana 😢 Nimeni nu ar fi trebuit să treacă prin iadul ăsta, niciodată, nicăieri.
😮😢😢😢😢😢
@Ioanabadea I am so glad he lived to become a grandfather so that there was a voice for the unspeakable horror that humanity can inflict on each other. His courage and strength are an example of the beauty that is inherent in all of us. Considerening that he remained a kind man after all of that, and without therapy ( though honestly I don’t know how a therapist would be able to address something so evil fro outside) his story through the generations carry those seeds. Thank you for telling this part of his story, whie it show humanity's depravity, it also shows that if we are true to who we are adversity doesn't have to destroy the divinity inherent in each of us.
@ so true
you don't need to compare one tragedy to another in order to make a point, especially when that tragedy in question is the frickin holocaust...
i don't think you're fully aware of the extent of horror those people endured and the amount of damage it caused to think our prisons are comparable to that.
may your grandparent rip though, we're lucky to live better times.
Thank you for highlighting the Pitesti experiment. As someone from Pitesti, it’s horrifying to know such atrocities happened here. The horrors are outrageous, and it’s important that they’re never forgotten.
Greetings, fellow piteștean!
@@GabiBrooks Hello! 👋🏻
“Re-educate” should be a red flag word for anyone in any society.
Except major corporations now shove those exact precepts down our throats in conjunction with the government.
Like when Hillary said that we needed "Happy camps for adults" to put Trump supporters in? Everybody thought that was a real funny joke.
@@DesiRush1Trump literally would do the same 🤣 both sides r not good.
What do you think "un-learn" means nowadays..
@drea7421 It’s always Trump “would” do something. The left is the side using this language and talking about unlearning and re-education. The right never talks like this, not ever. Do not make this a both sides argument. And if you’re so confident that you’re right, please provide an example like the person did that you disagree with.
It's sick that Simon's talking about beatings, sleep deprivation and starvation and THEN he goes "OK, now here's the really bad stuff!" You know things are bad when even some in Romania's Secret Police were like "We're going a bit too far here, lads"
is it? or is it sick that there are young people today who openly advocate for a communist system , ignoring what it would mean ....hrmmm
It was straight after the starvation part that I then had the video interrupted with an advert for pizza.
I'm gay. And it'll make the news
Sick good or sick bad?
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Are we commenting on the quality of Simon's video or the torture?
@GS-dn4gn I'm certainly not saying that he made light of any of this, considering the type of topics that Into The Shadows covers, he's always very respectful about it.
there could be a series of documentaries on the horrors of eastern european nations from 1945-1990
It was, and it was broadcasted on national television. It was called "memorialul durerii" - the memorial of pain. It was a whole series, it was brutal and eye opening, shattering, for the ones to acknowledge it, the "nostalgia" for the communist period.
and the 20 years before that were actually worse for most of those nations, I suggest the book 'blood lands' it's horrific
Pretty big talk after half the world walked around like😷😷😷😷😷😷
@@floradu2001I saw it as a child maybe 9-11, was heartbreaking 😢
nothing to the globe wide horrors perpetuated by the USA and their controllers, the Israeli's.
I'm romanian. Thank you for bring this dark chapter into the light.
What makes the Pitesti Experiment different from other prisions or reeducation camps is that it was distroying the fabric of human relations to a level where you were left as a pure piece of meat. Camaradery and sense of community bring strength in the darkest hours, but in Pitesti you were left alone brutally beatean and tortured by your friend/sand betrayed in the most abject way. There are no words to describe this tornment
I mean it failed. Clearly. They did that while they were forced to but once the prisoners were released they immediately ''betrayed'' the state. I'm guessing that's the real reason it was shut down. Also there's a chance the higher ups actually didn't know the details. In Romania there is this mentality of hiding from the truth or rather it was more prelevant when I was young. So if presented with stuff they don't like, the powerful would likely not even look at it.
So the way muslims leave our young british girls?
@@HaggisMuncher-69-420your pfp
@@HaggisMuncher-69-420 You are not dong anyone any favours.
@@HaggisMuncher-69-420Islam is just as brutal as communism... Or even worse because the satanic islamic fanatism is far worse than the godless ideas of communists
The man who taught me to ski in 1983 when I was 4 in Romania was taken by the state police. He was never found, rest in peace Nesco.
How recently was that stuff happening?
@@Dapryor 1983-1986
@@billybob-jp7eh that’s interesting. I didn’t know that was going on as late as the 80s.
@@Dapryor Romanian revolution (Romanian: Revoluția română) was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world
Before the revolution of 1989 I guess you had to be careful .Dappyor were you even born before 2000? I was at college.
I’ve heard about The Pitești Experiment in 1990, after the Revolution. I lived in Târgoviște a town 55 kilometres away from Pitești.
We were left speechless and aghast at the sophistication of the torture inflicted on the prisoners. We knew already about the Danube-Black Sea Canal and TransFagarasan and other cyclopian enterprises where the dissidents (intellectuals, priests or simply those opposing collectivization) were tossed out to wither away and disappear.
Thanks for covering this painful story.
I am glad Simon and Co. are talking about Romania under communism. The atrocities of the Ceausescu regime is often underdiscussed in the context of the Cold War and Authortarian regime Ceausescu's regime would almost be comedic if it wasnt so horrific.
Read about Pauker and Luca, architects of the Securitate.
Only thing is the Pitești Experiment happened under Anna Pauker, Teohari Georgescu and Vasile Luca who were the worst of the worst. Ruthless and feral Moscow puppets in the Romanian Workers Party.
As a sidenote, Pauker's husband was deemed as a liability by the party and thus removed (yes, that kind of removed) and upon being informed of her husband's fate, Pauker reportedly said 'If this is the wish of the party then so be it.'
Make no mistake, Ceaușescu's regime wasn't a really in the park, but this horror is before him gaining all the power. This is designated as the Stalinist period of Romania and it used large scale torture and horrific abuse that didn't happen afterwards on such demonic scale and so atrocious. This is truly the most horrific time in Romanian modern history, people should take notes , it's seems unreal but it was all too real and there were (a handful of) survivors that lived to tell the tales. It's truly unspeakable
This was before Ceaușescu, when the country was under direct occupation by the Red Army. The worst atrocities happened in the 50s under that occupation.
Keep in mind this was NOT under Ceausescu, but way before, in the years of the bolsevic j..wes that were in power at that time. They were fiercely anti christian and anti romanian
... And guess how they recruited the "Securitate" officers... My father was one of them. He had graduated the university with full 10 (the highest possible grade). They came to his workplace and asked him to join. Not only did he refuse, but he punched their lights out. A few days later he received an order to go and work on some communist grand project as unqualified worker. Next day the same guys he had beaten up came back to him with the same paper. This time he signed. What choice did he have? To leave his wife and two sons behind and dissappear in some work colony or to join the regime...
But the worst thing is that everyone in power today is either related to the "Securitate" people or former Securitate.
10 in what subject?
@@Jamie-js3qw basically he is saying that he had straight A's as he graduated from university
Old fan from Romania here, thank you for covering this!
My grandfather was incarcerated there in May 1949 because he was not a communist. After one year there he was sent to Cernavodă forced labor camp.
pare rau sa aud
evil empire
Does Cernavoda mean black water ?
Asking for a slavic friend.
Yes
I suppose it's a Slavic name, but in Romanian "black water" is "apă neagră". I'm pretty sure most Romanians aren't aware of the etymology.
@CPTE5069
The idea behind the torture and humiliation wasn't just for the prisoners to confess to their imagined crimes but to also denounce their families and friends, who would then also be locked up and so on.
Turcanu was only a tool back then. There's no denying he committed countless atrocities for which he deserved his punishment, but there were others who masterminded the whole thing and allowed him to do everything he did and nothing happened to them.
Prison beatings and torture was still a custom in Romania even after the Pitesti Experiment ended, though not to that extent. There were many who beat up or killed hundreds or thousands of innocents in Romanian nothing ever happened to them. Even after the fall of Communism those who came to power had their back and they never spent a day in prison. They lived their lives in comfort without a care, some of them still do...
Makes you wonder if it was the Soviets at fault, or if this was something Romania had always suffered from.
@@DukeOnkledwhen communism came to Romania it gave huge power to the lower classes. Suddenly, all kinds of scumbags were policemen and they started using their new-found powers to terrorize the elites, the middle class and everyone that had a grudge against. So, it was, indeed, the Soviets who brought communism here, so they were like the orchestrator of all this, but the most horrific acts were committed by Romanians against fellow Romanians.
@@DukeOnkledthe gouvernment still stayed the same after the fall of communism,so it was the same people who allowed and orchestrated these "experiments",except now they call themselves "social democrats" instead of communists
@@aaabbb-zc7sx And it was the same before communism, some societies simply fall into habits they have trouble breaking.
@@DukeOnkled no it wasn't lmao,it all started with the iron guard,and they werem't nearly as popular before the soviets invaded
This was a hard watch. I cant believe how dark and evil people can be. And it wasnt even that long ago. Crazy sht.
the hardest books I've read was this ---> gulag archipelago. tbh, Stalin was worse than Hitler (and that's something)
You make it sound like it doesn't happen anymore.
Humans will always be like this sadly. The ability to other people seems to always be around. Look at how it was during Covid. Those Covid Ian maniacs wanted to round up anyone that did not get their fake jab.
Well publicised that this is still happening around the world
Humans are the worst creature to exist on earth. We all do not deserve this gift
Fenomenul Pitești - by Virgil Ierunca, a very good book on this subject. (I hope it's also translated in english)
I read Romanian
but I need the English version
Kudos to you for discussing this topic, in Romania this is still not widely disscussed... the younger generations have no ideea of this topic...
What was also bad, was the way romania treated its disabled, absolutely disgusting, keeping disabled young adults constantly in the dark and children that were in care living in squalor to name a few.
Remember that when someone tries to tell you how great communism is. Especially someone who lived their entire life in a free democratic country.
probably similar though in any other iron curtain country , but i like also how everyone today focuses more on the goosesteppers from ww2, but will turn a blind eye, downplay, and even advocate for such a system still , because "right side of history" or "real communism hasn't actually been tried " something
@@CalinCosmaSeriously. Why is this ideology seeing a surge of interest recently? It's already proven to be an absolute failure.
@@bluegold1026 In the United States fascism is on the rise. People never learn
I have never heard of anyone praising communism in the West.
i am romanian also. Thanx for the detailed storytelling. your sources are very good. Thanx also for the great videos and themes that you make!
After watching this video, I wanted to know more about Ceaușescu, and had a long reading to do. I did read his French Wikipedia page. It is said 52% Romanian respondents believe they lived better during the communist period than now. What is your two cents about all that?
@@nathalie_desrosiers Only the boomers, the ones that are satisfied with just working and having a place to live, and food. The regime was devastating to any artist, musician, philosopher, queer, different religions, etc. the propaganda was very efficient and very deeply rooted in the daily life. They sound exactly like the ones crying after the nazi regime. Despicable people!
@@nathalie_desrosiers my dude, wikipedia is bs; yes, members of the regime did live better than the others, and everyone had an appartment in the city - because they were expelled from their homes and forced to work in industrial areas. The nostalgic ones miss their youth and the simpler times, because after the revolution we took in every single cultural aspect from the west, no matter if it was a good or a bad thing (aka before : life was predictable, now : drugs and them kids with their loud music)
@@nathalie_desrosiersit's bs.people in romania have a deep hatred for communism,to the point where you could be found dead in a ditch for drawing communist symbols.there are very few people who miss communism,and those are ex-securists (state-police-like organistation that would live like kings while the masses suffered,who would falsely accuse many,including their friends and family,of "spreading capitalist ideology",in order to boost their own salaries)and ex-communist party members,who got rich by robbing the country while causescu was getting exectuted.to this day,most millionares in romania inherited their millions from those thieves).there are also very few still-brainwashed elders,but they stay inside and watch teleshopping all day.because of that,there are no pro-communists parades in romania,unlike,let's say,spain.ask any romanian above the age of 40 about their memories from communism,and they'll all say the same things.food was so rare,it might have as well not existed,winters were so cold because of ceausescu's no heating policy,the f*cking walls would freeze (my grandma's apartment still has huge cracks in the walls,and they were caused by the ice that formed on them during communist winters),sleepping in the same room with your entire extended family so that you wouldn't freeze to death during winter,brutal labour-camps,etc.
So I have to wonder if Orwell had heard anything about this (even if only just rumors) when he wrote and published 1984. The bit where you break the victims by forcing them to torture their comrades runs an eerie parallel to Room 101, and "Do this to Julia, not me!" (Quote paraphrased due to not wanting to look it up.)
Possibly, although that particular tactic has unfortunately been used by plenty of other regimes and groups. Humans have always been depressingly creative in coming up with ways to inflict suffering on each other, as shown by the fact that in most religions with some kind of afterlife duality the descriptions of hell tend to be much more graphic and detailed than descriptions of heaven.
I'm also reminded of what O'Brien, Winston Smith's torturer in the novel, said to him: "We will hollow you out and fill you with ourselves".
1984 (the novel) was published in 1949 - so it might be the other way around... but also goes to prove Orwell's vision was right on point on what could happen in a totalitarian regime.
This is how dictatorsips work. All of them.
I was thinking the same thing
I live in Pitești. Glad to see this being talked about. It scares me how quickly people forget...
This happened all over the communist prisons in Romania. The Museum of Communism in Sighetul Marmatiei describes some more of these psychological torture tactics. A good read if you're interested in the experience of those imprisoned is "The Diary of Happiness" by Nicolae Steinhardt. Thanks for your interest in this part of history.
Ty for shining a spotlight on this. I had never heard of it before. It was absolutely unacceptable! Those poor people!
Ok, now I understand why Romania was such a weird topic in the 70s.
Ironic then, when u will find out that the 70's (most of it) was part of a period called "The Golden Age". This is very polirizing topic
This was late 40's early 50's
If there's anyone interested in the subject, there's an adaptation on Netflix called "Intre chin si Amin", which means "Between struggle and Amen". It's very graphic and pretty hard to watch, but it perfectly depicts the horrors those people had to go through.
A lot of this sounded familiar from the book "Tortured for Christ" by Richard Wurmbrand. He was imprisoned in Romania from 1948 to 1956, and then from 1959 to 1964. I went back and checked. He was moved around to different locations over the years, and at one point he does mention Pitesti specifically.
Back when i worked in TV as a broadcast tech, i had a couple of special editions where survivors were invited. Hearing them and seeing their faces when they described the horrors was not easy. The worst part is that most of the guards got away with it. Once the "experiment" was deemed too horrific and the officials were afraid that leaks of the Pitesti prison would reach Radio Free Europe, the location was locked down and was replaced with the "canal" (Danube-Black Sea Canal) site, where the victims were worked to death.
As sick joke. kids & grandkids of some guards and officials that kept the "experiment" functional are now politicians on the local and national scene.
Hello, can you say what's there now?
Who's to say that such acts of brutality are still going on today in places like North Korea or even China?
When you put literally anything (e.g. ideological purity, religion) above human rights and decency, you get hell on earth.
this is literally happening in the Israeli concentration camps.
Say RUSSIA first, they do it culturally...
The prison was turned into a museum in 2014 with the help of private funding and was designated a historic monument in 2023. The Romanian government has nominated the facility, along with four other prisons used during the communist era, to be included as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Humanity really disgusts me sometimes.
Me too. And some people think that human beings are basically good. Yeah, right.
I suspect that most of us are capable of the worst atrocities and the greatest good, depending on the circumstances and childhood influences.
@@peripheralparadox4218100 %
This is not humanity, this is the direct result of atheism rule and atheistic society. Becoming anti God they become anti Humans
Pitesti was ended, because those that approved it, and sent people there, were afraid of being sent there, themselves.
Romania has one heck of a history, of some really messed up people
All countries had messed up people, and sadly all do. Unfortunately after WWII we've been left to the soviets/russians by US & UK just like they do with Ukraine now. The russians put in charge the most messed up people.
@@tech477 Thanks for stopping by. You know nothing about me. But Meh, what do you care about my life?
What exactly do you refer? Bring some details not just some generic thing.@@carolinebjerkelund767
Not Eugen Țurcanu invented the system of torture at Pitești prison. The so-called "reeducation program" and the young age of the incarcerated proves that Nikolsky (his real name was Boris Grunberg, a Transnistrian resident) was in fact the coordinator of the systematic torture and unimaginable abominations that happened at Pitești Penitentiary. Eugen Țurcanu had the power of a warden with the acceptance of the prison's communist management over the inmates, he was ruthless and violent, but not a "reeducation program" planner.
Da, s-a procedat la o tortura continua, ziua batai, supusi la umilinte fizice (unele nu pot fi descrise), siliti sa-si inghita terciul clocotit, sa-si manance fecalele, sa bea sare cu apa, iar noaptea sa stea nemiscati, pe spate, izbiti cu tevi de fier la cea mai mica miscare. Psihic, erau obligati sa-si faca demascarea, adica sa se lepede de familie, de parinti, de neam, de Dumnezeu, sa-si tradeze prietenii, sa devina delatori. Au trait efectiv iadul pe pamant. Scopul era sa-i transforme din opozanti ai regimului comunist, in agenti tortionari si in informatori ai Securitatii. Unii au fost trimisi in alte inchisori, pentru a reedita demascarea detinutilor prin teroare si tortura. Nu va faceti iluzii ! “UN POPOR CARE NU-ȘI CUNOAȘTE TRECUTUL E CONDAMNAT SĂ-L REPETE”. (NICOLAE IORGA)
MartyrMade: the Anti Humans. One of the best podcast episodes out there. The latter part of the episode is on Ptesti.
That dude loves nazis lol
It has always saddened me the amount of terrible things that one human being can do to another. I enjoy your videos they are deep interesting and certainly make a person think. Thank you Simon ✌️😊
Just when you thought you knew basically everything there is to know about how bad humanity can get Simon + team always seems to find more 😵💫😬💯
Starting to miss my naive days but I can't stop learning lol.
There's a channel called Shrouded Hand that covers things like this but doesn't do so in an exploitative way, some things he's talked about still haunt me just hearing about them
@@cloudbloomI've once seen a documentary with interviews with the survivors of the "experiment". I cried, it's unspeakable what they did and made the inmates do themselves, through torture. It's demonic. The mock religious ceremonies included human feeces, and I don't want to say more... It's unspeakable
@@Onora619 plenty of people today who are quite naive and are "learned" , after all some still openly advocate for such a system because " real communism was never tried" , yet history shows otherwise.
@@Onora619 i learned, you can gain back that "Feeling" of innocence while not having it. You can train your brain to feel certain ways despite not experiencing said thing. been havin' lots of fun with that lately.
War will always strip away the thin veneer of "humanity" we wear.
That wasn't during the war. It was during peace. But it was under communism.
War didn't do what these people did. In war, apart from the inherent horrors of it, many times heroism, comaradery, indestructible bonds form, just like in prison, under a brutal regime, in the face of hardship, people come together. These people attacked those very bonds, the fabric of all the good in humanity, aiming to destroy it.
@@floradu2001 Yeah Communism then. "We are all equal but some are more equal than others." (George Orwell, obviously)
Much love & respect for all victims. Never ever again.❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
I simply can't comprehend how humans can be so incredibly cruel to each other. I understand wanting to hurt somebody who may have personally hurt you but going to these lengths to destroy people you've never even met before that time at a molecular level is just evil. There's no other way to describe it.
Watching this from Pitesti...
In the end, this is the truth of evil, not only in what it does in trying to destroy everything you are to turn you into what it is, but in how it fails. Those that died are gone, those who survived are not broken, and the regime has passed away into a cautionary tale of history. Evil is weak and fallible, the power of the good in humanity is inexhaustible and relentless, as evil would have you think of itself. Humanity is on a rough road, but it is a road to paradise, and we will not be stopped.
More and more elderly people (Romanians) are now becoming nostalgic about the olden days, including my father. It's a sentiment led by 'euroscepticism' which more often than not is a weak facade for populism and xenophobia.
Thank you, Simon for shining a light on the horrors of the communist regime. My generation is still wiping the aftermath.
The REAL Romanian horror story is just how many have come to the UK to scrounge and commit crimes ❤️🇬🇧❤️
The generation that also lived in the age before communism and was highly educated is almost gone, or pretty much no longer that influential in the social space. Coming from their behind is the generation that grew up in the 1950s, the '60s or the '70s, which were heavily influenced by the communist way of life triumphing over "the bourgeois" one, despite being heavy listeners of Radio Free Europe and smuggling tapes with rock music from the West.
I think we must not sweep events under the rug just like that and see the communist regime in its full nature, the way it was: a terrorist one, imprisoning everyone in their own country and leaving them no way to express themselves. We must keep the memory of this alive so that it will never happen again in the future.
They are wrong to praise and wish for the olden days of communism and they are right to be eurosceptic. Both can coexist.
I think you have it the wrong way. Whether it's right or wrong in it itself, I think the reason Euroskepticism is flourishing in so much of Europe is because a lot of people intuitively sense that things aren't going in the right direction and that their society/identity is under threat. In Germany, a German woman went on social media and insulted a migrant who was involved in gang raping a 15 year old German girl and ended up being given a longer sentence than he was.
And you wonder why Euroskepticism is flourishing...
Thank you for making this video. I am disgusted by what had happened and that this took place in my country. And I am ashamed that I didn’t know about it until now. It's outrageous that we're not taught about this in history at school.
I am constantly amazed of the cruelty and depravity people are capable of inflicting on others. Sometimes I think the Devil gets too much credit...
Im from Pitesti and I visited the prison i can say i remained traumatized after visting
This is why 1984 was written in the 1950's
1940s actually. First published in 1949.
the ussr committed many terrors in ukraine. thats why they are fighting now
written in 1948, 84 was the inverse of 48.
"people actually thinking for themselves...." that was something they FEARED. LOL
all dictatorships fear this
Any totalitarian regime fears this
When I started watching your serious channels I would wonder what kind of amazing degrees you must have because you seem to know everything about everything.
Then I started watching Brain Blaze. Needless to say now, I wonder how you're not an Oscar winning actor.
Simon is old, very old. Some say older than 3000 years. Yes. He was there. He witnessed everything, thats how he knows.
I know he looks rather young for that age but thats because hes only midway through his lifespan. He has so much yet to see. Epic battles like Neo vs Agent Smith, Luke vs Anakin, Ellen Ripley vs Miss Universe... And so much more.
As for an oscar, he's been told Hollywood is waiting for Morgan Freeman and David Attenborough to pass on before he is eligible for one.
Oh, and did you know? He kicked a helmet once......
Long ago on Today I Found Out, Simon was actually replaced by a lizard person.
Simon reads scripts, written by other people. He's said MANY times that he retains next to no knowledge from any scripts he reads
Simons brain is very big
Simons brain is very wrinkled
Simon knows the past is the worst.
He knows that you should never write down your crimes.
He absolutely is in awe of police and their investigations.
Simon is the President of the Pedro Lopez fan club.
Simon has only 1 YT channel.
Welcome to the Whistleverse.
Please take your vessi's off, put your feet up and grab a drink.
Simon will smash out a super fast into and get right into it, it's what makes him different than other channels.
He is a stickler for sticking to the script.
I actually knew about this atrocity. Few people mention the "baptisms"
😢😢😢😢
I believe today they call it "Enhanced Interrogations" and all countries did it and some still do it today. You should do a Gulag video or maybe Guantanamo Bay. I heard there was a nice island in Russian where it was an all you can eat resort.
Nazinsky island, simon did a video a while back
If I don't hear the word "lengthy" mispronounced as "lengthly" at least once a day I feel as if my life is lacking in Simon, somehow. Thank goodness he has so many channels to choose from! Hugs
I never heard of this awful experiment before. The Romanian people has suffered a lot because of the communists. Now I think they are a happy people living in a beautiful country. Thank you for sharing this interesting story.
Thank you for a very condensed account of that horrible and shameful episode. My father, as his friend Ticu Dumitrescu, went through re-education, but in Gherla (Pitești was, as the name says, the experimental phase, where many were killed -and this was not the aim of the experiment-, while the “mature” method was later applied in other prisons), and his accounts correspond to the facts presented by you. Nicolschi (who was Russian, btw) died of old age, unrepentant, in a very luxurious house, located 5 min. away from my parents’ apartment. My father, who had first met him in very unpleasant circumstances, would see him regularly in the street.
I cannot recommend a podcast about this topic enough. It's the "martyrmade" podcast and the episode is called "anti-human" for.very good resaon!!! I must warn you its the darkest podcast I've ever listened to in my life. He does a deep dive into the mostly eastern European post ww2 atrocities by communists. It goes way past even the worst things you can think of.
Also there's a great book called "the bloodlands Europe between Hitler and stalin" that is very similar but was mostly during war time.
It sounds insane but it gave me a glimpse of understanding of how some people chose to be nazis including some well known groups still in the Ukranian army. I warned you
This was an excellent video. I'm romanian and I can tell the summary at the beginning is also very accurate, as for the experiment itself, ive read a book about it last year and Simon covered every aspect in that book. Sadly this doesn't get taught in highschools
Now that I think about it, the absurd horror of Sàlo doesn't sound so fictional anymore... this "experiment" reminds me of that grotesque movie
Thanks for sharing.
I’m Romanian, thank you for covering this horrific topic, it’s important that we don’t forget the past, as we don’t want to repeat it… the memory of those who died still lives on.
This is as Orwellian a story as I've ever heard. Being an American, it is very similar to our own history of Guantanamo Bay, America's private torture chamber in Cuba. But this wasn't attached to WWII, we aren't that lucky. Gitmo is *contemporary* history but the way it was "handled" was about the same as Pitesti at 13:52. Sure, some actors were prosecuted but the bulk of those responsible were quietly reassigned, in particular, the upper officers. They discreetly retired. And the prison? It's still there. Obama used closing it as an election platform in 2008: and it still stands. An ugly truth that proves that America is NOT a shiny, spotless place.
Everyone knows America is evil. They are a wolf in sheeps clothing
Couldn’t help but think of the last 100 pages of 1984 watching this video
Guantanamo prison torture methods are not even close to Pitești, it's like comparing Ted Bundy with a regular criminal
The worst thing of Pitesti is that it went much further and is unique in that aspect in human history. The usual torture just goes like breaking the body for intel. Yet it does not break the mind. Well, Pitesti broke the fabric of the human connection, of the human spirit. There is nothing worse.
It is NOTHING like American history. You young progressive clowns have absolutely NO IDEA about how fortunate you are to live in the USA. That is just absolutely crazy. Things get much much much worse than in American I can assure you my young friend.
I teach 1984 every semester in a university, for the last 12 years and I was thinking the worst part of this was realizing how every year it felt less fiction and more reality.. now I know, the book was more of history book, mixed with fiction..
I would point out that it wasn't so much "playing both sides" as it was a corrupt government and Nazi German "persuasion" that led to Romania being allied to the Axis powers and then becoming a communist state. The country wasn't as interested in Germany's war, nor did they have the obligations that drew them into WWI as allies of the Ottoman Empire, Germany NEEDED the countries oil reserves among other resources and had been bribing/buttering up many powerful individuals against the King at the time. When the German tanks rolled in, those on the side of the Coup let them do as they pleased, those who didn't were persuaded to fall in line. By the end of the war the country was greatly weakened by being pumped dry and the Russians having felt miffed by many countries hesitance to adopt their 5-yr plans and offers of Communism took advantage of the situation by assisting the rebels to retake the country from the Germans, knowing that it wasn't the people that chose to join the Reich, but then turning around and demanding the country pay reparations. That further destroyed the country and forced Romania to take the Russian's "helping hand," cementing Communism and Nicolae Ceaușescu's rule going forward. I will say that despite so much pain, misery, and trauma he caused; Ceaușescu did at least making efforts into paying off the debt that Romania has been saddled with by Russia and Germany (which conveniently for Russia ballooned from their initial $300million into nearly 1.2Billion in assets). In the end the country was co-opted into a war they didn't really want to be in by an outside supported coup (not unlike what we'd see from many players in the following Cold War), pumped dry, "saved" by Russian, and then betrayed and trapped into a spiral of being plundered, stripped, and used for the many decades.
It may not defend the horrific things that were done, nor does it excuse anything in this video; but hopefully it provides some context to this discussion and it's history. I think many people forget that "history is written by the victors" and that tends to muddy the waters when you're trying to sift through so much history. I will point out that on this side of the European divide you'll find that many countries tend to be welcoming/friendly to other Eastern Europeans (perhaps not their countries/politics/government, etc.), due to the interesting history of the region as a whole. I think that subtle distinction between a country as a singular "entity" and the individuals that exist within he geo-politically defined borders of a "country" are at times vastly different than may appear. (see @hjognathansaegal3156's & @moog012's posts for further examples of how the individuals were during that time)
This place is just 15 meters away from my window. It's demolished now but it still scares me. God have mercy
Thanks for reminding me. It was, indeed, one of the most horrendous treatments of the political prisoners in the whole communist block. A small correction (at 2:10): Romania went under soviet occupation, and the soviets gave the communists a free hand to do whatever it took to gain power and remove their adversaries. The communists, in turn, boycotted any government that did not have key portfolios under their ministers (such as internal affairs or defense) as well as a communist prime-minister. Eventually, the government became fully communist. Initially, the government was supposed to be entirely communist, but King Michael tried to oppose this through the so-called "Royal Strike" - where basically he refused to sign any law adopted by the government unless the government was replaced with a national union one. The King also had the support of the US and the UK, who refused to recognize the said government. The communists decided to back up a bit, accepting two ministers (from the Liberals and the Peasants respectively) as ministers without portfolio and the US and the UK recognized the government. With that issue solved, parliamentary elections were organized in 1946, and while the National Peasants Party was the favorite, the communists won the election. There has been massive voter fraud, abuse, violence against people voting the Peasants or the Liberals (or any other party not allied with the communists). It is said that the Peasants Party won, but the results after the ballot count have simply been reversed, in favor of the communists.
Given the situation, Petru Groza, the communist prime-minister of Romania at the time, blackmailed the King into signing a poorly and hastily written abdication decree, proclaiming the Republic in the very same day.
The soviets knew exactly every single thing about these events, and even orchestrated (or helped orchestrate) most of these events. And the Pitești experiment was no exception. Started in Pitești, the torture methods were applied in many other prison camps like in Jilava, Aiud, Râmnicu Sărat, Sighet, Gherla etc.
Just to get an idea of how cruel, these methods were: the inmates were initially left in a chill environment, where they could freely speak with each other (of course, with torturers infiltrated among them). They all would start speaking about what they did as members of the democratic parties or anything they were (priests etc.). Then, all of a sudden and without any warning, the torturers would start beating the inmates in the cruelest way possible. This was just the "greeting" for the inmates. Basically, every single person was a victim and an executioner at the same time.
The Pitești experiment had a catch, though: nobody had to die, especially in the Pitești camp. Or the death shouldn't be attributable to the conditions inside the camp. One incident involving a suicide at Pitești endangered the whole experiment. The other incident that caused the authorities to stop everything was that Romania was getting ready to be part of the UN in 1955. Of course, as Simon said, the communist authorities tried everything they could to minimize the awareness of the whole thing. And as the events managed to stay so low profile, they partially succeeded.
There is a movie called Martyrs which is extremely similar to this, but this is so much scarier because it really happened. Martyrs is the scariest movie ever made in my mind, but this is just different...
This was horrible. What is it with Romania and terrible experiments? I saw on YT years ago Romanian tests on babies and toddlers. They were testing on babies and toddlers how they were affected with zero emotional interaction during the most important developmental part of their lives. The times when this interaction is crucial. The youngsters were devoid of humanity and looked like blank faced old people. I really wish I had not seen it. The looks on those kids faces are etched into my memory forever.
are you sure that was a test and not just a communist orphanage?
Haha i really thought im the only romanian following Simons channels.
So happy to see fellow romanians watching the guy ! ❤
This horror should never be forgotten
Ion Antonescu was originar from Pitesti.In that region,in the Fagaras Mountains,there was a strong resistance from the people against comunism.
Ana Pauker was Romania’s prime minister while this was happening and at the same time, in US she was on the cover of “Time” magazine!
Hi! Great work, I’m always glad when someone is covering a topic about România. Here are some reading rules for anyone interested:
Ș= sh as in shadow
Ț= first sound in czar
Ă= like “a” from “a monkey”
Â= I don’t know how to explain, pls help
Ce/ci= c is like ch in chair
Ge/gi= g is like j in jar
Che/chi= ch is like a strong “k”
Ghe/ghi= gh is like g in garden
Thank you for bringing this forward ...
Nicolschi was not punished like this guy say. He didn’t “avoid execution and did only prison time”. He died well thanks of old age before anything happened to him, I think of heart attack. Plus, he had a very strong reason to humiliate and break the spirits of those who were religious Christians and do all those inverted mock religious rituals. Guess why.
I’m so glad this is being covered. I always thought it was terrible that it was forgotten next to all the other Soviet crimes. I read the anti humans and it was truly was one of the most deprived event I’ve read about .
Similar thing happened in Bangladesh. Although not too graphic, but similar methods were adopted by the Sheikh Hasina regime. You can replace Romania's communism with India's influence, in case of Bangladesh. If anyone dared to speak against the brutal policies taken by the Sheikh Hasina regime in favor of Indian government, were put down, arrested, tortured. Abrar Fahad was brutally beaten to death because he protested against the river share policy taken by the government, which acted largely in favor of India.
Countless people were abducted in "Aynaghor" or "Mirror Room". Their family wouldn't even know if the abducted people survived or not. It was a hell on earth.
Nice imaginary story 😂
This was a good watered down take on this topic. The full real story isn’t for most people.
Pitesti is my hometown, I am so glad you are speaking about what happened there 70 years ago. All those who defend communism make my blood boil, "well ACKTUALLIE that wasn't TRUE communism!".
Ask any neomarxist or neocommie where they think they'll be in the new communist structure, most of them will say that they will be a "poet" or "propagandist" or other soft jobs. No, buddy, you're going STRAIGHT to the coal mines. Neomarxists are just lazy people that want handouts.
What's sad is that this is far from the only time human being have treated other humans so horribly. As I was listening, I thought the descriptions sounded strangely identical to some of the tortures committed against "prisoners" at the Khmer Rouge S 21 prison under Pol Pot, not too many years after this in fact.
This shit reminds me of Danganronpa type stuff. With how Junko created the Reminants of despair and spreading despair across the world.
That's basically the ministry of love tactic word for word from 1984
here before this gets age restricted cuz i cba verifying my account lol
What does cba stand for?
What did it say
@@CindyandRicoTheCoonhoundCross can’t be arsed
@@mmmmmmmmaria thank you. I would think it would be cbb. Can't be bothered. But, what do I know! 🤣
@@mmmmmmmmariaNice to see someone get it right rather than saying "can't be asked" 😅
Thank you for this presentation, very well done ❤
"They saw enemies everywhere, especially among the educated and the young."
Um? Who does that sound like in America today?
The communists saw the young and educated as anti-communist.
The young and “educated” of American aren't anti-communist.
So, the analogy doesn’t work.
@@theprophet9429This.
I don't understand what you mean.
@@theprophet9429 Are you prophesying for us?
@blessd24
The left, fake news, Mexican rapists, Socialists, communists, transgenders, gays, social media, NBC, ABC, globalists, immigrants, Haitians who eat dogs, muslims, Democrats, Antifa, BLM, The Deep State, WHO, NATO, UN.
That's just off the top of my head. There's more.
Oh! democracy is now an enemy as well.
My good friend, who's also, by far, the biggest patriot and admirer of The Gipper, immigrated legally from Romania. This place is one thing he just won't talk about. In high school, I had heard of a Romanian "prison" that contained horrors to rival those of Unit 731 or the Morality Police in post-revolution Iran. I, admittedly, had a hard time wrapping my head around the absence of humanity shown, given, or even expected.
Learned about this back in school. I love that more channels and the world is becoming more aware of my country and it's history. Saddened by no one pronouncing Romanian words correctly 😢
The "Ministry of Love" from 1984 in real life.
reminds me of "Martyrs", the movie from 2008. What an horrible fate to those who suffered these monstrosities.... really dark chapter on human history.
7:35 is this where they got the idea for Applied Behavior Analysis?
Simon Whistler is perhaps the most busy youtuber ive come across
he is the johnny sins of youtube.
Simon's pronunciation of romanian names makes my ears bleed.
Don’t make him say lemon ;)
@@cr0ninlahmayee😂
I am Romanian. My grandma's family went through monstruosities like this. I am just proud that after all of this nowadays it is actually a decent place to live in (despite all of the downsides).
This new use of stock footage to tell the story is tacky. It's much more powerful when it's just Simon talking with occasional historic images or maps.
Could be worse he uses AI images sometimes. I'm more annoyed by the bad mics.
Your comment is tacky and cringe. Stop whining.
"I don't like how your doing this fully free content I'm watching."
That's just like your opinion, man
😅😅
You'd think that people would've evolved past barbarism by now, but unfortunately, it's still extremely prevalent. We really are a vile species.
Because the truth about evolving, within the confines of biology, humanity , and astrophysics is that it is ALWAYS a process of deterioration, and never one of improvement.
That "s" with a comma underneath is pronounced "sh", also there's no emphasis on the "i" at the end of Pitesti ( Might be hard if you're not a native but try not to pronounce it as Pitesht-E")
This video is an extremely brief summary of the event at Pitesti. You did not tell of the triumph of faith over the horrors that happened there. This kept most people there sane. And Pitesti was one of the prisons that tried to destroy the soul. There was Aiud, Suceava, Gherla, Târgu Ocna, Târgşor, Braşov, Ocnele Mari, Peninsula, Sighet, Râmnicu Sărat, Galaţi, etc.Many saints emerged from them proving that faith is stronger than atheism.
The result? The victory of human soul over the communist ideology.
Kafka meets Communism... (Shudder)
Such things still happen in many modern nations...
Lemme turn out the lights for this
As a Romanian I thank you for bringing this important piece of historical information to attention, especially in an era of creeping communism sympathy in the west