HUNGER AS OBSESION IN THE CARCERAL MEMOIRS OF WRITERS INCARCERATED IN AIUD PRISON
HUNGER AS OBSESION IN THE CARCERAL MEMOIRS OF WRITERS INCARCERATED IN AIUD PRISON

Summary/Abstract: From the broad array of mechanisms of terror employed in the concentrationary spaces, cold and hunger stand out as two phenomena deliberately applied as brutal experiments upon the inmates’ weakened and diseased bodies, with the clear objective of breaking their resistance. The image of hunger is a recurring element in most detention memoirs. Its description can only be imagined by the reader. The prisoner’s subconscious carefully constructs a closed universe in which he defends himself and resorts to autosuggestion. For many detainees, hunger becomes an obsession, and in certain situations it triggers a strange form of apathy and egoism. The obsession with hunger recurs in the memoirs of former prisoners incarcerated in Aiud Prison. Nicu Păun, Aurel Sergiu Marinescu, Dumitru Bordeianu, Tertulian Langa, Ion Ioanid, Nicolae Mărgineanu, and Vasile Cârdei are among those who endured this experience in the Aiud dungeon and shaped in their memoirs a suggestive image of a symbol of the carceral space, one that distinguishes itself throughout the Romanian concentrationary system of the communist period.

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