Testimony from within the Anchetă: The Ordeal of Anton Golopenţia
Testimony from within the Anchetă: The Ordeal of Anton Golopenţia

Summary/Abstract: Almost all of the testimony about the Romanian Gulag we have been able to consult reflects the memoirs of former political detainees, in most cases post-facto recreations of events that took place many years before. While the accuracy of some of these memoirs has been challenged, we should remember that it depended to a large extent either on the phenomenal memory of the former detainee in his or her new guise as author (Ion Ioanid being the most obvious example) or on a collaborative effort by several participants to verify names, events, procedures, arbitrary punishment and executions. What is singularly lacking is direct testimony, whether in the form of letters sent to loved ones or of actual journals smuggled out of prison. None so far has come to light, although there are hints in some testimonies that at least in the early years (1947-48) sympathetic jailers and resourceful detainees may have found a way to smuggle out a few letters and journals.

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