🇷🇴 The Pitești Experiment: The Eastern Bloc's Most Brutal Prison
The experiment carried out in the Pitești Prison in Romania, aimed to torture and brainwash prisoners into absolute loyalty towards Romania's communist party
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The experiment was carried out between 1949 and 1951
on up to 5,000 prisoners from which up to 200 died in the process
The experiment is often refered to as the largest and most intensive brainwashing torture program in the Eastern Bloc
First Stage: "External Unmasking"
Each person in the experiment was first thoroughly interrogated and tortured to reveal personal details about their lives ("external unmasking")
As a result, they had to disclose everything they were thought to have hidden in previous interrogations
To escape torture, many prisoners confessed to things they didn't actually do
Detainees, who were regularly and severely beaten, were forced to torture each other to break any past loyalties
Different torture methods were used to break the prisoners
Guards would bring in buckets filled with shit and urine in which the heads of the prisoners were submerged almost to the point of death
The head was then raised, only to have his head pushed back into the sewage
The prisoners' whole bodies were burned with cigarettes, their buttocks would begin to rot, and their skin fell off as though they suffered from leprosy
Others were forced to swallow spoons of shit, and when they threw it back up, they were forced to eat their own vomit
Any prisoner who refused to become a torturer or did not beat former friends mercilessly was severely punished
Electrical shocks, hallucinogenic drugs, whippings, near starvation and fatal beatings were daily rituals in the prison of Pitesti
Besides physical violence, inmates undergoing "reeducation" had to work long hours doing humiliating tasks, like cleaning the floor with a rag held in their teeth
They were malnourished and kept in degrading and unsanitary conditions
Not able to resist the physical and psychological violence, some prisoners tried to commit suicide by cutting their veins
Others ended their lives by throwing themselves through the opening between the stairways
Many died from beatings and torture
Second Stage: "Internal Unmasking"
In the second phase, "internal unmasking," the tortured prisoners had to give the names of those who had treated them less harsh or more kindly while in detention
Those would then get tortured again
Guards forced inmates to attend Marxist political instruction sessions on topics like dialectical materialism and Joseph Stalin's History of Soviet Communism
These sessions were accompanied by violence and encouraged inmates to report each other for real or invented offenses
Third Stage: "Public Moral Unmasking"
Public humiliation was also used, especially in the third stage
Inmates had to give up all their personal beliefs, loyalties, and values
Religious inmates had to insult religious symbols and sacred texts like the Bible
"When you said, ‘I still believe in God,’ in five minutes you were full of blood"
Roman Braga, survivor of the Pitesti Prison
The experiment was stopped by the authorities themselves
Over 20 high ranking officials involved in the experiment faced death sentences which were carried out by a firing squad on 17 December, 1954
Involved members of the Securitate were given light sentences and freed after
Today, the former Pitesti Prison is a museum reminding people of the atrocities that happened during communist times
Around 10,000 people visit the museum every year
"Many of us died, many of us became mad, but in some of us the good triumphed"
George Calciu, survivor of the Pitesti Prison
Calciu giving a rare interview in 1988, he was released from prison due to pressure from supporters such as U.S. president Ronald Reagan
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Similar to their Italian counterparts, the constructions had to be imposing and giving the royalty a greater significance
The architecture and sculpture were simple, elegant and filled with national symbolism
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The Transnistria Exhibition pavilion was built in Bucharest in 1941
The exhibition honored Romania's conquest at the Eastern Front
On one of the panels of the Transnistria exhibition pavilion, we see a depiction of the Romanian ruler Duca-Voda, Prince of Moldova (several times between 1665 and 1684), of Wallachia (1674-1678) and Hatman of Ottoman Ukraine (1681-1683)
🇷🇴 The Tactics of Vlad the Impaler: Asymmetrical & Psychological Warfare
Raids, battles, and campaigns are all synonymous with Vlad III, the Impaler
Behind the legend, however, lies the history of an excellent military commander
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While it is easy to label Vlad as a bloodthirsty maniac due to many myths, his actions were rarely impulses but rather calculated actions aimed to demoralize his enemies
He played his part as a leader and commander in one of the most dangerous times in European history
Vlad learned the basics of war at the court of his father, Vlad II Dracul
Later he spent his teens at the Ottoman court as a political hostage where he was allegedly trained under the Ottoman Empire's elite troops, the Jannisaries
Known as one of the three Romanian principalities along with Wallachia and Transylvania, the Principality of Moldavia played an important role in Romanian history
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In 1353, a Romanian ruler from Maramureș named Dragoș, who was under Hungarian suzerainty, was sent by the Hungarian king to establish a line of defense against the Golden Horde around the Siret River (today part of the region of Moldova in Romania)
The legend says Dragoș came to Moldavia while hunting an aurochs (an extinct cattle species)
This event would become the inspiration for the future flag of the Principality of Moldavia which depicts the golden head of an aurochs on a red background
🇷🇴🇵🇱 Polish Highlanders also known as "Gorals" and their connection with Romanians
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Between the 13th and 15th centuries Romanian shepherds from Transylvania started migrating and settling around Central Europe following the Carpathian Mountain range
Some of those Romanian shepherds finally settled on Polish lands, specifically in a region called Podhale, where they started living and intermingling with the native Polish population
🇷🇴 How fashion giants like Dior and Louis Vuitton steal Romanian Folk Clothing designs and sell them as their own "original" creations for up to €30,000
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In 2017 Dior launched a collection featuring folk motifs
Soon people began to see that many of them looked very similar to those of traditional Romanian clothing from Bihor
This caused Romanian people starting a campaign against the fashion company with the goal of getting credit for the copied pieces
To this day Dior has never acknowledged copying Romanian folk designs