Ioan Marin

* 1944

  • "I was allowed to receive packages from home. I was given permission to send a postcard and to receive a 5-kg package. My mom - God bless her! -, knowing that I was in Jilava and how things were, came to see me at prison. We weren't allowed to receive visits. She brought me this vest. She was not allowed to get too close to the prison. They fired at her with rifles; she pretended not to hear anything. She arrived at the gate of the Jilava prison and asked about me. "If he sent this letter and he is here, is he healthy, does he live? That's all I want to know." They told her: "Lady, didn't you hear us shooting?" She replied: "I can't really hear much because I'm deaf". She gave this coat to a cop, who then gave it to me. God bless him for passing it on to me! It was made of white leather. I put it on, directly on the skin, and then wore my long sleeve shirt on top, you couldn't notice anything. I only took it off when I got out of jail; had any of the inmates seen me, they could have turned me in."

  • I gave all my money away for food because I thought I wouldn't have where to buy food from or the money in Yugoslavia. I wanted to have enough food supply for those 400 kilometers I would have to walk. A citizen saw us there. He was a snitch, as there used to be at the border. We got closer; we were very close, could already see into Yugoslavia. We miscalculated; we had come very close to the border. I said: "We've prepared, let's go, it's getting dark." We got into a hollow. Between Timişoara and Jimbolia there's this little corner. We wanted to cross the border there because it was less secured, since everybody was afraid of this little corner, which is the narrowest. And I said: "Here's the weakest guard!". And I got down into a pit, to wait there until it was dark. "Let's eat, get ready and when it gets dark, we'll go". One of the citizens from the store went and reported us to the militia and the border patrol. They surrounded us. The police was there first. We were hidden there. First, someone appeared on the coast. I realized something was wrong. I said: "If he ran away, he might have blown the whistle on us and we might get caught." Because of our clothes. We were wearing city school uniforms, while people in the village, in Ciuchici, had other clothing. There was also the difference of the food we had gotten... So I said: "Pack up, let's get out of here!" We hadn't started packing yet when the policeman appeared. He pulled the trigger, an automatic firearm, and told us: "Come on! Get out!" He stripped us naked and got us out of the pit. Bare-naked, we were taken to the local police station in Chiuchici.

  • I stayed in Jilava, where I was put under quarantine for 21 days, so 3 weeks. They put me in a cell; there were about 50 men in a tiny cell. There was only a little window, this size, it was this small. 30, 40, 50 blokes in that cell that was about 5 m long and 2 m or 2 m and a half wide. They just locked us up in there. One hour passed, then two hours and a half, let's say, and we were left without air. There wasn't any oxygen left. The elderly fell to the floor. They could no longer stand up, they started sitting down, being left short of breath. I was right next to the window, this is how it happened. One of the guys said: "Hey guys, does anybody have a match?" One would sometimes hide things under the clothes, in gloves... For example, I used to hide a sewing needle in the heel here, where the flesh is thicker, just here, in the heel - because they were performing strip searches. We had to strip naked and were searched everywhere, even in the ass. I'm using bad language, but this is the naked truth. I would stick the sewing needle in the heel, thrust it in the flesh. One of us said: "Hey guys, does anybody have a match?" And somebody did. "Strike it!", but the match didn't light up due to lack of oxygen. When I saw elderly men falling on the floor, we started pounding the doors - me and some other younger guys, who were standing near the window. When they finally opened the door, we all fell to the flour, I'm telling you. We all just hit the ground. When that fresh air came in and we could all finally breathe, we all fell down, I don't know what happened. The cell had two doors. One was thick and made of wood; the other one was made of iron and had bars. They left the wooden door open and closed the iron one.

  • "...they had me work on a mushroom farm. I've never worked so hard in my entire life as I did there for 6 months. I had 2 weeks to accommodate, and then worked for 6 months as I have never worked my whole life, doing hard physical work. They had us make manure, carry and unload it, as well as cultivate mushrooms. We had patterns made of long adobe bricks, about this high. The manure had to be mixed with sand, clay, formalin and lime. After that, the mixture was stacked on the alley, but these alleys or passageways were very long there, where these tunnels were. I'd say they were about 300 meters long. They wouldn't let you, you were not allowed to... the first time they would cultivate mushrooms there, they would spray everything with formalin... you weren't allowed to put anything down, you had to wash your feet with formalin and lime at the entrance; the mushrooms would otherwise get infested. You had to carry manure for 300 meters. You weren't allowed to put down the stretcher with the manure, except for where you were supposed to leave it. To make it easier for us, we made some sort of harness, and were carrying manure from morning to evening. On Sundays, I was assigned to do prison maintenance work - to mow the lawn, cut down trees, things like that. They thought I wouldn't try to escape, since I had to serve the shortest time in jail. Others had prison terms of 15, 20, 25 years, and weren't allowed to roam free."

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    Popeşti-Leordeni, judeţul Ilfov, 01.04.1996

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Iron Curtain Stories
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… I don’t want to live here anymore. Because of these communists, no matter how hard I try, I cannot realize anything. I decided to go to France to try my luck there. I want to go to France, to study there. And now, when I’m still young, is the best time for leaving there...

He was born on March 22, 1944 in Popeşti-Leordeni, Ilfov County.He finished 7 classes, having attended school in the village, even though his parents didn‘t want him learning. At school, he was close friends with Ion Iordan, the son of the village‘s church singer, who was just a few months older than him. After completing primary school, he wanted to go to a vocational school in Bucharest. However, after failing to take the exam and having quarreled with his parents, he stayed in Bucharest, working as an unskilled electrician on a construction site.Because of the particularly heavy work he was doing on the construction site, and rebelled against the Communist regime, when only 17, Ioan Marin decided to leave the country at all costs and convinced his friend, Ion Iordan - who was studying at a high school in Bucharest - to join him. They chose France as a destination and drew up plans to cross the border illegally. Constantin Stanciu, another 17-year old young man, joined them as well.In July 1961, he tried to cross the border together with two other friends at Ciuchici, a village near to Oravița. Before crossing the border, they stopped to buy supplies from a store, without realizing they were too close to the border and could thus raise suspicion. One of the persons in the store informed the authorities, and on July 6, the young men were surrounded by militia officers, arrested and questioned at the local militia station. They were then transported to Oravița, where the interrogation continued until Constantin Stanciu admitted to having planned to cross the border illegally and flee to France. From Oraviţa, they were sent to Timișoara, where they remained under investigation for approximately 6 months. Following the trial from December 1961, Ioan Marin was sentenced to 2 years in prison for „attempt of illegal border crossing“. His friends, Ion Iordan and Constantin Stanciu, were sentenced to 3, respectively 2 years in prison.He executed his sentence in the Timișoara and Jilava prisons. Despite the torment he endured, communist prisons offered Ioan Marin the chance to meet numerous intellectuals, and acted as spaces for expressing solidarity, fellowship and generosity towards people around him. He was released from jail on January 17, 1963, based on a pardon decree.