Figure 1: Visit a prison: Sighet Memorial inside a Communist Prison

Interpreting Dark Heritage: An analysis of the Sighet Memorial to

the Victims of Communism and Resistance, Romania

Word Count: 3979

1
Table of Contents

List of Figures 6

Introduction 7

Aims and Methodology 7

What is Dark Heritage? 8

The memory of communism in post-communist Romania 10

A Case Study: Sighet Memorial to the Victims of Communism and 11

Resistance, Romania

Setting 13

Narrative 16

Artefacts and Artwork 18

Interactive activities 19

Conclusions and Recommendations 21

Bibliography 23

Appendix 27

2
List of Figures

Nr. Description Page

No.
1 Visit a prison: Sighet Memorial inside a Communist Prison. Available at: 4
https://7daysabroad.com/visit-a-prison-sighet-memorial-inside-a-
communist-prison/ (Accessed: 5 April 2021)
2 Former cells of Sighet Prison. Available at: 13
https://planiada.ro/www/uploads/243/124.Memorialul_Durerii_din_Sighe
t_1.jpg (Accessed: 10 May 2021)
3 Endless list of names. Available at: 15
https://doxologia.ro/sites/default/files/styles/media-articol-
colorbox/public/articol/2017/04/09-
memorialul_de_la_sighet_foto_oana_nechifor.jpg?itok=uZbylmtR
(Accessed: 10 May 2021)

3
Introduction

Two decades have passed since the concepts of dark heritage and dark tourism were

published in the papers of the International Journal of Heritage Studies (Lennon, and

Foley 1996, 2000). Initially, this topic was studied out of simple curiosity by a small

number of researchers, but now, the relationship between heritage tourism and death

has become a major focus in tourism studies and management. This type of heritage

tourism involves visiting "dark" places, such as battlefields, places where horrific crimes

have taken place or acts of genocide, such as concentration camps (Thomas et. al.,

2019). Dark tourism remains a niche tourism, driven by various motivations, such as

mourning victims, commemoration, macabre curiosity or even fun.

Death, or the fascination of death, is a major metaphor of both dark heritage and dark

tourism, according to researchers (Foley, and Lennon, 1996; Logan, and Reeves, 2008;

Sørensen, and Viejo-Rose, 2015). However, dark heritage is better understood in a

larger sense, as an endeavour to broaden the scope of heritage studies. In this sense,

museums provided dark heritage exhibitions in order to educate, commemorate and

expand the overall visitor experience (Wollaston, 2005: 63). This paper will analyse how

Romania's Sighet Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Resistance interprets

communism, a symbol of the country's "dark legacy”.

Aims and Methodology

The aim of this paper is to investigate how dark heritage is interpreted at Romania’s

Sighet Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Resistance. The report will be

4
focused on the ongoing discourse of dark heritage, while highlighting the fundamental

challenges surrounding the interpretation of the ‘Victims of Communism and

Resistance’ in a museum setting. Before analysing the interpretation of the Memorial, it

is necessary to discuss the concept of dark heritage and the memory of communism

among Romanians, academics, and political figures, to better understand the topic and

the arising challenges. The report’s findings will mostly be based on onsite

observations. Because the curator and management staff are working on an ongoing

project, they were unavailable to comment on the findings of the report. The Memorial’s

website, archive, and other online materials, such as interviews with the founders,

related to the Memorial narrative and setting, however, provided enough insight into the

Memorial interpretation of dark heritage. Finally, the report will give recommendations

regarding the interpretation, in order to improve visitor experience.

What is Dark Heritage?

As mentioned above, Foley and Lennon (1996: 195) developed the concept of “dark

tourism” to describe the process of tourists visiting cultural sites linked to violence “for

remembrance, education or entertainment”. Stone (2006), influenced by these and other

scholars, proposed a "spectrum" of dark tourism, where specific attractions may exhibit

varying degrees of "darkness." He also argues that authenticity and the amount to

which the attraction has been commoditized for touristic consumption are two factors

that can influence how dark a tourist attraction is (Stone 2006: 157). In this sense,

Seaton (2009) highlights that as notions of what defines "darkness" within those

viewpoints and definitions change throughout time – both within academic discourse

5
and within communities – so will notions of what constitutes "darkness" within those

perspectives and definitions. Therefore, it can be assumed that each tourist will interpret

a heritage site in its own way.

In the case of Romania, travel in war-torn areas or in areas of collective trauma are the

latest trends in luxury tourism. Along with ecological or responsible tourism, black

tourism became an alternative to the superficiality of conventional destinations. The

places of collective traumas attract more and more tourists because they accumulate

the authenticity perceived as a borderline experience (Sturken, 2007:11). Dark heritage

grasps the significance and meanings of "heritage that hursts" (Uzzell, and Ballantyne,

2007), “negative and unpleasant things inherited from the past, having an impact on the

present in some form or another” (Thomas et. al., 2019). Therefore, dark heritage is an

attempt to achieve a more balanced view of how and in what forms the past is present

in the present, while also acknowledging the diversity of influence that both recent and

more distant pasts have on contemporary situations.

“Dark Heritage” research studies the desire of people to engage with heritage sites

related to times of warfare, death, and violence. On the other side, “dark tourism”

research emphasized death as a major topic (Dimitrovski et al., 2017: 696). As Thomas

et. al. (2019:1) argue, depending on their position in the conflict, temporal distance from

the events, and power structures, these features may have various meanings for

different groups or communities. Thus, dark tourism and dark heritage studies share a

6
common theme and a core challenge: understanding tourists’ reasons for visiting “dark”

places.

The memory of communism in post-communist Romania

At present, Romanians’ collective memory of communism is a palimpsest. It consists of

various layers of memories from several socioeconomic, sociopolitical and/or cultural

groups, as well as recollections from local communities. As defined by Holbwachs

(1994), these memories are shaped by “social frameworks”, which include the family,

social, cultural, or professional organisations, the media, and the international political

context. Thus, the interpretation of communism among Romanians can be influenced by

when and how they lived that period, and by what social position each had.

Following the political events of December 1989 in Romania, Nastasa (1998) argues

that right-wing academics, designated "democrats", developed a portrayal of

communism as a foreign system imposed by the USSR and encouraged by the betrayal

of "superpowers" at the conclusion of WWII. Thus, by emphasizing the severity of

repression and the terrifying efficiency of the Secret Police, this discourse highlights the

Romanian concentration camp experience as an extreme case of persecution that left

profound scars that prevented people from rebelling, based on testimonies from former

detainees. The 22 Romanian political magazines, the Sighet Memorial, and the TV

series "Memorial of Pain" all promote this right-wing elite view of communism heavily

and frequently (ibid.). On the other side, Papacostea (1992) highlights how former

communists emphasized the importance of forgetting about their recent history. For

7
example, Ion Iliescu, a neo-communist icon who was the president of Romania, argued

that any discussion of communism is pointless because the system has already been

condemned by history, and that communism was not even that severe. He also

suggested that the past should be forgotten, and that reconciliation should be sought in

order to restore the country (ibid.).

Following the year of 2000, a new generation of artists, academics, and political leaders

rose to prominence in the cultural, political, and social spheres. They began to develop

a different interpretation of communism, from their own personal memory. Most of them

were exposed to communism as children or teenagers, and they saw communism as a

good thing. Some of them published their memories in The Pink book of communism,

which received a lot of criticism because the authors were accused of writing a false

interpretation of communism (Dobre, 2019). However, at that time, teenagers enjoyed

learning about communism from this new and good perspective, even though their

parents’ recollection of communism was different. Therefore, it can be argued that each

individual, each generation interpreted communism from their own perspective.

Case Study: Sighet Memorial to the Victims of Communism and

Resistance

According to the memory of communism among Romanians and academics, Sighet

Memorial is considered the darkest heritage spot of the country, as it tells the history of

more than 50 years of to death, suffering, and trauma (Dogar, and Arsenie, 2009). In

1995, The Civic Academy foundation received the Prison of Sighetul Marmatiei, which

8
was turned into a museum of communism and soviet brutality. Ana Blandiana, the

founder of the foundation, developed in 1992, what was first named, a "Memory Center"

dedicated to the memory of communist victims (ibid.). It consists of a museum and an

international center that houses textual, oral, and visual archives related to communist

repression and anticommunist resistance. Later, it became a Memorial, which opened to

the public in 1997. The Sighet Memorial drew a lot of attention when it first opened, and

was declared an enterprise of national interest, which entitled the museum to financial

support from the state, even though former communism’s political figures were against it

(ibid.). In 1998, the Council of Europe designated the Memorial to the Victims of

Communism and Resistance, commonly known as Sighet Memorial, as one of Europe's

"hotspots of Memory Preservation" (MemorialSighet, 2007). As a result, the Memorial

joined other prominent memorial sites such as the Auschwitz Memorial and the

Normandy Peace Memorial.

At the Sighet Memorial, the right-wing interpretation of communism as a "colonization"

of Romanian space and soul found concrete expression. The Memorial commemorates

communist victims in order to show that communism was an oppressive and totalitarian

regime. The Memorial’s website, the catalogue’s interpretation of the exhibits, and the

brochures interpretation of each room of the museum, expose Romanian communism

as a “dark” regime of terror (ibid.). The Memorial collects memoirs and memorial

artefacts from former political detainees to provide insight into this world. It uses facts,

statistics, and material symbols to re-enact anti-communist resistance. Through these,

9
the Memorial aims to rewrite the historical truth of crimes against the Romanian

community (Gucea, n.d.). Initially, there was a debate about whether the narrative would

be too harsh for the public, but the curators considered that if they would hide the

darkest parts of history, then the narrative would not be authentic, because that would

not be the historical truth (see Appendix 4).

Setting

Figure 2: Former cells of Sighet Prison. Source: PLANIADA, n.d.

As mentioned above, the Civic Academy Foundation of Ana Blandiana took over the

ruin of the former prison in 1995 and developed it into Sighet Memorial. The founder

wanted to give another purpose to the former prison, by converting it into a Memorial

dedicated to the fight against communist, where everyone could learn, and

commemorate the victims. The rehabilitation works of the building lasted until the year

10
2000. Because the building, a century old, was ruined and had dampness, it was

necessary to restore the foundations, insulation, roof, and the interior walls, which,

however, had been repainted and were no longer reminiscing the 1950s, were

whitewashed. Each cell became an exhibition, in which, now following a chronological

order, objects, photographs, documents were placed, creating the ambiance and

documentation of a museum room (see figure 2 & Appendix 1). The predominate

colours are black, grey, white and red, which were used to add further darkness to the

narrative. The Memorial founders considered important that each cell must tell a story,

so visitors could learn as much as possible from the narrative (SighetMemorial, 2007).

The layout of the rooms is very important, as visitors can choose which cells they want

to visit and which not, as some of them may be too emotionally charged.

The first room of the museum, called the Map Room, tries to introduce the visitor to the

Romanian geographical context, in order to acclimatise them and to emotionally prepare

for the rest of the exhibitions (see Appendix 2). Here are maps with the locations of the

penitentiaries in Romania, with identified corpses, and with the execution places of the

forced labour camps. The visit continues through a corridor leading to the place of

detention of the prisoners. On the walls of this corridor are displayed portraits of some

of those who were imprisoned for political reasons at the Sighet Prison (see Appendix

3).

In the former cells arranged today as individual exhibitions with different themes, there

are also presented the most unexpected methods of torture in prisons and

11
extermination camps. Through the exhibitions, the museum founders wanted to respond

to the “war of memory” started by communists more than 50 years ago

(SighetMemorial, 2007). Some exhibition tells the story of an important event during the

communist regime. For example, “Danube Canal – Black Sea” Exhibition tells the story

of more than 40.000 people who were concentrated in the Canal Camps, which were

convicted without trial. Moreover, there are exhibitions about deportation actions of

innocent people, about the strategies of destroying religion etc. (see Appendix 4). To

add to the setting and narrative, on the walls of the descent ramp in the underground

space, there were engraved in smoky andesite the names of almost eight thousand

people who died in prisons, camps, and deportation places in Romania, in order to

connect visitors with the “individuals” (SighetMemorial, 2007).

Figure 3. Endless list of names. Source: www.doxologia.ro

The Museum also has “The space of Silence and Prayer” in the courtyard of the former

prison, which allows each visitor to light a candle for the souls of those who have

suffered here, which is a specific Romanian gesture to show their compassion for those

who lost their lives (see Appendix 1). The impressive corridor leading to this

underground room is wallpapered with the names of those who died in prisons, camps

12
and due to communist deportations (see figure 3). The endless list continues on the wall

of the concrete fence that surrounds this subterranean building. The last part of the visit

includes “The procession of the sacrificed”, a sculpture made by Aurel Vlad, which

represents 18 people walking towards a wall that closes their horizon, just as

communism had blocked the lives of millions of people (see Appendix 1).

Narrative

Material goods and visual artefacts at Sighet Memorial stage two fundamental themes

that dominated the post-communist public discourse of the “democratic” elite:

overwhelming communist repression and authentic anti-communist resistance. Both

viewpoints are supported by the Memorial's extensive collection of the “Securitate”

memoirs and documentation which are displayed chronologically in every cell

(SighetMemorial, 2007; SighetMemorial, 2021). To add further depth to these ideas,

strong and personal narratives of individuals who lost their lives or suffered during the

communist regime run throughout the memorial. The museum takes the story of more

than 50 years of communism and breaks it into narratives of memoirs and individuals

which makes the display very emotionally charged (see Appendix 4).

The memorial founders argue that the memorial played an important role in the overall

interpretation of communism in Romania (ibid.). Until the foundation of Sighet Museum,

the interpretation was very different. The communist regime forbade the formation of

any groups, associations, foundations, or other types of activity involving more than two

people. Collective memory was viewed as a counter-memory, and hence was forbidden

13
and persecuted. The communist party's official narrative of history was the only one that

was acknowledged in public: an interpretation which excluded violence, suffering, and

death (see Appendix 4). Therefore, the development of the memorial gave everyone the

opportunity to learn the real history exactly how it happened.

This narrative has mostly proven popular and made the overall visitor experience a

success (see Appendix 5). The founders of the memorial wanted through the narrative

to highlight all the violence and suffering during the communism (SighetMemorial, 2007;

see Appendix 4). For example, visitors state that when visiting the ground floor of the

museum and entering a cell which was turned into an interrogation room of the

communist secret police, Securitate, they felt like a prisoner. From the labels, the visitor

can learn about the secret organization and methods of torture. In the cell there are also

a table with a typewriter for the detainee declarations, and a desk lamp which were

used for torture. During the investigation, the detainee was forced to sit in a chair, also

found on display, on which he was occasionally restrained, and an officer was placing

the lamp in his eyes, to make him talk. On top of the labels and display of authentic

furniture, a recording of such a session can be heard, which made the interpretation

more alive.

The intensity of agony increases as the visitor moves upward to the first floor. The

punishment cell, dubbed "the black cell", greets visitors here. An empty room with no

windows in which inmates thought to be particularly dangerous were chained. After

presenting physical repression, the museum displays, in the next rooms, through

14
photographs of imprisoned writers as well as artefacts, the cultural repression.

Moreover, in order to educate visitors that there was no gender discrimination during the

communism repression, a room is dedicated to all those women who were victims of

political persecution, including former political captives (SighetMemorial, 2021). Even if

they were pregnant, ailing, old, or very young, women were imprisoned.

Artefacts and Artwork

The narrative of the exhibition features prominently in the displays of objects from the

victims of communism. In the first exhibition, the maps displayed on the wall mentioned

above, are also on display in other rooms because the Memorial designers wanted to

suggest that this interpretation of communism is the true one (SighetMemorial, 2021).

The hallway after the map exhibition, is a display of photographs of former political

prisoners, of both men and women who were imprisoned at Sighet or elsewhere in the

country (Patrasconiu, n.d.). This narrative made the interpretation more personal, as

some visitors recognised relatives or friends who were imprisoned by the communist

authorities. As the visitor goes further into the museum, he is told through artefacts such

as sketches how Romania suffered due to communism, from losing part of its territories

(Bessarabia and Bucovina, which were annexed by the Soviet Union). For the same

purpose, testimonies, documents, photographs, clothes, or furniture are displayed in all

the exhibitions. By displaying these artefacts, visitors can gain a greater understanding

of communism.

15
The Artwork at the Memorial adds further depth to the interpretation. The idea of

punctuating the development of the more than 50 halls of the Museum through works of

art was born from the need to add to the scientific content of the themes to which the

museum halls are dedicated, the suggestion of the suffering that repression generated

and the emotion in front of the violence and absurdity of the evil produced (Patrasconiu,

n.d). Several works of fine art complete the profile of the Memorial, giving it a special

personality among history museums.

For instance, the two large sculptures by Camilian Demetrescu entitled "Tribute to the

political prisoner" (one subtitled "Resurrection") give the atmosphere dramatic and

uplifting features. Equally impressive is the triptych Requiem by Victor Cupșa, dedicated

to the victims of communism in all the countries where communism exercised its power.

Moreover, The Relief Seen in Fall by Peter Jacobi, the author of some reference works

dedicated to European memory, is located in the Map Room. To these is added a large

work in size and artistic spirit, the statuary group "Sacrifice Procession" made by the

sculptor Aurel I. Vlad, which became one of the emblems of the Memorial (see

Appendix 1). It is about eighteen human figures walking towards a wall that closes their

horizons, as communism had denied the lives of millions of people. Presented in 1997

in wood, the work was cast in bronze the following year and is located today in another

inner courtyard of the former prison. A final component of the Memorial is the Cemetery

of the Poor, located 2.5 kilometers away, outside the city (ibid.). According to the

legends of the time, the 54 dead from the political prison were secretly buried here at

night.

16
Interactive activities

Since 1998, the Civic Academy Foundation has held every year a “Summer School”

aimed at students aged 15 to 18, and between 2008 and 2014, high school history

teachers were also invited. Every year, about 100 students and history professors

congregate here to study about communism, as well as to voice their thoughts about

their society and their life objectives. The transcript of the conferences and debates

resulted in the "School of Memory", the annual collection published between 2002 and

2014, as well as the series "Adolescent" consisting of four books of essays

(SighetMemorial, 2021). According to a statement from the Memorial’s website, “The

Sighet Memorial Summer School is the place where young people learn the memory

that neither the school nor their parents were able to pass on” (ibid.). In a true pedagogy

of forgetfulness, they read documents, see images, listen to analyses and testimonies

about the monstrous mechanisms of the functioning of history in the last half of the 20th

century, based on class hatred and the repression of the most basic human rights

hatred understood as a fuel of history. Moreover, leading thinkers, politicians, artists,

and scholars were also invited to address the Memory School participants at

conferences. Guests from other former communist nations, as well as Western Europe

and the United States of America, are asked to speak on their experiences with

communism or their studies on the subject (ibid.). The organisers’ aimed the Memorial

to become a living museum, a memorial-school, and a memory institution through the

Summer School, passing on truths from one human generation to the next without

which it cannot continue. The Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Resistance

17
leaves Sighet's prison walls to travel between the temples of thousands of young people

attempting to learn history and themselves via the Summer School (Patrasconiu, n.d.).

Another annual activity at the Memorial is the Remembrance Day. Since 2003, every

year on the Ascension / Day of the Lord Heroes, at the Sighet Memorial, on the

occasion of Remembrance Day - Open Day, in a real pilgrimage, former political

prisoners, their families and their descendants from all over the country come to Sighet

to celebrate this day (SighetMemorial, 2021). It is an impressive day of celebration of

memory, during which debates are organised, new halls or exhibitions are opened,

books are launched, concerts are given, and in the Cemetery of the Poor there is a

memorial service for the dead in prisons, camps, in deportations. Therefore, through

these activities and many others which are currently developing, the Memorial founder

and staff wants to further educate people about communism and repression, and

commemorate the victims (Patrasconiu, n.d.)

Conclusions and recommendations

The report has focused on the good practices of interpretation of dark heritage at the

Sighet Memorial. As this report has uncovered, the Memorial’s approach of interpreting

communism defines the institution as a memorial in its senses. Nevertheless, the Sighet

Memorial does not neglect its teaching vocation, through the narrative, its “Memory

School”, and its publications. Sighet Memorial goes beyond its traditional functions,

trying to become a prestigious memorial enterprise with the mission of articulating a

suppressed memory and bringing justice to the victims it remembers. It is organised in a

18
former prison and seeks sacredness and social purposes: it addresses national identity,

provides service to humanity and to Romanian nation (expressed through communism

education), and brings honour to the country, as well as humanitarianism.

These methods have proven mostly successful with visitors to Sighet Memorial, with a

visitor rating of 4,5 out of 5 on TripAdvisor (see Appendix 5). Periodic surveys done by

the Memorial would be useful in assessing how successful the overall visitor experience

is and how the Memorial could renovate itself, as reviews on TripAdvisor are not

enough. Another key issue identified onsite and also on TripAdvisor reviews is that

there’s little interpretation in English for foreign visitors. There are only a few panels

written in English, and a few signs written in various languages. Also, the audio guide is

only in Romanian. Creating narrative in English and other languages would improve

foreign visitors’ experience and expand the variety of them. This could also further

increase funding. In the same way, the Memorial could provide interpretation for those

with disabilities. Another key issue identified onsite and through suggestions from

visitors on TripAdvisor, is that there are too many labels to read in order to learn all the

history. Creating digital interpretation, such as testimonials, short videos, or

documentaries, will make it easier for visitors to collect all the information provided,

without losing interest while reading too much. Overall, Sighet Memorial has developed

its own interpretation of communism, through which has found a balance between

education and memorialisation.

19
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 Appendix 1 – Setting

Ground floor

Source: www.vacanteleleluimircea.ro

First floor

Source: www.calatoriileioanei.ro

24
Second floor

Source: Dinu Lazar | www.fotografu.ro

The space of Silence and Prayer

25
 Source: Dinu Lazar | www.fotografu.ro

The procession of the sacrificed

Source: www.sighetmemorial.ro

26
Appendix 2 – The Map Room

27
 Source: Civic Academy Foundation, n.d.

Appendix 3 – Walls of the corridors

28
 Source: www.sighetmemorial.ro

Appendix 4 – Cell exhibitions

Cells where Romanian personalities died

29
Exhibitions of objects, photographs and documents

30
 Source: www.sighetmemorial.ro

Cells where prisoners were tortured

31
 Source: www.pearipidevacanta.ro

Appendix 5 – Interview with Ana Blandiana about Sighet Memorial

32
Dialogue Ana BLANDIANA - Cristian Pătrășconiu.

How is a museum of communism made in a country with many still active

reflexes of communism? And, at the beginning of your project, the more reflexes
and starts of communist origins

To answer this question, I must say how I came up with the idea of making such a
Memorial.

At first, this idea was rather theoretical. In 1993, when I proposed it to the Council of
Europe, it was one of the many ideas of the Civic Alliance, an organization made up of a
large group of intellectuals almost obsessed with the question of how a dictatorship
should be transformed into a rule of law. What needs to be done to make this
happen? And what should we do outside the political world, when it often did the
opposite, that is, prevent the formation of a rule of law.

Well, among these ideas was the creation of a memorial to the victims of communism. I
proposed it to the Council of Europe and they accepted it, surprised and somewhat
surprising. In short: I had been invited to give a conference on human rights in
Strasbourg at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. After this
conference, there was a dinner and I was seated at the table next to Catherine
Lalumiere, then Secretary General of the Council of Europe. At a table you talk all sorts
of things. We were two intellectuals who had something to say to each other. I
happened to come from another conference in Krakow. Or, Krakow is very close to
Auschwitz. With the group from that conference we went, of course, to visit the
Auschwitz museum. It was 1993, even during talks with the Poles who had announced
that they intended to build a monastery near the building where all the monstrosities had
taken place, a building that had been a monastery before Nazism. Protests began to
appear, in the sense that, wanting to build a monastery, he would like to diminish the
importance of the museum… And then, the Council of Europe, to ease the tension of
that moment, decided to build a Holocaust Study Center there. This is where the
discussion between me and Mrs. Lalumiere started. I asked her if she didn't think that,
like a Nazism study center, she should do a communism study center, the horrors of
which are much less well known. There is, I told him, a prison in which the elites from
interwar Romania were destroyed, in Sighet. And I added: it would be an ideal place to
make a Memorial, a center of study. It would be an important moment of knowledge.
The discussion had started, in fact, from the question of how to get to know the two
Europeans, the Western one and the one that had just come out, how much it had come
out of communism. My thesis was that it is not enough to unite their public or economic
policies, but that they must come to unite their obsessions, to know, each other, their
great traumas.

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This was the turning point.

Yes, it was. This is where it all started. Mrs. Lalumiere said: it's a great idea; make a
project! I did this project with my husband. I submitted it and waited for the answer. And
the answer came, first by phone: your project was accepted. We were in the ninth, tenth
heaven of happiness; it was a great success of the Civic Alliance, I did a press
conference in which I told everything. The result was that in the official newspaper of the
Văcăroiu Government,   Vocea României, appeared two days in a row with lame letters,
the title: "The Sacrilege of Sighet", a text that explains the fact that we sell the suffering
of Romanians to the Council of Europe. At that time, Romania was not integrated in the
European structures, because of the mining it was not even a member of the Council of
Europe, so they “defended” their country, and we were traitors.

When you did this project, did you have in mind a certain model for this type of
institution?

Not . Because then there was nothing like that about communism. Even the officials to
whom we presented, after the discussion of principle, this idea were, at first, reserved. It
seemed to them that talking about communism in terms comparable to those in which
Nazism was talked about was something unusual, exaggerated. However, as they came
to the delegations in the country, they overcame these initial reluctances, they began to

34
know things better and to accept them. And their European endorsement was
decisive; it is unlikely that I would have made this Memorial without their help.

And, to return to the first moment of success: they announced it to us, we did the press
conference, we started to be attacked in government newspapers and, after a month, a
month and a half, they published our approved project, in English and French. Well,
when I received it and read it on paper, I discovered that it was what we had written,
plus a new chapter: how to raise money. And at that moment, I understood that we had
to raise the money. We had no money, there was no one in the Alliance to collect a
salary, we did not pay rent, we lived in a building that collapsed in a short time, a
building very affected by the earthquake. For us the idea was purely theoretical, purely I
simply thought that if they accepted our project, it meant that they would support it.

Can we say that the Auschwitz moment, what was there, acted as a trigger for
your project?

Yes. As a comparison that must exist. Nazism and communism are the two madnesses
of the twentieth century.

Even: how do you explain that, in the West, there is no absolute parallel between
these two? Why isn't red equal to brown? Why is Nazism still seen as an absolute
evil and only it?

First of all, because the leftist ideas and the force of the communist parties in the West
prevented such a perspective at that time. Just think that in France the Communist
Party has been, for decades, one of the great parties. Or in Italy. It was very difficult to
accept such a negative image of communism. For them, for many of them, everything
that Solzhenitsyn published had nothing to do with the political life of their countries. laid
the theoretical foundations of this comparison and equality.

Returning to the Memorial: what were the first, practical, "implementation" stages
of the project?

First, the funding. It was clear, as I told you, that we have no money to do such a
thing. And, just as clearly, it was that, at that time, there was no possibility of getting
them from the country. At the same time, it was just as clear that I could not say that I
misunderstood, that we are no longer doing this project because we cannot support it
financially. In other words: there was no question of going back. Let's not forget: one of
the conditions set by European officials, which was found in the initial documents, was
to set up a foundation to administer the idea. The result was that I founded the Civic
Academy Foundation. And - an idea that proved to be a savior for the project at that
time - the Foundation opened its offices in places with a strong Romanian exile: in
America - in Los Angeles and New York; in Paris; in Munich. These were the places
where representations were created. And the first money started to be raised through
donations. It was a significant adherence of the Romanian exile to our ideas. At that
time, it was exile, it was not the diaspora! In exile were some people who, if they had
not fled Romania, would have been in prison themselves. There were no large
donations; In general, there were no very rich people in Romanian exile. There was only

35
one exception: Mișu Cârciog. From him I first received £ 600; compared to all the other
amounts received through donations, this was very high. The rest was usually $ 50, $
70. I then wrote him a letter of thanks and in it I told him about what we had done and
what we were going to do and I invited him to come and see what we were doing. To
our surprise he came. We had already started, once a year, to have some great
symposia, up to 300-350 people gathered, former political prisoners, former deportees
and historians. Published, the works of these symposia, which lasted 10 years, formed
the substance of the "Sighet Annals", the first corpus of studies on the history of
communism in Romania (around 10,000 pages). On the one hand, here we have
confessions of those who suffered directly - through deportation or arrest - in
communism; on the other hand, we also have young historians here. They started what
we can call professionalization, specialization in recent and contemporary history. It is a
fact that many of the historians known today as specializing in our recent history began
there in Sighet. former deportees and historians. Published, the works of these
symposia, which lasted 10 years, formed the substance of the "Sighet Annals", the first
corpus of studies on the history of communism in Romania (around 10,000 pages). On
the one hand, here we have confessions of those who suffered directly - through
deportation or arrest - in communism; on the other hand, we also have young historians
here. They started what we can call professionalization, specialization in recent and
contemporary history. It is a fact that many of the historians known today as specializing
in our recent history began there in Sighet. former deportees and historians. Published,
the works of these symposia, which lasted 10 years, formed the substance of the
"Sighet Annals", the first body of studies on the history of communism in Romania
(around 10,000 pages). On the one hand, here we have confessions of those who
suffered directly - through deportation or arrest - in communism; on the other hand, we
also have young historians here. They started what we can call professionalization,
specialization in recent and contemporary history. It is a fact that many of the historians
known today as specializing in our recent history began there in Sighet. On the one
hand, here we have confessions of those who suffered directly - through deportation or
arrest - in communism; on the other hand, we also have young historians here. They
started what we can call professionalization, specialization in recent and contemporary
history. It is a fact that many of the historians known today as specializing in our recent
history began there in Sighet. On the one hand, here we have confessions of those who
suffered directly - through deportation or arrest - in communism; on the other hand, we
also have young historians here. They started what we can call professionalization,
specialization in recent and contemporary history. It is a fact that many of the historians
known today as specializing in our recent history began there in Sighet.

So, Mişu Cârciog came to Sighet, stayed there at our conference and, at one point,
asked us: do you have any plans? Did you have a project? That was in 1995. We had
some plans: including the sense that we wanted to turn a yard into a space of silence. It
was in our minds to do something like a chapel. But we could not decide which cult to
belong to - because the victims of communism were of all kinds, from Greek Catholics
to Orthodox, from Roman Catholics to Protestants and Jews. On the last night he
stayed there, Mișu Cârciog studied this project and, before leaving, he said: I do this
part. And he did it! He made room for silence. He financed everything. I started with a
contest, also funded by him, which was attended by over 50 architects from all over the

36
country and won by a young man who had just finished college, from
Timisoara. Returning to Mihai Cîrciog, initially, the estimate was 85,000 pounds; In the
end, it took almost £ 150,000. He covered all this.

And then?

Meanwhile, the 1996 elections came and the government changed. Nicolae Noica, a
colleague of ours in the Civic Academy, became the Minister of Public Works and
proposed, managing to pass it in Parliament, the law of the Memorial. It is about the law
95/1997 by which the Memorial is declared "ensemble of national interest". According to
the law, the Memorial consists of the Sighet Museum (which also includes the Cemetery
of the Poor) and the International Center for Studies on Communism based in
Bucharest, both of which are administered by the Civic Academy Foundation. There are
three institutions that have this status: Ipotești - Mihai Eminescu, Tîrgu Jiu - Brâncuși
and Sighet-Memorial. This law says that these institutions CAN be subsidized from the
budget; "Can be" does not mean "must" and "am". Every year when we vote on the
budget, we have emotions.

And after this law?

I worked normally. On the one hand, due to the law, we had salaries covered - implicitly,
we were able to hire people. By the way, until then I had no employees. The first years
were volunteering. Then, slowly - slowly, with a stable financing, I was able to hire and
started various works - either arrangements or restorations. Conferences, summer
schools, exhibitions were covered in projects following specific partnerships with various
foundations, especially with the German Christian-Democratic foundations, Hanns
Seidel and Konrad Adenauer.

I want to say one more thing: only after 1996 when the elections were won by
democratic political forces and the rotation of power took place, which did not bring
about a real change, was the moment, the turning point when I understood that there is
no a chance to change something essentially only through politics. I found that things
need to change somewhere much deeper, deeper. And this "deep" meant, for us
Romanians, the knowledge of communism; in other words, let's find out what really
happened to us. Let's find out what the remnants of what happened to us are now.

When I went to Yad Vashem, the Memorial in Jerusalem, I was shocked for the first
time that there were movies with executions and countless traces of evil that they
offered to those who visited that Memorial. The Germans had filmed the murders and
left traces. The bureaucracy of evil was more rigorous there. Well, in our country a lot of
traces have been erased. Therefore, in order for us to heal, we needed to understand,
and in order to understand, we needed to know what communism was, to discover what
it had been.

For me, in these years, one of the great shocks was what my husband, Romulus
Rusan, together with his research teams discovered the truth about the peasant
uprisings of the sixth decade. I had no idea they were and how many there were. More
than a hundred uprisings of the peasants, whose lands were taken from them, were

37
discovered against the communists. And we didn't know anything, we said that "polenta
doesn't explode"…

So we had to find out what it was and let everyone know, or as many people as
possible, what it really was, how hard it was. First, therefore, discovery and then, of
course, assumption. And then to sift through the meaning of what it was, to clarify
things, to clarify morally about what communism was. And the transmission of the
conclusions of the generations that did not live it.

I have always said: The memorial is not a road to the past, it is a road to the future. We
need to understand what it was, to explain what it is and to help us decide what should
or should not be.

It has been said of your approach that it offers a perspective of the "victims of
communism." Is this assessment fair, is it unfair?

That's right ... It's a fact! There may be, of course, another kind of museum of
communism - one that, for example, presents the struggles between Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej and Ana Pauker. There are countless perspectives from which the
history of communism can be viewed. But this, the history of communism seen from the
perspective of the victims - not a few - of communism, seems to me to be essential. And
existential.

To summarize, what would be the guidelines of your relationship to communism?

We return defeated from the greatest illusion in history. Communism was this illusion
and it shattered countless lives. I mean, it was an "illusion" not in the sense that it was
not well put into practice, but in the sense that it could not be put into practice. And,
every time it was tried to be put into practice, it gave monstrous results, often criminal in
its own way. One of the cynical conclusions that communism leaves behind is that
people cannot be made happy against their will, proposing to them and imposing on
them a certain happiness, the communist one. You can't impose mass happiness -
when you try something like that, it usually turns out the opposite of the original
intention, something inhuman, anti-human comes out.

From my point of view, the only correct way to look at communism is to do it from the
point of view of the victims of communism. Because we must not forget: communism,
together with Nazism, created the most monstrous century in human history. Not that
there were no precedents - the French Revolution, for example. Or the Inquisition. But
the proportions of Evil are incomparable.

For the first time in human history, with communism and Nazism, he killed himself en
masse. And he killed himself in the name of ideas that promised supreme happiness
and in the name of the dream of a "new man."

I believe that it is decent, natural, desirable not to make a new man, but to make the
man who is to love, not to hate. And don't kill. This history - which was drawn with blood

38
by both communism and Nazism - was based on hatred as the fuel of history. Class
hatred or racial hatred. Red-brown.

To your knowledge, did high-ranking executors of communism come there at the

Memorial? People who practiced communist evil?

There is only one character, of absolute shamelessness, who was the political officer of
the prison. This man lived until the years of the Memorial. And he was ashamed to
come to me and ask me if I didn't want to buy him a hat and another object, both
claiming to be Iuliu Maniu's. Obviously, I refused. He had even given interviews on
television, talking about a cane of Iuliu Maniu, fake of course, which he offered for sale
and which he wrote "Iuliu Maniu, 1853 - 1952". She was doing a kind of trade,
incredible… She had come, as I was telling you, to give interviews and she had also
become a kind of local star - she gave interviews after interviews in which she made fun
of the press, history, logic. He always said another place - all fictitious - where those
who died there were buried, in Sighet.

What is, according to the curating vision, the Sighet Memorial?

You asked me earlier if I had a model when I went to work. The model, I said, could not
exist directly. But seeing many museums, a clear idea of what not to do came up. We
wanted to do it in such a way that visiting the halls there, the one who enters does not
have the impression that the suffering is or that it becomes a banality. Under no
circumstances should the museum create boredom, it should not be linear,
monotonous. Our wish could be realized on the one hand, by making a thematic
arrangement inside the museum. And so I did. No room looks like another. Everyone
tells a different story. Each room, by the way, has behind it a detailed study made by
our historians from the Foundation.

Except for me, I only made a few rooms (the one about the persecutions in literature, in
the arts, the one about poetry in prison and the one about Piteşti), because my current
attributions were more related to what we call PR, representation. I was a kind of
spokesperson, the image of this institution, I had to get money, to make the image of
the Memorial grow maybe even faster than the Memorial, in order to become a point of
support. While my husband built dozens of halls. And, in connection with this, I must say
that I was extraordinarily impressed to discover something very special, after the death
of my husband. I always had a kind of remorse because it seemed to me that because
of me, my husband could not see enough. And, to some extent, it was true. And only
when he died, I discovered that what he was doing was visible, that it was visible in the
public space. As they wrote after his death, people realized that he had been the man
who created the work in Sighet. I presented this work, I made it known, I imposed it. But
the content he created, fundamentally. And each room was the result of non-existent
research, which was carried out by him together with our colleagues, the researchers
gathered around him. He was the decisive and essential element in connection with all

39
this.

Coming back a bit: what I read between the lines is that the museum did not leave
suddenly with what it has now, that there were several stages, that the evolution
was somehow organic?

That's how it is. First there was a building, in a great state of degradation when I got
there. With the walls deteriorating rapidly because, at one point, there was a salt depot
there after the communist authorities decided to dismantle that prison. Or, salt is very
dangerous for a building. Immediately there were those meetings with massive
participation. Historians, on the one hand; political prisoners, who came to tell their own
story. It is created, as it were, the database. There was a phase in which the Memorial
consisted of pieces of paper stuck to the sackcloth. As we discovered things, we
created temporary rooms. When we made the first rooms here, there was still no access
to the archives. We have had to change the rooms several times and we will do it again
- in light of the latest documents we have access to, certain rooms need to be
rebuilt. We are still discovering new things about Romanian communism. The museum
is an organism that has had many faces and will change its face from now on.

Let me also say that this Memorial is not, as has long been believed, the museum of
Sighet Prison. It is also this, but it is especially the Museum of the Victims of
Communism in Romania, and not only in our country. There are several halls that talk

40
about communism and repression in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and that, in this
way, connect Romanian communism with other forms of communism. The same - there
are museum pieces in Sighet that link the Romanian resistance with the resistance in
the other countries. The key moments of the Eastern European resistance are
highlighted.

Let me ask from the opposite angle: he is, yes, an organism that changes its face
and it is natural to do so given the matter with which it works. What remains
unchanged at the Sighet Memorial, from your point of view? What is his heart,
what is his DNA, what is his unseen, in a good way?

The victims are and will be unchanged. There are a lot of pictures, documents,
evidence, stories with them - they will remain in the memory of Romanian
communism. This, in the physical sense.

Then the principle, the meaning is that this museum offers truth and models. Life
models, ethical models. I believe that from this Memorial, a place that marks and
commemorates many incredible sufferings, you do not come out depressed. I think you
come out strong and enlightened. When I'm in Sighet, at the Memorial, I like to sit by the
door and see the figures of those who enter and those who leave. And those who go
out, come out as after an existential experience. I think the people who go in there see
the light from the darkness, they see the meaning of those sufferings, they see that
there were strong characters that they can take as models. There is a significant part of
our heritage of verticality.

Is the Sighet Memorial the way you dreamed? It's good, could it be even better?

It is, in any case, as a public impact, much more than I dreamed it would be, than I
hoped it would be.

Note: this interview appeared, for the first time, in Ramuri magazine, in the January
issue.

Source: Cristian Patrasconiu, n.d. | www.lapunkt.ro

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 Appendix 5 – Visitor experience | TripAdvisor

Positive reviews

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Positive review with suggestions

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44
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