Mărturii despre drama femeii române în perioada 1950-1964
Testimonies Regarding the Romanian Woman's Drama During 1950-1964

Summary/Abstract: The women's prisons represented a very interesting side within the Romanian concentration camp system, the best known being those in Miercurea Ciuc and Mislea. Using oral testimonies we tried to analyze in this study the iniprisonment experiences of women who belong to different generations, social lasses, and religious beliefs and who were compelled to live under the same conditions. The oral testimonies underline two types of feminine human typologies, considering their mental and emotional strength. One typology is that of the woman who has no restrains in talking about the imprisonment experience she went through, though she will never be able to forget that unfortunate period of her life. Tne other typology refers to those women who are still psychologically influenced by the hard conditions inside the imprisonment system. The inner feelings differ from one person to another, but every one of them insist on the negative side of their experience and on not wanting for it to be ever forgotten. Comparing to the imprisoned men's testimonies, the women's testimonies have a harsher tint, probably because of their skill in more realistically describing the pain. When their men were imprisoned, women had to divorce them in order not to be fired from their jobs and to be able to provide for their families. They worked as servants, maids or street cleaners. They spent hours and hours in queues to shop for others, being degraded but not feeling humiliated. They carried their ordeal with undiminished dignity. From the moment they were arrested their lives' stories developed pretty much the same: unbearable physical and psychological tortures during interrogations at the Ministry of lnternal Affairs or inside the Security's cellars. The trials were pure semblances having no other purpose but to make official the convictions that had already been established by the Security and to give the detention certain legality. Harsh years of detention followed, years marked by shortcomings, uncertainties, more or less significant injustices, untrue promises, humiliations, and indescribable misery...

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