Ioan Marin

"...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."

"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.