The woman who “turned” communist cells into ballrooms and palaces. He managed to save the souls of hundreds of women lost in the hell of prisons
A Jewish woman imprisoned by the communist regime for espionage in the most terrible prisons of the regime, helped hundreds of women to survive the horrors of the repressive camp, through an absolutely original method. He used his imagination and oratory to translate them into an imaginary world.
The Samulelli sisters PHOTO Sighet Memorial
Over 500,000 Romanians were arrested and imprisoned for political reasons during the first decades of the communist regime. The penitentiary system dedicated to “re-educating” or punishing “enemies of the people”, i.e. Romania's cultural and political elite, village householders and all those who opposed the communist utopia, included 44 main penitentiaries and an extensive network of forced labor camps, such as those on the Danube–Black Sea Canal.
Of the total number of prisoners, 5.31% were women. That is, around 4,000 Romanian women who endured the horrors of the communist prison regime, either because they supported their husbands, brothers or fathers involved in the resistance movements, or because they were considered “enemy elements” due to their social status or activities. The women, like the men, endured torture, beatings and an inhumane regime, including unsanitary conditions, violation of privacy and immense psychological pressure.
1.25% of incarcerated women were never released from prison. Among them was Annie Samuelli, an educated woman, who ended up in communist prisons on charges of espionage. He had worked at the British embassy in Romania. Seeing the despair that had taken over the political prisoners, Annie, with the help of Morse code, managed to create an imaginary, beautiful, saving world for hundreds of women. Annie's stories helped them mentally resist and survive, being the most beautiful form of resistance in the communist camp.
The “libraries trial” and the end of a beautiful career
Annie Samuelli's tragic story began on the night of July 25, 1949, when she was arrested. That date marked the end of a life dedicated to law and diplomacy and the beginning of a nightmare of over a decade.
Annie Samuelli was born in 1910 and came from a wealthy family of Jewish intellectuals. He had a younger sister, Nora, born in 1914. Both lived in Bucharest and went to serious schools. They attended law school and graduated with high marks. Annie became secretary to the head of the British Press Office in Bucharest, while Nora was secretary to the head of the US Press and Information Office in Bucharest.
Both were arrested, as I stated, on July 25, 1949. They were beaten, tortured. Only a year later they were judged in the so-called “American and English libraries” trial. Among others, in the same file, Constantin Mugur, accountant at the Press and Information Office of Great Britain in Bucharest, was sentenced to hard labor for life, Princess Eleonnora Bunea-Wied, Mugur's secretary, to 15 years of hard labor, and Liviu Popescu Nasta, correspondent of the “New York Times” in Bucharest, sentenced to 20 years of hard labor.
For Annie, the sentence fell like a guillotine: 20 years. Nora, her sister, got 15 years. Both, on charges of high treason. The newspaper “Scânteia” headlined then, with bloody enthusiasm, that the decision was received with satisfaction by the working people, who were seething with indignation in front of the “imperialist tools”. Basically, the Samuelli sisters were accused of “the crime of high treason”, the crime being “espionage in favor of England and America”.
Through the hell of communist prisons
Annie went through prisons in Jilava, Mislea, Timisoara and Miercurea Ciuc. A real hell. Women of different generations, ethnicities, social classes and faiths have been subjected to a regime of physical and mental extermination for years.
Annie Samuelli recounted that, at one point, Maria Antonescu, the widow of Marshal Antonescu, the widow of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and her sister-in-law, Iridenta Moța, a legionnaire, Eleonora Bunea-Wied, cousin of King Mihai, and the two Samuelli sisters, Jewish, woke up together in a cell of the Mislea penitentiary.
“A beautiful bouquet”said the director of the prison. He hoped these women would destroy each other. He was wrong. Beyond ideologies, religious beliefs and other socio-political aspects, in communist prisons there was only one goal: survival, turning the cell into a space of silent resistance.
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Communist prison was no easier for women. On the contrary, it was more difficult from a mental, moral and physical point of view. Annie later recalled with painful lucidity how being a woman offered her no protection, but rather her ethnic identity made it worse.
“I can say that the fact that I was a woman did not exempt me from anything, and the fact that I was Jewish, on the contrary, made my situation much worse. A woman has more resistance than a man”said Annie Samuelli.
Women often did not have the necessary privacy, were humiliated, made to live in the cold, tortured and often sexually abused.
“Equality between women and men was complete in the prison regime. And we are not wrong if we say that maybe the woman enjoyed more rights… but during the torture… her breasts were burned… and more and more… During the extermination work, they continued to be cursed, beaten, with reduced food rations. The Romanian woman worked at the Canal with the yoke around her neck just like the men, dug with a pickaxe, dislodged the stone boulders with the crowbar and broke with the sledgehammer, fell under the burden of the weights and stood up with dignity thinking about tomorrow”said Annie Samuelli in her book “The Wall Between”.
A universal language and imagination that saved the mind and soul
In communist prisons, subjected to torture and abuse of all kinds, torn apart by the longing for children, husbands and families, many women lost their minds. They were surviving physically, but they were collapsing mentally.
There was, however, one inmate who cared for the mind and soul of fellow sufferers. It was Annie Samuelli. She testified that women seemed to have a greater power of mercy than men, but many lost their minds under the pressure of longing for children taken by the Securitate or husbands arrested.
In this void of despair, salvation came in the form of a rhythmic pounding on the wall. Morse code became the only link to humanity, a code learned fervently from an arrested radio operator, practiced on the ironwork of the bed or on one's own knees.
“If you couldn't communicate, you couldn't resist”she said, describing how the messages nailed to the wall helped them stay anchored in a reality beyond bars.
With the help of Morse code, Annie transposed the prisoners into an imaginary world. It helped them detach from the cruel reality of detention and forget, at least for an hour, the longing and the pain. Basically, he “organizes” balls and receptions. With a special talent, she made the other inmates imagine that they were participating in beautiful evenings, in meetings with important personalities. He described the whole atmosphere to them, what the waiters, the hosts looked like, what the dress code was, how they sang and what the orchestra played.
At the same time, he “took” them to London, describing the buildings. It even made them exercise their imagination and think about how they would like to be dressed at such parties. He even told them about foreign films he had seen at the cinema in London.
What Annie achieved was, in fact, the most extensive group therapy and one of the most sublime forms of resistance in communist prisons. He also “wrote” a book in detention. He had no paper and no pen. He “wrote” it mentally. And then, after surviving the communist detention hell, he put it on paper.
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It was called “The Wall Between” and described in it all the horrors of the communist regime that he endured. It is the chronicle of a world where prayer and religious holidays were mimed with sanctity, where Christmas and Easter were celebrated in spirit, and confessions before an imaginary clergyman or rabbi became bridges to dignity.
During all this time, their trial colleagues, such as princess Eleonora Bunea-Wied or journalist Liviu Popescu Nasta, did not get to see the light of day again, dying in prison-hospitals, succumbing to illnesses and exhaustion.
The sweet taste of freedom came at a price
Freedom came for the Samuelli sisters only in 1961, not as an act of grace, but as a commercial transaction. They were ransomed by the family for $12,000. They left Romania as they had left the prison gate, without luggage and without citizenship, being considered stateless by the state that had condemned them.
Their journey to the West, however, revealed a bitter discrepancy between the great powers they had worked for. While Annie was quickly recognized by the British Government, receiving citizenship and a pension for “services to the Crown”, Nora had to fight for years with the American bureaucracy to obtain a survivor's allowance, at a time when both sisters had completely lost the ability to work due to the traumas they had suffered.
Years later, Annie symbolically returned to the statue of the inventor of Morse code, laying a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a tricolor ribbon, kept hidden throughout her detention.
