Nicolae Moromete

Early life

Born to destitute farmers in Valea Ungureni, Argeș County (currently in Olt County), on 13 May 1912, Nicolae Moromete was the youngest of five brothers. They were all orphaned soon after, when their mother Maria died (the father, Gheorghe, had already fallen in the campaigns of World War I).^[1] The boy graduated from the village primary school. Though he later recalled that nobody had helped him during his stay there, he became the only one of his family who could even read and write.^[1] He then worked in Valea Ungureni as a swineherd and day laborer.^[1] Hostile accounts by his victims suggest that Moromete, whom they knew as "Maromet", had a stutter.^[1][2][3] In such records, he is also described as a "Gypsy"^[2][4] or a Gagauz^[1][5] by birth. Former inmate Remus Radina suggests instead that he was a Romanian, though one who stood for "the very dregs and scum of this nation".^[6]

In 1929, Moromete went to Pitești, enlisting as a camp follower in the Romanian Land Forces (6th Artillery Regiment).^[1] In 1934–1935, the young man did his regular military service, serving with the 11th Transmissions Battalion in Bucharest.^[7] Upon his honorable discharge, he failed to return home—and instead found a job as a street-sweeper.^[1][7] He was sacked after a dispute with a colleague.^[1] The Bucharest city government allowed him back, and then promoted him to janitor.^[1][7][8] He was again drafted in 1941, when the Romanian Kingdom, governed by Ion Antonescu, had formed an alliance with Nazi Germany. As such, Moromete served with distinction on the Eastern Front. Returning to 11th Transmissions Battalion, Moromete operated field telephones in the siege of Odessa, the Crimean campaign, and the defense of the Don Bend.^[1] For his courage under fire, he a "Valor and Faith" medal.^[1][7] The anti-fascist coup of August 1944 saw Romania engaged alongside the Allies, and Moromete serving against both Germany and Nazified Hungary. In late 1944, he and his unit reached Budapest.^[7]

The Soviet occupation of Romania, meanwhile, facilitated the rise of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR, later PMR). Journalist Diana Popa describes Moromete as one in a class of natural communist torturers, attracted into the movement by the promise of social recognition.^[1] Discharged from the army as a corporal and returning to work as janitor,^[1] he joined the PCR in 1945, and enjoyed privileges as a result. He graduated from a school for political commissars, and in short time, was named secretary of the PCR Yellow-Sector chapter.^[1][7] In 1947, he was assigned commissar in the Corps of Municipal Guards. His activity had been poorly rated by PCR superiors, who accused him of immorality in office. More specifically, he was accused of having promised advancement to cleaning ladies, in exchange for sex.^[1]

The PCR leadership had Moromete removed, and he was forced to undergo retraining at a party venue in Constanța.^[1] He was then made ideological instructor of the prison guards, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs—with this, he began his involvement with the penal system.^[7] By 1948, he was a salaried head guard at Văcărești Prison.^[1] As the communist regime was taking hold and mass imprisonments of political opponents began, he was made first-level guard of Jilava Prison. He was then promoted to commander of the guard.^[7] As "Maromete Nicolae", on 23 August 1949 he also received the Star of the People's Republic for his outstanding services to the Securitate.^[9]

Jilava warden

Holding the rank of Securitate captain, Moromete became warden of Jilava in May 1949.^[10] During his tenure, he was assisted by officers Fătu, Geamănu, Gutman, Ivănică, and Sabău.^[11] As head of this hierarchy, Moromete was ordered by the PMR and the Prison Directorate to decrease living standards, to apply corporal punishments, and to prevent prisoners from receiving mail. He himself acknowledged this in an explanatory memorandum of 1955.^[7] Various reports suggest that he applied himself to such tasks with unusual zeal, personally beating his inmates and addressing them with profanities.^[1][7][12] In several instances, he lined them up and jumped over them on horseback.^[13] His speech impediment made him hard to understand at times, but he tried to obtain his victims' undivided attention by carrying around a hoe handle, with which he bludgeoned those who did not respond in time.^[1][14]

The prison population was generally more educated than Moromete, and sometimes mocked his lack of self-awareness. A story passed on by Richard Wurmbrand suggests that he once unwittingly revealed that, under socialism, people guilty "of nothing" would still go to prison, but for less than ten years.^[1] In one other instance, he had seen a motto from Seneca scribbled on the walls of a cell. Infuriated, he asked Seneca to step up and account for his actions; when this failed to happen, one incarcerated students informed him that Seneca had left the facility, but that he was expected to return.^[1][15] Radina describes an encounter between the warden and Iosif Jumanca, a detained former activist of the Romanian Social Democrats. Moromete was initially infuriated that Jumanca described himself as a founder of Romanian socialism, but later agreed to hear him speak. The two of them had a clash of visions, once Jumanca opined that Marxism-Leninism was flawed. Moromete decided to end this episode by having his men beat up the naked Jumanca, who, fearing for his life, shouted his agreement with their ideological interpretation.^[16]

Moromete habitually spied on conversations: detainees who were heard expressing hopes that the Americans would land were picked out, severely brutalized, and sent to recover on top of garbage piles.^[1] Favorite targets of his included former officials of the Antonescu regime. According to anti-communist author Grigore Caraza, he would routinely round up such men, in particular those who had served in the army, and watched as they were being beat up. Caraza claims that these beatings caused the death of General Iosif Iacobici.^[1] Researcher Virgil Ierunca and philosopher Petre Țuțea believe that "Maromet" was partly responsible for the death of an Antonescu-era politician and scholar, Mircea Vulcănescu, by making him subject to a harsh regimen. Vulcănescu died at Aiud Prison, but from a pneumonia that, as both Ierunca and Țuțea note, could have been treated during his time at Jilava.^[17] In one other instance, Moromete personally ordered the arrest of 27 militiamen.^[7] According to an eyewitness testimony, after two Yugoslavs had managed to escape Jilava, he forced all remaining prisoners to run the gauntlet.^[1][7][18] He then locked the inmates in sealed rooms, bringing them close to suffocation.^[1][19] Jilava prisoner Gheorghe Marin reported that the overall conditions in Fort 13 were always squalid, with an "un-breathable air" and mold accumulated on the humid walls.^[2]

Relocation and downfall

By 1951, the communist regime was reexamining some of the Securitate excesses, in particular by investigating the re-education experiments at Pitești Prison. Radu Ciuceanu, who had experienced that treatment was dispatched with other survivors at Gherla, while the PMR pondered how to deal with the scandal. He was asked to meet two plainclothes Securitate men, who told him that Western capitalists and the Iron Guard had infiltrated prisons, in order to stage brutalities and compromise communism; in his retort, Ciuceanu asked them if anyone could seriously believe that Moromete could have been an American spy.^[20] Moromete lost his command at Jilava in April 1952,^[21] and was afterwards moved around. He was briefly warden at Caransebeș,^[1][22] before taking on a similar assignment at Galați (1952–1954). His activity came to be scrutinized by local prosecutors from May 1953, when they followed up on a complaint from the former inmate Ilie Simionescu. The latter reported on how Moromete had trebled the prisoners' workload, after accusing them collectively of being "appeasers" of the bourgeoisie, while also reducing their rations (particularly for those who had tuberculosis) and keeping them out in the cold. Some were made to harvest reeds in the local swamps, with little protection against the elements.^[23] Some of the human food was reportedly used to feed Moromete's pigs.^[1][23][24]

Simionescu believed that, through this regimen, up to five prisoners had died each day.^[23] The civilian authorities eventually dropped the investigation, suggesting that the case could only be handled by military prosecutors. The latter weighed in only briefly: some urged for Moromete to be relegated, but others insisted that he was "an honest comrade".^[23][25] During 1955, Moromete was fully sidelined by party officials, and made subject to investigation by the Prison Directorate. In that context, he reminded his superiors that they had vetted all his measures.^[7] Moromete also claimed that, back in 1949, Lieutenant Colonel Marin Constantinescu had warned him not to show any mercy toward the inmates, as doing so would have resulted in his own arrest.^[7] He is however known to have had positive incentives: at Jilava, his monthly pay was set at 17,450 lei, which was more than fifty times the average national salary.^[1]

Moromete's absence from Jilava was largely seen as ushering in a period of relaxation for its prisoners. Sent back there in 1955–1956, Ciuceanu noted that the "ritual" of body searches went quicker "after warden Maromet had been sent away".^[26] The same author heard an inmate mockingly complaining that the facility was no longer fun without the warden's insults (which he described as "true anatomical depictions and works of folklore"), and that the new staff were merely "clerks".^[27] In mid-1956, Moromete was commander of Chilia Veche labor camp, as a likely sign of his discreet demotion.^[1] In prisoner circles, the Danube Delta as a whole was coming to be described as "Maromet's Country";^[1] in that context, he was spotted managing the extremely harsh complex at Periprava.^[28] Late records showed that most of the prisoners he received in the isolated Chilia Veche were already infirm, and that he may have staged their steady extermination, including by pushing them to suicide; under his watch, the camp had an inexplicably high number of deaths.^[1][29] Here too, Moromete increased the workload, effectively doubling it.^[1]

Made a Securitate colonel, Moromete was also for a while the deputy warden at Văcărești.^[7] In Ierunca's assessment, he "reigned upon" the latter complex, being in part responsible for its severe overcrowding.^[30] The investigation into his past was resumed in 1958, after the Securitate heard reports that he and his subordinates had whipped an entire colony of Delta prisoners, "to the point where they soiled themselves".^[1] On 28 February 1959, Moromete was removed from active duty, but preserved his pension rights.^[1] According to Ciuceanu, the prisoners were aware that his final sacking was mainly because he had abused his own staff.^[31] It is not precisely known what happened to the former warden. Some of his former victims claimed to have spotted him working as a cinema usher in Bucharest,^[32] and this is presented as a fact in several standard biographies.^[1][33] Another former prisoner, Sergiu Popescu, believes that he was "assassinated, perhaps by common-law prisoners".^[5] According to Popa, "he died without ever facing trial for the crimes he committed."^[1]