In 1995, The Civic Academy Foundation has transformed what was the Sighet prison,  into a Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance.

 

The Memorial’s objective and purpose is to reconstruct and to keep the memory of the Romanian nation, whose history was falsified during the communist dictatorship.

 

The prison’s purpose was meant to exterminate all the Romanian intellectuality, by maintaining them in very bad conditions, depriving them of rest, being badly fed, and being tortured and humiliated every day. They could not even look through the window; the ones that didn’t obey the rules were kept in the “black cell” a complete dark cell with a chain in the middle.

 

With these harsh conditions, some of the prisoners found a way to communicate to each other using the Morse Code. In the cells there can be seen some objects made by prisoners: a cross made from a branch, letters written with a needle and a thread and many more.

 

Approximately 54 persons had died in Sighet prison.

 

Apart of the cells and all the information gathered inside, a very powerful meaning of the Memorial Museum has the architectural structure  “Space for prayer and recollection”  built by Radu Mihailescu. On each wall of this catacomb is graved the name of the approximately eight thousand persons that died in the prisons and concentration camp of Romania, to which have been added another 16,000 names inscribed on andesite plaques mounted on the walls of the inner courtyard and in the Paupers’ Cemetery.

 

Another emblematic symbol of the Museum is the sculpture “Cortege of the Sacrificial Victims” by Aurel Vlad, that represents a group of prisoners walking towards a wall that shuts up their horizons.

 

In order for us to remember eternally their tremendous suffering it is necessary to point out the mistakes of the past, so that we won't ever repeat them again. My photographs are meant to be mirrors of a grueling experience and they are the direct response to the entire concept of the Sighet prison.