Bacu's 1963 Testimony and the Pitesti Phenomenon
The English-language edition Romanian manuscript originally titled Pitesti, Centru de Reeducare Studentesca, published in Madrid in 1963. Its author, Dumitru Bacu, is described in the source document as a Romanian born in Greek territory who pursued his university education in Romania and joined an anti-Communist organization active before and during the Second World War. According to the introduction by Warren B.
Heath, Bacu remained in the country after the Bolshevik conquest, was eventually arrested on suspicion of holding opinions inimical to Bolshevism, and endured the tortures and hardships the text characterizes as normal in what it calls a Great Society. Heath's framing is central to how the book positions itself. He states that during his imprisonment Bacu by chance learned of an experiment conducted on a select group of young men and had the acumen and patience to discover precisely what that experiment was.
On this basis Heath asserts that…