History of Pitesti

World War II and communism

The city was affected in various ways by World War II and the successive regimes. After the fascist National Legionary State was proclaimed by the Iron Guard in late 1940, a bronze bust of former Premier Armand Călinescu (whom the Guard had assassinated in September 1939), was chained and dragged through the city streets. In December 1943, under the dictatorship of Conducător and Piteşti native Ion Antonescu, it saw the last deportation of Romani people into Romanian-occupied Transnistria (see Holocaust in Romania). The city was sporadically bombed by the Allies: on July 4, 1944, it was struck by a section of the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force (see Bombing of Romania in World War II).

In the 1950s, when it served as capital of the newly-created Regiunea Argeş, the city gained an ill notoriety, when the communist authorities used the local detention facility to subject political detainees to the infamous Reeducation, in which violence between inmates was encouraged to the point of being mandatory. The experiment was carried out by the Securitate secret police and overseen by Alexandru Nicolschi; its goal was to psychologically destroy the capacity for outside attachment and outside loyalty, thus creating the brainwashed New Man meant to suit a Leninist society. It was canceled after five years. At a trial held in 1953-1954, twenty-two inmate-participants were sentenced, with sixteen being condemned to death for their role in the experiment. In 1957, a new trial convicted certain members of the prison staff, who received light sentences; they were later pardoned.

In parallel, the