The Pitesti Experiment

Between 1949 and 1951, during the Communist party rule in Romania, many young political prisoners were sent to the Pitești Prison as part of a reeducation experiment. The goal of the experiment was to completely discard their past religious convictions and ideology, to eventually alter their personalities to the point of absolute obedience. Prisoners' bodies were burned with cigarettes; their buttocks would begin to rot, and their skin fell off as though they suffered from leprosy. Others were forced to swallow spoons of excrement, and when they threw it back up, they were forced to eat their own vomit. As many as 5000 people went through these experiments and at least 200 people died at Pitești.