Tag #129127 - Interview #78031 (Arnold Leinweber)

In 1940, I was living with my parents. On the night of 8th October, we were woken up by the chief of the gendarmes’ station of the neighborhood; he was accompanied by five other individuals, one of whom was wearing a green shirt [he was a Legionary] [13]. Claiming to be looking for subversive materials, they searched the entire house, frightening my elder brothers, and they took my father with them when they left. We went through a terrible night. Towards dawn, the chief of the station came back with other Legionaries and took my mother and myself to the station. I was 20 and my mother was 42. From the gendarmes’ station, we were taken to the 27th precinct police station on Pieptanari St., opposite the Bellu cemetery [a very old cemetery in Bucharest where many personalities are buried]. There we found my father together with Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Rozentzveig, who were more or less our neighbors. The ones who were there entertained themselves by slapping us; they also had my father clean the urine in the toilet with a handkerchief. Towards noon, we were all taken to the City police prefecture, where we got separated from my mother. They took us, the 4 Jews of the neighborhood, to the basement. There my father was systematically abused: first they hit his palms with a rubber cane, then the soles of his feet, until they swelled. To make them come back to normal, they made him dance until he collapsed. Then they went on with the beating; their sole purpose was to make him give away the names of the Communists he knew. The others were next. Towards the evening, when the abuse ended, we were taken to the third floor of the prefecture, where we found my mother and many other people who were forced to face the wall with their hands up. Meanwhile, people picked up by the Legionaries in the street kept pouring in. We stayed in that room until late at night, without food, water, sleep or the possibility to go to the toilet. Finally, an army colonel showed up. He examined each of us; he wanted to know our name, where we had been seized from and what we knew about our arrest and the abuse we had been submitted to. Shortly after he left, a commissioner came and asked us to go home.