The reeducation practices of communist Romania ended in 1951 with the transfer of political prisoners from Pitesti to the Danube-Black Sea Canal labor camps. After a mysterious process, these convicts became fanatical adherents to the regime, engaging in the torture of fellow convicts. When these acts became public, the regime responded with a series of trials against the prisoner-torturers, thereby shielding itselse and penitentiary staff members any complicity in these events.

Mircea Stanescu conducts an impartial analysis of the reeducation trials and their unfolding consequences,...