The Peripravalabor camp was a labor camp operated by the Romanian communist regime. The camp, located near the village of Periprava in the Danube Delta, held up to 2,000 prisoners. According to a study done by the International Centre for Studies into Communism, 8.23% of political prisoners in Communist Romania did time at Periprava. In the literature on communist prisons and camps in Romania, the Periprava labor camp is described as one of the harshest places of imprisonment. In view of the extremely severe detention and work regime, sheer terror, and high mortality, the camp is known among former detainees as a true death camp.
The labor camp
The official designation for the camp was Facility 0830. Exposed to scorching heat and mosquito swarms in the summer and icy winds in the winter, the prisoners lived in brick-walled, 24 m2 pens that held up to 160 men each. They spent their days cutting reeds and building dams; those who were unable to fulfill the daily quota of 8 thick bundles of reeds were beat unconscious by guards wielding rubber clubs. According to testimony in 2013 by Andrei Muraru, then head of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, this "was an extermination camp; it was a repressive, excessive, inhuman and discretionary regime." Detainees were overworked, beaten, left without heat, and forced to drink dirty water from the Danube, leading to widespread dysentery. Also according to Muraru, now an adviser to PresidentKlaus Iohannis, the inmates were subjected to a "diabolic program of extermination through exhausting work, hunger and physical torture."
The detainees
Periprava was one of the places of detention of Romanian writer Florin Pavlovici, described by him in his memoirs. Another writer who was imprisoned at Periprava was Mihai Rădulescu. Most of the prisoners were young, having been arrested after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the ensuing student protests in Bucharest. Many of the detainees were peasants who had resisted the collectivization of agriculture imposed by the communist authorities in the 1950s. Among them were 30–40 men from Răstoaca who had attacked a convoy of Party members that had come to convince the locals to join in the collectivization effort.
In 2018, teams of historians and archaeologists were searching for the remains of prisoners from the former Periprava labor camp who were either executed or died from a lack of medical care. Investigators have found skeletons of former prisoners who appeared to have been dumped naked into unmarked mass graves. As of 2019, 40 human remains have been discovered at Periprava; plans call for DNA testing and identification of the victims. According to Marius Oprea, 51 unmarked graves of prisoners who died at the Periprava labor camp have been identified as of June 2020.
