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The Danube–Black Sea Canal (Romanian: Canalul Dunăre – Marea Neagră) is a canal in Romania, which runs from Cernavodă, on the Danube, to Constanța (southern arm, as main branch), and to Năvodari (northern arm), on the Black Sea.
The Canal was notorious as the site of labor camps in 1950s Communist Romania, when, at any given time, several tens of thousands political prisoners worked on its excavation. The total number of people used as a workforce for the entire period is unknown, as is the number of people who died in the construction.
== Creation of the camps ==
The decision to build the Danube – Black Sea Canal was taken on May 25, 1949 by the [[Politburo]] of the [[Romanian Communist Party|Romanian Workers' Party]] and the [[Petru Groza]] executive.<ref name="spulber"/><ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="socor">[[Vladimir Socor]], [http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/53-6-1.shtml ''The Danube – Black Sea Canal: A Graveyard Revisited''], on [[Radio Free Europe]], August 31, 1984</ref> The document specified:
<blockquote>in accordance with art[icle] 72 of the [[1948 Constitution of Romania|Constitution of the People's Republic of Romania]], the Council of Ministers decides: art[icle] – preparatory work on the Danube – Black Sea Canal to begin.<ref name="cioroianu"/></blockquote>
A version of events, supported on one occasion by the Romanian leader [[Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej]] and made popular through the literary works of [[Marin Preda]], credited [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] dictator [[Joseph Stalin]] with the idea for the Canal – a project which was supposedly based on the [[Gulag]]<ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="hossu"/><ref>Tismăneanu, p. 139</ref>
(Communist leader [[Ana Pauker]], who, like her collaborator [[Vasile Luca]], opposed the project, told her family that Stalin personally "proposed" the Canal in late 1948).<ref name="Levy">Robert Levy, "Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist", [[University of California Press]], [[Berkeley, California|Berkeley]], 2001, pp. 88–89 ISBN 0-520-23747-1</ref> The legal framework for [[unfree labor]] was set up in 1950, when a decree passed by the [[Great National Assembly]] introduced it as a measure for the "[[Indoctrination|reeducation]] of hostile elements",<ref name="cioroianu"/> and when the new Labor Code allowed the executive to requisition workforce for various political purposes.<ref name="cioroianu"/> In its original form, the project was meant to result in the third-largest canal ever built (after the [[Panama Canal|Panama]] and the [[Suez Canal]]s).<ref name="hossu"/><ref name="arvatu">[http://www.jurnalul.ro/articol_37190/basmele_canalului.html Cristina Arvatu, Ilarion Țiu, "Basmele Canalului" ("Fairy Tales of the Canal")], in ''[[Jurnalul Național]]'', September 26, 2006</ref>
In October 1949, the authorities established a General Directorate to oversee both the works and the penal facilities, answering directly to the national leadership. Its first head was the engineer [[Gheorghe Hossu]], replaced in 1951 by [[Meyer Grünberg]], in turn replaced by [[Vasile Posteucă]] (who held the position in 1952–1953). According to historian [[Adrian Cioroianu]], all three were insufficiently trained for the task they were required to accomplish. By 1952, the Directorate came under the direct supervision of the [[Ministry of Administration and Interior of Romania|Internal Affairs Ministry]], and the [[Securitate]] was allowed direct intervention on the construction site.<ref name="cioroianu"/>
===Forced labor and repression===
{{Communist Romania}}
Prison camps sprang up all along the projected canal route in the summer of 1949 and were quickly filled with political prisoners brought from jails from throughout the country. These first arrivals were soon joined by newly arrested people who were sent to the canal in ever increasing numbers. By 1950 the forced [[labor camps]] set up along the length of the planned canal were filled to capacity; that year alone, 40,000 prisoners were held in those camps.<ref name="memorial">[http://www.memorialsighet.ro/en/sala.asp?id=8 ''The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance''], page for Room 17, Forced Labor</ref> By 1953, the number of prisoners had swelled to 60,000<ref name="time">[http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,818727,00.html "Unfinished Canal"], in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', August 24, 1953</ref> (other sources indicate 100,000<ref name="socor"/> or 40,000<ref name="cioroianu"/> for the entire period). British historian and [[New York University]] professor [[Tony Judt]] claims in his book, ''[[Postwar (book)|Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945]]'', as recorded in a 2005 review:
<blockquote>At the time, an estimated 1 million Romanians were imprisoned in dire conditions or engaged in often deadly slave labor, digging out the Danube – Black Sea Canal.<ref name="graff">[http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901051212-1137619,00.html James Graff, "Continental Shifts"], in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', December 4, 2005</ref></blockquote>
The construction effort surpassed the resources available to the Romanian economy in the 1950s. The canal was assigned inferior machinery, part of which had already been used on the Soviet [[Volga-Don Canal]],<ref name="hossu"/> and building had to rely on primitive techniques (most work appears to have been carried out using [[shovel]]s and [[pickaxe]]s,<ref name="spulber"/><ref name="cioroianu"/> which was especially hard in the rocky terrain of [[Northern Dobruja]]). Detainees were allocated to brigades, usually run by common criminals – encouraged to use violence against their subordinates.<ref name="socor"/> In parallel, the region's [[industrialization]], destined to assist in the building effort, was never accomplished.<ref name="spulber"/>
Sums allocated for prisoner health, hygiene and nutrition declined dramatically over the years. Food rations were kept to a minimum, and prisoners would often resort to hunting mice and other small animals, or even consuming grass in an attempt to supplement their diet.<ref name="socor"/>
The prisoners comprised dispossessed farmers who had attempted to resist [[collectivization]], former activists of the [[National Peasants' Party]], the [[National Liberal Party (Romania)|National Liberal Party]], the [[Romanian Social Democratic Party (1927-1948)|Romanian Social Democratic Party]], and the [[Fascism|fascist]] [[Iron Guard]], [[Zionism|Zionist]] [[History of the Jews in Romania|Jews]], as well as [[Romanian Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] and [[Romanian Roman-Catholic Church|Catholic]] priests.<ref name="spulber"/><ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="hossu"/><ref name="socor"/><ref name="gordon">[http://ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1954_10_EastEurope.pdf Joseph Gordon, ''Eastern Europe: Romania (1954)'', pp. 299–301], at the [[American Jewish Committee]]</ref> The canal was referred to as the "graveyard of the Romanian [[bourgeoisie]]" by the Communist authorities,<ref name="memorial"/> and the physical elimination of undesirable [[social class]]es was one of its most significant goals.<ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="socor"/><ref>Tismăneanu, p. 36</ref>
One estimate places at over 200,000 the number of people who died as a result of exposure, unsafe equipment, [[malnutrition]], accidents, [[tuberculosis]] and other diseases, over-work, etc., of those working on the project between 1949 to 1953.<ref name="applebaum">[[Anne Applebaum]], [http://forejustice.org/wc/gulag_applebaum.html ''Gulag: A History''], Doubleday, 2003, review by Hans Sherrer for ''Justice:Denied'' (March 20, 2005)</ref> More conservative estimates place the number at "considerably in excess of 10,000".<ref name="socor"/> As such, the project became known as ''The Death Canal'' (''Canalul Morții''). It has also been called "a cloaca of immense human suffering and mortality".<ref name="rothschild">[http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ebooks-public/pdfs/0195119924.pdf Joseph Rothschild, Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, ''Return to diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II''], [[Oxford University Press]], New York, 1999, p. 161 ISBN 0-19-511993-2</ref>
In parallel, authorities left aside sectors of employment for skilled workers – kept in strict isolation from all others,<ref name="socor"/> they were attracted to the site with exceptional salaries (over 5,000 [[Romanian leu|lei]] per month), as well as for young people drafted in the [[Romanian Army]] and whose files indicated "unhealthy origins" (a [[middle-class]] family background). Their numbers fluctuated greatly (regular employees went from 13,200 in 1950 to 15,000 in 1951, to as little as 7,000 in early 1952, and again to 12,500 later in that year).<ref name="cioroianu"/> At the same time, facilities meant to accommodate the projected influx of labor (including homes available on credit) were never actually completed.<ref name="spulber"/> This was overlooked by the [[propaganda]] machine, which instead furnished [[Stakhanovite]] stories, according to which work quotas were surpassed by as much as 170%.<ref name="arvatu"/> Authorities also made the claim that the construction site was offering training to previously unskilled workers<ref name="spulber"/><ref name="arvatu"/> (as many as 10,000 in one official communiqué).<ref name="spulber"/>
On July 18, 1953, the project came to a discreet halt, all work being suspended for another 23 years<ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="hossu"/><ref name="socor"/><ref>Tismăneanu, pp. 139, 300</ref> (according to some sources, the closure had been ordered by Stalin himself, as early as 1952).<ref name="hossu"/> The canal camps remained in existence for another year, and their prisoners progressively relocated, to similar conditions at other work sites in [[Northern Dobruja]].<ref name="cioroianu"/><ref name="hossu"/><ref name="socor"/> Penal facilities on the canal site were shut down in mid-1954.<ref name="socor"/>
==Inmates of the labor camps==
*[[Arsenie Boca]]
*[[Matei Boilă]]
*[[Barbu Brezianu]]
*[[George Matei Cantacuzino]]
*[[Ion Caraion]]
*[[Ion Cârja]]
*[[Andrei Ciurunga]]
*[[Corneliu Coposu]]
*[[Gheorghe Cristescu]]
*[[Constantin Galeriu]]
*[[Șerban Ghica]]
*[[Pyotr Leshchenko]]
*[[Ovidiu Papadima]]
*[[Aurel Popa]]
*[[Pavel Popa]]
*[[Ștefan Radof]]
*[[Toma Spătaru]]
*[[Richard Wurmbrand]]
*[[Sabina Wurmbrand]]
==Notes==
{{Reflist|2}}
[[Category:Defunct prisons in Romania]]
[[Category:Human rights abuses]]
[[Category:Penal labor]]