Sighet Prison

Former prison in Sighetu Marmației, Romania

The Sighet Prison, located in the city of Sighetu Marmației, Maramureș County, Romania, was used by Romania to hold criminals, prisoners of war, and political prisoners. It is now the site of the Sighet Memorial Museum, part of the Memorial of the Victims of Communism.

The prison was built in 1896–1897 by the authorities of the Kingdom of Hungary. Following Austrian practice, it was situated close to the courthouse in order to facilitate prisoner transport. From its opening until 1944, it housed common criminals with sentences of six months to two years. T shaped, the building had a ground and two upper floors. Of the 108 cells, 36 were individual and the rest fit four or six people. It was built of brick and reinforced concrete, with doors of fir wood. The thick walls were some six meters high and topped by guard towers. While Northern Transylvania was under Soviet military administration from November 1944 to March 1945, the building was used for interning Soviet deserters and delinquents, subsequently returned to the Soviet Union. After the end of World War II, ethnic German war prisoners passed through Sighet, some on their way to forced labor in the Soviet Union, others returning home from there. Between 1947 and 1950, common criminals formed the majority of detainees. However, political prisoners began to appear: peasants from the surrounding Maramureș region who refused to hand over food quotas to the state, and local youth who had been active in the Iron Guardist Frățiile de Cruce associations. From the latter category, among the earliest arrivals were eighteen pupils from Dragoș Vodă High School, accused of demonstrating against the new communist regime; they were incarcerated in August 1948 and kept until May 1949, after which they were tried in Cluj and sent to prisons in Pitești, Gherla, and Târgșor, or to the Danube–Black Sea Canal.