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‘Ceausescu looked in my eyes, and he knew that he was going to die’
A former soldier is haunted by the memory of the Christmas Day firing squad that killed Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena
Dr Robert Rojack was a member of the three-man firing squad that killed
Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena
Christmas Day memories are made of this: a turkey dinner, exchanging gifts, watching television, family togetherness, peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. Dr Robert Rojack’s abiding memory is of the Christmas Day he shot a dictator.
“I know what I would rather have been doing,” said Dr Rojack, who was a member of the three-man squad that killed Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, on December 25, 1989. “As a Christian it is a horrible thing to have to take someone’s life — and that on Christmas Day, that holy holiday.”
Dr Rojack was in the elite 64th Boteni parachute regiment when Romania crumpled in the 1989 revolution. Unlike the upheavals in Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, blood was spilt — some of it on Dr Rojack’s paratrooper boots.
“You have to picture how it was then,” Dr Rojack said. “Rumours were swirling — there was panic everywhere on the radio, on television, even on the army radio frequencies. It was like the coming of the Apocalypse.”
The paratroopers had gone over to the side of the revolutionaries; some of their units were fighting agents of the Securitate secret police around the Bucharest television tower. But Dr Rojack — 27 at the time and a non-commissioned officer — was at regimental headquarters in Boteni, about 30 miles (50km) outside the capital.
“Many army leaders were beginning to break down under the intense pressure.” Someone, it was never clear who, had placed Soviet-made electronic devices around their barracks, creating a loud drone, the sound of explosions. It was psychological warfare at its crudest. Was it a revolution, a Russian-backed coup d’état? Even now there is not much clarity about who was pulling the strings.
Thousands filled downtown Bucharest on December 22, 1989,
or a demonstration in the uprising that toppled Ceaucescu
Into this maelstrom, early on Christmas Day, came two helicopters. “Our commander needed eight volunteers. We didn’t know where we were going, which is against the military code — every soldier should be told his mission.”
Dr Rojack has put on weight — his stomach pushes against the waistband of his grey suit — but he still has a military bearing; a sergeant’s ashen moustache. He is a lawyer now, vetting contracts for foreign property dealers. As we sat chatting for three hours in a draughty Bucharest café near Ceausescu’s former Palace of the People, my eye was drawn constantly to his right hand, to the trigger finger.
“We flew at high speed, very low, zig-zagging in our Puma helicopters to avoid radar.” They touched down in Bucharest near the military cemetery and were joined by officers from the military justice department. Dr Rojack recognised only one man, General Victor Stanculescu.
“He was just like an English gentleman — very elegant.” General Stanculescu had been the favourite of Elena Ceausescu, had briefly taken over command of the army and had now changed sides. “We had a lot of time for him. He knew how to talk to soldiers, had looked after us, arranged coffee and cigarettes for the troops.”
This week the general, undergoing treatment in a prison hospital, has argued in interviews with the Romanian press that the Soviet KGB had helped to plan the toppling of Ceausescu for almost a year, that the United States was aware of a plot and that Russian GRU (military intelligence) were among those firing in Bucharest and Timisoara to increase the sense of menace and accelerate a popular uprising. Twenty years ago though, to Dr Rojack and his comrades, General Stanculescu seemed to be the only officer who knew what he was doing.
Demonstrators in Bucharest on December 22, 1989
To reassure the garrison in Tirgoviste, where the Ceausescus were being held, one of the officers had unfurled a long yellow scarf that had briefly got caught in the rotors — a code that they were on the side of the revolutionaries. General Stanculescu barked out: “Paratroopers to me!” The Ceausescus, he said, were about to be “judged by the people”. If the verdicts were to be death, he needed soldiers ready to carry out the sentence.
“Who is ready?” All eight men stepped forward. “Those ready to shoot, raise your hands!” All eight raised their hand. Impatient, the general barked: “You, you and you!” The three men were Captain Iomel Boeru, Sergant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dr Rojack.
The captain was ordered to sit in the makeshift courtroom and shoot the Ceausescus if anyone tried to break in and rescue them. Dr Rojack and Mr Octavian were supposed to stand guard outside the room.
An Army tank fights with pro-Ceausescu troops in central Bucharest on December 23, 1989
“I could hear everything through the door,” Dr Rojack said, “and I knew then that there was something wrong with the trial. Elena was complaining, refusing to recognise the court. The so-called defence lawyers were acting like prosecutors. But I was a soldier obeying orders. It was only later that I realised what a mockery it all was.”
The Ceausescus face the Romanian people during their televised trial in 1989
The verdict was read out after a few hours. The Ceausescus were sentenced to death. They had ten days to appeal, but the sentence was to be carried out immediately. A nod to Kafka.
There was a confused silence. Death — now? The dictator and his wife were tied up but not blindfolded. As Dr Rojack helped to frogmarch the dictator along the corridor, he heard a shout: “Get on with it! The US Sixth Fleet has just sent a helicopter force to rescue them! Move! Move! Do it!”
“Take them to the wall,” General Stanculescu said. “First him, then her.”
But the Ceausescus did not know what was happening until they were led past the helicopters to an outbuilding. “He looked in my eyes and realised that he was going to die now, not at some time in the future, and he started to cry,” Dr Rojack said. “It was very important to me, that moment. I still have nightmares about it. That look.”
The dictator was lined up with his wife — she had insisted on their dying together — and yelled: “Death to the traitors!” He puffed out his chest and started to sing the Socialist Internationale: “Arise, wretched of the Earth! Arise prisoners of hunger!”
He never reached the fourth line: “This is the eruption of the end / of the past, let us wipe the slate clean.”
“We were told to fire 30 rounds each into them. From the hip. As paratroopers. Not as a firing squad, where some of the shooters have real bullets, some blanks, so that no one has to live with the feeling of being an executioner. We fired live,” Dr Rojack said, his thick trigger finger unconsciously mimicking his actions of 20 years ago.
“After shooting seven rounds into Ceausescu, the gun jammed. I changed magazines and shot a full 30 rounds into Elena. She flew backwards with the force of it all. We started at about a metre range and then walked steadily backwards, still firing, so that we wouldn’t be caught by a ricochet.”
Elena’s blood splattered on his uniform. The back of her skull had fallen away. “She didn’t die easily. She was in spasms,” Dr Rojack shook his head at the memory. “I had never even killed a chicken before.”
Behind the three-man squad, two other soldiers had joined in the shooting. One had lost his brother in the Timisoara rising a few days earlier and wanted revenge.
“I was angry too when I shot Ceausescu. Until the Timisoara revolt in mid-December, I had been a true- believing communist. What else? Even in kindergarten we hadn’t sung songs about nature and sunsets but about the genius of Ceausescu and how he was our national father. But then the army was used to shoot civilians and it made me, many of us, question everything. I was furious with Ceausescu for betraying socialism.”
After the executions — “it wasn’t a trial, it was a political assassination in the middle of a revolution” — Dr Rojack was edged out of his army career. He studied law.
Captain Boeru later rose to the rank of colonel and retired. Mr Octavian became a taxi driver. “We don’t meet up any more,” Dr Rojack said, “because we always end up talking about the same thing.
“Now I try to live according to the teachings of the Bible. But I can’t be happy on Christmas Day, not ever. Across the world, Christians are celebrating. But not me. Not me.”
An edited transcript of the Ceausescus' trial
Chief prosecutor
Esteemed chairman of the court, today we have to pass a verdict on the defendants Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Ceausescu, who have committed the following offences: crimes against the people. They carried out acts that are incompatible with human dignity and social thinking; they acted in a despotic and criminal way; they destroyed the people whose leaders they claimed to be. Because of the crimes they committed against the people, I plead, on behalf of the victims of these two tyrants, for the death sentence. [He then reads from a bill of indictment, listing genocide, destruction of state buildings and undermining the economy].
Prosecutor
Did you hear the charges? Have you understood?
Ceausescu
I do not answer, I will only answer questions before the Grand National Assembly. I do not recognise this court. The charges are incorrect, and I will not answer a single question here.
Prosecutor
Note: he does not recognise the points mentioned in the bill of indictment.
Ceausescu
I will not answer any question. Not a single shot was fired in Palace Square. Not a single shot. No one was shot.
Prosecutor
By now, there have been 34 casualties.
Elena Ceausescu
Look, and that they are calling genocide.
Prosecutor
In all district capitals there is shooting going on. The people were slaves. The entire intelligentsia ran away.
Elena Ceausescu
The intelligentsia of the country will hear what you are accusing us of.
Prosecutor
Nicolae Ceausescu should tell us why he does not answer our questions. What prevents him from doing so?
Ceausescu I will answer any question, but only at the Grand National Assembly, before the representatives of the working class. Tell the people that I will answer all their questions. All the world should know what is going on here.
Prosecutor What are you really?
Ceausescu
I repeat: I am the President of Romania and the Commander in Chief of the Romanian Army. I am the president of the people. I will not speak with you provocateurs any more, and I will not speak with the organisers of the putsch and with the mercenaries. I have nothing to do with them.
Prosecutor
Please, make a note: Ceausescu does not recognise the new legal structures of power of the country. He still considers himself to be the country’s President and the Commander in Chief of the Army. Why did you ruin the country? Why did you export everything? Why did you starve the people?
Ceausescu
I will not answer this question. It is a lie that I made the people starve. A lie, a lie in my face. This shows how little patriotism there is, how many treasonable offences were committed.
Prosecutor
We have always spoken of equality. We are all equal. Everybody should be paid according to his performance. Now we finally saw your villa on television, the golden plates from which you ate, the foodstuffs that you had imported, the luxurious celebrations.
Elena Ceausescu
Incredible. We live in a normal apartment, just like every other citizen. We have ensured an apartment for every citizen through corresponding laws.
Prosecutor
Mr Chairman, we find the two accused guilty. I call for the death sentence.
Counsel for the defence
Even though he — like her — committed insane acts, we want to defend them. We want a legal trial. [Addressing the defendants:] You have acted in a very irresponsible manner; you led the country to the verge of ruin and you will be convicted on the basis of the bill of indictment. You are guilty of these offences even if you do not want to admit it. Despite this, I ask the court to make a decision that we will be able to justify later as well. We must not allow the slightest impression of illegality to emerge. Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu should be punished in a really legal trial.
Prosecutor
I have been one of those who, as a lawyer, would have liked to oppose the death sentence, because it is inhuman. But we are not talking about people.
After the television broadcast is cut off, the speaker announces that the verdict is the death sentence.
Source: Foreign Broadcast Information Service
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