Despre un posibil cimitir al deţinuţilor politic de la Poarta Albă, judeţul Constanţa / On a possible cemetery of political prisoners at Poarta Albă, Constanţa County

Abstract

The construction of the Danube – Black Sea Canal started after 1948, during the communist regime. It was built with the effort of tens of thousands of political prisoners who manually (mostly) excavated the Canal which afterwards became part of the Carasu irrigation system. A series of memoirs, accounts and historical documents indicate that a great number of people died because of the strenuous work, malnutrition and poor conditions of hygiene. The dead were buried in mass graves or penal cemeteries. Marking these events in the field and also in the collective memory is the duty of both local authorities and historians. An area of almost 2000 m2 came to the attention of archaeologists. In the southern half, the A area, the land has an alveolar shape and it is formed of sediments of yellow clay. In the northern half, the B area, the soil is at the same level with the other cemeteries from the neighbourhood. The presence of a mass grave was the main assumed hypothesis while investigating the A area. This area is rectangular, 33 × 30 m, and oriented E– W. The lowest level is at -0,80 m below the present day one, measured on the northern side, where this entire formation is limited by a ridge. Archaeological excavations uncovered a cluster of large, 2 m deep pits that covered an area of ca. 150 m2. The pits were filled with black soil taken from the neighbouring area. Some of the pits were dug into the yellow clean virgin soil, but others cut and destroyed different pits filled with dirtyyellow soil with brown thin deposits. Chronologically, the pits were assigned to the contemporary period, more precisely to the communist age. In these pits no human bones were recovered from the latter pits and their function remains obscure so far. In the levelling layer overlapping the pits with dark soil, were founds lids marked RPR, thus prior to 1965. The functionality of these pits is obscure. It is worth retaining the account of some former prisoners who remembered that the firing of limestone (used in the construction of the canal) was done in pits. The possibility of slaking pits, where limestone was burnt in order to obtain the lime for the construction of the canal, can be taken into account. Five graves were discovered in Area B. The site plan and the orientation of the pits suggest a contemporary cemetery (post 1945). The graves are narrow and not very deep (-1 -1.40 m) and they correspond to the size of the “ coffins” used (wooden boxes). Certainly, it is a cemetery for social outcasts. During the communist era, the vast majority of such outcasts were political prisoners. The authors believe that some of the archaeological arguments (such as location, density of graves, lack of markers and grave goods) and the anthropological analysis of the skeleton discovered in Grave 3, suggest political prisoners buried in the area.