Elena’s evil plan – “Operation Rosa” – Timisoara and Bucharest, December 18 and 19, 1989
On December 18, 1989 Ceausescu flew to Iran to negotiate about the sale of weapons with the Iranian President. Before leaving Romania, a message from General Coman assured him that “the situation in Timisoara was under control”.
The town centre was guarded by soldiers, policemen and Securitate agents. The mayor called a meeting at the university where he condemned the previous day’s “vandalism” and “hooliganism”. A state of siege was announced in County Temes. The assembly of more than five people was prohibited.
In spite of the prohibition brave people, especially students started gathering in front of the Orthodox Church in Timisoara. They flew Romanian flags with the coat of arms cut out in the middle and started singing “Desteapta-te, romane!” (“Wake up, Romanian!”), a song which was prohibited since 1947. The army started shooting again. Some died or obtained serious injuries, while others could run away. Members of the Securitate broke into hospitals and shot the injured. Then they piled up the bodies in the morgue and held the coroners as captives. The coroners were not allowed to do an autopsy, they had to establish the cause of death from external injuries.
Elena Ceausescu and some of Ceausescu’s advisors, having full control of the country now, brought forward a gruesome idea called “Operation Rose” (Operatiunea Trandafirul). The goal of this operation was to remove the bodies of those shot to death on December 17. Those officers who denied to prosecute the orders were threatened to be shot to death.
Militiamen brought a refrigerator truck from a meat factory based in Beregsau Mare (Berekszó) for the execution of the operation. On December 19, between 1:30 and 4:00 a.m. a doctor let them into the morgue. The militiamen closed the curtains and switched off the light before gathering about 47 bodies which then they packed into the truck.
After the truck was filled, it went to the military headquarters, where another driver took over, who drove the truck to the Cenusa (Ashes) Crematory in Bucharest. Three militiamen accompanied the truck by car. Members of the militia in Bucharest picked up the “packages”. The licence plate of the truck was exchanged at the border of the city. The militiamen coming from Timisoara were staying at a hotel until the workers at the crematorium finished their job.
The workers of the crematorium had to sign a declaration that they keep the operation a secret and received 2,000 Romanian lei each. The ashes of the dead filled up four bins. In the morning of December 20, 1989 the ashes were poured into a sewer near Popesti-Leordeni. At the crematorium no register of the dead was made and all existing documentary evidence had to be burnt. Rumour had to be spread around instead about the rioters fleeing the country. Nothing to be seen here, we did not shoot anybody… On his return to Timisoara, the driver of the refrigerator, who was not aware of delivering dead bodies was ordered to clean up the truck thoroughly.
In spite of the operation being secret, news arrived about it arrived to Hungary the next day already I remember it was one of my last days at school before the winter break. We were making Christmas decoration and playing Christmas music. Suddenly everything became silent and the speaker in the classroom started playing the Sekler anthem. Then the teachers informed us about what happened. Everybody was worried about not knowing where the Securitate took the Tőkés family and shocked about how Elena tried to make the bodies of the dead disappear.
Desperate relatives of the dead wanted to find the bodies. A lot of people believed that the corpses were secretly buried in the cemeteries nearby and exhumed freshly dug graves in a paupers’ cemetery in Timisoara. (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED!!) A shocking picture circulated in the newspapers and on television with the bodies of a woman and a baby in focus. However, it was revealed that some of these bodies were not victims of the militia as they showed marks of autopsy, but no gunshot wounds and a lot of them were already in an advanced state of decomposition. The woman on the picture actually died in cirrhosis of the liver and the baby suffered a crib death.
Source:
Á. Szenczi: Temesvár – A romániai forrradalom kitörésének valódi története (EurOnAir Productions Ltd: Berlin, 2013)
Radio Free Europe
Adevarul.ro
Iconic Photos
Cover: Wikimedia Commons
