Phantom Cemetery on the outskirts of Bucharest: 5,000 children buried in mass graves in Pipera

19 May 2019

More than 5,000 unidentified children were buried in about 100 mass graves in two cemeteries, said to be of the poor and children, in Pipera and Frumu?ani. It all happened between 1997 and 2000. On most of the crosses, now we, from Berton, do not write anything. It looks like a ghost cemetery. But he hides the pain of a mother whose child was lost in one of these common pits, and now she can't find it. The woman filed a complaint against those who brought her child here and received a criminal fine for keeping silent…

On 21.08.2014 at the headquarters of the Inspector General of Police was filed a complaint registered at number 158778. Through this document, Angela Tudorache, nurse at a hospital in Bucharest, asked the bodies authorized to search for the body of her child, who died in 1997 in The Municipal Hospital and buried, with "documents that can no longer be found", in one of the common graves in the children's cemetery in Pipera. The woman's story is hallucinatory and terrifying at the same time.

"I gave birth to Gabriel, my first child, in 1997 and they came two days later to tell me that he had died. I went crazy with pain. Then they put a document in front of me in which I handed over the child's body, to be buried by I don't know who. They said that, not being baptized, he needed a special job, which they would take care of. I signed, but I tell you I didn't know what I was signing at the time. Then I asked to be shown my child, and they took me to the morgue. Gabriel was in a refrigerator, cut in half, without organs. An autopsy had been performed. I asked him to let me take him and take care of him, to be sewn, dressed and put in a coffin. They did not leave me, they reminded me that I signed the paper and that it will be buried, they said then, by the Patriarchate "

SECRETS OF GOVERNORS. The ghost cemetery on the outskirts of Bucharest: 5,000 children buried in mass graves in Pipera

"I've been judging them for almost 10 years"

A year later, in 1998, Angela went to the Patriarchate to find out where her child was buried. "The secretary there told me in amazement that the Patriarchate does not deal with such a thing. He got on the phone and called the Municipal Hospital for clarification. Only in this way did the people from the hospital refuse to tell me that the boy was put in the children's cemetery in Pipera, in a common grave, at position 7. I went there crying. Why didn't they give me the child to bury him, why did they put him in a common grave, where there are still 40 children? ”, Angela Tudorache continued her confession.

In the cemetery, however, he was surprised to find that the name Tudorache appears on the tablets of two adjacent crosses, along with the names of several dozen other children. There were about 100 children in the two graves, all of whom died in 1997. Angela then decided to erect two funerary monuments named Gabriel Tudorache, on both sides where she found the plaques, and to sue the hospital for what she did to him.

"I asked for my child's file with the observation sheets and all the documentation related to the illness and death. I have been on trial with them for almost 10 years and I have not been able to find the documents proving the cause of my son's death and the place where he is buried. I received the answer that the archives were flooded twice and were irretrievably damaged. Why did they put me in the hospital to sign that document that I am giving up the child's body and who are they, it has not been clarified yet? I went to the PGI and filed a complaint to find out where they hid my child's body, so that I could light a candle at his head ", Angela Tudorache told us through tears.

How is it possible that in Romania there are, after 1990, common pits for children, what is their story and who put them there?

Between 20 and 50 children put in a pit

The space we are talking about is in the Pipera parish cemetery, where about 100 crosses, perfectly aligned, have no name on them. It's a kind of ghost cemetery. Only on one of the crosses, there is a plaque with 37 names written on it. Strangely, these names are not accompanied by first names: Nanu, Iacob, ?iriac, Ionescu, Mogo?, Voicu…

Apart from this blackboard, everywhere only white, unwritten crosses, like ghosts, as far as the eye can see! What is this sinister?

We can solve this riddle with the help of photos of the same location, taken in 2007. At that time, the crosses were made of wood and each had a board on which were written the names of the deceased summed up here - no first name - 30, 40 or 50 -a common pit. All the children! Yes, about 5,000 children are buried here in 100 mass graves.

"Several thousand children are buried on this strip. Deep pits were dug and buried there. I myself held the services of these poor people brought from different hospitals and homes, most of them under one year old. The records are with the burial association. There was no one to take care of the Christian burial of those children, "It was a Christian gesture," said the parish priest of Pipera, Father Mihai Bogdan.

Interestingly, the vast majority of children who passed through the pit of common graves died in 1997. It should be noted that in 1997, according to statistics, 5,209 children died across the country. That would mean that at least 80% of them were brought to Pipera.

There is a similar cemetery in Frumu?ani

The association that took care of the children put in common graves is called the Brotherhood, and Pipera is not the only place where the association committed such "Christian" gestures. In Frumu?ani, the Brotherhood buried, also in 1997, approximately 250 unidentified children in 11 mass graves. In 2002, an investigation was carried out by the General Inspectorate of Police regarding the common pits in Frumu?ani. The policemen took all the records of the Fr??ia association, both those from Frumu?ani and those from Pipera, then proposed not to start the criminal investigation. Immediately after the investigation, all the crosses of the common pits in Frumu?ani disappeared, transforming the location into a pit field. With this, the case of the ghost cemeteries has been officially closed!

"We had all the files for those taken there, everything is legal. We did what we did with the help of the Romanian Patriarchate, the owner of the lands on which the cemeteries are located, respectively with PS Teofan (archbishop of Bucharest at that time -nr). He himself put us in touch with the Carol Davila School of Medicine, from where we picked up 200 bodies. I also took from kindergartens, hospitals, orphanages and other places. We consider it Christian to have a grave and a funeral service each, so we did what we did. In Pipera, we received a plot of land to bury children in hospitals, born and abandoned, or in orphanages in Bucharest or in the country. Of course, we didn't have the money to make holes for each one, we also added two or three. But each had at least one cloth to wrap himself in, if not a coffin. The financial effort is quite great, luckily the Patriarchate helped us. This is the situation and we have nothing to hide. In 2002, all the documents, respectively the approvals from the Patriarchate and the registers, were collected by the General Inspectorate of Police. I don't know anything since then ", said Costel Carabelea, the head of the Fr??ia association.

On top of that, the Patriarchate gave the land, and the Fr??ia association committed the Christian gesture of putting 50 children each, with an identity that can no longer be verified, in mass graves. Almost all in 1997. It is the strangest ghost cemetery in Romania.

Criminal fine for looking for her child

Tudorache

Angela Tudorache tried to find out the truth about her child from the archives of the Capital City Hall. It was not a bad idea, but he received the answer that the archives were flooded twice and the documents could not be recovered. "You can't have a fantastic bad luck and have two floods in the archive. I still hope that an archive, as everyone lied and still lies, exists partially, even damaged, I still hope that someone will give them a space and move that part somewhere. And I even asked them, I told them I was staying for two months of my life and looking for page by page, but they said I was not allowed to do that. I did not receive any answer to my problem, only a criminal fine of 100 lei, ie court costs that I had to bear. I filed the complaint with the IGPR for about a year and a half and I did not receive anything. I know that new crosses have appeared in the Pipera cemetery in the meantime. I'm really curious if there's even a slight trace of a connection between my child and other children, and if he, my child, exists in one of the two common pits. … Like dogs… ”

We would say that they are lined up like soldiers of no one who patiently waits for their justice.

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