The Pigs' Slaughter Quotes

“Stoica was outside the room, and he got another order, a direct and whispered one: "The headquarters are lost, in the enemy's hands. Put an AKM clip in Ceauşescu and one in Elena”. "Then he left me. But the next day on 25th he accused me of treason. Because I didn’t execute his order. I didn’t do it and that was smart because a friend, an officer, had been ordered to open fire with the 14.5mm heavy machine gun on the room holding Ceauşescu if he heard gunshots from inside. ‘Flatten the building’, was the order” confessed Stoica in 1994 in front of the "1989 Commission”.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter

“But the reality is that nobody was shooting but us. So the commander came and gave that order and left. A few moments later everybody deserted the headquarters. Left behind were only me, Stoica and the two Ceauşescus. I didn’t want to kill them so I got out of the room. The place was deserted. Silent. Everybody was outside in defensive positions. There were phones ringing, but nobody to pick them up or to ask what to do? So I looked outside and saw two soldiers with their guns pointed towards the headquarters' doors and I realized what it was all about. After executing Ceauşescu we were to be shot for not defending the prisoners, or for deserting. And they would have said that Ceauşescu was killed by strangers that entered the headquarters during that confused battle.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter

“The story goes that Russian winter clothes, when introduced into a common latrine, start fermenting when in contact with urine and feces and where there is fermentation there is alcohol too. Nobody knows who it was who dared to boil and then distill this fermenting sewage but someone must have because cheap alcohol lovers got to drink it. "They probably produce it industrially”, my father once said, obviously full of admiration for the ingenuity of the people who made booze from clothes and shit.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter

“Defense Minister, General Militaru was definitely from the latter category. Iliescu wanted terrorists and he was about to provide them. The whole country wanted the terrorists caught and he wanted to provide that, too, he wanted to serve. Ceauşescu had stopped Militaru from serving eleven years before 1989. It was 1978 and Militaru was a three star general when he was pulled out of active duty and given a position in management in the Construction Industry Ministry - luckily for him. He was lucky. Ceauşescu feared the Russians. Militaru’s name came out in the Raven’s file as a GRU agent. The GRU was the secret service of the Red Army, and this was the reason why Ceauşescu took the Second Army from Militaru’s command and gave him that petty job in the construction industry. He would have been killed if Ceauşescu didn’t fear the Soviet backlash, that’s for sure. Twenty years after 1989 I see the events more clearly. But on that night I was young and stupid, and open to being manipulated like the other 23 million Romanians.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter

“Later that day cousin Ioan would call us to tell us in a quite self-satisfied voice that he knew one of those people. It was the assassin-looking guy always standing beside Iliescu and his name was Dan Iosif. After the Revolution it was said that he was the one in the crowd who shouted “Down with Ceauşescu” and that he was among the first to enter the Central Committee building. People would go on to say that it was there he made his first million, looting Ceauşescu’s foreign currency coffers.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter

“Brucan had been in Moscow earlier that year, not that we, the people, were aware of that, getting orders to organise the Ceauşescus' fall.”
― Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter