Adile Abbas-ogly recalls interrogations and Cell No. 38 in the Georgian NKVD

“All the way there I was tormented by one and the same thought: why was I being taken to the NKVD of Georgia, what had I done, why did they need me? I was not yet nineteen, I held no post, and I had never held any dangerous conversations.

I was shoved into cell number 38, and the door slammed shut behind me with a crash. From two bunks two women looked at me searchingly. A third bunk was waiting for me. As I learned later, both of my cellmates had been inside for more than two years and had endured unimaginable physical and moral torment. Yet they were still beautiful women. One was called Tina Ramishvili, and she was the wife of some influential man who had been declared an “enemy of the people”.

The other cellmate, Ekaterina Gegechkori, black-eyed, slight, with a kind face, turned out to be the sister-in-law of Beria’s wife. When I saw her she had not yet recovered from her latest beating and could barely move. Katya said that her husband had obtained permission to travel to Germany with his family for the sake of his daughter’s treatment, and three times they had taken the girl to some famous resort. In 1937 they were accused of espionage and arrested. That was how Katya came to be in cell No. 38, and Nikolai Gegechkori, I believe, was shot. Poor Katya often thought of her daughter when she looked at me, for the girl was only two years younger than I was. Sometimes she would press me to her breast and weep, glancing back at the spyhole in the door lest the guard should see. She taught me how to tap messages through the wall to the neighbouring cells…

On the night when I first crossed the threshold of cell No. 38, Ekaterina and Tina looked at me with sympathy. The door had barely closed behind me when the questions came tumbling out: where was I from, what had I been put away for, how old was I. But I, stunned by what I had seen and by a sleepless night, dropped onto the bunk as if felled and fell asleep.

I heard and saw a great deal in the cells and corridors of the NKVD. Inhuman screams from every side, women in my cell writhing in pain… Sometimes they would lead me to interrogation, and along the corridor towards me people would be dragged who could not walk on their own after the torture.

At one of my first interrogations Gurgenidze showed me a piece of paper:

“Here, read this. It is authorisation to apply measures of physical coercion to you. I can now skin you alive.”

I said nothing. Then he seized me by the hair (and my hair was long, below my waist), wound it round his hand and began dragging me after him about the office. I said nothing, though it hurt terribly. Then he began to bark orders:

“Stand up, sit down! Stand up, sit down! Hands up, hands down! Hands up, hands down! On your knees! Get up!”

I had to carry out these senseless commands until complete exhaustion, until my arms and legs swelled. But for some reason they did not dare to beat me; why, I do not know, I only know that Lilya Chikovani, who was two years older than I, was not beaten either.

They made up for it, however, by tormenting me in other ways. Worst of all was when others were beaten and I was made to watch their sufferings. I saw women beaten with a rubber whip; I saw half-naked men tortured and struck in the most sensitive places and forced to run on all fours. I saw many things that I cannot speak of and do not wish to recall. At such moments I forgot where I was and was ready to rush to help, but with a single blow to the back the executioners quickly brought me to my senses. The interrogator threatened to do the same to me if I went on denying everything. Often I was put in the punishment cell, which was in a semi-basement: a metre and a half by a metre and a half, a cement floor, a tiny hole in the door, a dim light. It quickly became stifling, and I would begin to thrash about like a beast in a cage. Once a day I was given 200 grams of black bread, hard as stone, and twice a day a mug of water. In the corner stood a slop bucket. One could suffocate from the stench.

But I never wept at interrogations, never appealed to the pity of my tormentors.”

“I Cannot Forget”, Adile Abbas-ogly