[4] Exposed to scorching heat and mosquito swarms in the summer and icy winds in the winter, the prisoners lived in brick-walled, 24 m2 pens that held up to 160 men each.

[7] According to testimony in 2013 by Andrei Muraru, then head of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, this "was an extermination camp; it was a repressive, excessive, inhuman and discretionary regime."

[1] Also according to Muraru, now an adviser to President Klaus Iohannis, the inmates were subjected to a "diabolic program of extermination through exhausting work, hunger and physical torture.

Among them were 30–40 men from Răstoaca who had attacked a convoy of Party members (which included Nicolae Ceaușescu) that had come to convince the locals to join in the collectivization effort.

[1] In 2018, teams of historians and archaeologists were searching for the remains of prisoners from the former Periprava labor camp who were either executed or died from a lack of medical care.

[16] Investigators have found skeletons of former prisoners who appeared to have been dumped naked into unmarked mass graves;[1] their clothing was retained by the administration of the camp.