However, political prisoners began to appear: peasants from the surrounding Maramureș region who refused to hand over food quotas to the state, and local youth who had been active in the Iron Guardist Frățiile de Cruce associations.

[3] From the latter category, among the earliest arrivals were eighteen pupils from Dragoș Vodă High School, accused of demonstrating against the new communist regime; they were incarcerated in August 1948 and kept until May 1949,[4] after which they were tried in Cluj and sent to prisons in Pitești, Gherla, and Târgșor, or to the Danube–Black Sea Canal.

On May 26, the group of Romanian Greek-Catholic bishops and priests arrested in October 1948, previously held at Dragoslavele and Căldărușani Monastery, arrived.

The rest were there on orders from the Interior Ministry or the Securitate; no charges were filed, and their status was that of temporary pre-trial arrest.

They were buried at night by common criminals in the city cemetery or on the hospital grounds in graves that remain anonymous.

[9] The prisoners were under constant watch, each cell visited every ten minutes, day and night; guards wore noiseless shoes so their approach would not be heard.

Prisoners would be rousted from bed with insults and blows, the entire guard corps carrying out a minute search.

Prisoners performed menial tasks: peeling potatoes, washing clothes, chopping wood, sweeping.

Memoirists agree that the greatest torture at Sighet was hunger, which began to grip them days after arrival.

Food included bread, boiled corn flour, beans, cabbage with occasional bits of meat and, for most of the first three years as a main meal, pearl barley.

However, the warden and guards habitually stole these two items, as well as sour cream, smoked bones and vegetables.

A report noted that the warden would daily bring home three or four buckets full of food for his pigs.

The most common diseases were rapid weight loss, ulcers and liver, heart, kidney problems.

Circulation was restricted on the streets around the prison: from some distance away, signs warned people away, and the sidewalk was patrolled by armed guards.

[4] In the aftermath of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, that saw the dismantlement of the communist regime, poet Ana Blandiana presented in January 1993 to the Council of Europe a project to transform the former prison into a museum, called the "Memorial to the Victims of Communism and Resistance."

The larger courtyard features the statuary group called "Sacrifice Parade," made by the sculptor Aurel Vlad [ro].