One of the biggest public improvements promised the people by the Rumanian People's Democracy was to be the 50-mile-long, 200-ft.-wide Danube-Black Sea Canal, a project long dreamed of by Russian czars, British promoters and Bucharest businessmen. It would cut 170 miles off the route, allow deep-draught Red vessels to sail into Europe's heart, and reclaim by irrigation the vast, poor Dobruja plain through which it flowed.
Ground was broken in the spring of 1950; target date was 1955. Every four miles along the route, a camp sprang up to house 60,000 prisoners, redeeming themselves through "socialist labor," i.e., as slaves.
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