Franț Țandără

Franț Țandără (22 February 1930, Izbiceni, Olt County – 2 May 2004, Giurgiu ) was a Romanian communist and self-described torturer.

Țandără was born into a poor and dysfunctional family. Abandoned by both parents, he became an army ward at age 11. After the end of World War II he led a vagrant life, before becoming in 1946 a sympathizer of the Romanian Communist Party in Giurgiu. He was released early, upon receiving a presidential pardon he said was signed by writer Mihail Sadoveanu (the nominal head of state in early 1958). After his release he worked as a carpenter and a beekeeper. stating, "I hated the bourgeoisie at the maximum. I wanted to kill them all". His confessions, where he asked to be judged by a tribunal of his victims, are the subject of the 1999 book The Road to Damascus: Confession of a former torturer by Doina Jela. He died in 2004 in Giurgiu, without ever having faced prosecution for the crimes he confessed to. The story was revisited in a play staged in 2022 at Teatrul Dramaturgilor Români in Bucharest, with Răzvan Vasilescu as Țandără and Maia Morgenstern as Jela.