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| Credit: Euronews |
Euronews (9 July 2018)
carries a peculiar article about a woman sleeping overnight in a van in Bucharest
attacked by a mob which suspected she was involved in the abduction of children
[1]. Apparently they mistook the vehicle
she was sleeping in for a mythical ‘black ambulance’. The black ambulance is an urban legend in
parts of Central and Eastern Europe, seen as a sinister means whereby organ
harvesters ply their grisly trade abducting children and murdering them for
their blood and body parts.
According to the Euronews report, such stories originated in Poland and were
promoted both to help instil hatred of the West and to help cover up abductions
by the secret police. However, an
article on Polish urban legends notes that in the 1960s the vehicle was a
Soviet Volga, painted black, and the alleged market was the Soviet Union
(presumably symbolising blood-sucking Russia) rather than the West [2]. The legend travelled to Czechoslovakia, where
the car became a black ambulance. In
both Poland and Czechoslovakia the fear was alive in the 1980s and ‘90s [1, 2,
3, 4]; it travelled even further, to Romania, where it clearly still exists.
In the present case, Romanian writer
Doina Popescu-Brăila had hit on the idea of converting an old ambulance in
order to travel round on a book tour as cheaply as possible. She lives and sleeps in it and uses it to
sell her work. Its purpose is
unambiguously proclaimed by a sign on the side which says: ‘Ambulance for
literature’ (Ambulanţă pentru literatură), a rather nice idea.
On 4 July she parked up for the night
near Bucharest’s main railway station but just before midnight a hostile crowd
gathered, believing the ambulance was there for the abduction of children. Initiated by several ‘hysterical’ women, the
incident snowballed as more people arrived.
Later Popescu-Brăila gave an interview to Euronews in which she said that the crowd formed quickly, trapping
her, and seemed organised. Social media
posts publicised what was happening, drawing still more participants. Even if the numbers are an overestimate it
must have been a terrifying experience for her, which included physical
assault:
‘“They started filming me, they got into
the ambulance and someone put out a cigarette on my cheek”, the writer told
Euronews. “They started going through my things, they saw the caravan toilet
chemicals and believed it might be blood or a medical substance of sorts. I
showed them my books and they got so scared as if I was showing them voodoo
dolls. When the police got to the scene, there were close to 500-600 people
from the surrounding neighbourhood encircling the van. A woman even stole the
ambulance number plates to help fuel the general hysteria.”’ [1]
A commentator puts the figure at 100,
which may also be a back-of-a-fag-packet estimate but is more plausible
[5]. Popescu-Brăila herself rang the
police, who arrested three people, a man and two women [1, 6, 7] (the Romania Insider report indicates five men
were directly involved in the assault [6]).
Demonstrators then gathered at the police station, angry that
Popescu-Brăila had not herself been arrested.
She was given medical treatment at the police station but refused to go
to hospital because she feared for her safety there. She was upset at the lack of support from
fellow authors and at the way the business was treated by a sensationalist
media in search of ratings:
‘“I am a writer, not an organ
trafficker. I am shocked to see no other writer or intellectual taking a stance
against this incident. I am even more surprised by how the entire thing was
depicted on TV, with some news shows, in their quest for ratings, talking about
the “black ambulance” as if it were a real thing not a bogus story”, Mrs
Popescu Brăila decried the
event.’ [1]
She had begun the project in 2016 and
this was the first time she had run into trouble. Despite her ordeal she vowed to continue her
tour. On Facebook, the police and
Ministry for Internal Affairs urged calm and rational behaviour, and requested
that individuals refrain from posting fake stories about the non-existent black
ambulance [1, 6].
A paper presented by Petr Janácek at the
thirtieth Perspectives On Contemporary Legend Conference, at Göttingen,
Germany, in 2012, was titled ‘The Black Volga Revisited: Child Abduction
Legends and Rumours in Countries of the Eastern Bloc’, and he draws attention
to the complex nature of the theme [4].
While prevalent in various countries previously within the Soviet orbit,
such rumours were not confined to them he said, having appeared in places as
far apart as Italy, Brazil and Nigeria.
He notes that these stories began
circulating in the 1930s, with a generic black Soviet car as the basis. They have constituted a stable and
long-lasting narrative with social, economic and political implications, for
example attitudes to state-run health services and xenophobia towards Jews,
Germans and Arabs, all of whom at various times were accused of driving black
vehicles in pursuit of children. He
considers racism the most common driver nowadays, but this would hardly cover
Popescu-Brăila’s dreadful encounter.
In fact the whole affair is hard to
credit, unless the entire crowd possessed zero literacy skills and could not
read the sign on the side of the ambulance (which would have been ironic given
their target). The only common feature
between the author and the alleged organ harvesters is the ambulance, but here
it is blue and white, not black, and has its function displayed on the side as
well as her name in very large letters.
This is hardly the behaviour one would expect from a murderer hoping to
work undetected.
Such panics are symptomatic of social
malaise, as Janácek indicated in his talk, but why this urban legend has
persisted is a mystery, as is why Popescu-Brăila suddenly became a target after two years
on the road without any problems.
It is also curious that it occurred in the middle of Buchaest rather
than in a rural area, where superstitions might persist longer than in an urban
environment. Perhaps there was an
anti-intellectual element, dislike of an independent woman travelling alone, or
a group of poorly educated and bored individuals seeking a licence to vent
their frustrations on someone seen as an eccentric outsider.
Sources:
Update 25 November 2023:
The black ambulance as a sinister concept
is back in the news, though its form and colour are flexible. On 13 August 2023 an article by George-Andrei
Cristescu on the Romanian-language website Adevarul.ro asked if there was ‘A
new "Black Ambulance" case in Ilfov?’
Ilfov is the county surrounding Bucharest. According to Cristescu, a message on several
Facebook pages reported that two individuals in a black car were accosting teenage girls, in Cristescu’s opinion probably to kidnap them in
order to traffick their organs, which he considered an established campaign [1].
At 10 am on 12 August in Fermei street, in
the village of Săftica, a couple of men in a black car tried to accost two
14-year-old girls. One of the girls
screamed and the individuals fled. The
poster apparently saw this happen as the message continues that from the window
it was not possible to see many details, though one perpetrator was described
as having dark hair and a beard.
The post adds the girls were scared by the
episode and did not want to leave the house, and concludes with an appeal to
people to share the warning, and for the authorities to take action. Police were said to be conducting checks of
CCTV footage, but I’ve not seen any follow-ups so it seems likely the story
fizzled out. The two men may well have
been sex pests trying to chat up the girls, rather than intent on abducting
them, their black vehicle evoking the sinister black ambulance and stirring up
anxiety.
The article has a link to a 27 March 2019
article by Madalina Spulber on the same website describing how Romanians were
abused in Paris after being falsely accused of attempting to steal children,
but this time in a white van [2]. The
episode has the hallmarks of social hysteria victimising an unpopular
outgroup. Social media posts warned
parents that a white van was travelling between the Parisian suburbs of
Nanterre and Colombes to kidnap children and young women for the purposes of
drug trafficking, organ harvesting and prostitution networks. The panic was sparked by an incident when a
girl was winked at and followed briefly by a man in a car, near which by chance
was a white van.
As a consequence, racist attacks were
conducted by vigilantes who felt the police were not doing their job. Romanians were targeted, especially Roma or
if driving vans registered in Romania, and even more so if the van was
white. The white van stories bled into a
wider anti-Romanian prejudice. On 16
March, twenty people from Colombes attacked two Romanian men who were pulled
out of a white van and assaulted. They
escaped and ran into a building nearby where they called the police. Meanwhile the mob set fire to their vehicle,
then attacked the police and firefighters.
The men were taken to hospital and twenty people were arrested for
assault.
Police tried to cool the situation, using
Twitter to urge people not to spread false information that incited violence,
and labelling the rumours ‘fake news’.
Their efforts were to no avail, despite them emphasising there were no
credible reports of abductions, with further accounts surfacing of would-be
kidnappers operating in the Paris region.
There was pushback by Romanian pressure groups who called for the Roma
to be defended by the community, pointing out this wave of hostility was the
latest manifestation of prejudice, including the myth of child stealing,
stretching back centuries, and was similar to expressions of French xenophobia
towards other minority groups.
The article goes on to link the French
outbreak with the black ambulance:
‘In Romania, the equivalent of this story
would be the myth of the "Black Ambulance", a legend that has
circulated in Eastern Europe since the 60s and 70s, with variations depending
on the country, such as the "Black Volga", the "Black
Mercedes", in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belarus, Hungary, the list
goes on. On board these "evil" vehicles, driven by Jews, Satanists,
priests, vampires and other diabolical creatures, children were kidnapped as
their blood was needed by rich capitalists from the West or Arabs suffering
from leukaemia.’
It provides further examples of incidents
in Romania as well as in France, Belgium and Germany. In these examples, white vans seem to have
taken over from black ambulances, presumably because they are ubiquitous and therefore
better suited to the rumour mill as it is more plausible to claim a white van
is prowling with bad intent than to say the same of a distinctive black vehicle (and white van drivers already come with negative stereotypes). The underlying mechanisms are the same,
however.
The article concludes that where urban
legends propelled by racist fake news and circulated on social media are
concerned, ‘in the case of the intellectually and psychologically vulnerable
public, they are impervious to rational arguments.’ In other words, you can’t convince idiots
they are wrong. The black ambulance may
mutate, but it is unlikely to go away.
Sources:
[1] George-Andrei Cristescu. Un nou caz
„Ambulanța neagră” în Ilfov?: https://adevarul.ro/stiri-interne/evenimente/un-nou-caz-ambulanta-neagra-in-ilfov-2291651.html?utm_source=ground.news&utm_medium=referral#google_vignette
[2] Madalina Spulber. „Ambulanţa neagră“,
varianta franceză. Români bătuţi după ce au fost acuzaţi că fură copii în
periferiile Parisului: https://adevarul.ro/stiri-externe/europa/ambulanta-neagra-varianta-franceza-romani-1933410.html
