10 July 2018

A ‘black ambulance’ in Bucharest

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:

[1] Writer attacked by mob who mistook her van for mythical 'black ambulance': http://www.euronews.com/2018/07/09/writer-attacked-by-mob-who-mistook-her-van-for-mythical-black-ambulance-





[6] Romanian writer assaulted in urban legend frenzy: https://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-writer-assaulted-urban-legend/

[7] Cele trei persoane suspectate că au agresat-o pe scriitoarea din Brăila care dormea într-o maşină asemănătoare ambulanţei, plasate sub control judiciar: https://www.news.ro/social/cele-trei-persoane-suspectate-ca-au-agresat-o-pe-scriitoarea-din-braila-care-dormea-intr-o-masina-asemanatoare-ambulantei-plasate-sub-control-judiciar-1922403506002018071418222322


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