However, in 2020, at the beginning of the most recent restoration of the building, a piece of sacking inscribed with the names of 16 of the political prisoners enclosed in brick was found in the masonry, and when this list partially overlapped with the list of names written from memory by former prisoner Mircea Nicolae,

in which 59 of those who rebuilt the Casino were mentioned, only then was the subject historically assumed and became official and public.
The Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile - IICCMER set the tone, starting the research in the pursuit of drawing up a report on this unprecedented episode of political detention in Romania.

This Casino is worked on by political prisoners of the year 1951 month 31 December. Led by Architect Joja Constantin. The stucco layers’ team led by Rusu A Ioan, Botoş Dumitru Arad County, Jercău Constantin, Ciscău Gheorghe, Coraş Ionel, Sava Nicolae, Popas Ioan, Vlădescu Ilie, Hosu Petre, Hosu Ghegor, Voicilă Nicolae, Anastasiu Ştefan, Gorbovan Gh., Bamer Fidel and Marton Iulius.

Meanwhile, in 2023, a second note (of the Saxon prisoner Marton Iulius, written in German) was found in the Casino's masonry, as well as other evidence of forced labor, such as prisoners' signatures on the plaster-covered beams or on the reverse of some plaster elements. Last year, the testimonies of workers at a 1986 restoration of the Casino were also recorded, when letters from political prisoners from the 1950s were found in bags hidden in the four globes in the corners of the roof. Unfortunately, according to these witnesses, they were melted in the pitch boiler. Of course, part of the same category of evidence, the Letter of the architect Cristodulo to his child cannot be omitted, a magnificent artifact that survived improbably, but providentially, the detention.

Beloved friend
whoever finds these words,
may God bless you.

I have been here as a political prisoner
since July 16, 1951, until now, May 1952,
working as a mason and carpenter.

I was sentenced to three years,
and since January 10, 1949,
my life has been in God's hands,
for I will not be free anytime soon.

But God is merciful.

With regards, Marton Iulius,
resident of Cisnădie, near Sibiu

In the days when this Casino reopens, so in the year of grace 2025, following the combined research so far, over 80 names of bricklayers have been identified that are part of the immortal history of the unparalleled architectural pearl on the Black Sea coast.

Ion Omescu, a poet who literally ended up in chains, described the mission at the Casino as follows:
Here we will build a cathedral/ with thin and warm saints of kindness/ of faded gold and equal marble/ and half of us will perish...

In the poem called, as if inevitably, Manole to the disciples, he called the building a cathedral, a sanctuary built from its own ruins,

thus consecrating the transcendent dimension of the destiny of a political prisoner. While they were building, they, the prisoners, were also creating, and while they were erecting walls, they were rising.

Of course, at that moment, the persecuted were not all imbued with the sacredness of their own destiny, rather, they were overwhelmed by exhaustion, hunger, uncertainty, exasperation... but using their last energies to rebuild the mythological edifice, very likely the hope of their own restoration was also nourished from this process.

Looking back, salvation really came from this combination of cathedral and wheel of fortune, because, first of all, all 100 survived the works and, after their completion, gradually, but soon enough, all of them were - some only for a while, as it turned out - freed. Which does not mean that they escaped the consequences, especially the imperishable scars of the soul.