ANUARUL ACADEMIC 2003-2004 - Facultatea de Teologie "Andrei ...

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand said: “What the communists have done toChristians surpasses any possibility of human understanding.” 36 Tortures had aphysical dimension, but also a psychological one. A clear distinction betweenphysical tortures and moral torture.Fr. Bejan calls the struggle of the inmates a struggle beyond the humansphere: “There is a struggle for biologic: cold, hunger, beatings – these are cruelrealities. Overcoming, accepting the evil as an expiatory necessity is almost asuperhuman struggle. I think only those that ask for perpetual grace from God canmanage.” 37 Thus, he states a kind of general principle that helped the Christianprisoners survive. Talking about the precarious conditions of detention, Fr. Bejanlabels the prison with the appellation, “hell”. And he explains, “It has been a hell.Three people sleeping in one bed. The people – skeletons, dirty, with a hard smellas corpses – dressed in repulsive patches, who would rush as hyenas to the plate offood” 38 . Overcrowding, dirt, starvation one very often meets reading thetestimonies of the Christian inmates.Overcrowding is also mentioned by Fr. Oancea. He says there were eightpeople in a cell for maximum two people 39 . The bad treatment within the prison isalso highlighted by Father Nicolae Steinhardt: “It is terribly cold, little food;wormy water…the room is overwhelming like in a horror movie; perpetual harshtreatment, each word of the guards being accompanied by blows and punches” 40 .Thus the guards insist on worsening the conditions by adding “kind” blows andpunches.Besides the general precarious conditions meant as tortures, there wereseveral added. For instance, isolation was highly practiced in the Romaniancommunist prisons. The inmate was locked up in a very humid room, with no placeto sit, and sometimes with water running on the floor. About this practice, Fr.Bejan says:suffered and many of them died in the communist prisons – go to, for example: Vasile Manea, 2004,Preoţi ortodocşi în închisorile comuniste, Alba Iulia, Editura Reîntregirea, 550p.36 Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, Middlebury, Living Sacrifice Books, Middlebury, 1967,p.37.37 Dimitrie Bejan, Bucuriile suferinţei. Viaţa Unui Preot Martir, Hârlau, Iaşi, 2002, p.73.38 Ibidem, p. 87.39 Ibidem, p. 71.40Nicolae Steinhardt, Jurnalul Fericirii, Editura Mănăstirii Rohia, Rohia, 2005, p.42.158