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

It is the one who needs to be fed by force!` Usually, after the beginning of thestrike, the doctor showed up. Knowing Muresanu, Doctor Ranca asked him:`What’s up Muresanu? Do you feel like eating eggs and milk? (this was themenu for forced feeding)” 52 .Another case presents a starved engineer who went on a strike: “Anotherone, I can not remember his name, an engineer, on the third day of forced feeding,seeing the eggs and the cheese, rushed avidly saying: `Let me have them as theyare!`” 53 . And Fr. Oancea mentions that the Christian inmate ate the eggs togetherwith the shell.So far we have seen another kind of torture: depriving people of food andwater. The consequence was in most cases madness. However, this deprivation wasmany times counterbalanced by abundance of food. It was not a sign of kindness,compassion or mercy, but another form of torture. Fr. Steinhardt relates: “Hot pearlbarley swallowed all in one breath, followed immediately by a large mug filledwith cold water; eating enormous quantities of food, followed by twenty four hoursspent in an overcrowded cell without bucket and with the door locked” 54 .All the tortures mentioned so far were doubled by others conceived by thehuman mind. Generally, the aim of tortures was to form a different personality, tofill old patterns of thoughts with opposite meanings. This process is known as “reeducation”.Talking about other kinds of tortures, Fr. Steinhardt mentions:“Climbing up the walls using one’s own nails;Endless genuflexions causing fainting;Eating faeces (the one eating his own, is considered privileged);Sleeping hours reduced to four hours, from 00:00 to 04:00, and these interruptedevery fifteen minutes;The obligation to stand from 04:00 to 12:00 for two months” 55 .This last quotation takes us to a new aspect of the physical torture, the oneconcerning the beatings endured by the Christian inmates. After having mentionedsome of the tortures applied to the Christian inmates, Pastor Richard Wurmbrandcomments:52 Ibidem.53 Ibidem.54 N. Steinhardt, op. cit., p. 99.55 Ibidem.161