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

“All the biblical descriptions of hell and the pains of Dante’s Inferno arenothing in comparison with the tortures in communist prisons…Other thingssimply can not be told. My heart would fail if I should tell them again andagain. They are too terrible and obscene to put them in writing” 56 .According to Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, a general image of the suffering inthe Romanian communist prisons is described as such:“I have seen Christians in communist prisons with 50 pounds of chains ontheir feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salthad been forced, being kept afterwards without water, starving, whipped,suffering from cold, and praying with fervour for the communists. This ishumanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ, which was shed into ourhearts” 57 .Although he presents several of the tortures endured by the Christianinmates, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand acknowledges that there are much more andit would be impossible for him to tell all of them: “If I were to continue to tell allthe horrors of the communists and all the self – sacrifices of Christians; I wouldnever finish”.Describing the bad treatment he was applied by the guards, Pastor RichardWurmbrand says:“The tortures and brutality continued without interruption. When I lost myconsciousness or became too dazed to give the torturers any further hopes ofconfessions, I would be returned to my cell. There I would lie, unattended andhalf dead, to regain a little strength so they could work on me again. Manydied at this stage, but somehow my strength, always managed to come back.In the ensuing years, in several different prisons, they broke four vertebrae inmy back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. Theyburned and cut eighteen holes in my body” 58 .Beatings were the most common way of persecuting the Christian inmates inprisons. After having killed one of the Christian inmates, the torturer threatened theChristian inmates:“In the same way I will kill all of you confessing they are Christians, and ironguardists as I will transform you into what I wish” 59 . .56 R. Wurmbrand, op. cit., p. 39.57 Ibidem.58 Ibidem, p. 41.59 D. Bordeianu, op. cit., p. 208.162