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

that they saw the corpses, but they also got the feeling that the same was going tohappen to all of them. Of course, the guards were conscientious in pointing out thispossibility to them. According to Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, brainwashing wasalso forced on the Christian inmates:“For years we had to sit for seventeen hours a day hearing:Communism is good!Communism is good!Communism is good!Communism is good!Christianity is stupid!Christianity is stupid!Christianity is stupid!Give up!Give up!Give up!Give up!For seventeen hours a day – for days, weeks and months” 85 .Faced with this terrible process, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand admits that onlylove for Jesus the Saviour helped him to resist brainwashing. Because of too muchexternal pressure, the relationships between cellmates were disturbed; then thetorture was greater when suspicion and distrust were dominating in one cell:“The hatred is boiling, the denunciation feels as if at home, envy settled itsthrone here…Suspicion and distrust devastate everything. Not only that peopledo not talk to each other, but they even stopped addressing offensive words toeach other…Each sick person is totally convinced that the others are simplypretending…An envious, spying look descends over every mess kettle…Thereare endless charges of stealing” 86 .Referring to the same feeling among cellmates, Dimitrie Bordeianu relates:”We were afraid of each other like wild beasts, because during the tortures ourgestures, our look, and generally the entire countenance were studied. We wereexchanging words among ourselves as if we were strangers that had never met.So we were suspecting each other. Therefore, we were talking only about trivialthings: about meal, air, room service, and sleeping. What had previously unitedus, now it disappeared completely” 87 .85 R. Wurmbrand, op. cit., p. 40-41.86 N. Steinhardt, op. cit., p. 105.87 D. Bordeianu, op. cit., p. 281.169