“At Securitate, Father Arsenios a pillar of light for the tormented and desperate souls”

In the morning we were handcuffed and taken to Brașov, to the Securitate, to the villa “Popovici” and they put us in a room where there was a terrible noise. There was a wardrobe and a man opened the door and put me in this wardrobe and I felt like I was suffocating. They pulled me out, cursing and beating me. They put me in a small cell, so small you could only stand up, where there was a high voltage light that blinded you, there was also damp, dirt and it smelled of urine.

I was kept there for, I think, four days with a piece of bread. When they took me out, I was stunned with exhaustion. They took me up a few steps and into a room, locked the door after taking my boot laces and belt. After a while three men came in with rubber batons. I knew one of them to be Ionescu Brăila from Făgăraș. In this room there were two desks facing each other. Brăila in front of me. He took out a sheet of paper, handed it to me and I read it. There were twelve points that he wanted me to confirm. Twelve points. As I read them, I realised that answering in this way was a heavy and certain sentence. I said I would not answer such false accusations. He hit me on the head with his cane and then everywhere he could. He hit me with all his might. I didn’t want to admit anything and the beating started again. […] That’s how they kept it going, I think, for about two weeks.

These beasts wanted us to admit that we had organised the legionary movement and legionary aid around Făgăraș and in Rupea. I had never been to Rupea, and I didn’t want to put a noose around my neck. Beating and starvation were their arguments. At one point the head of the Securitate, Tomescu, appeared and told me that if I didn’t confess, “we would change the sheet”. And they did. The next day they tied my hands with a woollen braid and put me on the “spindle”. They stuck an iron bar between my elbows, below my knees, and made me walk like a whirlwind, barefoot and bare-bottomed. They kicked my soles, my ass and my testicles. After I had almost fainted, they threw me on the floor and poured a bucket of water over my head. They ordered me to write. I showed them my hands. My fingers were so swollen that I couldn’t hold the cigarette butt, and I told Braila to write. They smelled of alcohol because they were all drunk. He read and I said I wouldn’t sign. The batons went straight to my head, and then they burst the eardrum in my right ear. I was immediately deaf and dizzy. They took me to the cell, and the next day to the interrogation, with batons, “with the spindle”, with bargaining and beatings, every two days. With great difficulty I answered six questions and reluctantly signed my name. They took my boots off and took me to a room in the cellar, with a bed in the corner, where I sat, dirty and bloody. There were many people there. […]

From a corner at the back of the room I saw someone dressed in a white reverend get up and come to my side. I was very surprised because I didn’t know that Father Arsenios Boca had also been arrested and was being investigated. I had known Father Arsenios for many years and we were friends. This friendship lasted until his death. He didn’t ask me anything because he knew I was against communism. Father Arsenios was taken to the investigation in the evening and came back in the morning. He took me from the edge of the bed, made room for me next to him and washed and dressed me. He was very cheerful and always had a satisfied smile on his lips. Oh, Father Arsenios! You have healed the wounds of one who fell among robbers! At the Securitate, Father Arsenios was a pillar of light for the tormented and desperate souls, desperate and despairing at the situation in which the whole country had fallen into the hands of the beasts…

I stayed there until I recovered, I think for two weeks, and from there I went to the prison in Brașov. I left Father Arsenios there. Later, after I was released, I heard that they had taken him to the Canal. I saw him a few years later when he was working at the Maicilor factory in Bucharest. I brought him some stainless steel and he worked on my Gospel window, which can be seen in the church in Galați.

(Testimony of the priest Ioan Comșa in Galați – Făgăraș. Meeting place of two blessed Romanian lands, edited by Elena Manta, Lux Libris Publishing House, Brașov, 2010)