“Brother Nicholas, look at me. My teeth have been pulled out one by one, my fingernails have been pulled out – and all because I have not spoken a word of blasphemy against our Lord.”

Everything that a sick mind could imagine was used to bring to its knees the unyielding spirit of those who rejected the communist order, and especially those who believed in God. Every scrap of information was used to obtain more information, and every contradiction was punished with a vicious beating.

Prisoners were forced to denounce and condemn their parents for bringing them up with high moral values and faith in God. People were tortured for not standing up straight, for not speaking respectfully to their ‘re-educators’ or for not sleeping in a ‘disciplined’ position. [Particular cruelty was used against those who showed or were known to have a strong faith in Christ. The torturers were angry at not being able to fully control the lives and minds of these people who, thanks to their faith in God, seemed to be able to escape from reality into that which their torturers could neither face nor understand.

One of the victims exposed to all this horror was Father Roman Braga, whom I later met in the United States. As a young theology graduate, he was struggling to decide which path to take in life. On the one hand, he was attracted to many worldly things, but on the other, he felt a strong call to the priesthood. He hated the atheistic nature of the communist state and hoped that it would be a short-lived phase in the life of the Romanian people. He was arrested for openly opposing the regime. After his trial, he was sent to Pitești prison for ‘re-education’ and slowly became involved in the process. Long periods of torture and suffering followed.

I had the privilege of meeting him on several occasions at the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, where he is a monk and priest. Our conversations were long and deeply moving.

On a warm September afternoon in 1983, we sat in the monastery library and he recounted many of his sufferings. After all I had seen and heard, I didn’t think I could be moved by anything else, but the story told by this priest with a warm, calm, pure tone, whose only aim in life was and is to serve God, shook me again. I could understand why the American journalist who had come to interview him was completely unable to understand and believe his story and never published anything as a result.

– As a seminarian, Father, and as a man who believes deeply in God, were you treated differently from others? I asked him.

– In a way, yes. They did everything they could to break my faith in God and in Jesus.

Father Braga told me how the prisoners stripped one of the other prisoners naked in front of him and forced him to kneel down by the other unfortunate man’s genitals, make the sign of the cross and kiss the man’s genitalia, saying that it was Jesus. The torturers also invented a new version of the Lord’s Prayer that was so vulgar and disgusting that it would be sacrilegious for me to repeat it here.

– But, Father, I asked myself, looking at this priest who now lives in peace and good reconciliation with God and the world, what would have happened if you had not submitted to these criminals?

– Brother Nicholas, look at me. My teeth were being pulled out one by one, my nails were being pulled out, all because I had not uttered a word of blasphemy against our Lord. I couldn’t stand it any longer. They beat me and tortured me for days. I wanted to accuse God to get rid of this torment, but whenever I opened my mouth to say those words, they just wouldn’t come out. It was beyond human power.

I remember once when I was brutally beaten and could not get a word out. I will never forget that at that moment, Țurcanu calmly and indifferently told me that he cared little for my beliefs or ideas; all he really wanted was to compromise me. That, after all, is the true nature of communism: to find a weak point and compromise people.

– The whole process began with an unbelievable shock designed to scare you to death. Out of the blue, after having befriended you and treated you kindly, a gang of a few “re-educated” people beat you savagely and demanded that you confess everything. At the same time, for months we were given a drug in our food which often made us remember things we had forgotten. They also made us sit on the bedpost for hours, all day long, with our backs straight and our palms on our knees. That’s what they called the reflection position. Of course, some specialists had trained them in this posture, and the result was that, strangely enough, you remembered almost everything from the age of three or four. Once they had squeezed the last confession out of you, they would corroborate everything as they saw fit and torture you for further confessions.

– It was hell, brother,” muttered Father Braga. I didn’t know what a human being was until then. I saw people whom I thought were strong and whom I respected very much, fall inexpressibly easily when confronted with suffering, but I also saw those who were humble and withdrawn, who seemed as if they would never last, turn out to be stronger than anyone could have imagined. I have seen people with the faces of saints fall into hell, and seemingly weak people rise as martyrs with great faith and strength. You see, Brother Nicholas, we do not know what lies behind a façade, behind a polite smiling face, or behind a frowning, scowling one, until they have gone through the fiery ordeal.

– And do you think they have changed the deep, inner personality of those subjected to this action? I asked anxiously.

– Oh, no, the gentle priest of Ellwood City reassured me. They succeeded in killing a few and in making forty other prisoners, I remember, lose their minds, prisoners who never recovered their sanity, but they failed to change human nature. You see, this is where the Communists are wrong. They deny God and believe that man is just an animal, a bag of bones and reflexes that can be easily shortened and reprogrammed. But we are made by God in His image and likeness. God dwells in each one of us. What we experienced in Pitești and in several other Romanian prisons is the work of Satan. For some reason, God has given Satan freedom so that we cannot defeat him alone. By giving him time and freedom, Satan can do a lot of damage, and he is actually working diligently to lead us away from God. We must bind ourselves to God, Brother Nicholas. That is our only hope. […]

Father Braga’s last comment was:

– As true Christians we must forgive those who have wronged us, but as human beings we must investigate the incident and those involved in order to better understand ourselves and to avoid such heinous acts in the future, anywhere in the world.

(Nicholas Dima – Journey to Freedom. Encountering Destiny, Romanian Cultural Foundation Publishing House, Bucharest, 1993, pp. 84-88)