Doctor Dumitru Uță – the merciful Samaritan

Of the 200 deserters from the front who were in Aiud, half had serious leg wounds. Their legs were bleeding. Some had lost their heels, others the flesh on the soles. The administration was no longer in a position to heal them. The brave doctor Dumitru Uță, who had “fallen” just as he was finishing his doctorate in Cluj, was allowed to go to Cluj to treat them.

He managed to take two suitcases of medicine with him. Cluj was generous. He began to treat the sick with great passion. I saw some of them myself. He anointed them with yellow ointments, bandaged them and examined them.

But despite all his care, healing was very slow. And after six months of treatment, some of them still hadn’t grown all the flesh on their soles. They had healed, but there was no flesh on their feet. I wondered. How could this be? Does orthodox medicine heal worse than homeopathy?

I’d seen a few cases of frostbite like this in my village. But they were completely cured by the women of the village after 5-6 weeks. I didn’t know exactly how. But I remember that the leg was wrapped in some kind of dough made from a mixture of wheat flour, maybe flax, beans, fat, herbs, all put together in the fire, and then they tied it up with rags. I don’t know the proportions of the elements in this composition. But the speed of the healing amazed me. And here I was witnessing these admirable efforts at healing, but with so little effect.

But the admirable Dr. Uță was not satisfied with this. He tried not to deprive the deserters, but all the prisoners, of their soul food: books. He tried to bring each one a book, two, according to his needs. He asked others, borrowed, gave back, always ran, but he gave something to everyone.

And no one was forgotten. He was very religious, and he looked especially for religious books, or books on religious subjects, which were now more in demand.

He would ask people at home to bring him such books. In the dungeon, with several thousand inmates, he was the man who took the greatest interest in each one.

He was tireless. There were a few priests in the prison, but we were not the merciful Samaritan who washed the wounds of those who had fallen among the “robbers” with oil and wine, but he, Doctor Dumitru Uță. And he did it all with a humble soul, as if it were his duty.

In all the years of my imprisonment, I have never met a man so devoted to the cause of others. Admittedly, later, in the isolation and control that was, it was not even possible. Dumitru Uță, that sublime legionnaire, remained a chosen model of devotion, sacrifice and love for others.

(Fr. Nicolae Grebenea – Memories from the Darkness)