Doctor Uță’s selfless service in the communist prisons

The love and devotion of Doctor Uță in the Alba Iulia prison

At the beginning of September 1944, the Romanian and Soviet armies reached Sibiu and Alba Iulia. (…) Accompanied by a wagon full of files and prison documents, we set off for the prison in Alba Iulia. Caught between two fronts, our rescue was safer in prison than in freedom. The irony of fate! We moved slowly.

Before the Galda stream, 2 km from Teiuș, another column of Soviet cars, tanks and armoured vehicles with hammers and sickles passed by to the shouts and cheers of the soldiers on them. On one tank Tarnovschi, wrapped in a red flag, shouted drunkenly and gesticulated with a clenched fist the joy of victory. I stood with Valeriu Gafencu and Marin Naidim.

– Here is proof of what I told you a few years ago!

When we got to the stream, we all fell into the water, thirsty and tired, and drank like cattle where we were.

Most of us took off our scuffed boots and trudged along the hot asphalt. Near Alba Iulia, people had gone out into the fields, trying to gather what was left before the Soviets destroyed or looted (…).

We stopped again all the way to Alba Iulia, because the soles of our feet were bleeding and we were exhausted from the heat and the effort of the march. It was very dark when we arrived in Alba Iulia, some crawling, others on the arms of the most resistant, and in the wagon like a hearse, one on top of the other, the completely sacked were thrown like sacks. At the prison gate, the escorting guards handed over the cart with the files, covered with corpses. It took more than two hours to get through the gate. We went in and fell like logs blown down by the wind. No one could speak. (…)

In order not to be exposed to Soviet control, Major Muscă, the prison commander, insisted that we take shelter in the cells, so that we could rest on the beds and be protected from the cold of the night, since few of us had clothes other than shirts and underwear. It seemed that even the bones were too heavy to carry… Although there were four bunk beds in the cells, we were packed two to a bed. Before we could feel anything else, we barely managed to draw a cross over our faces before we fell asleep, as if in a dead faint. (…)

The next morning we were barely awake. We were stiff, many with high fever, some with sunstroke. That’s when I realised Dr. Uță’s love and capacity for devotion. Weakened and almost paralysed by the effort of the journey, accompanied by comrades Sandu Ștefănescu and Florea Trandafir, also from Oltenia, he asked the director for access to the prison infirmary and, crawling from man to man in the courtyard where we had gone out in the sun, he disinfected our wounds, encouraging us with his calm but categorical words to resist, trusting that only God would restore our health.

Our bodies recovered amazingly quickly. After two weeks, we were all well again.

An intervention for the physical and moral salvation of ordinary prisoners

When I returned to Aiud in October 1944, the common prisoners were housed in sections of the old prison, 10-20 to a room. They lived a life of misery and moral promiscuity in a “gang” with a boss who dictated the way of life. The food they were entitled to was halved by the boss and the prisoner ate the leftovers. The money they were entitled to buy porridge, bacon or soap from the prison “canteen” was spent on cards, barbour or poker and always won by the boss.

The young men were the “objects” of sexual pleasure for the older ones, usually the boss. Some suffered from venereal diseases; gonorrhoea, chancroid and syphilitic chancroid were widespread in their environment. In addition, they lived in a state of hygienic misery: dirty, unwashed, full of boils and abscesses. Doctor Uță alarmed the administration by intervening in the physical and moral treatment of these unfortunates.

The chiefs were isolated one by one in a cell in the Zarca and given appropriate medical treatment, as were their close collaborators. In addition to medical treatment, a moral awakening was attempted on the victims. Many of them, poor things, wallowed like pigs in the mud, making devils of themselves, as the Holy Fathers say. Some broke up with sin and came to the Church; I understood that whoever really wants to be saved, God will help him.

Doctor Uță, Sub-Director Mareș, exanthematous typhus and… a ‘holy blackmail’.

The first victims [of the typhus epidemic in Aiud prison] were the common people. Then came our own. Doctor Uță alarmed the administration. The bosses wanted to exterminate us, but God wanted to save us.

The deputy director, Mareș, fell ill. Doctor Uță, whom he trusted, confirmed his illness. Mareș was alarmed because the lawyer Măntăluță, a strong-willed man of exceptional kindness, had died earlier. A biological symptom of the disease is a rise in temperature above 40 degrees. If the heart had lasted two or three days, he would have survived. The lawyer didn’t have a perfect heart and didn’t make it; that’s humanly speaking. God had prepared a place of light for the goodness of his soul; by accepting his illness, his crown would be brighter.

– If you cure me, I don’t know how I can repay you… if you save me from death, at my own risk, I will save you from prison too,” promised Mareș.

– If you have a good heart and God wills it, you will get better.

– Ask me for anything, said Mareș impatiently.

– If you get me out of prison, I alone will be spared suffering. But if you do as I say, you and the whole prison will be free of typhus. First, I’ll check your heart, and because you have a family, I’ll isolate you in the prison hospital until you get better, so you don’t take some lice home and get what happened to the guard whose baby died.

After a thorough examination, it was confirmed that Mareș was a Maramureșean in good health. Except for his soul.

– You will escape, Uță encouraged him, but only under my supervision. From now on you must do as I say.

– I’ll do anything, said Mareș.

– Sign an official document in my name, in the name of the prison, a special delegation with which I will go to Cluj, to my former teachers and university colleagues, and bring back medicines: DDT, powder and liquid, medical equipment and concentrated food. All this will arrive at the prison in a special wagon. You must destroy the shipping documents. With my men, you’ll treat all the prison premises.

– You ask too much of me.

– Then you will die. I will not treat you. I’m a prisoner and have no obligations. Entrust yourself to your doctors, whom you trust!

It wasn’t blackmail, it was a real sacrifice. Mareș did not care about the lives of others. The only value on earth was himself. This is communist materialism. In his desperate situation, he accepted the proposal.

Doctor Uță went to Cluj in civilian clothes, and sent a car with concentrated food (sugar, fat, vitamins) and medicines to the Aiud prison. Three to four teams of three to four men each, with pumps for DDT (diethyl-diphenyl-trichloroethane) and bottles of liquid analcid, carried out the deworming. An obtuse guard tried to prevent them from entering his floor. Sandu Ștefănescu, a good collaborator of Dr. Uță in all sanitary actions, who had a great presence of mind, rare courage and exceptional agility, in a split second immobilised the guard, disarmed him and locked him in a cell. Then he brought in Dr. Uță and another guard and said to him:

– Don’t you see people dying? Do you want to take home lice infected with typhus? You can make your wife and children sick, and you will all die. You should kiss Dr. Uță’s hands, not prevent him from curing you.

The soldier apologised. Sandu handed him his gun, belt and keys and shook his hand:

– Now do forgive me, but you see that it was not for my sake that I did this, but for yours.

Typhus was eradicated in Aiud, but hunger was not. Those who didn’t die of typhus died of hunger. The food brought from Cluj was more a symbol than a solution to the situation. Especially as much of it was stolen by the guards.

(Virgil Maxim – Hymn for the Cross Carried, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 97,99-100,129, 131-132)