Dumitru Bordeianu demonstrated a strong faith and an almost mystical experience
I once met Bordeianu Dumitru (Mitică) in Bucharest at a meeting of former political prisoners, which he also attended. I found out by chance that he was passing through Bucharest, having come all the way from Australia. There were many people who wanted to talk to him and he wanted to talk to as many people as possible, he was surrounded by a large circle of prisoners, I didn’t recognise him, he was so changed after so many years that had left their mark on him. I made my way through the other prisoners to reach him, told him who I was and reminded him of the gesture he had made to me in Aiud, for which I thanked him again, but he said he didn’t remember[1].
My untimely arrival interrupted their dialogue and each of them tried to approach him and not miss the opportunity to ask him something else. I never spoke to him again, just as the others had not finished their conversations. A man from Bucharest put him in the car and drove away. I was left with this huge unpaid debt, at least to have been able to talk to him longer, because such debts can never be repaid in such circumstances. I’m thinking about the following. If he didn’t remember this gesture, it means that for him charity work is an ordinary fact, which he sees as a normal thing, not an unusual one. When I knew him in the Aiud cell, he showed a strong faith and an almost mystical way of life.[2] I thank him once again with these lines, which I dedicate to him, and I wish God to give him good health and much gratitude in my heart.
(Pintilie Iacob, Vremuri de băjenie și surghiun, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2001, pp. 191-192)
1. The gesture to which Iacob Pintilie refers took place in the following context: because of the unbearable summer heat, Iacob Pintilie threw a few cups of water over the window blinds of his cell, hoping to cool the stifling atmosphere, but this “misbehaviour”, once discovered by the guard, earned him seven days of solitary confinement. During these seven days, the memorialist ate the lunch of a single day in prison, which left him in a critical condition, given that the usual diet of Aiud inmates at the time was one of slow extermination anyway. After serving his sentence, he was placed in a new cell with Dumitru Bordeianu, who took the initiative of getting all his cellmates to give up part of their food ration for a few days in order to physically entertain the newcomer. In those particularly difficult conditions, such gestures could mean the difference between life and death for those returning from solitary confinement, but they were also proof of great devotion.
2. Dumitru Bordeianu also left traces of a deep faith in his memoirs, “Confessions from the Swamp of Despair”, a work whose perspective is eminently mystical. In fact, the dramatic experience of Pitești, and not only, enriched his faith to such an extent that, at the time of his spiritual maturity, Bordeianu would confess: “I believe in God without limit. Whatever I do, think and say, I refer to the absolute truth that is God”.