Dumitru Bordeianu – the confessor who reached the heights of love towards his enemies
I have already said that, out of modesty, I will not speak of my heroic deeds, but only of my helplessness, my weakness and my collapse. However, I will tell the following story, just to make those of good faith understand the madness we went through, the young legionaries and non-legionaries there.
One fine evening, around nine o’clock, Zacharias returned from room 4 hospital, humming. He stopped at my door and told me to follow him. He took me and put me on the torture committee’s bed, tied my hands and feet and said to the others: “Come and embrace your comrade who was your room-master and didn’t want to beat you.”
Whether he did this on Țurcanu’s orders, or whether it was simply a manifestation of his excesses, I don’t know yet. But I confess, with the fear of God, that I never felt closer to the people and more affectionate towards them than on that unforgettable night. Instead of feeling hatred and revenge, I felt – paradoxically – the joy and satisfaction of knowing that those who had beaten me had not done so out of hatred, but because they had been driven, forced and tortured to do so.
At that moment I would have embraced them and kissed the wounds and bruises on their bodies. I didn’t look, I closed my eyes so as not to see who was beating me, because in the same circumstances I had also beaten my dearest and most honest comrade, Costache Oprișan, in room 2 on the ground floor. I had the pleasure of paying for my weakness. As Bogdanovici had said: “Brother, this is how you pay for your mistakes.”
The unbelievers, those who hate us, those who have never had the feeling for their fellow man that brings man closer to God, will say that what I confess is more than madness. If I had not experienced these states of mind myself, if my being had not been shaken to the core, I would never have understood my comrades and the drama of Pitești and Gherla.
I lost consciousness, so I don’t know how long the torture lasted, and I didn’t want to know who hit me and who didn’t. All I remember is that the next morning I was lying on the bed, not in a fixed position, but bent over from the pain I could hardly bear and covered in wounds. And yet, in those moments, I was convinced that none of my comrades had even touched me with a finger, but that beings from another world, full of hatred and cynicism, had beaten me with bestiality[1].
I didn’t move from the bed for a week, and food was brought to me there. A comrade was even allowed to apply cold water compresses to my wounds.
What filled my soul with pain was that, after what had happened, some of the comrades who had tortured me could no longer look me in the eye, just as I could no longer look Oprișan in the eye. I understood them. I don’t want to mention the names of those who beat me; some of them are still alive and I could cause them great pain. That was the last time I lost consciousness during torture.
(Dumitru Bordeianu – Confessions from the Swamp of Despair)
1. The author insists on the responsibility that belongs to the evil spirits. Bordeianu has a spiritual vision and observes that people who are enslaved by sin to the evil one are only tools of that evil one (see also what he says about Zechariah). He comes close to the great commandment to love those who harm us (ed.).