From the terrible sufferings of the martyr Ioan Pintilie

The Christmas holidays were approaching. We had taken part in many horrors, but, man being a frighteningly adaptable creature, we were less and less impressed by the monstrosities in which we took part. […]

With our guilty eyes we watched them as they were now forced to break the fast of the holy feasts by “eating” the “sweet delicacies” that had become “traditional fare” both at the Nativity and at His Crucifixion, at Easter! […]

Țurcanu hastened to be one of the most schismatic. He was guilty of being one of the great mystics who had made many proselytes! And he was a veteran before ’40. He had appeared here in our absence, replacing Oprișan. In the sense that he had placed the prici in exactly the same place. His name was Pintilie. He waved him over, and when it suited him, he grabbed him, but before he could bring him to him, he slipped out of his hand. He looked up in surprise and hit him so hard that he fell like a stunned man. Țurcanu went straight for the tin can. Pop Cornel, who was standing nearby, poured water on him to wash him off. Pintilie’s clothes were stained with faeces and urine (from the toilet) as he struggled to keep them from being forced down his throat. At one point he shouted with the last of his strength: “From now on I won’t eat any more! Someone must have told Țurcanu what had happened, because Pintilie addressed him with that very line: “Who says you won’t eat from now on? Is it so?” and grabbed him. But as he slipped away, he grew heavy and kept asking himself with a grimace of nausea. Probably dizzy from the “smells” of the clothes on the floor, he ordered Mărtinuș to open all the windows and asked Bordeianu [Virgil] what he had to say about “our partisan”? Surely Virgil whispered something to him that got poor Cornel out of danger. And then he gave him this order: “Go with him, that is, with father Cornel, to the bathroom and wash your clothes. If any of you stink, I’ll bleach you.” […]

Pintilie hadn’t even had time to hang his clothes out to dry on the edge of the bed and get dressed with a change of clothes from his bag before Țurcanu’s strong arm grabbed him; the collar of his archaic overcoat broke: “Let me warm you up, bandit! I was told you threatened us with a hunger strike?” And he slammed his head against the wall with such force that Pintilie would have collapsed had he not been held still. Although he could see that he had not recovered, he asked him, “Do you realise what this means?” Pintilie didn’t make a sound. This made him all the more angry, so he banged his head harder against the wall and said through his teeth, “You mean you want to die, you little donkey? Don’t you?”

Pintilie’s silence drove him mad: “Good, if you want to die, I’ll help you, bandit!” He threw him on the ledge like nothing, next to the others, and ordered Mărtinuș, through one of his men, to watch him until he died.[1]

(Ștefan Ioan I. Davidescu – Journey through Hell, Vol. II, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2003, pp. 266-269)

[1] Ioan Pintilie’s death came later, on 14 January 1951. On the evening of 13 January, he was forced to swallow a bowl of saline solution, which caused him to suffer from a terrible thirst, then madness and finally death.