“Here comes, Costache Oprișan!”

One day Țurcanu came and announced that Costache Oprișan, the head of the Brotherhoods of the Cross in the country, was being brought to our room.

– “You bandits”, he said to us, “don’t say a word and hide your faces so as not to show your bruises, otherwise you’ll be worse off than before!”

Then he whispered instructions to this committee and the others on the other side of the room.

I dreaded the thought of what I knew was coming.

Indeed, not long after, the door opened and the guard pushed in a man a little older than us, with big eyes that expressed a kind of bewilderment and – of course – fear of the unknown.

As soon as he entered the room, he was surrounded by a number of re-educated men, probably former acquaintances, who, playing the part of brave resistance fighters, began to ask him all sorts of questions… pretending to be in awe of him.

Costache Oprișan sensed that something was wrong. I don’t know what he answered, but he kept moving his head, trying to find out what was going on.

The view from our side was blocked by groups of re-educated…

It wasn’t long before this state of speculation was over, for at a signal, with a roar that resembled the howling of beasts in the forest, they all rushed at him.

He was trampled and beaten on all sides, and soon lost consciousness. But the beating did not stop. Eventually he was stretched out on a bed, and with belts (where did the belts come from?) he was systematically taken from head to toe and from foot to head.

When one team of torturers got tired, they’d change to another. I think this torture went on for hours.

Many buckets of water were poured over him to wake him up and scream into his ears:

– We, the re-educated youth, those of us who were under your command before, will destroy you. You are guilty of our fate, and we will take from you everything you know, everything you have not declared to the Securitate…

I don’t know how many days this torture lasted, I only remember that after a period of not being beaten he was interrogated (I don’t remember by whom, by Țurcanu? by Sobolevschi?):

– What do you think, bandit, of us, your former subordinates? To which, after a short pause, Oprișan replies:

– I make a comparison with the judges in old Australia, who were chosen from the ranks of former criminals.

At the time, I judged this answer to be in keeping with both his intelligence and the particular circumstances in which he found himself.

The torture continued, but it was the norm at the time.

Oprișan, too, began to be taken to Țurcanu to be unmasked. I don’t know what he said.

After all, he saw the rest of us isolated people wearing the signs of communist humanism, and the thought that he was not alone probably brought him some small comfort…

(Aurel Vișovan – My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? 3rd edition, Napoca Star Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2006, p. 36)