“There was no young man more brutalised than him at Pitești”
“Constantin (Costache) Oprișan – a man over 30. Head of the Brotherhood of the Cross in the country. A man of impressive character and culture. In Pitești, Țurcanu prepared the most terrible tortures for him, physically destroying him and humiliating him. His back, from his neck to his heels, was covered with scars. All his flesh was torn to shreds. Țurcanu succeeded in “disciplining” him in the sense of making him obey his orders, but he did not succeed in transforming his conscience into a convinced communist, as he did with others. This Costache Oprișan was too strong. In the cell [in Jilava n.n.] he was the only one who had the right to lie on the bed. He suffered from tuberculosis in the last phase of his life”.
(Octavian Voinea – The Massacre of the Romanian Students, by Gheorghe Andreica)
***
“The most impressive thing from the beginning of my imprisonment was our cohesion. I was personally attached to my suffering brothers… Many of those who were in prison were like angels. The one who impressed me the most was Constantin Oprișan. I spent a year with him in the same cell. He was a man of extraordinary complexity, a master of various fields, from music and art to mathematics and philosophy. By nature he was very affectionate and lived everything to the full. He was subjected to the greatest ordeal, there was no one more crushed than him; he took a beating for every young legionnaire, with an enduring heroism unmatched”.
(Dumitru Bordeianu – “Confessions from the Swamp of Despair”)
***
“Another of those most harassed by Țurcanu was Costache Oprișan, head of the Brotherhood of the Cross throughout the country (…) He went through all the phases of re-education several times, each time Țurcanu declared him insincere. In room 4 of the hospital, traces of his blood could still be seen until 1952, and Țurcanu, once torturing a young man from the Brotherhood of the Cross, even told him
– I want your blood to spurt up to the ceiling, so that there it will mystically unite with the blood of Oprișan”.
(Virgil Ierunca – The Pitești Phenomenon)
***
“We had just sat down on the doormat when my supposed friend Țurcanu (Sobolevschi) started talking again:
– We are determined to destroy all the bandits, to destroy the legionary movement. Come on, Costache, he addressed Oprișan again, in the same mocking tone, but now doubled with hatred, as if to say, of all the banditry you’ve done, have you told all of them to the investigation?
– “Yes, all of them,” said the questioner. Again: “Hey, hear me out!”, as before, and a mob jumps on the poor man, they hold him by his arms and legs, they bend him over the left-hand ledge of the door, they pull down his trousers, and with the straps they had, narrower and wider, they begin to pull him down countless times. It was impossible for him to resist and his screams were muffled by the Securitate gag in his mouth. Only the moans added to our excitement, for the four of us watched the scene in horror. When they had had enough, they left him”.
(Ioan Muntean – On foot through the “re-educations” of Pitești, Gherla and Aiud)
***
At a signal, with a howl that resembled the howls of the beasts of the forest, they all rushed at him.
He was trampled, beaten from all sides and soon lost consciousness. But the beating did not stop. Finally, he was stretched out on a prickly pear, and with belts (where did the belts come from?) he was systematically taken from head to foot 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.
(Aurel Vișovan – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)
***
“Several rounds of “re-education” had already taken place in Room 4 of the hospital. They tortured Costache Oprișan like Christ, for weeks on end, forcing all those who had once been under him and had deified him, for he really deserved it, to beat him, spit on him, torture him and tell lies about him, to disown him, to denigrate his ideas and declare him a fraud. I saw him once when they were throwing us out. He had taken off his shirt, and his whole back was torn into regular shapes, as if he had been skinned alive, burned with fire or whipped, crucified, God knows!
(Eugen Măgirescu – The Devil’s Mill)
***
“I saw with my own eyes how Țurcanu kept jumping with his boots on his chest, not casually, but for minutes on end. Bogdanovici died crushed and beaten. Or others, or I’ll tell you… Petrică Cojocaru, or I’m not talking about Oprișan, I’m not talking about Oprișan… I think Oprișan didn’t have a single square centimetre of his body that wasn’t bruised. I don’t think so, I saw him naked in the bathroom and everyone said: “Look at Oprișan!” ” (Emil Sebeșan)
***
Little did I know that I was about to witness another shocking scene. (…) Just when I was beginning to wonder what the reasons were for Oprișan having been spared so far, Țurcanu, like an angel, entered the room, went straight for him, snatched him from the slat and dragged him into the middle of the “magic wagon” (as he had named it himself)!
Due to the ankylosis caused by the long sphinx position [torture position n.n.], Oprișan was unable to stand. Unlike on the other side, there were only a few people here to make fun of him. He certainly hadn’t regained control of his legs, that was the first impression. Țurcanu held him like a puppet, dangling in one hand, twisting him like a hanged man to get a good look at him. Suddenly he let go of him and Costache (as the boss kept “caressing” him) collapsed on the mosaic, rubbing his calves furiously, barely able to contain the painful sensations we remember so well. After staring at him with his arms folded on his hips, I heard him muttering to himself: “I’m going to loosen you up, Costache!” And he began to play with him like a bear, crushing him with all the weight of a well-drunk man. He lay down on his chest and went down on his heels to his abdomen, systematically searching his stomach, then his liver, pancreas and intestines to crush them. Oprișan couldn’t even whimper under the weight and heavy stamping of the chief. Several times he tried to speak, but with his breath coming in short gasps with each blow, no sound came out. (…)
Oprișan closed his eyes and choked on his suspicious cough, which irritated the executioner, who kicked him in the ribs a few times. “Are you playing dead? I’ll bring you back to life! Don’t worry! You’ll still die by my hand, but not now, when I want you to!” And he burned a few more slices. After waving to Zacharias, he said to Mărtinuș: “Take him away. You know how to stretch their legs.”
They picked him up from the ground like nothing. A club appeared as if from nowhere, and with inhuman swiftness they divided two tables in parallel, flying the ‘tablecloths’ around, and with the club between them they twisted a band from their own rags to bind his feet together at the ankles, and with a twisted towel they bound his hands together at the calves. Someone pressed down hard on his shoulders and shouted at him to sit on his bottom. Zachariah put the stick between his knees and arms, lifted him up and put him on the stick between the two tables. Poor Oprișan swung upside down several times, as if in a cradle. They stuffed his mouth with his own handkerchief and then turned away, panting, looking at Țurcanu, who told Zaharia to kick him over his boots until he will tell him to stop.
The whole room watched as if it was a common, mundane thing. Zachariah began to kick the soles of his boots, slowly and hard. Unthinkable for a music lover! Especially as I could see him getting excited as he kicked, radiating joy at what he was doing! I’d learnt in Brașov that you could feel every blow in the back of your head. Pain that lasted for days, weeks, the feeling that your head was tightening like a vice. (…) Zaharia didn’t stop when he clearly saw that Oprișan was no longer responding to the blows, nor when Țurcanu raised his hand. It was only when the boss’s authoritative voice shouted “stop” that he “froze” with his bat in the air. He was tired of hitting and counting. He had stopped at just under twenty! When they put him down and untied him, Oprișan’s head bobbed and his eyes seemed to stare. They pulled the handkerchief from his reddened mouth. He experienced the panic of losing his breath from the bleeding that made his throat gurgle with blood.
(Ștefan Ioan I. Davidescu – Journey through Hell, Volume II)
***
“Finally, when they had frightened us with the beatings, they made us beat each other. They brought Gioga, leaning against the beds, to beat him, or rather to beat Costache Oprișan, whom he had respected and loved as a superior man in every way. Poor Costache had become a means of proving that all the others had left the Legion. He had become nothing more than a wound. A few months later, when we met again, the linear scars caused by the blows of the belt inflicted by his own people were still visible on his back and buttocks. But he told those who asked him and who had not been with us, so that they might know the cause, that they were marks from the Securitate [to cover up the mistakes of the suffering brothers who had fallen into re-education n.n.]”.
(Ioan Muntean – On foot through the “re-educations” of Pitești, Gherla and Aiud)
***
“He was in such a bad physical condition because he had been tortured for three years in Pitești. They beat him on his chest, on his back, until they destroyed his lungs. But he prayed all day. He never said anything bad about those who tortured him, but he talked about Jesus Christ”.
(Fr. Gheorge Calciu – The Mystery of Love, The Martyrs of the Romanian Nation)