- Jul 10, 2007
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I am nearly finished with reading the book my good friend (and CF member), Thekla, sent me a couple months ago. It's called Christ is Calling You! This book has made a HUGE impact on me. I've read it the past three days, and it's both fascinated me and haunted me. His 16 (plus house arrest - 21) years in prison and his telling of the horrors at the diabolical Pitesti Prison were very hard to read and scared me, TBH. I'd heard and read of tortures in other prisons and deaths, hunger, labor, etc., but this was beyond anything I'd ever heard of regarding communism and what people have suffered in prisons who were never guilty of anything in the first place. He spoke boldly against communism and boldly about Christ, and so he was put in prison as a "political prisoner."
I had never heard of such a place before I read this book. Thank you, Thekla, for sending me this book so that I am now aware of a horrible and most satanic time in our history that seems to have not received much attention, whether in school history books or through the media (history channel, documentaries, etc.). Fr. George had said, the torture of the body and mind is one thing....but the stripping of the soul of a person is another, and it is satanic. He said after that experienced, he realized that those in the communist regime were instruments of satan's army. Read about what the "re-education" of prisoners in Pitesti meant, and if you're able to watch or read the survivor's accounts on this link, your heart and stomach are stronger than mine.
Here's an excerpt and the link:
This genocide, in its extreme form, was begun in Romania in 1949, at the political penitentiary of Pitesti, as an experiment unlike any before it: "the reeducation" of political prisoners through continuous torture, by physical or spiritual means, done even through the fellow convicts. "The reeducated" were obliged to auto-denounce themselves, to negate their identities, to denounce their own families, friends and loved ones, that is to "expose" them, to negate themselves, everything that was holy, to deride the belief in God and the sacraments. "The re-educators" were obliging them to participate in genuine antireligious and satanic rituals. Ultimately, "the reeducated" were compelled to become "re-educators" of others, therefore executioners. Those who refused to cooperate were obliged to be "reeducated" again, until they accepted the role of "re-educator;" if they continued to refuse, they risked their lives. Several tried to commit suicide in order to escape this inferno, but very few were successful. We cannot overemphasize the inability of language to accurately describe everything that these young anticommunists (around 2,000) endured, most of them still students at the time of their arrest.
In conclusion, the genocide of the spirits was not possible precisely because the soul is eternal. That was the hope of those condemned to die spiritually. Only the belief in God saved them.
"The Pitesti experiment" is almost unknown in Romania, even today. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the 1970 Nobel Prize laureate for literature, considered the experiment as "the most horrible barbarism of the contemporary world." The historian François Furet, Member of the French Academy, described it as "one of the most ferocious experiences of dehumanization that our era has known."
The Genocide of the Souls. The Pitesti Experiment.
I also wanted to share the last note from the editors of the book I read (at least parts of it):
The story that Fr. George has to tell in this book is not a rare one. Men, women and children in countries all over the world have suffered and are suffering at this very moment for the true faith in Jesus Christ. However, in a world of shopping centers, fast-food restaurants, and the constant pursuit of fun and entertainment, many might think that this story is an extreme case, a product of a far-away backwards country. Many might think to themselves, and many might say, "This could never happen here. This could never happen to me."
Each Christian must take this story of Fr. George Calciu, who is still alive today, as a reminder and warning that we may someday have to witness Christ in the same way. Elder Ignatius of Harbin (+ Aug. 3/16, 1958), who lived in Russia at the time when millions were enduring martyrdom, prophesied: "What began in Russia will end in America." But in this last of "freedom," where our Christian churches are being sold off one by one to be turned into night clubs and apartments, and "political correctness" rules the society, persecution will come in an entirely different form. Fr. Seraphim Rose once wrote in his journal: "Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it thank to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example--and warning--to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection."
_________________________________
Please share what you know about this and your thoughts.
I had never heard of such a place before I read this book. Thank you, Thekla, for sending me this book so that I am now aware of a horrible and most satanic time in our history that seems to have not received much attention, whether in school history books or through the media (history channel, documentaries, etc.). Fr. George had said, the torture of the body and mind is one thing....but the stripping of the soul of a person is another, and it is satanic. He said after that experienced, he realized that those in the communist regime were instruments of satan's army. Read about what the "re-education" of prisoners in Pitesti meant, and if you're able to watch or read the survivor's accounts on this link, your heart and stomach are stronger than mine.
Here's an excerpt and the link:
This genocide, in its extreme form, was begun in Romania in 1949, at the political penitentiary of Pitesti, as an experiment unlike any before it: "the reeducation" of political prisoners through continuous torture, by physical or spiritual means, done even through the fellow convicts. "The reeducated" were obliged to auto-denounce themselves, to negate their identities, to denounce their own families, friends and loved ones, that is to "expose" them, to negate themselves, everything that was holy, to deride the belief in God and the sacraments. "The re-educators" were obliging them to participate in genuine antireligious and satanic rituals. Ultimately, "the reeducated" were compelled to become "re-educators" of others, therefore executioners. Those who refused to cooperate were obliged to be "reeducated" again, until they accepted the role of "re-educator;" if they continued to refuse, they risked their lives. Several tried to commit suicide in order to escape this inferno, but very few were successful. We cannot overemphasize the inability of language to accurately describe everything that these young anticommunists (around 2,000) endured, most of them still students at the time of their arrest.
In conclusion, the genocide of the spirits was not possible precisely because the soul is eternal. That was the hope of those condemned to die spiritually. Only the belief in God saved them.
"The Pitesti experiment" is almost unknown in Romania, even today. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the 1970 Nobel Prize laureate for literature, considered the experiment as "the most horrible barbarism of the contemporary world." The historian François Furet, Member of the French Academy, described it as "one of the most ferocious experiences of dehumanization that our era has known."
The Genocide of the Souls. The Pitesti Experiment.
I also wanted to share the last note from the editors of the book I read (at least parts of it):
The story that Fr. George has to tell in this book is not a rare one. Men, women and children in countries all over the world have suffered and are suffering at this very moment for the true faith in Jesus Christ. However, in a world of shopping centers, fast-food restaurants, and the constant pursuit of fun and entertainment, many might think that this story is an extreme case, a product of a far-away backwards country. Many might think to themselves, and many might say, "This could never happen here. This could never happen to me."
Each Christian must take this story of Fr. George Calciu, who is still alive today, as a reminder and warning that we may someday have to witness Christ in the same way. Elder Ignatius of Harbin (+ Aug. 3/16, 1958), who lived in Russia at the time when millions were enduring martyrdom, prophesied: "What began in Russia will end in America." But in this last of "freedom," where our Christian churches are being sold off one by one to be turned into night clubs and apartments, and "political correctness" rules the society, persecution will come in an entirely different form. Fr. Seraphim Rose once wrote in his journal: "Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it thank to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example--and warning--to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection."
_________________________________
Please share what you know about this and your thoughts.
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Beautifully said.
