Nicolae Purcărea

We asked ourselves: we were so ugly, so hideous, so deformed, so disfigured, that even Quasimodo seemed prettier. Without teeth, with a swollen eye, with a fractured jaw… We were so ugly that we thought we each had a mask on our face, as we didn’t resemble to what we once looked like. It was like we all had a hideous carnival mask. And even though time passed, other beatings came with it. For instance, if they slapped you on the face, you had to change your „mask” again. You would leave your teeth wherever… Your tongue was burnt, your lips as well, because they made you eat like a pig: they put the kettle on the floor and you had to lick it, even if the so called soup was hot. They didn’t care what you had it the kettle – you had to clean it. And the kettle became a universal instrument: you would eat off of it, you would wash your clothes in it, you would use it for other things… (physiological necessities – n.n.) But you had to eat everything that was in it.

The most degrading blasphemies... They talked about our Saviour as if He was human and they mocked at Him. They talked about Virgin Mary as if she was an ordinary woman and they mocked at her. The communion and everything else were also transformed... They forced the “priests” to feed us faeces on a spoon and urine instead of wine... And then they sculpted a big phallus that we had to kiss crawling on our knees. Of course, they sang all kinds of religious songs with the lyrics transformed: instead of the Lamentations on Good Friday Evening, they invented all sorts of parodies that we had to sing and listen to. And this question always arose: “Do you still believe in God?” Because for them, our belief in God was what kept us from transforming.