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COMMUNISM IS MELLOWING?
Dear Friend:
Rev. Richard Wurmbrand spent eleven years in prisons in Communist Rumania.
He gave sworn testimony concerning the treatment he received on Friday, May
6, 1966, before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Committee on the
Judiciary of the United States Senate. His account of his experiences and
the scars on his tortured body provide further evidence, if such is needed,
of the true nature of communism.
Pastor Richard
Wurmbrand is an evangelical minister who was for many years a representative
of the World Council of Churches for Rumania. He was a Professor of the Old
Testament in the seminary of Bucharest. From 1945 to 1948 he was a pastor of
the Norwegian Mission to the Jews.
He was imprisoned in
1948 by the communist government of Rumania. He was released in 1956, and
from 1956 to 1959, he preached and exercised his other pastoral functions
illegally. He was rearrested in 1959, and remained in prison until July,
1964. In 1964, he became pastor of the Evangelical Church in Orshova, a
Rumanian town.
His story cannot be
consigned to the "bad days of Stalinism" but reveals communism up
the present day.
Light out of Darkness
The testimony is voluminous and illuminates many facets of communism. I
will quote directly from the testimony but will take the liberty of editing
the syntax when necessary. Every effort will be made to retain the precise
meaning.
The Positive Approach
When Rev. Wurmbrand was leaving Rumania, the communists came to him and
said, "You may preach Christ as much as you like. Don’t speak against
communism. If you speak against communism, we can find a gangster who will
liquidate you for $1,000. We can have you brought back from the West to
prison. We can destroy you morally. We will tell some story about you and a
girl or about your misuse of money and people will be stupid enough to
believe it. We will destroy you if you touch us."
Rev. Wurmbrand: Under
these conditions I was allowed to come out. Very sorrowfully I found people
in the West, even religious leaders, who told me the same thing,
"Preach Christ as much as you like but don’t touch communism."
(Pages 2 and 3)
In Rumania you are
allowed to say as much as you like that God is good. You are not allowed to
say that the devil is bad. John the Baptist could have saved his life if he
had said, "Repent because the kingdom of heaven is near." Nobody
would have touched him. He was touched when he said, "You, Herod, are
bad."
If Christ had delivered
1,000 sermons on the mount, they would not have crucified Him. They
crucified Him when he said, "You vipers."
In Rumania you can say,
"God is good," but you can’t say, "Communism is cruel. They
commit atrocities. It is a crime to poison children with atheism." If
you do this, you go to prison. (Page 18)
Comment: The so-called
positive approach is frequently a mask for cowardice. It is impossible to be
truly Christian without being anti-communist.
Torture
Some of the incidents related in the testimony are too gruesome to
reprint. I will give you a few quotations:
Rev.
Wurmbrand: They tortured by all means; they beat until they broke the
bones; they used red hot irons; they used knives; they used everything. It
is not only what they did, but how they did it. They interrogated you very
politely, and if you did not wish to say what they asked, they said,
"Well, this is the first. On the fifteenth you will be beaten and
tortured at 10:00 o’clock in the evening."
Imagine the next
fourteen days. We have had prisoners, who during this time knocked on the
door and said, "I can’t bear it. I will say everything before the
torture." (Page 9)
I was in solitary
confinement for the first two and one-half, almost three years. It was in
the most beautiful building in Bucharest, the headquarters of the
Secretariat of State for Internal Affairs. Foreigners all stand before
this building and admire it; and there, ten meters beneath the earth are
the cells. There are no windows in the cells. Air enters through a tube.
There were a few desks with a straw mattress. You had but three steps for
a walk. We were never taken out from these cells except for interrogations
when prisoners were beaten and tortured. For years I did not see the sun,
moon, flowers, snow, stars, nor any man except the interrogator who beat
me, but I can say I have seen heaven open; I have seen Jesus Christ; I
have seen the angels; and I was very happy. (Page 4)
In Philadelphia there
was a great meeting. A Presbyterian pastor, wearing clerical clothes,
delivered a speech in which he praised the communists and said that
communists are all right and that it is stupid to fight against them. I
have learned something from the communists. A minute after the pastor left
the pulpit, I was in it. I said, "Now, I will speak about communism,
and I will show you my credentials, how I have studied communism." I
undressed myself to the belt and I showed them my body. "This is what
communists do to Christians. Pastor, if you are a Christian and have youth
and vigor, why don’t you demonstrate before the Soviet and Rumanian
Embassies against torturing Christians?" (Page 21)
Heroism
Rev. Wurmbrand: I am a very insignificant and a very little man. I have
been in prison among the weak and the little ones, but I speak for suffering
country and for a suffering church and for the heroes and saints of the
twentieth century. We have had such saints in our prison to whom I did not
dare to life my eyes.
I am a Protestant, but
we have had near us Catholic bishops and monks and nuns about whom we felt
that the touching of their garments heals. We were not worthy to untie their
shoelaces. Such men have been mocked and tortured in our country; and even
if it means going back to a Rumanian prison, being kidnapped by the
communists and going back and being tortured again, I cannot be quite. I owe
it to those who have suffered there. (Page 6)
We had hundreds of
bishops, priests, and monks in prison. My wife, who was near me, was in
prison with Catholic nuns. She tells me that they were angels. Nearly all
Catholic bishops died in prison. Innumerable Orthodox and Protestants have
been in prison too. (Page 5)
Anti-Semitism
Rev. Wurmbrand: The Jewish religion has been persecuted just as the
Christian religion. In the prison of Gherla, we had a whole room with rabbis
who were in prison. We also had Moslem representatives in prison.
Sen Dodd: Were the
rabbis subjected to the same kind of torture that you suffered?
Rev. Wurmbrand: Yes,
there was no difference. I had a discussion with the commandant of the
prison in Targulacna, and he said, "We are not like the fascists who
made racial differentials and persecuted the Jews and Hungarians. Look
around you, we keep Rumanians, Hungarians, and Jews in prison in exactly the
same manner. We don’t make racial differences." (Page 14)
There is anti-semitism
in Rumania. Just before we left the country, wherever Jews were in high
positions as chief engineers or doctor in some industry, there were silenced
and reduced in rank. (Page 14)
This is purely a racial
measure. If they were of Jewish origin, they were reduced in rank. They
could have been atheists. Some were even members of the Communist Party. All
Jews have been driven out of the secret police. (Page 14)
Communist Use of Religion
Rev. Wurmbrand: The communists have used three great instruments with
respect to religion:
Firstly, persecution to make everybody afraid. They always find
political motives for imprisoning pastors. They never admit religious
motivation. Here is an illustration of a political motive:
A
Unitarian pastor, a friend of mine, was put in prison and sentenced to
seven years on the charge that on Christmas Eve he had said that when
Jesus was a baby, Herod wished to kill Him, but His holy mother fled with
him to Egypt. The communists charged, "You meant us by Herod, and you
hope Nasser will be on the side of the imperialists, therefore, you
mentioned Egypt."
Another pastor, a
friend of mine, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The charge against
him was that he preached on a Sunday morning in a village from John,
Chapter 21, where it says that the Lord walked on the seashore and saw the
apostles and asked them, "Have you anything to eat?" They said,
"We have not." Jesus then said, "Throw your nets on the
right side."
When the pastor asked
them from the pulpit, "Have you anything to eat?", everybody
began to weep because with us, since the collectivization of agriculture,
peasants have nothing to eat. Peasant children do not see milk and fruit.
Everything goes to the collective and from the collective perhaps to
Vietnam. Nobody knows where it goes. To the weeping congregation, the
pastor said, "Dear children, you have nothing to eat because you
throw your nets on the left side. You must throw them on the right
side." He meant the side of clemency and of the goodness of God.
The next day the
secret police came and said, "Aha, you said not to go to the left
wing with the communists but with the right side, the imperialists."
The man was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Secondly, the method of corruption.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party decides who must be patriarch,
who must be a Baptist preacher, and Pentecostal preacher and so on. They
have always been able to find weak men susceptible to sin. They have put
such men in the leadership of the churches. As a result you could hear in
our theological seminary in Bucharest that God has given three revelations–
once through Moses, secondly through Jesus, and thirdly through Karl Marx.
Religion is corrupted
from within. Religion has been widely used and is still used as the tool of
communist politics. The priests everywhere had to propagate the
collectivization of agriculture; and everywhere, when communists have had
something important to do, knowing the influence of religion, priests and
pastors are ordered to preach these things. (Page 13)
Thirdly, religious disguise for communist agents in the West. We had a
Professor Justin Moisescu. He had never been a priest. He was a professor of
church history but a layman. He was known in the whole country as a
whoremonger and a drunkard. Suddenly we heard that in a few weeks he had
become a priest, a bishop, and the metropolitan of a town called Yasi. This
is the highest position below the patriarch.
He has personally
denounced a group of 400 church peasants from his own bishopric. He has
denounced the priests whom he ordained whenever they said some
counterrevolutionary word.
He has a very
impressive beard, and he came out to the free world and was accepted as a
bishop. Religious leaders in the West believe they are speaking with the
Orthodox Church of Rumania when they are speaking with the secret police of
Rumania. (Page 15)
Improved Conditions
Rev. Wurmbrand: Restrictive measures on the exercise of religion are not
as stringent today as they were 10 or 15 years ago. They are not necessary
as the people have the apathy of despair. That situation is illustrated by
this story:
I was
with a very poor family with five little children, and I caress the
youngest child. The mother said to me, "This child is so good, it
doesn’t weep even when it is hungry. It had given up weeping because the
child knew it was useless to weep. You can’t get any food, so this child
was not beaten because it did not weep anymore.
The Rumanian people
do not weep anymore so they do not need to be beaten. They have abandoned
hope that they will ever be released. They are desperate. For years we
heard a broadcast, "Rebel against communism; rebel against
communism." When we rebelled, we were abandoned. (Pages 16 and 17)
Comfort for the Enemy
Rev. Wurmbrand: See, our oppressors are helped! While in the prisons of
Gherla, the Commandant Major Alexandrescu, gathered us together and made a
speech, "You fools, you sit for 15 or 20 years in prison and expect the
Americans to come. You expected the Americans would come and release you.
Now, I will give you the news. The Americans have come but not to release
you. They come to help us; do business with us; to trade with us. You fools
have not known. If you beg them, the Americans give nothing. If you insult
them, if you mock them, they give you money. We have been cleverer than
you." (Page 17)
Political Underground
Rev. Wurmbrand: Our people have given up the fight. Political
underground movements don’t exist anymore with us. As a result, everything
has quieted down in the country, and they don’t need the same terror
anymore. In this sense there is a relaxation with us, but it is not an
essential one. We continue to have the avowed dictatorship of an atheistic
party. We have only one party. There can be no religious freedom where there
is only one party. We have elections, and we have a joke which says that
when God created Adam, He created only one woman, Eve, and He said to Adam,
"You are free to choose as a wife whoever you wish." (Page 17)
Youth
Rev. Wurmbrand: Our government doesn’t mind old women coming to
church, but our children and youth are poisoned with atheism. We are not
allowed to counteract this, and what bitter fruit will come from this seed,
nobody knows. (Page 17)
Demonstrations
When asked if Rumania had anything like the demonstrations so prevalent
in this country, Rev. Wurmbrand said, "Such a thing doesn’t even
enter into the mind of anybody. Nobody can say a word of criticism. I will
tell you something which may be funny to you but it is tragic to us:
"A
man was in a barbershop in a little town, Sibiu. While the barber was
shaving him, he said, ‘What should I do, my hair is falling out?’ The
barber said, ‘Very well, I will give you something to rub on it, but you
should not worry about it. The most intelligent people in the world have
been bald.’
"On the other
side there was an officer of the secret police, and he said to the barber,
‘What have you said now?’
"‘I said that
the most intelligent people of the world are bald.’
"‘So you
assert that Stalin has not been intelligent.’
"That make you
laugh but not us. Nobody dares say a word." (Page 20)
Nationalism
Rev. Wurmbrand: Rumanian communists are very interested in the fact that
you have here in the States something like 300,000 American of Rumanian
origin who speak the Rumanian language and are Orthodox.
These Rumanians have a
bishop, Bishop Viorel Trifa, who is anti-communist, and the communists wish
to win them for a left-wing Christianity which supports communism. They have
sent several men to the United States. These don’t come with communist
slogans but with the words, "You must love the Rumanian Fatherland. You
must have connections with the Rumanian patriarchy."
When I come out from
Rumania, I saw for the first time a Rumanian newspaper which appears in
Bucharest and which nobody in Bucharest has ever seen. It is called
"The Voice of the Fatherland" but nobody in the fatherland sees
this newspaper. It is seen only by American Rumanians and in France. In this
newspaper you read about priests and churches. You have pictures of priests
and monasteries. In our newspapers you will never find a word about the
church.
At midnight in Rumania
they have a broadcast of religious services. I do not know what hour that is
in the United States. No one in Rumania can listen to these broadcasts
because they are jammed. No religious services are broadcast to the people
of Rumania. These broadcasts are only so that the American should know how
fine the communists are and that they have religious services. (Page 21)
Internal Espionage
Asked if reprisals would be taken if a groups of people gathered to tune
into the broadcast above the jamming, Rev. Wurmbrand replied, "There
would be no reprisals at present. No reprisals are taken today if somebody
hears foreign broadcasts, but everything is noted.
"We have waves of
terror. We had a great wave of terror from 1948 to 1955. Then we had a bit
of relaxation until 1958, when nobody was arrested but everything was noted.
"Another wave of
terror came in 1959, and all those who had been noted during the previous
years were arrested.
"The whole spy
network continues with us. You are not arrested, but everybody knows that he
is spied upon and that everything is noted. How far this inner spy network
goes is unimaginable. In a little townlet of ours, there is a little Baptist
Church with only 22 members. The pastor of that church told me that he is an
informer of the secret police and that he knew three members of his church
who informed on him. It was the same way in the church where I was pastor.
The custodian of the church was ordered to inform on those who came to see
me. I had no salary so usually men who came brought a little parcel with
food, clothing, etc. The custodian had to spy on those who came with
parcels. In the smallest churches there are five or six who spy on what the
others do. One neighbor spies on another. Children spy on their parents. It
is without end so nobody dares to think." (Page 22)
Coexistence
Rev. Wurmbrand: I have asked Christian leaders, "Why have you sat
at banquets with our inquisitors?" I was answered, "We are
Christians and must have friendship and fellowship with everybody, with the
communists, too. Don’t you agree?"
I said, "I can’t
argue with you. I have not read the Bible for 14 years. You must know
Christianity better than I. I seem to have a faint recollection that it is
written in the Bible that friendship with the world is hatred towards God,
but supposing you must have friendship and fellowship with everybody, how is
it that you have had friendship and fellowship with only our inquisitors and
never with us?"
These great men of the
West have never been in the houses of Christian martyrs. I have an only son,
and I love him. I can’t bear to look at him. He looks like a skeleton. He
has suffered so from hunger that he will never be healthy. So many of our
children have died.
I ask them, "Why
do you go to see the Pope who is all right, who does not need your visit?
When you have been in Rumania, why have you not visited the tombs of
Catholic bishops killed by torture? Why have you not shed a tear? Why have
you not placed flowers on their graves? Why have you not left $30? Thirty
dollars would have been the salvation of a Catholic family."
I must say we are very
sad about these compromises with communism. We do not understand. It may be
right for a state to have peaceful coexistence with communism. I do not
know, but the church can never have peaceful coexistence with atheism.
Everybody would laugh at us if I said that health can peacefully exist with
tuberculosis, that the F.B.I. can peacefully coexist with gangsters, that
the church can peacefully coexist with drunkenness, but communism and
atheism are much worse than drug addiction and drunkenness. You drink a
little wine and the next day it passes, but communism has poisoned our youth
and our children for 50 years. (Pages 10 and 11)
Communist Self Destruction
Rev. Wurmbrand: When I was being interrogated they said to me at one
time, "You are all right. You are not a counterrevolutionary, but then
show your loyalty towards our government. Tell us who the
counterrevolutionaries are. Are you disposed to do so?" So I said,
"Yes, I am disposed. As you know, I have worked on an international
scale so I can tell you the counterrevolutionaries, not only in Rumania, but
in Russia.
"In Russia you had
as Secretary of State for Internal Affairs, Yagoda. Yagoda killed thousands
of people as counterrevolutionaries; then you discovered Yagoda was a
counterrevolutionary and he was shot.
"The you had Beria
as Secretary of State for Internal Affairs. Beria killed thousands of people
as counterrevolutionaries. Then you found out that Beria was a
counterrevolutionary.
"Why do you seek
the counterrevolutionaries in the church? Seek them in your own body. It has
been the same thing in Rumania."
Communists are not only
anti-Christian, they are anti-everything. They are anti their own comrades.
I was in prison with
Lucretia Patrascanu, the great communist leader who brought communism to
power in our country. He was put in prison and tortured until he was mad.
My wife was put in
prison with Gheorghe Cristescu. Everybody in Rumania knows the founder of
communism in Rumania who had been imprisoned for communism by the
bourgeoisie. He said to my wife, "40 years ago I fought for the 8-hour
labor day, and now my Communist Party has come to power and I have to work
14 hours a day." (Page 23)
Triumph
Rev. Wurmbrand: I want to say something. I owe it to those with whom I
have been in prison. I have told you so many sad things. I do not wish to
end on this note. I must tell you that in these great tortures and this
great suffering, Christians have shown themselves as saints and heroes. May
I conclude by reporting one scene which I witnessed:
150,000
men had been arrested to build a Danube Canal. My wife has worked and
shoveled the earth. At this canal there was a religious brigade of 400
men, bishops, priests, and peasants who loved Christ and who were in
prison for religious reasons. One Sunday morning the whole brigade was
gathered and the political officer of the prison selected a young man at
random and said, "What is your name?" He gave his name.
"What are you by profession?" He said, "A priest."
Then mockingly the communist said, "Do you still believe in
God?" The priest knows that if he says "yes," this is the
last day of his life. We all looked at him. For a few seconds he was
silent and then his face began to shine, and with a humble but very
decided voice, he said, "Mr. Lieutenant, when I became a priest, I
knew that during church history thousands of Christians and priests had
been killed for their faith and notwithstanding I became a Christian, and
I became a priest. I knew what I became and as often as I entered the
altar clad in this beautiful ornate which priests wear, I promised God,
‘If I will wear the uniform of a prisoner, then also I will serve Him.’
Mr. Lieutenant, prison is not an argument against religion. I love Christ
with all my heart."
I
am sad that I cannot give the intonation with which he gave these words. I
think Juliet spoke like that when she spoke of Romeo. This man loved
Christ as a bride loves the bridegroom. This man has been beaten and
tortured to death.
Rumania is a country
which is mocked, which is oppressed, but deep in the hearts of the people
is a great esteem and great praise for those who have suffered. The love
of God, the love of Christ, and the love of the fatherland has never
ceased. My country will live. (Page 24)
Concluding Comments
How do you comment on such a story which overflows with brutality,
torture, and injustice, but which reveals the sublime heights that can be
attained by the human spirit when the body is tortured beyond endurance?
Words are puny vehicles to convey the emotional response.
An attempt to analyze
my emotions reveals a mixture of compassion, anger, gratitude, and elation.
COMPASSION: The mental,
physical, and emotional torment of the millions of victims of the dread
communist disease should move the hardest heart. Man’s inhumanity to man
makes countless thousands mourn.
ANGER: The anger is
primarily directed to the evil doctrines of communism which turn men into
beasts and justify such vile measures in the name of an alleged historic
purpose.
The beasts who carry
out the tortures are also the victims of communism and merit pity rather
than anger.
The anger embraces
those individuals who close their eyes and their ears to the record of
communist cruelty, their minds to the evils of communist doctrine, and who
apologize for the excesses of communist conduct while they fraternize with
the tyrants and ignore the victims.
GRATITUDE: I am so
grateful that I have not been called upon to face the treatment experienced
by the Rev. Wurmbrand and millions of others. I ask myself how I would
respond under such tortures. My own sacrifices have been so small by
comparison.
ELATION: How good it is
to know that many retained their human dignity and faith and Christian joy
despite all the pressure and torture applied against them. They experienced
the fulfillment of the promises:
"When the enemy
shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall life up a standard
against him." Isaiah 59:19
"I will never
leave thee, nor forsake thee." Hebrews 13:5
Can we not dedicate
ourselves to greater efforts in this battle? I we spend all our material
wealth and all our energy but keep our freedom and our physical, mental, and
spiritual health, we will be rich beyond measure.
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