The Man Who Came Back

MARY DREWERY

Richard Wurmbrand

RICHARD WURMBRAND

The Man Who Came

Back

by

Mary Drewery

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND TORONTO

Copyright © 1974 by Mary Drewery. First printed 1974. ISBN o 340

1776g 1. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without per-

mission in writing from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that

it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise

circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover^

other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including

tfns condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Printed in Great Britain

for Hodder and Stoughton Limited, St. PauVs House, Warwick Lane LONDON

EC 4P 4AH by Cox & Wyman Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham

Contents

Chapter

Page

Map

6

Prologue

9

I The Carpenter's Reward

12

2 The Gathering Storm

23

3 Fascist Terror

32

4 The Pastor

44

5 The Church goes Underground

54

6 Kidnapped

61

7 Joy of the Cross

69

8 In Solitary Confinement

74

9 Room Four

81

io An Unexpected Reprieve

90

11 Back to Prison

98

12 On the Brink

105

13 Not Peace, but a Sword

117

Further Reading

126

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Prologue

Winter is a bitter season in Bucharest. The crivat, a frost-

hard wind from the north-east, blows down across the plains

from Siberia bringing gnawing cold to Rumania's capital.

The streets are mantled in snow; the string of lakes round

the city's northern perimeter gleam dully like pewter under

their coating of ice.

That Sunday in 1948, however, had a feel in the air of

coming spring. The wind had eased a little. The sun shone,

gilding the snow on the branches of the trees till it slid in a

wet spray on to the pavement beneath. It was February

29th - Leap Year Day. An extra day. A once-in-four-year

bonus. So it was fitting that it was a Sunday and that one

could give thanks to God for twenty-four additional hours to

spend in His service.

There were no people about. Even had church-going not

been discouraged under the Communist régime, the streets

would still have been quiet at that hour for the man was

early.

- 'I'll see you in half an hour or so,' he had told his wife as

he left home. 'I've a number of things to see to before

church. I've a wedding this afternoon.'

So the man strode purposefully over the hard-packed

snow, long legs moving with the easy confidence of one who

enjoys his work, deep-set eyes alive to the promise of the

day.

Trie car came up so fast behind him that he did not hear

its approach. Only as it pulled up alongside with a squeal of

brakes and a spray of churned up snow did he notice that it

flO RICHARD WURMBRAND

was a Ford — a big Ford, black and sinister. The doors

opened and two men sprang out, seizing the man from either

side and twisting his arms up behind him till he was forced

to double up with the pain. He was thrust roughly into the

rear seat of the Ford and his kidnappers piled in with him. A

third man had moved round to the front and, when the

victim at last managed to straighten up, he found himself

looking down the barrel of a revolver levelled at him over

the back of the seat. A fourth man was at the wheel, the

engine still ticking over.

The car slid into gear, gathered speed and drew away.

Only the skid-marks made by the tyres and a patch of

churned-up snow indicated that anything had disturbed the

sabbath peace of that winter morning.

Inside the car, no-one spoke.

The man struggled to collect his thoughts. Now that the

first shock of the attack was over, his keen brain sought to

assess his situation. Strangely, he felt no fear. He had been

expecting this arrest and his mind was prepared to meet it.

The Police had imprisoned him before, so he knew what to

expect, what questions they would ask.

But what of Sabina, his wife? What of his little son,

Mihai? Would they guess what had become of him? He

drove personal thoughts out of his mind and sought to con-

centrate on preparing himself for the coming ordeal.

The car sped along the wide boulevards. There was more

traffic as they approached the city centre. Through the car

window, the man glimpsed a plaque on a wall giving the

name of the street: Calea Rahovei. That, he knew, was

where the Communist Secret Police had their headquarters

and, as if in confirmation, the .car slowed down, turned in

through large steel gates and stopped. The gates clanged

shut.

'Out!' said one of the kidnappers, and the man was

bundled unceremoniously from the car and into a bare office.

An official was seated behind a desk. He motioned to the

PROLOGUE II

kidnappers who began, swiftly and expertly, to empty their

victim's pockets. Wallet, identity papers, money, pen» keys,

handkerchief. All were placed on the desk.

'Take off your tie,' said the official.

The prisoner did so, and laid it beside his possessions on

the desk.

* *Now your shoe-laces.'

The man removed those, too, and laid them beside his tie.

The official, flicking through the wallet and papers, finally

looked up. The prisoner returned his glance calmly. The

official Rooked away.

'From now on,' he barked, 'you are no longer Wurmbrand.

Your name is Vasile Georgescu. Remember that! Vasile

Georgescu.'

He made a motion of dismissal.

A little later, from the plank bed that provided his only

seating accommodation, Richard Wurmbrand examined the

tiny, bare, concrete cell in which he was confined. The only

illumination came from a small, barred window so high up

in the wall that he could not reach it to see out. If the thin

sunshine still brought a promise of spring to Bucharest on its

wide plain between the mountains and the sea, he would

have no means of telling, for the grimy panes acted more as a

blind than a window.

Wryly, he contemplated the new name he had been given:

Vasile Georgescu. It was as if, in England, he had been

called 'John Smith'. The Communists were determined that

he should lose his identity under a common name. Even his

guards were not to know how famous was the man they were

watching, in case they were questioned outside. Pastor Rich-

ard Wurmbrand, like so many other Christians and Jews and

intellectuals in Communist-occupied Rumania, was to dis-

appear without trace.

CHAPTER I

The Carpenter's Reward

Rumania is one of the group of countries that are known

collectively as 'The Balkans'. To a generation that grew up

between the two World Wars, its name is synonymous with

musical comedy and the Orient Express. To the younger

generation, more acquainted with rock musicals than musi-

cal comedy, with jet travel rather than railways, Rumania is

unfamiliar territory. It is not a part of Europe much studied

in the geography syllabus of western schools, except as being

rich in oil and having the Danube delta on its coast, yet those

two factors have been the cause of much of Rumania's

troubled history. The Danube has provided access for in-

vaders and, in today's world, oil means power.

The hundred and fifty miles of coastline where the

Danube empties itself into the Black Sea through a myriad

of sluggish, meandering channels, makes up less than one

twelfth of Rumania's long frontier. To the north and east

lies the U.S.S.R., to the West, Hungary and Yugoslavia. To

the south, separated from Rumania along most of the border

by the waters of the River Danube, lies Bulgaria.

The country has seen a constant movement of settlers and

invaders along the Danube waterway. Dacians discovered

the country's rich valleys and fertile plains a thousand years

before Christ. Greek traders built cities along the Black Sea

coast. The Emperor Trajan made the country a province of

the Roman Empire. Goths and Huns and Tartars invaded it.

Germans settled in it. Hungary annexed part of it. Turkey

swallowed the country whole into its vast Ottoman Empire

and kept it suppressed for four hundred years. Little wonder,

12

THE CARPENTER'S REWARD 13

then, that it became a country with a mixed population con-

taining a number of minority groups: Hungarians, Germans,

gypsies, Jews and many others.

Richard Wurmbrand belonged to two of these groups. He

himself is a native-born Rumanian but his family, as the

name suggests, was of German extraction from the German-

speaking province of Bukovina. Indeed, the family always

spoke German at home. Moreover, they were Jewish. Into

this family Richard was born in Bucharest on 24th March,

1909-

He grew up in a country at war. When the Congress of

Berlin gave Rumania its independence in 1878, it also gave

the country a German princeling as its king. He was still on

the throne when World War I broke out so Rumania,

naturally, was on the side of Germany. However, in 1916 old

King Carol died and his successor, Ferdinand, whose wife

(Queen Marie) was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria,

switched the country's allegiance to the Allies. Immediately,

an army of Germans, Bulgarians and Turks invaded Ruma-

nia and occupied three-quarters of the country, including

the capital itself.

It was a dreadful time of starvation and epidemics. To

crown the suffering of the Wurmbrand family, Richard's

father died in the 1918 epidemic of Spanish flu. His mother

was left to provide food and clothing for Richard and his

three older brothers. There was never enough to eat; only

second-hand clothes to wear — but there were books in the

house, many books, for Richard's father, a dentist, had been

a man of taste and culture. Although Richard's education in

war-torn Bucharest was scanty, such was his love of reading

that by the time he was ten he had read every book he could

find, even the sceptical writings of Voltaire. Young and im-

pressionable, with no father to discuss and argue the ideas he

was absorbing, by the time he was fourteen he was a con-

vinced atheist. He was not just indifferent to religion; he

considered it positively harmful to the human mind. As he

14 RICHARD WURMBRAND

read more and more atheistic, revolutionary books, he grew

into a young man with revolutionary ideas, ready to suffer

and to fight for these pro-Communist ideas and ideals.

Yet when God has a great work to be done, He can use the

most unlikely tools. Saul of Tarsus was among those who

stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr, yet as St. Paul

men revere him as one of the first and greatest missionaries, a

man whose writings have helped to turn the world upside

down. Matthew was a hated tax-collector yet he became a

disciple of Jesus and in the first Gospel he has left a tender

and moving record of Our Lord's brief ministry. So it was

not mere chance that the young atheist, Wurmbrand, found

himself continually being drawn into synagogues and

churches, always seeking a God he was convinced did not

exist — but he found little there that was an inspiration for

him.

The synagogue services were all in Hebrew which he did

not understand and the rabbis seemed always too busy to

notice the young enquirer in their congregation. There was

equally little comfort to be found in the Christian churches

he visited. The ritual was complicated, the sermons dull, and

the Roman Catholic Church at that time conducted its ser-

vices in Latin which he could not follow. Yet churches held

a strange and inexplicable fascination for him.

Perhaps this stemmed from an incident which occurred

when he was eight years old and which he has never for-

gotten. His father had, briefly, moved his family and prac-

tice to Istanbul in the vain hope that conditions might be

better there than in Rumania. On the way home from school

with a small Christian friend, Richard and the other boy

stopped at the Catholic Church.

ïïang on a minute,' said the friend. 'I have to give a mes-

sage to the priest from my father.'

He disappeared. It was the first time little Richard had

ever been inside a church. It seemed very strange. There was

a sweet and unfamiliar smell that he would later come to

THE CARPENTER'S REWARD 15

know as incense. The holy pictures on the walls and the

Stations of the Gross were interesting but no more, for the

child had never heard the name 'Christ' in his life. He won-

dered who the old man with the beard was who came out

through a side door with his friend. Presently, the old man

came over to Richard and patted him on the head.

'Well, little fellow, and what can I do for you?' he

asked.

"Nothing,' stammered Richard, overcome.

The old priest smiled. 'But I am a disciple of One who has

told me always to do good to other people, so I must do

something for you.'

Timidly, Richard ventured that he would like a drink of

water and the priest brought it to him. He never forgot the

incident and perhaps, subconsciously, hoped as the years

went by that the Catholic Church would some day again

fulfil his now greater needs. He would enter a church and see

people kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary, saying

their prayer 'Hail, Mary, full of grace'. He would think to

himself, 'Perhaps if I kneel by them and listen and say the

same words, something will happen.' But nothing did

happen for Wurmbrand; the image of the Virgin remained

stone.

He found even less to attract him in the Greek Orthodox

Church to which eighty per cent of the population of

Rumania belonged. He could not reconcile their expressed

hatred of his own kind with their professed Christianity. "Was

not the Jesus they worshipped a Jew? Was not His Mother a

Jewess? Yet a Greek Orthodox priest set his dogs on Wurm-

brand because he, too, was a Jew.

It was said of Rumania that 'Foreigners and Jews run the

country because the Rumanians are too lazy to run it for

themselves'. In the thirties, the country was rich and pros-

perous and a man with little scruple could soon make his

fortune. Richard Wurmbrand entered the race for material

success. Ambitious, intelligent and with a formidable energy,

l6 RICHARD WURMBRAND

he soon outstripped his more complacent Gentile com-

patriots and by the time he was twenty-five, he was already

comfortably off as a stockholder. Honesty was not neces-

sarily for him the best policy so he found it easy to dismiss

'sharp practice' as 'clever dealing'.

He was a handsome young man, tall and broad-shoul-

dered, with a high forehead and deep-set, very blue eyes. He

was never short of a girl friend to escort round the night-

clubs and cabarets of Bucharest. The capital had earned its

title 'Paris of the Balkans' as much for its gay night-life as for

its elegant boulevards and parks. In the sensuous and dec-

adent atmosphere of pre-war Bucharest, Richard set out to

gratify his every appetite. Drink, dancing, food, sex — he

tried them all but still felt a nagging discontent. Nothing

tasted as delightful as it promised to do.

One summer evening, he was leaning over the balcony of

his home feeling sour and angry. His mother had been urging

him to marry and settle down. She had found him a suitable

match in a young Jewish girl of substance, an heiress with a

dowry of a million lei and an interest in her family's business.

He was tempted by the dowry and the inheritance but the

girl herself held no attraction for him. As he leaned over the

balcony, he saw his uncle approaching, accompanied by a

pretty, dark, petite girl he had not met before.

'If I could have a girl like her/ he thought, 'I wouldn't

care about the million lei*

The girl was Sabina Oster, a young Rumanian from Gzer-

nowitz. She was on vacation from her chemistry studies in

Paris and she did not return to Paris after that first meeting

with Richard; instead, she found employment in Bucharest.

The young couple went out together every evening. They

had much in common: they were both Jews who had put

aside their religion, they both loved the gay night-life of the

capital. They were madly in love and married on October

23rd, 1935. As a concession to their respective parents, par-

ticularly to Sabina's who were strictly Orthodox Jews, they

THE CARPENTER'S REWARD 17

were married in the synagogue with all the traditional re-

ligious ceremony. As is customary at Jewish weddings, a

wineglass was smashed on the floor to remind them of Jeru-

salem trodden under the feet of the Gentiles but this meant

nothing either to Richard or Sabina. Although the rabbi

who married them knew that Richard was a convinced, even

militant atheist, he made no attempt on this most solemn

occasion to talk to the young people about God.

Not that it would have had much effect at the time. Rich-

ard and Sabina were a completely worldly couple, flinging

themselves frenetically into a round of gay parties and

dances. They had no desire for a family; a baby would inter-

fere with their pleasure.

The bubble burst after less than a year of marriage. Rich-

ard began to be troubled by a persistent cough so went to see

his doctor. He returned to Sabina with the news that he had

tuberculosis, perhaps originating in the privations of his

childhood years; but certainly triggered off by the rackety life

he was now leading. Even in the 'thirties, tuberculosis was a

dreaded disease and for some time it seemed likely that

Richard would die. He was very frightened. There was no

logical reason why he should be so for his atheistic reasoning

told him that there was nothing after death, that his body

would just revert to the minerals of which it was com-

pounded. Yet every instinct warned him that there must be

something more. After all, what was the point of anything in

this life if there were nothing to follow — but what would it

be? Would there really be a Judgment to face? The fear of

what might lie ahead terrified him.

He was sent to a sanatorium high up in the Carpathians.

It was a beautiful place, with great views across the valleys

to forest-clad mountains beyond, but even in such lovely

surroundings, Richard could not find rest. He was an atheist,

but atheism did not give him peace in his heart. In his -

dçspair and anxiety, he found himself struggling to pray.

It was a strange prayer.

l8 RICHARD WURMBRAND

'God,' he challenged the unknown. 1 know you do not

exist. But if perchance you do exist (which I deny), it is for

you to reveal yourself to me. It is not my duty to seek you.'

As he prayed this reluctant prayer, Richard began to

think about the past, about the girls he had seduced, the

mother he had grieved, the wife he now seemed to have

failed. Tears came easily in his weak state but they brought

some relief, and when Sabina came to see him on one of her

fortnightly visits, she found him quieter, less resentful of his

illness.

He told her about a book he had been reading to while

away the long hours in bed. It was about the Brothers Ratis-

bonne who had founded an Order with the purpose of con-

verting Jews to Christ. It seemed incredible to Richard that

anyone should think the matter important enough to bother.

Then it was borne in upon him with something of a shock

that he himself must be one of the Jews the Order was pray-

ing for, even though they did not know him by name. It was

a humbling thought. If strangers could consider his life so

important, had he been right or fair to throw it away by

riotous living? He tried to explain this to Sabina but she was

impatient with his arguments.

'What are you worrying about?' she demanded. 'There's

nothing wrong in what we do. We are young. Youth is to be

enjoyed.'

But Richard was beginning to question the manner of the

enjoyment.

After some months in the sanatorium, the doctors felt he

was sufficiently recovered to leave. It was the spring of 1937

and Richard decided to go to a village in the mountains to

convalesce. Rumania has twelve thousand villages and he

could have chosen any one of them, but God directed him to

Noua. Unbeknown to Richard, the carpenter of that par-

ticular village, an old man called Christian Wolfkes, had for

some years been praying like this :

TDear God, I have one very great wish which I beseech

THE CARPENTER'S REWARD ig

you to grant me. I long to bring a Jew to Christ before I die,

for Jesus himself was from the Jewish people. But I am poor

and old and sick. I cannot go out looking for a Jew myself

and there are no Jews in our village. Please, God, bring a Jew_

here to our village and I will do my best to bring him to

Christ.'

In Richard Wurmbrand, the old man saw the answer to

his prayer.

'He gave him a Bible to read. The printed word, irrespec-

tive of its content, had always fascinated Richard so he read

the carpenter's Bible. As a Jew, however non-practising, he

was already in some measure acquainted with the Old Tes-

tament so he left that aside. But the New Testament was

virgin territory for him. Day after day, he lay on the sofa in

the cottage reading about Jesus. He was fascinated by the

man, by his direct approach, his undeviating honesty, his

devastating logic in argument. He was impressed that this

man, Jesus, could show love even to sinners. He read on,

stirred more than he cared to admit by the story of Jesus's

selfless life of service. But to what end? Christ had been

crucified and he offered no easier fate to those who sought to

follow his principles.

'You'll never have me for a disciple,' Richard said stub-

bornly. {I want money, travel, pleasure. This illness is

suffering enough. Yours is the way of the cross, and even if it

is the way of truth as well, I won't follow it.'

Richard hesitates to tell what followed in case he should

be thought to be exaggerating. He saw no vision of Christ

but, he says, he was vividly aware of his presence and it

seemed as if a voice spoke clearly to him: T)o not fear the

cross! You will find it the greatest of joys.'

"When he went back to his reading of the New Testament,

every passage his eye alighted on seemed to be telling him

how sinful was his own life. Christ's outlook was so pure;

Richard's so tainted. His nature was so selfless; Richard's

had been greedy for experience. All Richard's certainties

20 RICHARD WURMBRAND

began to crumble. He found he needed the friendship of this

man Jesus if he was to salvage anything from the wreck of

his life. This man? Surely he must be God after all; there

could be no other explanation of the wisdom and truth of

what he read.

'I was like the man in the ancient Chinese story,' Richard

was to write many years later, drudging exhausted under the

sun, who came on a great oak and rested in its shade. "What a

happy chance I found you!" he said. But the oak replied, "It

is no chance. I have been waiting for you for 400 years."

Christ had waited all my life for me. Now we met*

Richard's conversion to Christianity was a terrible blow to

his wife. Though she had latterly shown scant observance of

the Jewish religion, she was steeped from childhood in the

history of the persecution of her people by Christians. Like

the children of other Orthodox Jewish families, she had

been forbidden to mention Christ's name in speech. When

she passed a church as a child, she was ordered to turn away

her head. She could still remember having her hair pulled by

bigger girls at school because she was 'a dirty little Jewess*.

The Nazis in Germany were set on a course of persecution

of Jews ; and already in Rumania the Fascist organisation of

Greenshirts, Christian in name if not in fact, had begun their

ghastly pogroms. Jewish students were thrown out of the

windows at the University. Other Jews were impaled on

meat hooks in the market and labelled *Kosher Meat'. Now

her husband was to join the enemies and persecutors of her

race. When she heard that Richard was to be baptised into

the Christian faith, she contemplated suicide.

Richard was patient with her. He talked to her of Christ

He took her, frightened but also a little curious, to see the

inside of a church. He showed her the pictures of Jesus and

His mother and pointed out that they were Jews. He opened

the Prayer Book and showed her that the Commandments

printed there for Christians to obey were the same that she

had learned from the Book of Moses. He showed her the

THE CARPENTER S REWARD 21

Psalms and she realised that they were the same Psalms of

David that she had heard read in the synagogue as a child.

Richard showed her the Old Testament prophecies that

foretold Christ's coming. Surely she could see that Chris-

tianity was simply the Jewish faith opened to all the nations

of the earth. Still she was not convinced ; and anyway, she

did not want to spend Sundays in church. She hated the idea

of giving up the gay life she enjoyed so much.

Richard tried another approach.

'All right,' he conceded one Sunday evening when she

protested at his attending service. 'If you want to see a film,

we'll both see a film — because I love you.'

They went into the city centre and Richard went from

theatre to theatre, studying the posters and stills outside.

'We'll go to this one,' he decided at last. Sabina was sur-

prised; it was a very suggestive film. Two hours later when

they emerged from the cinema she was even more surprised

to hear him say: 'You go off home now. I think I'll stay up in

town and pick up a girl.'

''What did you say F Sabina was outraged.

'But you wanted me to come to the theatre tonight,' Rich-

ard replied quietly. 'You saw what happened in the film.

Why should I not do the same? Every man becomes what he

looks at, and if you want me to watch films like that night

after night, can you blame me if I turn into a bad husband?

On the other hand, if you want me to be a good husband, let

me go to church — and come with me sometimes.'

Sabina had to concede that he was right about the

film — but she still hankered after the gay parties Richard

wanted to put behind them. One evening, to her delight, he

did agree to accept an invitation. When they arrived at the

friend's apartment, many of the guests were already very

drunk. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. One or two

couples were petting in corners. Even to Sabina, the party

seemed pretty awful. 'Let's go home,' she whispered after a

very short time. 'If we slip away now, no-one will notice.'

22 RICHARD WURMBRAND

'Why leave?' protested Richard. 'We've only just come.'

So they stayed on at the party where the drinking became

more rowdy, the petting more open. Sabina hated it. 'Can't

we leave now,' she begged Richard again at midnight.

'It's far too early,' he replied airily. 'The night is young

yet.'

Time and again she implored him to leave and time and

again he refused. Only when he saw that she was utterly

sickened by the whole sordid occasion did he agree to take

her home. They came out of the smoke-laden atmosphere

into the cold clean air of early morning.

*Richard!' Sabina exclaimed. 'I'm going straight to your

pastor's house to ask him to baptise me as a Christian. It will

be like taking a bath after all that filth.'

Richard laughed. You've waited so long,' he said. 'Surely

you can now wait until the morning. Let the poor pastor

have his sleep.'

CHAPTER 2

The Gathering Storm

In order to appreciate the problems that the Wurmbrands

had now to face as Christian Jews, it is necessary to under-

stand the political situation of the time.

Europe, between the two World Wars, saw the spread of

Totalitarianism — that is, rule by one party only with no

opposition. This totalitarianism took two different and vio-

lently opposed forms.

At the extreme Tieft' was Communism, based on the writ-

ings of Karl Marx. This advocated the overthrow of all

existing forms of government. It allowed no private enter-

prise, no personal freedom. Communism in its present form

spread from Russia across national barriers. It kept, and still

keeps, a ruthless hold on its subjects in every way, including

their minds. Skilful propaganda controls their thinking,

secret police their actions. Religion, with its emphasis on

individual responsibility, is denounced as superstition. The

State has replaced God.

Totalitarianism of the extreme *Right' was called Fascism.

This came into being in the chaos following the violent up-

heaval of World War I. European countries became impov-

erished by the war, traditions of centuries were upset, life

was insecure. In such conditions, Communism began to

spread rapidly. The middle classes, however, were apprehen-

sive of its onward march. They were afraid of losing their

national identity and were bewildered by the loss of their

money as their country's finances collapsed, so they looked

for strong leaders. Thus the stage was set for the rise of

Mussolini in Italy, of Hitler in Germany, of Codreanu in

23

24 RICHARD WURMBRAND

Rumania, and many others. All introduced 'Fascist' régimes

under different names, all offering a strong one-party

government, intensely nationalistic in feeling. Great stress

was laid on keeping the nation 'pure' and to this end attacks

were made on minority groups — in particular, in Germany

and Rumania, on Jews who were blamed for all these coun-

tries' financial troubles. The attacks served also to divert

attention from the loss of individual freedom under a

dictatorship.

In Rumania, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, claiming to have

been inspired by the Archangel, founded his 'Legion of St.

Michael', with the declared aim of cleansing the country of

all Jews. This organisation developed into the Iron Guard,

often known as 'Greenshirts' from the colour of the military-

style uniform they wore. These were the men who had so

cruelly attacked Jews in the pogroms.

It was some time, however, before Richard and Sabina

came into conflict with either Communism or Fascism. The

hostility they met at the beginning of their Christian life

came from their own people, the Jews.

When Christ spoke to him in the carpenter's house and

said T)o not fear the cross; you will find it the greatest of

joys', Richard little realised how soon he would be expected

to take* up that cross in following his Lord. He and Sabina

had no desire to quarrel with anyone; all they wanted was

rest from the life that had gone before, particularly after a

little son, Mihai, was born to them in January 1939.

Richard was to write some years later: 'A calm life ...

raises new storms; one's religion is attacked, one must defend

it, and so, without having wished it, one is at war again. We

have actively to put into practice faith and love, and only

God knows why, as sons of peace, we do not bring peace, but

a sword.'

It was dreadful for the Wurmbrands to be called 'traitors'

by their former Jewish friends because they had become

Christian; but the hostility they now met among their own

THE GATHERING STORM 25

kind was only a challenge to a man of Richard's tempera-

ment.

Burning with zeal to show the truth of Christ, Richard

sought out the rabbi who had conducted his wedding ser-

vice. He was met with bland indifference. Other rabbis he

argued with reproached him for abandoning 'the faith of his

fathers*. Richard could not persuade them that faith was

something you could not inherit from your fathers but was a

matter of personal conviction ; each man must have his own

living experience of God. The rabbis he met were too

firmly entrenched in their rigid thinking to be open to per-

suasion so Richard turned his attention to Jews who were

not rabbis.

With a clarity that was not blinded by centuries of anti-

Semitic prejudice, Richard could recognise how immense is

the potential of the Jewish race. It was no accident of history

that God chose them as His people, that He sent His son into

the world as a Jew. Even without accepting Christ, the Jews

have been a brilliant race, producing men of the highest

intellectual calibre — great scientists like Einstein, great

painters like Chagall, composers, musicians, writers. If only

the intellectual passion, the brilliant intelligence of the

Jewish people could be harnessed for Christ, with what an

unequalled beauty could the Church be invested ! It could be

on fire with love for mankind; it could transform the world!

Now, at the beginning of his own Christian life, Richard felt

that God had called him to bring Jews to Christ. He did not

know how he would carry out the work but he had faith that

the way would be shown to him.

It was not easy, however, for the new convert to find the

Church that was founded by Jesus. Various Christian de-

nominations in Rumania at that time seemed still to be

rooted in mediaeval ideas about Jews and were as anti-Semi-

tic (that is, 'Jew-hating') as the Fascist administration they

supported. Richard found the Christian scene a tragic one.

Was this in the spirit of Jesus who said 'I was sent to the lost

26 RICHARD WURMBRAND

sheep of the house of Israel'? Men had made of Christianity

such a complicated thing, full of sectarian differences and

formal ritual. Surely there was need for the simplicity of the

early Church? The message of the Gospels seemed so clear

to him: God is love. If Christianity could truly be demon-

strated to be love —of God, of one's neighbour, of one's

enemies — then even the Jews must become converted to it,

for they were thirsty for love in a world that persecuted their

race so cruelly.

Richard found a job as Secretary to the Anglican Mission

to Jews in Bucharest. This was a missionary church and

centre set up by the Church of England for the purpose of

converting some of Rumania's thousands of Jews to Chris-

tianity. Rev. George Stevens was the pastor.

In his enthusiasm to do his best for the Mission, it was not

easy for Richard always to avoid his old ways. When an

insurance company brought a claim against the Mission, it

seemed quite easy for Richard to slip into his former ways

and offer a bribe to the Insurance Agent to drop the claim.

. He boasted of this to the Mission head.

'But are we really liable?' asked Mr. Stevens.

'Of course,' Richard replied.

'Then you were wrong to offer the bribe; we should pay

what we owe.'

It took Richard some little time to accept that there could

be no double standards for a Christian. But he was happy at

the Mission, delighted that a door had opened for him on to

the work he felt called to do.

The very first soul he won for the Lord was Clarutza, a

Jewish girl of sixteen. Although she would consider herself a

convert of Richard's, it was in fact she who completed his

conversion. Just as he was finding it difficult to renounce

completely some of his former business methods, equally he

still could not easily shake off the desire to make a lot of

money without any effort. Although his conscience told him

that buying lottery tickets was not in the Christian tradition,

THE GATHERING STORM 27

none the less he bought one, for the prize was a very large

sum of money. Did Glarutza guess?

"Brother,' she asked him. 'Have you taken a ticket in the

lottery?'

'Of course not,' Richard lied readily, though the ticket

was in his pocket as he spoke.

It is easy to tell a lie; less easy to live with one. The know-

ledge of his deception kept nagging at his conscience until he

could bear it no longer and he had to confess. He told the

story at the Mission on the following Sunday, in front of the

whole congregation. There was a brief pause then, one after

another, Christian Jews stood up and openly confessed to

falsehoods, frauds and thefts they had kept hidden in their

hearts. It was an occasion of great blessing for all who were

present.

Richard was. not yet ordained a pastor but he did his best

to be a missionary in his own country. He felt he just had to

tell everybody he met about the wonderful Good News of

Jesus. He would buttonhole Jewish people on trains, in the

street and on park benches to talk to them about Christ. He

also distributed leaflets and literature about the Christian

faith. Strangely enough, there was a need for such literature

to be distributed even among Christians, for the Orthodox

Church did not allow its members to read the Gospels for

themselves.

One Sunday morning in the summer of 1939, Richard and

Clarutza went to Sinaia, the beautiful mountain resort some

sixty miles north of Bucharest where the King had his

summer residence. They set up their stall of Gospels and

pamphlets outside the church.

Richard's face was unmistakably Jewish; so was Cla-

rutza's. In those uneasy days, all things evil were attributed

to the Jewish race. A suspicious policeman, convinced that

the two Jews in charge of the stall could be up to no good,

approached Richard and asked him his name.

'Wurmbrand,' replied Richard, which took the policeman

28 RICHARD WURMBRAND

aback. It was a German name, not Jewish. None the less, the

policeman persisted and asked to see their identity cards.

These; of course, revealed that Richard and Glarutza were

indeed of Jewish origin. 'JEW was stamped across every

Jewish identity card, even if its holder was a Christian. The

policeman was outraged. How did they, as Jews, dare to sell

Christian literature? They were desecrating something holy!

He promptly arrested them and marched them off to the

police station. But it was Sunday morning and most of the

police were off duty. The prisoners were left in charge of a

young constable to await the arrival of the police inspector

who would determine what action to take about their

heinous crime!

Suddenly the telephone rang, asking for immediate help

at the scene of an accident. The constable hurried off, leav-

ing the 'prisoners' alone in the police station. Richard and

Clarutza waited; the whole situation was so farcical, they

were intrigued to see how it would end. At last the Police

Inspector arrived, unaware that the man and girl in the

waiting room were the 'criminals' he was to interrogate.

'Good morning, Inspector,' said Richard, seizing the ini-

tiative. 'My name is Wurmbrand. This young lady and I

want to sell religious literature in your town. Do we need

your permission?'

It did not occur to the Inspector to check whether or not

they were Jewish nor, indeed, whether they had already sold

their literature.

'Have you a permit from the Ministry of Culture?' he

asked.

'Oh dear, no. Should we have had one?' Richard was all

innocence.

'Then I'm afraid I can't give you permission to sell your

literature here.'

'Ah well,' sighed Richard. 'It looks as if we shall have to

go home again. Good morning, Inspector!'

'Good morning.'

THE GATHERING STORM 29

Without waiting for any more questions to be asked, Rich-

ard and Glarutza hurried from the police station, stopped

the first taxi they saw and left the town. Richard's quick wit

and sharp intelligence when faced with a crisis were often to

stand him in good stead when in later years he, had to face

prison interrogation.

In September of 1939, war broke out between Germany on

one side and Britain and France on the other. King Carol II

was nominally on the side of the Allies who had guaranteed

Rumania's neutrality. However, Germany was a nearer

neighbour and in March of that year he had considered it

prudent to make an economic treaty whereby Rumania's

vast resources, especially her oil, were placed at the disposal

of Germany. The king's policy of keeping a foot in both

camps was eventually to lead to his own downfall and that of

his country.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, Rumania

vacillated between allegiance to Germany or to the Allies.

Russia was threatening Rumania's northern border, claim-

ing the province of Bessarabia. As the Allied fortunes in

Europe ebbed, Rumania began to look more and more

towards Germany for support against Russia.

It was a fearful time for the Jews. They were terrified of a

take-over by Russia for the Communists had always been

anti-Semitic in their policy. Equally, they feared the

influence of Hitler's Germany — a country bent on the exter-

mination of their race. At home, the Iron Guard openly

flaunted their power.

The Guard had been temporarily disbanded in 1938 when

their founder, Codreanu, had been arrested and executed.

Many of his organisation had fled to Germany where they

drilled and trained, becoming more Nazi even than the Nazis

themselves. Now, in the summer of 1940, following an am-

nesty from the king, the Iron Guard re-emerged under a new

leader, Horia Sima. The exiles returned from Ger-

many — lean, fit and hard, and dedicated in their hatred.

30 RICHARD WURMBRAND

They swaggered openly through the streets, while Jews

throughout Rumania trembled. Those who could afford it,

fled the country. Those who were poor remained and

suffered, or committed suicide. Goods and houses were

seized, investments appropriated. It is difficult for people in

democratic countries such as Britain or America to appreci-

ate the scope of the terror unleashed by the Fascists on the

Jews.

By August 1940 it appeared to the Rumanian Government

that the Allies were defeated. The British Army had re-

treated through Dunkirk; Paris had fallen; Norway, Den-

mark and the Low Countries were all overrun. It was time

to ally the country openly with Germany.

Naturally, such English people as remained in Bucharest

felt it advisable to leave, including the head of the Anglican

Mission where Richard worked. Since there was no minister

to carry on the work of the church, Richard offered to take

on the work himself. He studied and was in due course or-

dained as a pastor.

From now on, he was in constant danger. He was an

obvious target for the Iron Guard. In his home and in his

church, Richard offered Jews sanctuary from persecution. It

did not matter that he himself was a Christian Jew and that

his mission was to convert other Jews to Christianity. He was

of Jewish blood and that sufficed. Jews were anathema not

only to the Iron Guard but also, to its shame, to the Ortho-

dox Church. At that time, the Church supported the Fascists

in their campaign of terror. Murder walked the streets of

Bucharest and of every other big city.

One Sunday from his pulpit Richard saw a group of Iron

Guard in their recognisable green shirts file into the back of

his church. He could see that they were armed, although the

congregation, facing towards the pulpit, were unaware of

their presence. Richard determined that if this were to be his

last sermon, it should be a good one. He was speaking about

the hands of Jesus, how they had healed the sick and cradled

THE GATHERING STORM 31

children; how they had stretched out in blessing; how they

had touched lepers and had been nailed to the Gross.

'But you !' he suddenly thundered. 'What have you done

with your hands?'

The congregation looked at him in amazement; their

hands held only their prayer-books !

*Do you call yourselves Christians?' continued Richard in

passionate accusation. *You, who kill and beat and torture

innocent people? Cleanse your hands, you sinners !'

For some reason, the Greenshirts did not break up the

service. Though they glowered with rage and stood with

their guns drawn, they allowed Richard to finish his sermon,

and say the prayer and benediction. The congregation filed

out — nastily as they saw the reason for Richard's outburst.

As the last person left, Richard stepped down from the

pulpit and moved quickly behind a curtain. He could hear

running footsteps and shouts of 'Where's Wurmbrand? After

him!'

But he was prepared for just such an eventuality. Behind

the curtain was a secret door leading through a series of

corridors out into a side street. Once through the door and

with it safely locked behind him, Richard fled.

CHAPTER 3

Fascist Terror

Sometimes in the midst of gaiety on a day of warm

sunshine, one will suddenly shiver. It is almost as if some

Spirit of Times to Come moves past and one feels the cold

draught of his trailing garments. Some premonition of this

sort had happened to Richard in the early days of his court-

ship. One evening, he had said a strange and unexpected

thing to Sabina : 'You will suffer a lot if you marry me.' The

reality of that suffering, the reality of Jesus's words 'If any

man will come after me, let him .. .take up his cross' began

now to reveal itself to the young couple. They were in con-

stant danger.

One day a member of the Iron Guard was found dead in.a

street of Bucharest. No-one knew what had happened but

members of the Jewish community knew only too well that

they would be blamed and that reprisals would be taken

against them. A day or so later, Richard was sitting at home

when two young men of Jewish appearance asked to see him.

They said they had something on their conscience they

wished to confess.

'Go ahead,' said Richard.

They told him that they had been responsible for the

murder. Richard was dismayed.

'How could you commit a crime like that?'

'He was a Fascist,' they said. 'He deserved to die.'

This reply made Richard angry. 'Then why have you

come to me?' he demanded. T can understand your asking

my advice if you were ashamed of the crime you have com-

mitted, but you seem to glory in it. What you have done is a

32

FASCIST TERROR 33

crime. Even if a man is a Fascist, he should still be treated as

a human being. Did you not think that he could have a

mother or a wife? If he is our enemy, we must repay his

hatred with love. We must not kill him.'

And he sent the young men on their way.

That was not the end of the story. Some months later,

when the Iron Guard had been overthrown, one of the same

two young men came again to see Richard.

'I must tell you how you escaped certain death,' he said.

He went on to describe how he was in fact a Communist

who had been arrested by the Iron Guard while distributing

propaganda leaflets. He was tortured and, in order to escape

further ordeal, agreed to act as an agent provocateur for the

Iron Guard. The idea was that he and the other young man

(who was a member of the Iron Guard) would pretend to be

Jews. They would visit any place where they might find

Jews gathered together and would start pro-Communist dis-

cussions, at the same time criticising and insulting the Fas-

cists. Anyone who agreed with their opinions would later be

arrested by the Iron Guard and beaten up. With this plan in

mind, knowing that Richard was the leader of a Christian

Mission to Jews, they had called at his home and confessed

to a murder they had not committed.

'We never thought we should hear a Jew say that Green-

shirts should be loved!' the young man said.

Richard's truly Christian approach had saved his life.

The Government permit for the Anglican Mission had

become invalid when the Iron Guard came to power; it was

necessary to apply for a new one. But how could Richard, a

Jew, dare even to enter a Government Office to apply for

such a permit when the declared policy of the Government

was anti-Semitic? There was still one Englishman remaining

in Bucharest who worked at the Mission, a young man called

Roger Allison. He and Richard decided to visit an Inspector

of the Ministry of Cults in his home. This Inspector was in

fact an Orthodox priest who was also a member of the Iron

34 RICHARD WURMBRAND

Guard. When Richard introduced himself, the priest was

most affable. Wurmbrand is a German name, and Germans

at that time were treated with deference in Rumania. Im-

agine the Inspector's surprise when Richard disclosed that

he was a Christian Jew seeking a permit for his Christian

Mission to Jews!

'We don't want any exceptions to be made in our case,'

said Richard. 'We don't expect to be treated differently from

other Jews just because we are Christian. All we ask is the

right to worship.'

The Inspector /priest burst out laughing. It seemed to him

a great joke that a Jew should have been baptised. 'Of

course, it is only your skin that is baptised,' he said. 'You

could not possibly become a real Christian.'

'How right you are,' agreed Richard. 'It is difficult enough

for anyone to be truly Christlike and it is doubly difficult for

us Jews who are so new to the task. But we are trying in our

community. We do beg you to give us a chance to try to

improve.'

The Inspector continued for a long time to mock and

insult Richard and the Mission but Richard continued to

answer humbly, admitted that he and his fellows fell far

short of the ideal standard of Christians but insisted that

they sincerely believed and, if only given the opportunity to

worship, would seek to do better. Suddenly the priest

changed his tone. 'I have been deliberately testing you,' he

said, 'and I have discovered that you are worthier of bearing

the name of Christian than I am. You shall have your

permit.'

The Wurmbrands' was not a luxurious home. Indeed, it

was only an apartment on the northern outskirts of Bu-

charest where the rents were low. The other apartments in

the block were occupied by members of the anti-Semitic

Orthodox Church so the Wurmbrands were viewed with

suspicion, though tolerated because they were Christian.

Round the courtyard were pasted big posters of Codreanu,

FASCIST TERROR 35

the founder of the Legion of St. Michael. He had been à

thug and a Jew-baiter but now he was being almost can-

onised. The apartment block was not a friendly place for

Richard and Sabina to live.

That was at the beginning.

But Richard always had a wonderful gift for finding the

right word for the person he was seeking to win. He was once

described, derogatorily, as (a great actor' but he took this-as a

compliment. 'I cannot see how it is possible to be a good

missionary,' he said, 'unless one has a certain artistic flair,

and a knack of playing different rôles.'

Using this gift, Richard set to work to win over his hostile

neighbours. One man snarled at him : You Jews have never

done a damned thing that's any good.' Richard was standing

by the parlour door at the time, watching the man's wife

sewing. He replied, 'That's a fine sewing-machine. What

make is it? A Singer! Hold on — wasn't that invented by a

Jew? Really, you know, if you think Jews are so useless,

you'd better get rid of that sewing-machine!' No wonder the

neighbour began to laugh. Gradually Richard wore down

the unfriendliness of the other residents of the block. He

could be charming, he could be direct, he could command or

he could cajole. And, as his wife Sabina has said, 'his blue

eyes could look into your soul'.

So their neighbours did not betray them when their house

was used as a refuge for the homeless and the persecuted.

Every day, Christians and Jews in trouble of some kind,

gypsies, beggars, anyone in need would come to their door.

No-one was ever turned away. Mihai has written how even if

Sabina had to 'slice the bread a little thinner, or stretch the

soup with water', none the less there was always a place at

the table for the hungry stranger.

She had become a radiant Christian. Richard was the dy-

namic crusader against cruelty and oppression. She gave no

less effective Christian witness in her gentle acts of love. A

friend said of her: 'It seemed as if no-one in Rumania got

36 RICHARD WURMBRAND

married or had a baby or encountered trouble but they came

to Sabina for advice.'

In September of 1940, King Carol was forced to abdicate.

For a brief period, the ordinary people of Rumania hoped

that sanity would be restored to their country. Carol had

been an autocrat; and in endeavouring to placate both Ger-

many and the Allies, he had succeeded in pleasing nobody

and had lost his country's trust. Now King Carol's son,

Michael, succeeded to the throne. The country had hopes of

a 'New Age' under the new young ruler but he was very

young and the real power lay with the Prime Minister, Ion

Antonescu, who had to continue to use the Iron Guard to

keep control. Conscription was introduced. Meat and petrol

were rationed. More than seventy per cent of Rumania's

output had to go to Germany. The Rumanian cow was being

well and truly milked. Far from witnessing the dawn of a new

age, Rumanians were seeing the sunset of freedom.

After a time, the Prime Minister tried to dispense with the

services of the Iron Guard but that was easier wished than

done. A vicious power struggle developed. There was

fighting in the streets of Bucharest between rival factions,

bloody massacres as Fascists and their opponents killed each

other off. At this time, Richard and Sabina even helped the

families of Iron Guard who were suffering in Antonescu's

purge. One family, in great distress, were about to commit

suicide when Richard came to their rescue. He was criti-

cised for extending his help to anti-Semites but he insisted

that it was Christ's command that we should love our

enemies.

'We must not be selective in our good deeds,' Richard has

written. 'The enemy we have conquered must also have.our

help. But any help given to an enemy when he is in power is

wrong, because it makes us his accomplices.'

Eventually, Antonescu broke the power of the Iron Guard

by calling on Hitler for assistance, but it was at the cost of

the last pretence of neutrality. Rumania now entered the

FASCIST TERROR 37

war actively on the side of Germany and the country itself

was occupied by German troops.

The hounding of Jews increased in intensity and per-

secution bit deep into the Wurmbrand household.

All Sabina's family were deported from their home near

the frontier town of Czernowitz — her parents, her brother

and three sisters, along with many relatives and friends. It

was winter; many of the people collapsed in the snow; others

starved to death; numbers were shot. Sabina never heard

from any of her family again.

She and Richard risked punishment by giving sanctuary

in their home to Jews hunted by the Nazis. More than this^

Richard spoke out fearlessly against the system that could

encourage such terror. He preached with power and people

listened. He would stand up in any church that would invite

him to preach, no matter what its denomination, speaking of

the love of Christ, bringing courage and hope to frightened

people. He preached in bars, in brothels, in prisons; and

when the Nazis and their puppets forbade him to speak, he

arranged secret meetings in people's homes and continued

his defiant teaching there. He became a rallying point for

resistance to the régime. Many times attempts were made

to arrest him during meetings but always warning was re-

ceived in time and the group was able to disperse quickly

and unnoticed.

On June 28th, 1941, eleven thousand Jews were butch-

ered in one day in the town of Jassy in north-east Rumania.

Seven young Christian Jewish girls managed to survive,

along with a Norwegian missionary, Sister Olga. When

Richard learned of this he determined to rescue these girls

before another massacre overtook them. But how? Jews were

forbidden to travel, yet if the girls remained in Jassy their

death was certain. Richard devised an ingenious plan. He

arranged with a friend in the Police whom he knew to be a

sincere Christian to have the girls arrested and brought to

Bucharest as prisoners. Richard and Sabina met the train,

38 RICHARD WURMBRAND

took over the prisoners from the Christian policeman who

was escorting them and sheltered them in their home until

their escape to safety could be arranged.

Antonescu's new régime brought further problems for

the Christian Jews of the Mission. Once again, the permit to

worship, extracted so recently and so unexpectedly from the

Iron Guard, became invalid. Moreover, when Rumania

officially entered the war on Germany's side, diplomatic re-

lations were broken off with Britain and the Anglican

Mission to the Jews was dissolved. The Assembly Hall was

closed and the Wurmbrands were evicted from their flat.

The little congregation of about one hundred converted Jews

were now without a home. Fortunately the Rumanian

branch of the Swedish Mission to Israel was prepared to

accommodate Richard and his flock. This was a Lutheran

missionary body similar to the Anglican Mission. However,

Richard would once again have to obtain a permit to hold

meetings.

This time he approached Mr. Sandu, a cabinet minister in

the new government and head of the Ministry of Ecclesi-

astical Affairs. Once again, thanks to his German name,

Richard was granted an interview. He attempted the same

honest approach that had won him his permit on the pre-

vious occasion. This time, however, he had no success. The

Minister attempted to refer him to another department

and when Richard said he had already tried them refused his

application altogether.

'The Germans are in our country,' he said. *We cannot

give permits of this kind to Jews.'

'At that moment,' Richard wrote of this incident, 'God

had taken from me all my powers of reasoning, so that I

completely forgot that I was a Jew, without any rights, in an

anti-Semitic atmosphere, in the office of a minister of state.

All he had to do would be to ring his bell, and I should have

been arrested and should have vanished without a trace.'

When the Minister refused the permit, Richard said to

FASCIST TERROR 39

him : 'All right, Minister. I withdraw my application but we

shall continue to meet and to worship at our own risk. But

before I leave, I want to remind you of something. The day

will come when we shall no longer be ministers of state,

clergymen or anything else; we shall all stand naked and

trembling before the Throne of God to answer for our deeds.

Consider carefully what you may have to answer for when

you deny Christians the right to assemble peaceably in order

to worship Jesus.'

Richard stopped speaking, dismayed at his own boldness,

and waited for the outraged anger, for the arrest he felt must

be inevitable. But the Minister did not. fly into a rage. In-

stead, to Richard's amazement, he rose from his chair and

asked humbly: 'What can I do to be saved, wretched sinner

that I am?'

Richard was touched with awe. It could only be the power

of God working through him that had wrought such a

change.

So, once again, he had a permit for his Church to as-

semble. It did not last long. Soon afterwards, Richard and

Sabina and several others were arrested on a charge of hold-

ing 'illegal religious meetings'. By the time they were re-

leased from prison, they found their permit had been

cancelled and the cabinet minister who had granted it had

been dismissed.

The lack of a permit did not deter them. If the Church

could not meet in public, they would worship together in

secret, meeting in various homes, each time risking long

terms of imprisonment should they be discovered. They de-

veloped all manner of ingenious techniques to keep their

assemblies from being raided. Only on one occasion were

they surprised and even that situation was saved by some

quick thinking. The Police had made the mistake of not

surrounding the whole block of flats where the meeting was

being held. When they knocked on the door, the owner of

the apartment took a long time opening up. Then he delayed

40 RICHARD WURMBRAND

the police in the entrance. What did they want? Gould they

identify themselves? And so on. When the police finally

made their way into the flat and began their search, they

could find no-one there except the members of the family;

all the worshippers had escaped through the back windows

for the apartment was on the ground floor!

However, Richard's work was so varied and outstanding,

his reputation so widespread, it was inevitable that sooner or

later the authorities would manage to trap him. If the name

'Wurmbrand' could become synonymous with 'comfort' to

Rumania's oppressed, equally it had come to represent 'op-

position' to those in authority.

About eleven o'clock one night, Richard was making notes

for a sermon when Sabina hurried into the room.

'The police have surrounded the house,' she warned

him.

Richard just had time to hide his notes — in themselves

enough proof of 'guilt' in the eyes of the police — when those

same police pushed their way into the room and declared

that he was under arrest. Richard went with them promptly

and without protest; he did not want them to search the

next room! That was stacked to the ceiling with crates of

food which were to be distributed next day among several

hundred Protestant Christian women who were interned in

the women's prison. The Wurmbrands had taken on the job

of distributing such relief on behalf of various oppressed

groups whose leaders lacked the courage to do such danger-

ous work for themselves. Giving aid to prisoners was a

serious offence. If the police had found the food, there would

have been all manner of awkward questions to face: where

had the money come from to buy the food? For whom was it

intended? Did they not know it was economic sabotage to

hoard food?

Fortunately, Richard was granted his release after only

fourteen days' imprisonment on that occasion, thanks to the

intervention of the Swedish Ambassador. Although the Am-

FASCIST TERROR 41

bassador had a responsibility for the Swedish Mission itself,

he was really breaking diplomatic rules in interceding for a

Rumanian citizen. But the Ambassador had considerable

influence in high places. Sweden was à neutral country and

through its embassy in Bucharest, Prime Minister Antonescu

could keep in touch with Moscow. After all, Germany might

lose the war! So once again Richard was free to carry on his

work.

As the war increased in violence, Richard found other

outlets for his passionate Christianity. He provided help for

gypsies who, along with Jews and Protestants, were subject

to oppression. Where Jewish children had been herded into

ghettoes, he organised the rescue of as many as he could and

tried to reunite them with parents or relatives. He and his

brethren planned escape routes across the border from

Hungary for Jews who had managed to escape the Nazi ex-

termination camps. All this was carried out under the noses

of the occupying Germans. Richard had a special edition of

St. John's Gospel printed and distributed among the

German soldiers.

Rumanian troops were fighting alongside the Germans in

the attack on Stalingrad and-many Russian prisoners-of-war

were brought to Rumania. Whenever Richard met any of

them, he would take the opportunity to speak to them of

Christ. Richard spoke fluent Russian — his father's family

came from the province of Bukovina which had changed

hands several times between Russia and Rumania — and in

meeting Russian soldiers he felt he had a God-given oppor-

tunity and a God-given mission.

His very first encounter with a Russian prisoner of war

moved him to tears.

'He told me he was an engineer,' Richard wrote after-

wards. 'I asked if he believed in God. If he had said "No", I

would not have minded it much. It is the right of every man

to believe or disbelieve. But when I asked him if he believed

in God, he lifted towards me eyes without understanding

42 RICHARD WURMBRAND „

and said : "I have no such military order to believe. If I have

an order I will believe." '

Bucharest was under constant attack from the air by the

Russian airforce. As soon as the sirens sounded, Richard

would hurry to the nearest air-raid shelter and take the op-

portunity of preaching the Word of God, thus reaching

Rumanians as well as Jews.

The very first air-raid took place on one of the many oc-

casions when Richard was under arrest. He was, in fact, ac-

tually in the middle of being tried, along with six other

brethren. When the 'Alert' was sounded, the prisoners were

bundled into the nearest air-raid shelter by an armed guard

and there they were joined by the judge, the lawyers, the

court officials and members of the public. The drone of

heavy bombers, the whine and crump of falling bombs was

terrifying. The shelter shook with the violence of the explo-

sions and dust showered down. Everyone was frightened;

somebody screamed. Then, above the moans of terror and

the crash of bombs, Richard's voice rang out clearly and

calmly: 'Let us all kneel and I will say a prayer.' They all

knelt: judge, lawyers, armed guard and public. Richard

prayed and everyone crossed themselves and said 'Amen*.

Then, without any interruption, Richard went on to preach

to an attentive audience about the need always to be pre-

pared to meet one's God.

The 'All Clear' sounded.

Immediately, the guard seized Richard and the other pris-

oners by the collar and marched them back to the

courtroom. The trial was resumed and the judge who, only a

short while before, had been on his knees before Richard

now sentenced him to a term of imprisonment!

In the years between 1941 and 1944, Richard was gaoled

several times by the Fascists and the Nazis before they

themselves were overthrown and themselves became the

hunted. He endured interrogations and beatings on

many occassions but they never broke his spirit. Indeed,

FASCIST TERROR 43

these years under Fascist oppression were turned to

advantage.

'They taught us,' Richard wrote, 'that physical beatings

could be endured, that the human spirit with God's help can

survive horrible tortures. They taught us the technique of

secret Christian work.'

He was to need all this preparation for the far worse

ordeal that was soon to come. The tide of war was turning

against Germany. Richard was about to face the Commu-

nists.

CHAPTER 4

The Pastor

By the spring of 1944, the Russian army had rolled back

the combined German and Rumanian forces and had

reached the frontier. Rumania had been long enough under

Fascists of one kind or another to recognise that salvation

did not lie that way. An anti-Fascist Communist 'People's

Party' had been formed the previous year, led by Gheorghe

Gheorgiu-Dej. On August 23rd this party toppled the An-

tonescu régime in a swift, armed coup. King Michael an-

nounced his support for the Allies and declared war on

Germany. Now Bucharest was bombed by the Germans in-

stead of the Russians !

Rumania had suffered so much under Fascism that when

the Russian army invaded the country, they were in the be-

ginning welcomed as friends. When the first columns entered

Bucharest on August 31st, 1944, Richard and Sabina went

out on a tram to meet them. This did not mean that they

welcomed Communism to Rumania ; rather, they welcomed

the opportunity of reaching with the Good News of Christ

representatives of a people brain-washed into atheism.

There was, of course, an official 'welcome' for the Rus-

sians: a rather nervous group of Rumanian Communists

carrying red flags, quavering the Internationale, practising

phrases of welcome in Russian and preparing to hand over

the traditional Rumanian gift of welcome to the

stranger — a loaf of bread, a handful of salt. Richard and

Sabina were not part of the official party. Their presence on

this momentous occasion was the result of one of Richard's

impulsive decisions and they had brought Bibles in Russian

44

THE PASTOR 45

as gifts. But when the first huge Soviet tank came to a halt at

the city boundary neither the official nor the unofficial gifts

were welcomed.

'Bread, salt and Bibles!' growled the Russian sergeant. 'All

we want is a drink. Where can we get some vodka?'

The Wurmbrands realised they would have to use a more

subtle approach.

The following day Richard was out with Mihai when they

saw their first Russian couple — a captain and a woman ser-

geant. They were having difficulty over their shopping for

they knew no Rumanian and the shopkeeper no Russian.

Richard offered to interpret and helped them over their pur-

chases. Although to Rumanians the Bucharest shops seemed

depleted of goods after the prodigal luxury they had form-

erly displayed, to the Russians they seemed rich beyond

belief. The woman wanted to buy some clothes and asked

Richard if he could recommend a good store. He seized the

opportunity for missionary work.

'I don't know much about ladies' clothes,' he said. 'Why

don't you come to our house for lunch when you have

finished your shopping and meet my wife. She will take you

out this afternoon and show you the best dress shops.'

The couple were delighted and wrote down Richard's

address, promising to be there within the hour. Little Mihai,

however, was disappointed. Although only five, he took his

father's duties as pastor very seriously.

'Father,' he demanded as the Russian pair departed. 'Why

didn't you talk to them about God?'

*Do you remember, Mihai, when you planted that apricot

stone?' his father replied. *You kept digging it up to see if

it had started to grow? Nothing happened, did it? Some

things need patience. A kind invitation is a seed. It will

grow.'

Mihai had a child's alert observation. He had clearly ab-

sorbed what his mother and father had said in his presence

about the Russian sergeant the day before. Now as they

46 RICHARD WURMBRAND

walked home to the flat, he saw Russian soldiers coming out

of wine shops with their arms full of looted bottles. Even to a

child it was apparent that Russian soldiers liked to drink.

Did his father think the Russian captain and the lady would

also like to drink, he asked. So when the guests arrived, they

had a glass of Mihai's wine and then sat down to their

meal.

'First, we always say a grace to God in this house,' said

Richard. He said the grace in Russian.

The guests put down their knives and forks. Would he say

the words again? What did they mean? The girl recalled

that her grandfather had had some 'holy books' but she had

not read them because at school they were taught that re-

ligion was invented by the bourgeoisie to oppress the

people.

Sabina never did take the woman sergeant shopping. In-

stead, all four of them spent the whole afternoon talking

about Jesus. But it was not always easy; there was so little

common ground between them.

Richard told them the parable of the man who had a

hundred sheep and lost one and went in search of it The

Russians did not understand. 'How was it that he had a hun-

dred sheep?' they asked. 'Why did he not send them to the

collective farm?'

When Richard spoke of Jesus as king, the Russian reaction

was 'Kings are bad men who tyrannise the people; this Jesus

must have been a tyrant.'

When Richard told them the parable of the workers in the

vineyard, they nodded their heads in approval. 'Those

workers did well to rebel against the owner of the vineyard.

It should have belonged to the collective.'

Richard very soon realised that to preach the Gospel to

Russians after so many years of Communism, it was neces-

sary to use different imagery from that in the New Tes-

tament. He would have to translate the Gospel into Marxist

terms to make it comprehensible. It was something at times

THE PASTOR 47

he despaired of achieving but eventually the Holy Spirit

showed him the way.

Later he was able to publish pamphlets dealing with the

relationship between Christianity and Marxism. He tried to

make these books attractive to Communists by using their

terms. For example, there were captions under the illus-

trations such as 'Jesus the Working Proletarian', 'Jesus driv-

ing the Capitalists out of the Temple'. Sometimes he and his

colleagues published works which appeared at first sight to

be pro-Communist. They had to do this in order to get the

books past the censor. They would have such titles as 'Re-

ligion is the Opium of the People' and the first few pages

would quote the sayings of Marx and Lenin. The censor,

seeing this, would pass the book and, equally, Communists

would begin to read it when it was given to them. Only by

the time they had reached, say, page ten would they discover

that the book was now all about Jesus — but by that time the

Christian who had pressed it into their hands would be six

streets away.

Even little Mihai played his part in the work of the

Church, handing out Christian literature to the Communist

troops. Russians love children and would often lift the little

boy on to their knees and give him sweets. They would

accept leaflets from a child where they might have been

angry with an adult.

He was an intelligent child and listened to the talk of the

grown-ups who flocked through the house. Already in his

short life he had experienced more of tension and drama

than many people ten times his age. Despite the pressing

demands on his time, Richard always made time for his son,

to teach him and tell him stories. Mihai accepted these

stories at their face value — with some unexpected conse-

quences.

One story that impressed him greatly was about a rich

woman who, when asked for food by a beggar, gave him

some mouldy cheese that she was going to throw away. The

48 RICHARD WURMBRAND

beggar did not care whether the cheese was mouldy or not;

he was starving. So he was happy. The rich woman felt that

she had done a good deed for the beggar, so she felt happy

too. But that night she dreamed a dream. She was in heaven

and there were tables spread with good things. Saints she

recognised were sitting at the tables enjoying the food. She

made to sit down with them herself but an angel directed her

to a small table set apart on which was the piece of mouldy

cheese she had given the beggar.

'This is your place,' said the angel. 'What you give, you

get.'

Richard pointed out that this story illustrated what St

John meant when he said that a man who had two coats

should give one 'to him that hath none'.

It so happened that after many years of 'making do',

Richard had just been able to afford to buy himself a new

suit.

'You have two suits,' said Mihai when the story was over.

•Now you must give one away!'

*Which shall I give?' asked Richard.

The one you want to wear in heaven,' said Mihai. 'Old

Mr. Ionescu must have your new one; then he can throw

away that smelly old jacket he always wears.'

What could Richard do in the face of a child's direct

logic? He had to make do with his old suit even longer.

The Wurmbrands had been utterly opposed to everything

that Nazism stood for. They had seen and heard of dreadful

crimes against humanity committed by German troops.

Equally they had been opposed to Rumanian Fascists.

Sabina in particular, having suffered the loss of her entire

family, had particular reason to hate them. But now the

Russians had arrived, these two groups were themselves de-

feated and in danger. Most of the German soldiers still in

Rumania were victims of war, starving and terrified. Rich-

ard and Sabina could not deny them help, even though the

penalty for concealing Germans was death. People used to

THE PASTOR 49

say: You are taking foolish risks for the sake of murderers'

but Richard would not agree. How many Rumanians, he

asked, would have had the courage to refuse to become Nazis

if Hitler had ruled in Rumania? Indeed, how many

Rumanians had supported the Iron Guard? And had there

not existed even in Germany many brave souls who had

helped Jews to escape? 'We must not hate a whole nation

because of its leaders,' he said. 'And God is always on the

side of the persecuted.' Love, the outpouring of a heart that

hates the sin but loves the sinner has always been the motive

power of Richard Wurmbrand's ministry.

Consequently, the Wurmbrand home became a refuge for

German soldiers on the run, just as, a few months previously,

it had sheltered Jews hunted by those same Germans. If God

made no distinction and allowed His rain to fall alike on the

just and the unjust, who was Richard to choose which per-

secuted people were most deserving of his help?

One German officer they were hiding asked Sabina : 'Why

do you, a Jewess, do this for me? When the German army

recaptures Bucharest, you will not find me helping you.'

Sabina replied: 'My family were killed by people like you,

but Jesus commands us to love our enemies. You yourself

admit to murdering Jews. I cannot absolve you of that sin;

only Jesus can do that. I will protect you if I can from the

police but I cannot protect you from the wrath of God.'

One day a group of Blitzmädchen, girls serving in the

German army, appealed to the Wurmbrands for sanctuary.

They were terrified of being deported to Russia. Someone

informed on them and soon Richard found the house sur-

rounded by police.

Richard produced his identity card, issued under the Fas-

cist régime. It had 'JEW' over-stamped on it in large capital

letters.

'Half our family have been murdered by the Nazis,' said

Richard. T)o you think we would be likely to shelter

German girls?'

50 RICHARD WURMBRAND

The police officer apologised and withdrew. 'The whole

thing is obviously a mistake,' he said.

At the same time as they were providing sanctuary for

hunted Germans, the Wurmbrands were also entertaining

Russian troops and talking to them of Christ. There was a

constant danger that the two would meet but, under God's

providence, this never happened.

The Red soldiers were always stealing. One day two

young men in uniform knocked on the Wurmbrands' door.

TDo you want to buy an umbrella?' they asked, offering

three to choose from which Richard guessed were stolen.

'We are Christians in this house,' Richard replied. 'We

don't buy; but we have something to give.'

He invited them in and Sabina brought them some milk to

drink. One of the young men stared at her.

'Why, it was you who gave me the Bible,' he said.

'And you were the sergeant on the first tank into Bu-

charest,' cried Sabina in recognition.

The sergeant told them his name was Ivan. He still had

the Bible in his locker at the barracks.

'I've read it,' he said, 'and, you know, it settled a question

that was puzzling me. We have a Jew in our battalion. One

of the older men, when he was drunk, used to rail at the Jew

and say "You killed Christ". We all thought the chap was

crazy. We'd all of us, not just the Jew, been killing people all

the way from Stalingrad to Bucharest. We couldn't think

why he should remember someone called Christ more than

any of the others. But your Bible explained what the man

was going on about.'

It seemed such a tragedy that anyone could reach Ivan's

age without even having heard the name of Jesus. Later, he

brought the Jew to the Wurmbrand home and Richard

spent hours talking to them about the Bible, explaining

everything from Genesis to Revelation. In due course, both

young men became Christians. They visited the Wurm-

brands frequently and thoroughly enjoyed being in a home

THE PASTOR 51

instead of barracks. When the battalion was posted, Ivan

brought a farewell present — a shining new electric fire.

Richard and Sabina exchanged glances. They guessed that,

like the umbrellas, it had been stolen — in gratitude for

being shown the way of Christ! They sent the fire to a needy

family who had been released from Auschwitz concentration

camp. They felt Ivan would have approved.

Richard was appointed pastor first of the Swedish and

afterwards of the Norwegian Mission to Israel in Bucharest.

The Mission also had a Norwegian pastor named Solheim.

Both men were asked to serve as representatives on the

newly-formed World Council of Churches. One of their

duties was to administer the relief funds sent from the west

to aid famine-stricken Rumania. First Germany and now

Russia had stripped and pillaged her resources. With

wholesale conscription of all able-bodied men into the army,

there had been left only the old or the maimed to till the

land, and the agriculture had been sadly neglected.

Richard and Pastor Solheim distributed among the needy

such clothes, money and food as they were able to obtain.

They also turned the Mission into a canteen where they

were able to give up to 200 people a day some little food to

keep them from starving. They looked around for larger ac-

commodation in order to extend their work. They succeeded

in renting an enormous place from a once-wealthy Jewish

doctor; one room was big enough for a ballroom. Richard

and Sabina took a few rooms for their own use; the 'ball-

room' (which could accommodate 200 people) became a

church and the rest of the rooms were used by the Mission.

The place was always filled with strange guests of differing

nationalities and persuasions. Once again, no stranger was

turned from the door and it was not unusual for thirty visi-

tors to be sleeping there — in the hall, on the floor, some-

times even in the bath.

During 1945, after the war in Europe had ended, the

Wurmbrand family grew overnight from one to seven ! Rich-

52 RICHARD WURMBRAND

ard and Sabina decided to foster six Jewish children released

from concentration camps. There were thousands of little

orphans like these, whose parents had been sent to the gas-

chambers. The children were thin, haunted-looking and in

rags but they soon began to laugh again in that loving house-

hold. Mihai was delighted. You told me I couldn't have any

brothers or sisters,' he said accusingly to his parents. *Now I

have three of each.'

Rumania had hoped that once the war was over and the

last Germans had been driven from the country, the Rus-

sians too would leave but this did not happen. Instead, the

Communists imposed on Rumania a puppet Prime Minister

called Groza. Young King Michael was powerless to oppose

the growing Communist strength. One by one, the various

Cabinet posts and Government positions were taken over by

men loyal to Moscow. When the Communists were in com-

plete control of the government, a Congress was convened of

all Christian bodies. It was held in the Parliament building.

Four thousand priests, pastors and ministers of all denomi-

nations attended. Such was their fear of Communism, they

elected Joseph Stalin as honorary president of the Congress!

One after another, the delegates rose to their feet and de-

clared it as their opinion that Christianity and Communism

were fundamentally the same thing and could therefore

work together. The proceedings were being broadcast and it

seemed to the Wurmbrands who were at the Congress rep-

resenting their Mission that to allow such statements to go

out over the air was like spitting in the very face of Jesus.

•Richard,' urged Sabina. 'Stand up and wash away this

shame from the face of Christ.'

'If I do,' he replied, 'you will lose your husband.'

'I don't want a husband who is a coward.'

It was wonderful that they were in complete accord on a

matter that they knew was bound to have far-reaching

consequences.

Richard sent up his card to the chairman with a request

THE PASTOR 53

to speak. The Communists were delighted at the prospect of

a representative of the World Council of Churches making

propaganda for them. Richard rose from his seat and made

his way down the aisle to the platform. Every eye followed

him and as he stepped up to the microphone a hush fell upon

the hall. The atmosphere was tense with expectancy.

Richard began to speak. 'When the children of God

meet,' he said, 'the angels also gather there to hear men

praise the wisdom of God.'

They were all assembled in the liall, he continued, as rep-

resentatives of their various churches and, as such, it was

their duty to glorify God the Creator and Christ the Saviour,

who died on the Cross. It was no part of their Christian duty

to praise earthly powers that come and go, to align them-

selves with a system that denied the very existence of God.

The intensity of the listening in the hall could almost be

felt. The platform party grew restless for the speeches from

the Congress were being broadcast throughout Rumania.

Suddenly the Minister of Cults, Burducea, jumped to his

feet.

*Your right to speak is withdrawn!' he shouted.

Richard ignored him and went on. The audience began to

applaud; Richard was saying all the things they had wanted

to say but dare not.

'Cut that microphone,' bellowed Burducea, but his voice

was drowned in the hubbub. The audience rose to their feet

and clapped as Richard continued his defiant address. Fin-

ally someone cut the cable of the microphone and his voice

could no longer be heard —but the audience had heard

enough.

'Pastorul! PastoruU' they chanted rhythmically as he

made his way back to his seat. 'The Pastor! The Pastor!'

From that day on, Richard was no longer a pastor in

Rumania; he had become The Past or — shepherd of a very

large and bewildered flock.

CHAPTER 5

The Church goes Underground

Despite Richard's courageous action at the Congress,

many of the Church leaders yielded to Communism in the

days that followed. One bishop had the hammer and sickle

embroidered on his robes and asked his priests not to address

him as 'Your Grace' any longer, but as 'Comrade Bishop'.

Some priests became officers in the Secret Police. One high-

ranking member of the Rumanian Lutheran Chruch began

to teach that God had given three revelations: one through

Moses, one through Jesus and the third through Stalin. The

tragedy was that many of these Church leaders who col-

laborated with the Communists denounced those faithful

pastors who refused.

Thus was founded the Underground Church in Rumania,

a sort of secret society of the faithful whose aim was to evan-

gelise, to preach the Gospel and, wherever possible, to win

children for Christ.

In his capacity as pastor of the Swedish and Norwegian

Missions and as a representative of the World Council of

Churches in Rumania, Richard had the perfect cover for

underground work. His official jobs gave him standing with

the authorities but his main work now took two forms. One

was to continue his help and ministry to the enslaved people

of Rumania. The other was by secret means to bring the

Good News of Christ to the million Russian soldiers who

made up the army of occupation.

The Underground Church had to use all manner of in-

genious methods to approach the Russians. Fortunately,

they discovered that there were, just occasionally, Russian

54

THE CHURCH GOES UNDERGROUND 55

soldiers who were already secret Christians and these helped

the work in many ways.

The Russian troops were eager for watches. They were

evidently unable to buy them at home so that in Rumania

they would acquire all they could lay their hands on, often

by stealing. The jewellers' shops were soon empty and if a

Rumanian whose watch had been stolen wanted to replace

it, he had to go to the Russian barracks and buy one there.

There were plenty available — sometimes Russian soldiers

walked around the streets wearing several watches on each

arm!

The members of the Underground Church spent a lot of

time 'buying watches' — though their real purpose in visiting

the barracks was, of course, to talk of Christ and to distribute

pamphlets.

The first time Richard went was the day of the Feast of St.

Peter and St. Paul. He spent a lot of time looking at watches

the soldiers had for sale, until he had gathered quite a crowd

round him. Then he casually asked: 'Is anyone here called

Peter or Paul?'

One or two were.

'Do you know what day it is today?'

Thus he began to tell them about the two great saints.

One of the soldiers, an older man, interrupted him.

'You haven't come here to buy a watch,' he said. Tou

have come to speak of the faith. Pease tell us more, but do

be careful.'

The man arranged that he would stand with his hand on

Richard's shoulder. Every time he squeezed it, that would be

a signal of danger and Richard would quickly start asking

the price of watches again. When the pressure was released,

he would carry on with his stories of Christ whom Peter and

Paul had so lovingly served. This visit was repeated on other

occasions and many of the Russian soldiers became Chris-

tians.

Some brave members of the Underground Church en-

56 RICHARD WURMBRAND

rolled in the Secret Police in order to perform 'counter-

espionage' on the Church's behalf. Some Christian doctors

joined the Communist party for the sole purpose of gaining

access to the prisons, in order to bring assistance and news to

prisoners. Others deliberately took jobs in Government

offices where they could be forewarned, perhaps, of Commu-

nist plans. By such means did the Underground Church sur-

vive but often these brave people had to endure the scorn

and reproach of other Christians who thought they had gone

over to the 'enemy' and abandoned their Christian faith.

All the Wurmbrand family were involved in the work of

evangelism. Sabina discovered a talent for preaching and she

began to hold street corner meetings, drawing large crowds.

Indeed, on one occasion when speaking on the steps of the

University, she was mistaken for the notorious Ana Pauker,

the Rumanian Communist schoolteacher who had joined

the Red Army and had executed her own husband for 'devi-

ation' from Communist principles. No-one could understand

why on this occasion at the University Comrade Pauker was

urging her audience to repent of their sins!

Inevitably, it was only a matter of time before the King

was deposed. He was the one political obstacle that remained

between the Communists and complete control of Ruma-

nia. On December 30th, 1947, Groza presented him with an

Instrument of Abdication and told him to sign it. The King

refused. His palace was surrounded by Communist troops

and once again he was told to sign. He was told he was an

'unsettling influence' and warned that if he did not abdi-

cate he would be responsible for bringing bloodshed and

civil war to his country. The King signed and the People's

Republic of Rumania came into existence on that very

day.

Mihai, who was almost nine, was very concerned when he

heard what 'abdication' meant and realised that the hand-

some young King whose picture had disappeared from the

wall of his classroom was actually going to be turned out of

THE CHURCH GOES UNDERGROUND 57

his palace. He knew that his father had had an audience

with the King only shortly before.

'Why can't the King come and live with us?' Mihai de-

manded. He assumed that even Kings would automatically

turn to The Pastor when in need.

'We have no room,' said Sabina. 'Our house is already

full.''

'He could share my bed,' offered Mihai. 'It's a big one.'

'I don't think it would be big enough,' replied Richard.

*You see, the Queen Mother would have to come too, and all

the Court. They would need sixty cars at least to get here.

We couldn't ask the King without his courtiers.'

They could laugh over Mihai's innocent solution to the

King's problems but it was laughter that was very near to

tears. A fresh time of terror had begun. All opposition to

Communism was being crushed without mercy. Hundreds

and thousands of innocent people were 'liquidated' or

thrown into prison for the sole crime of holding independent

opinions. People became afraid to speak to each other in case

they dropped an indiscreet word and were informed upon.

Informers are at once the bane and the backbone of any

Communist society. They were to be found all through the

country from the highest offices of Government even down

to the youngest classes in the schools. Even Mihai, young

though he was, felt the tension of having to be careful what

he said to his teachers or to the other children in his

form.

He was sad, too, for his six 'brothers and sisters' had left.

After the war was over, Russia had annexed the provinces of

Bessarabia and Bukovina as part of the price Rumania had

to pay for supporting Germany in the war. It was decided to

re-populate these two provinces with refugees. Many

orphans, like the Wurmbrands' foster-children, survivors

from concentration camps, were being taken there. Richard

and Sabina dreaded the thought of this happening to the

children they had grown to love as if they were their own.

58 RICHARD WURMBRAND

They hated the idea of their being brought up as Commu-

nists, indoctrinated with atheism.

An opportunity arose of sending the children to Palestine

where the new State of Israel was coming into being. Here

was a chance of a better life than in Bessarabia. It was an

agonising decision ; it was almost like parting with Mihai.

The children left aboard the Turkish steamer Bulbul,

along with many other Jews bound for Palestine. Weeks

passed but no news came of their arrival. Ships and planes of

many nations joined in searching the Black Sea and the

Eastern Mediterranean but no trace of the vessel was ever

found. It was assumed that it had hit a wartime mine and

gone down with all aboard. The ship never reached Israel

and none of the passengers was heard of again.

Richard and Sabina were distraught with grief, though

they tried to console themselves that the children had

perhaps escaped a more Ungering fate, for terrible things

were being done in Rumania.

The Swedish and Norwegian Missions being active, were

a prime target for the Communists. Organised gangs would

attempt to shout Richard down when he went into the

pulpit to speak, for he refused steadfastly to preach the Party

Une. Sometimes the hecklers would cause disturbances and

fighting would break out in the church. On occasion, the

opposition was so violent that Richard could only preach

with a solid phalanx of his congregation guarding the

pulpit.

Yet amongst all the violence and the terror, Richard and

Sabina seemed to move unscathed. They had their work,

their home, their friends, their little son. Richard had been

imprisoned under the Fascist régime and beaten on more

than one occasion but this was nothing compared with the

sufferings some people endured. His work was difficult and

dangerous but so far he personally was unharmed. How

could he exhort others to bear their cross with forbearance

when he himself carried so small a burden? This thought

THE CHURCH GOES UNDERGROUND 59

allowed him no peace. On many nights, he and Sabina

prayed that they, too, might bear their cross for Christ.

Richard knew it was inevitable, particularly after his

defiant speech at the Congress of Cults, that sooner or later

he would be arrested. Even so, when the day came, he must

have felt some inner turmoil beneath his outward calm. Yet

the Secret Police were nonplussed by his firm handling of the

situation. He would not go quietly with them, he said, unless

the family was first allowed to pray and sing a hymn. He

even suggested the Police sit down and listen!

All who were in the house knelt together in the room

where the Police were waiting. What were Richard's

thoughts then? Lord, is this the time of my testing? Is this

where the cross begins? They sang a hymn, and Richard

prayed and read one of the Psalms; then he went out quietly

with his captors.

Two weeks went by. Three. That was as long as he had

ever been detained under the Fascists. Four weeks. Five.

Sabina was beside herself with anxiety. She approached

everyone she could think of to help obtain Richard's release.

At last, reluctantly, she once again approached the most

powerful of their friends, the Swedish Ambassador to Ruma-

nia. Once again he took the unusual and undiplomatic step

of interceding on behalf of a Rumanian national. After six

weeks in prison Richard was released, but he guessed that

this had only been a rehearsal for the ordeal that was to

follow.

Friends urged him to leave the country. It was still pos*

sible, if difficult, to get away. It was tempting. Richard and

Sabina talked about it over and over again. Richard was

worried for his family. Was it fair to ask them to suffer? And

could he not do more for the Underground Church if he

went to the West? What purpose would it serve if he were in

prison? The Mission would have to close. Pastor Solheim

would not be allowed to stay on his own ; he was a foreigner.

And Richard might be put away for years. What good would

- 6O RICHARD WURMBRAND

it do to stay? And supposing Sabina were imprisoned as well?

What would happen to Mihai?

One evening, when they had almost come to a decision to

try to buy an exit visa, the words of Jesus came to them with

great urgency: 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,

and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.'

A day or two later, they were both at a secret meeting, in a

private house. Some fifty or so were gathered in prayer. Sud-

denly a woman spoke out loud: 'One of you is thinking of

leaving us but I say to you: "Remember that the good shep-

herd did not desert his flock. He stayed to the last." ' She had

no knowledge that Richard and Sabina had been discussing

flight but they knew Who had put the words into her mouth.

They were to stay.

One Sunday morning in February of 1948, Richard left

the house early promising to meet Sabina later at church. He

never arrived. He just vanished from the streets. v

CHAPTER 6

Kidnapped

Richard was in prison.

When the cell door closed on him that Leap Year Day of

1948, he knew that he faced questioning, torture, perhaps

years of imprisonment, even death. Yet he was not afraid.

It would be wrong to say that he was not anxious. The

very thing had happened that he had feared when he had

discussed with Sabina whether or not they should leave

Rumania. Whatever must she be feeling now? When she

found he was not at church, would she guess what had hap-

pened? Would she be told where he was being detained?

Would she be able to visit him? And what of Mihai? He was

only just nine — such a little boy to be deprived of his father.

Had they after all been fair to him staying behind in Ruma-

nia when they had known surely that one day, like today,

Richard would be arrested?

It would be equally wrong to say that he was not appre-

hensive. There was so much information inside his head that

the Communists would like to know: names of workers, ad-

dresses of meeting places, secrets of the Underground

Church. His enemies would stop at nothing to extract this

information from him. Gould he trust himself not to break

down under stress and betray his friends?

Richard knew, without being told, that this was not going

to be a mere six-week imprisonment. He had prepared him-

self for prison and torture as an athlete trains for a race. He

had studied the lives of great Christian saints who had

suffered for their faith and he had planned how he could

adapt their experiences to his own.

61

62 RICHARD WURMBRAND

Now the testing time had come.

He sat down on the plank bed and thought. February

29th. Leap Year Day. It had been a day of such bright prom-

ise when he had set out from home — was it so short a time

ago? Then he remembered something. In the Bible, the

words T)on't be afraid!' occur 366 times. Not merely 365

times, once for each day of the year, but 366 times which

would allow for Leap Year Day as well. And today was Leap

Year Day. It was a coincidence that immediately cheered

him.

Moreover, if God had made it so clear that he wanted

Richard to stay in Rumania, then surely He would give him

the strength to carry out whatever task it was He still wanted

Richard to do.

Therefore, he would not be afraid.

There was nothing in the cell to help him pass the time, no

books, no writing paper. The window was too high up in the

wall to see out. There was nothing to do but think.

He thought about how he would cope with his interroga-

tion when it came. They would be sure to make much of

the fact that he was a pastor. Priests were always told : 'As a

Christian you must tell us the whole truth about everything.'

Yet what purpose would it serve if he betrayed his friends?

It would not buy his own freedom, of that he was certain. He

would be found guilty whatever he said. He decided that, if

God would give him the strength to do it, he would try to

leave his interrogators more confused by the end of an in-

terrogation than they were at the beginning.

If there were an interrogation — that was the point. The

Communists had their own methods ; sometimes they would

not ask any questions for a week. There was nothing to do.

He just sat on his plank bed or paced up and down the

narrow cell. He slept as much as the cold and his thin

blanket would allow. Then one night at about ten o'clock,

the cell door opened and he was told he was wanted for

questioning. The guard made him wear dark goggles so that

KIDNAPPED 63

he could not see where he was going; it is unnerving to be led

along unfamiliar corridors in the dark. Eventually he was

pushed down onto a chair and the goggles were removed.

Richard blinked and turned his head, dazzled by a bright

lamp directed straight into his eyes. The rest of the room

was in shadow.

'Ah, Vasile Georgescu.' A voice from the shadows ad-

dressed Richard by the new name he had been given on his

arrest. You will find paper and pen on that desk. Take your

chair over there and write down about your life. We've

brought you here to confess to us.'

Such a vague request. A confession. A confession of

what?

Richard made up his mind that he did not care what he

said about himself, provided he did not incriminate any of

his friends and fellow-workers in the Underground Church.

He wrote about his life as a boy and a young man. Then, in

case the 'confession' might be read by Party leaders, he de-

scribed how for many years he had been an atheist like

themselves and what a sinful life he had led. That would

surely attract their attention and make them read on ! Then,

at great length, he described the events and thinking that had

brought him to a belief in God. He must have been writing

for an hour or more before he was told he had done enough

for that night and was led back blindfold to his cell.

He had expected that his 'confession' would be followed

by questioning on the following day but he was to learn over

the years that the communists did not work like that. They

were artists in interrogation, using every psychological

device to break down their victim's resistance. It was like a

refined game of cat and mouse. They used not to tell a pris-

oner anything. He did not know why he was in prison or

when he was to be tried. If he confessed, was he confessing to

the right crime? What did they want to know? There would

be long delays between interviews so that the prisoner

became nervous, starting every time he heard footsteps in

64 RICHARD WURMBRAND

the corridor outside his cell. Were they coming for him now?

The prisoner would be in a constant state of tension and

uncertainty. There were other tricks to strain his nerves. He

would be told the date of his trial, and then it would be

postponed at the last minute, just when he had nerved him-

self to endure the strain of it. He would hear the screams of

prisoners, the sound of a firing-squad, and would not know

whether it was real or whether it was a tape-recording. Then

there would be silence. And time — unending, uninterrupted

time. Time to think, time to worry, time to panic.

So once again it was several days before Richard had his

second interview — in a basement room this time, just to

make it more difficult and confusing to reach blindfolded.

There was no ill-treatment — just questioning, going

through his statement line by line and asking him to give

further details. But at intervals his interrogator would shoot

a question at Richard that had nothing to do with his state-

ment hoping to catch him off his guard. He could never be

sure when one of these questions was coming and had to

watch carefully everything he said in case he should let slip

an indiscreet word.

Richard's next inquisitor read from a typed list of ques-

tions. 'Write down the names of everyone you know.'

That was going to need care. There were friends Richard

wanted to shield, but if he did not put down enough names,

his questioners would know his list was false. He thought for

a moment, then started by writing down all the names of

people openly and legitimately associated with him : Sabina

and Mißai, Pastor Solheim at the Mission, the church

officials, the caretaker and so on. He went on to write down

the names of as many Communist members of parliament as

he could remember, of known informers and the like. Any

names that were safe, provided he could keep on writing.

This type of questioning went on for months, all part of a

wearing down process before moving on to the next stage of

interrogation. Often, after a period of weeks, Richard would

KIDNAPPED 65

find they were asking the same questions all over again and

he would rack his brains to remember how he had answered

the first set of questions; otherwise he would face yet further

inquisition because the answers were different.

He was encouraged when the prison barber whispered to

him that Sabina was well and carrying on Richard's work. It

gave him a wonderful surge of thankfulness for he had been

desperately anxious lest Sabina also should have been ar-

rested and Mihai left to starve or to rely on the charity of

neighbours. It gave him strength to know they were safe.

Richard could not know how frantic was Sabina's search

for news of him. When he first disappeared, she had con-

vinced herself that he had met someone in need and had

maybe gone to their house and become so involved in their

problem that he had forgotten the time. Then she had

phoned or visited all the hospitals. No, no-one following

Richard's description had been brought into the casualty

ward. With a sense of foreboding, she tried the prisons. The

officials looked down their lists. 'Wurmbrand? There is no-

one of that name here.' She went from one department to

another in the Ministry of the Interior. People opened filing

cabinets. Looked through official-looking folders. 'Wurm-

brand? No-one of that name in our records.'

It was rumoured that Richard had been taken to Moscow.

Sabina could not, would not believe that this was true. Every

evening she laid his place at the table. Surely he would come

tonight; he had never been held for more than a few weeks

before.

In despair she appealed to the Swedish Ambassador again.

Perhaps he could at least find out something definite. He

tried. It was eventually to lose him his post as Ambassador,

but he tried. He went to the very highest level and asked

Rumania's Foreign Minister, Ana Pauker. She had her

answer ready: 'Our information is that Pastor Wurmbrand

has absconded with the money entrusted to him for relief

work. He is not in the country.'

66 RICHARD WURMBRAND

It was many, many months before Sabina had any news,

and then only after wasting enormous sums of money in

bribes. One day a man came to the Mission saying he had

met Richard.

'I'm a warder/ he said. T)on't ask me which prison, but I

take him his food. He said you'd pay me well for a bit of

news.'

'How much do you want?'

The sum he named was exorbitant. If Sabina paid, she

would have practically nothing left. She turned to Pastor

Solheim. 'What shall I do?'

The pastor was doubtful. The man reeked of tuica, the

fiery plum brandy of Rumania. How much could such a man

be relied on? Solheim fetched a bar of chocolate from the

relief stores.

'Give this to Pastor Wurmbrand,' he said, 'and bring back

a message in his handwriting on the wrapper. Then we will

pay you what you ask.'

A few days later the man was back. He took off his cap

and carefully extracted a piece of paper from the lining. It

carried a single line of writing but in Richard's un-

mistakable hand : 'Dearest wife. I thank you for your sweet-

ness. I am well. Richard.'

That was all — twelve words on the wrapper of a

chocolate bar — but they were more precious and beautiful

to Sabina than the greatest love poem ever written.

She needed news if only to sustain her for she was

suffering greatly. It took all her Christian faith to rely on

Christ's promise: 'Be not anxious for the morrow.'

Men from the Living Space Office came to look over the

house. 'You have too much accommodation,' they said. 'And

a ten-year-old boy does not need a room to himself.'

So Mihai had to move into one room widi his mother

while the rest of the house was taken over by a captain in the

Security Police. Private property had been confiscated by the

State so Sabina had now to pay her rent to the government

KIDNAPPED 67

instead of to the doctor. It was hard to find the rent. She

had no income of her own, her small savings had long since

been exhausted on bribes, and she could not get work be-

cause she was the wife of a political prisoner.

'But it has been denied by the highest authorities in the

land that my husband is in prison ! '

'That is nothing to do with us. You cannot have a job

anyway because you have no ration card.'

Sabina trailed round to the department that issued ration

cards.

*No ration card for you,' she was told. 'You have no job.

We only issue ration cards to workers.'

*But how am I to live? I have a little son.'

'That's your worry.'

So Sabina had to earn money where she could, and jobs

that could be done without a work card were very poorly

paid — there were so many people after them. Miraculously,

each day her needs were met. There was never anything

over, there was not always enough, but there was something.

*Be not anxious for the morrow.'

It was as well Richard knew nothing of this ; he was strug-

gling with a dreadful decision. He had made up his mind

that if he was tortured, he would take his own life rather

than betray others. The problem was how to do it. The

guards checked the prisoners and their cells regularly for any

possible means of suicide — slivers of glass, nails, a razor

blade, a length of string. One day a solution to his problem

suggested itself to Richard. He had hardly slept at all for a

week so when the doctor came on his rounds Richard asked

him for sleeping pills. He was so dazed with lack of sleep, he

said, that he was becoming confused and could not remem-

ber the correct answers to the questions put to him in his

now daily interrogation. The doctor prescribed one sleeping

tablet each night and the guard would look into his mouth to

make sure he had taken it. But Richard managed to conceal

the pill under his tongue. By the end of a month, he had

68 RICHARD WURMBRAND

thirty pills'hidden in a small slit in the seam of the palliasse

on the other bed in his cell.

Thirty pills would surely be enough to end his life if he

were in danger of breaking down. The thought of the little

hoard in the mattress gave him strength when he faced his

interrogators, but it made him depressed when he was

alone.

It was summer. He could hear sometimes in his cell faint

sounds from the world outside — the clang of a tramcar, a

girl's voice singing. Once he heard a woman's voice calling

to her children. 'Emil! Silviu! Gome here!' and his heart

ached for Sabina and Mihai. Once a feathery seed drifted in

through the cracked window pane and settled on the floor.

He remembered Mihai's apricot seed, and the Russian

couple in the shop, and the luncheon party with the bottle of

wine. He had told Mihai : 'An invitation is a kind of seed. It

will grow.'

What was God doing? If He had put it into Richard's

heart to sow seeds of love for Christ, why was He allowing

him to end his life before he had finished sowing? An answer

to this reproach came promptly. The following morning, a

guard came into the cell and picked up the palliasse with the

hoarded pills.

'We want this for another prisoner,' he said.

Richard's first reaction was anger that all his careful de-

ception to obtain the pills had been wasted ; then he laughed

and felt calmer than he had done for weeks.

If God so clearly did not want his suicide, then He would

assuredly give Richard strength to face what lay ahead.

CHAPTER 7

Joy of the Cross

Colonel Dulgheru, grand inquisitor of the Secret Police,

sat behind his desk. His hands, small and delicate as a

woman's, drummed lightly on the papers in front of him.

'You've been playing with us, Georgescu,' he said, indi-

cating the sheets covered with Richard's handwriting. 'We

have been patient with you long enough. Now we want

results.'

He began to question Richard about a Red Army man

caught smuggling Bibles into Russia. It was a new line of

interrogation. Up to now all the questions had been about

Richard's contacts with the West, about his work as a pastor,

nothing about his mission to the Russians. The captured

soldier was, in fact, a man Richard had himself baptised.

Perhaps a tiny hesitation on Richard's part made Dulgheru

suspect that at last he was on to something important. .

That night, both plank beds were taken out of Richard's

cell and he was given only a hard upright chair on which to

rest. Every few minutes he heard the metallic click of the

shutter to the peephole in his door and knew that he was

being watched. If he dozed off for a moment balanced on the

chair, the guard would come in and kick him awake. The

process was repeated night after night for several weeks until

he lost all sense of time. Once his confused brain thought he

heard Sabina screaming in the next cell. Was it really she, or

was it a nightmare? Tn his exhaustion, he could not dis-

tinguish dream from reality. Dulgheru would come to the

cell in the middle of the night and continue his question-

ing there but on no occasion, despite the mental torture,

69

70 RICHARD WURMBRAND

could the colonel extract answers that were of any use to

him.

T)on't you realise,' he screamed one night in exasperation,

*that I have the power to have you executed, now, this very

night?'

Richard still had the strength to say to him : 'Colonel, let

us try an experiment. I know you can have me shot as you

say, but put your hand on my heart. If you can feel it flutter-

ing, you will know that what I have said is all lies and there

is no God. I shall be afraid of dying. But if my heart is

beating calmly, you will know that I am not afraid. That is

because I know there is a God, that there is an eternal life. I

know that if you have me shot, I shall go straight to my

Lord.'

Dulgheru struck Richard across the face.

'All right,' he shouted. You've asked for it. Tomorrow

you'll meet Comrade Brinzaru.'

Major Brinzaru was the prototype torturer of the spy

film — large, brutal, with hairy arms like a gorilla and ugly

yellow teeth. He showed Richard the tools of his

trade — clubs, coshes, whips. He picked up a rubber trun-

cheon and tested it lovingly, as a man might try a favourite

golf club. He showed Richard the trade mark: 'Made in

U.S.A.'

Your American friends give us the tools,' he grinned. 'We

do the job.'

Then he locked Richard up in his cell again to think over

what he had seen. Strangely, Richard never had the beating

from Brinzaru. That night as he was resting on his hard

chair, the spy-hole in the door flicked open and Brinzaru

called through the opening: 'Still there, Georgescu? What's

your Jesus doing tonight?'

*He's praying for you,' said Richard.

Richard's first physical torture took place on the following

day. He was made to stand with his arms raised above his

head, finger-tips touching the cold plaster of the wall.

JOY OF THE GROSS JI

'Just keep him like that,' Brinzaru said to the guard..

Richard stood in that position for hours, till his arms and

legs were numb. When he collapsed to the floor in a faint, he

was revived with a sip of water and made to stand facing the

wall again. Guard relieved guard, day after day, night after

night, and still Richard stood, arms above his head, facing

the wall. His legs were swollen, his arms were like leaden

weights. The pain was excruciating. The wall seemed to

loom over him.

That way lay madness.

He decided to concentrate on walls that were mentioned

in the Bible. He thought of the verse in Isaiah which said

that Israel's wrongdoing had put a wall between God and his

people. That verse saddened him. The Christian Church had

not been vigilant. It had allowed Communism to grow and

spread.

He remembered the phrase: 'With my Lord, I leap over

the wall.' That verse gave him hope. God would sustain

him.

He thought about the walls of Jericho coming down,

about the walls of Jerusalem rising up. He murmured to

himself over and over again a verse from the Song of Sol-

omon: 'My beloved is like a roe or a young hart; behold, he

standeth behind our wall.' He tried to picture Jesus standing

behind him, holding him up, supporting his arms as Moses'

arms were supported on the mountain top until the Israelites

had won the victory. As long as he could concentrate his

mind on something, Richard could bear the pain.

From time to time, Major Dulgheru looked in on him to

see whether he was prepared to 'co-operate' and say how the

Bibles were being smuggled into Russia. When he had no

success, Dulgheru decided to change the treatment.

'Put your shoes on. Walk!' ordered the guard.

Richard fumbled to force his swollen feet into his shoes

but they would no longer fit. 'Come on. Hurry. Keep going

round. Walk!'

72 RICHARD WURMBRAND

Four paces down the cell. A wall. Turn. Two paces across

the cell. A wall. Turn. Four pages up the cell. A wall. Turn.

Two paces across the cell. A wall. Turn. Round and round

and round.

'Halt! TunTabout! Walk. Keep walking!*

Round and round and round.

Four paces up the cell. A wall. Turn. Two paces across the

cell. A wall. Turn. Four paces down the cell. A wall. Turn.

Two paces across the cell. A wall. Turn. Round and round

and round.

^ 'Faster!'

Hour after hour. Day after day. Night after night. Round

and round and round. If he stumbled and fell, the guards

dragged him to his feet and clubbed him till he started again.

Round and round and round. His feet bled, his legs sagged.

He clung to the walls while the guards screamed at him. He

crawled on all fours. Round and round and round.

At last, through the agony and the exhaustion, Richard

forced himself to pray for the guards. And after that it

seemed that the cell was moving round him, not he round

the cell.

There were other tortures. Richard was trussed like a

chicken for the oven and hung upside down while the soles

of his feet were beaten; he was whipped; he was branded

with red hot irons; other things were done to him which are

too unspeakable to record. All the time he was urged to talk,

to co-operate, to confess.

After weeks of this treatment, Richard gave in. He

would sign any confession they wanted about himself. He

admitted to adultery, to homosexuality, to theft of the

church bells (his church had no bells but what did that

matter?). He admitted to spying and treachery. What

harm could such confessions do to him? God knew he was

innocent.

He was asked for the names of his accomplices. He wrote a

long list, with addresses. At least it would gain him a night's

JOY OF THE GROSS 73

rest, without interruption. Brinzaru was delighted. The list

might earn him promotion.

A few days later, Richard was flogged again. Brinzaru had

checked the list. All the people on it were either already

dead or safely out of Rumania !

During all his years in prison, Richard never once be-

trayed anyone. By fixing his mind on Christ, he found that

even the most ghastly treatment could be borne. If anything,

it seemed to bring him nearer to Christ. When he was

flogged, Richard would remember that Jesus was flogged

and would rejoice to share His pain. When he was mocked,

he realised that the mockery Jesus endured could well have

been far worse than His crucifixion.

Richard had prayed for a chance to bear a cross for Christ

and his petition had most surely been granted. It is not easy

to understand how such agony could become bearable but

Richard was now discovering the truth of the promise Christ

had spoken to him eleven years before in that village in the

Carpathians :

'Do not fear the Cross! You will find it the greatest of

joys!'

CHAPTER 8

In Solitary Confinement

It was October 1948 and the beginning of winter. Already

there would be snow in the mountains. In the Calea Ra-

hovei, the prisoners shivered. Their frugal diet and tattered

clothing gave them nothing to withstand the cold.

The door of Richard's cell opened and the guard brought

in a plate of goulash — piled high, hot and savoury and

steaming. With it were four whole slices of bread. There was

more food than Richard normally had in a week. Tears of

joy trickled down his cheeks as he picked up his spoon; but

before he could eat even one mouthful the guard opened the

door again.

'No time for food now. Bring your things. You're moving

to a new prison.'

It was yet another refinement of torture.

Richard's new prison was underneath the Ministry of the

Interior which is a handsome building much admired

by tourists visiting Bucharest. They would be appalled

if they knew what lay beneath their feet. Mihai must have

walked hundreds of times across the square outside

the Ministry, unaware that his father was thirty feet below

him.

Richard's new cell was three paces by three. Being under-

ground, the only air came through a tube in the ceiling. A

naked electric light bulb burned day and night. There was

no window, no furniture except for the familiar plank bed

and straw pallet. There was not even the usual bucket in the

corner. He would have to ask the guard when he wanted to

use the latrines.

74

IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 75

That was another carefully calculated horror inflicted on

prisoners. The guard would be too busy and the prisoner had

to wait. Or he would deliberately not hear the prisoner when

he begged and implored to be taken from his cell for relief. It

was a pain to contain oneself, an agony and a humiliation to

soil oneself. Some prisoners went without their scanty food

and drink rather than suffer this particular torment.

Richard's biggest trial was the silence.

No sounds from the outside world filtered down to his

tomb-like cell. There was not even the familiar clatter of

boots in the corridor, the clanging of cell doors that he had

known in his other prison. Here the guards wore soft shoes.

The cell doors moved smoothly on well-oiled hinges. No-one

spoke to a prisoner. His meals —bread and watery

soup — were placed silently on the floor. Instructions were

given by gesture. The prisoner's only chance of conversation

was when he was interrogated.

Richard had never been the sort of priest who devoted

hours to meditation. He was a man of action. He preached

with urgency. He loved people, overwhelming their doubts

about Christ by the sheer enthusiasm of his own faith. Now

he would have no props to that faith, no admiring con-

gregation, no dramatic conversions, no underground mission

to stimulate him with its dangers. He had no-one but God.

How real was his Christianity now?

As the months went by in that silent, underground cell, he

had many bad moments. Most of these were when his mind

dwelt on what could happen to Sabina and Mihai. Had she

been persuaded to divorce him? Was she in prison? One day

his control snapped and he beat wildly on the cell door

shouting: 'What have you done with my son? What have

you done with my son?' He screamed the words over and

over again until the guards rushed in and held him down on

the bed and gave him an injection that silenced him into

blessed unconsciousness. There were times when the cell was

thronged with all the people he had ever injured in his life,

j6 RICHARD WURMBRAND

provoking memories of sins he had hoped were done with for

ever.

But these were the bad times. God showed him how to

find a strength within himself.

He worked out a routine. It was possible to distinguish

between day and night by the visits of the warders with food.

As soon as he was sure he would not be disturbed any more

for several hours, he began a time of prayer.

He went over his day, thanking God that he was still alive,

expressing his gratitude for any small detail that might have

distinguished that day from any other day. He reviewed his

life, his work, his marriage, pouring out his gratitude for the

many blessings he had received, confessing everything he

could now recognise as a fault. Few men can have examined

their souls more searchingly.

Then he would preach a sermon as if to his congregation,

beginning 'Dear Brethren' and ending with 'Amen', just as

he would have done in his church. They were not always

good sermons. He had no paper to make notes, no books to

enrich his mind. He had to struggle to remember his Bible.

Sometimes he got the verses wrong or the books mixed up.

Other times he could not remember anything at all from the

Bible but he struggled to finish his sermon, no matter how

bad it was.

Among the most precious moments of his nightly pro-

gramme were the times when he sent out thoughts to Sabina

and listened in his heart for her reply. They really did com-

municate in this way. Sabina has herself recorded how she

would lie in bed and know that Richard was thinking of her

and would send her thoughts winging back to him with the

message 'I love you'.

Sometimes Richard would pretend he was Colonel Dul-

gheru and would try to understand why he was as he was,

what pressures he had to withstand, what his fears were. He,

too, was a prisoner — of the system that now held Rumania

in its grip. That way Richard would find it easier to pray for

IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 77

him. Then he would try to look at himself as he imagined

Colonel Dulgheru would look at him. That also helped. It

even enabled him to pray for his torturers.

His thoughts turned to dancing, how in many countries it

was used as a form of worship. He recalled how David

'danced before the Lord'. He remembered a word of Jesus:

*Blessed are you when men come to hate you, when they

exclude you from their company and reproach you and cast

out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice

in that day and leap for joy.' The first part of that verse was

true of him, even to the 'casting out of his name'. Did any-

one in this place know he was Richard Wurmbrand

and not Vasile Georgescu? If the first half of the verse

could be so appropriate, he would make the other half right

also.

So Richard danced — as much as anyone could dance in

a cell three paces square — leaping about the room like a

madman. The first time he did it, the guard really did think

he had gone mad. It was one of the guard's duties to watch

for signs that a prisoner's mind was beginning to crack under

the strain of imprisonment, for if he went to pieces a prisoner

would be of no more use for questioning. So the guard

rushed off to his canteen and came back with a hunk of

bread and some cheese and sugar, and broke the rule of

silence as he tried to soothe this strange, laughing, capering

figure. Richard ate the food gratefully, and remembered that

the complete verse in St. Luke's Gospel that had prompted

his dancing ran : 'Rejoice in that day and leap for joy — for

behold, your reward is great'.

It was a very large hunk of bread, far more than he

usually had in a whole week !

Thereafter Richard tried to dance some part of every day.

He did not receive any more cheese or sugar or bread but

the activity cheered him and helped to keep his body

less «n-healthy. The guards soon became used to his queer

antics.

78 RICHARD WURMBRAND

So the months passed and Richard disciplined himself to

cope with the boredom and the silence. It was no longer

boring or silent for him. God was very close.

During the daytime Richard used to play himself at chess,

using chessmen made of crumbs of bread pounded together

with scrapings of distemper off the wall. Thus he could play

black bread versus not-so-black bread. Eventually he found

someone to share his game.

One night he heard faint tapping on the wall beside his

bed. There was someone in the next cell. He returned the

tapping. Gradually, he and his fellow-prisoner worked out a

laborious code of tapping so that they could communicate

with each other. The man told him he had been a radio

engineer before he was arrested. Over the weeks that fol-

lowed he taught Richard the Morse code. By this means they

played chess together and eventually were able to converse

quite fluently. The tapping went on from cell to cell

throughout the prison. New prisoners came. Incredible

though it seems, the Morse code enabled Richard to preach

the gospel through the wall, to hear confessions and to turn

people to Christ!

One morning when his then neighbour had reminded him

that the day was Good Friday, Richard searched around in

the lavatory for something sharp and found a nail. He

scratched the name 'JESUS' on the wall of his cell. So small

a sign might bring comfort to some wretched prisoner who

came after him. Needless to say, the word was discovered

and as punishment Richard was put in the 'career'. This was

a sort of upright coffin spiked on the inside with nails. It was

all right provided its occupant kept perfectly still but, should

he sway or sag — as was inevitable after several hours — the

nails lacerated his body. Some prisoners had to endure the

career for a week but Richard was only confined for two

days. The prison doctor had warned the authorities that his

health was in a dangerously low condition. He was ema-

ciated and scarred and coughing constantly. His tuberculosis

IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 79

had returned and he really needed drugs and good food,

fresh air and skilled nursing.

One day when the prisoners' latrines were blocked, he was

taken to those used by the guards. There was a mirror over

the washbasin and he saw himself for the first time for two

years. Long confinement without any daylight had made

him like a plant kept too long in the dark. His hair was thin

and lank, his face pallid, the skin drawn tight over the cheek-

bones. His always deepset eyes were sunk even deeper in

their sockets. He looked an old man, yet he was still only

forty ... forty-one ... forty-two? How long had he been in

this place where there was no time? Would anyone recognise

him now as the handsome Pastor Wurmbrand?

One of his interrogators was a young lieutenant called

Grecu. He pushed over a pen and paper and ordered Rich-

ard to write down the names of all the people who had com-

municated with him in prison.

'We know you are tapping out messages to each other.

Write down what these messages say and who says them.'

He went out of the room.

It was two years since Richard had held a pen in his hand.

He could hardly form the letters on the paper.

'I am a disciple of Christ,' he wrote, "Who has taught us to

love our enemies. I pray daily for all Communists, that they

may be converted and become my brothers. I cannot reveal

to you what other prisoners have said. That is between them

and God.'

Richard put down the pen and waited. Grecu returned,

picked up the paper and read what had been written. He was

silent for some time, then he turned a troubled face to Rich-

ard.

'Why do you say you love me? he. asked.

They had many discussions after that, under the guise of

'interrogation', but the information Grecu was seeking was

the sort Richard was only too glad to give him — the mes-

sage of God's love and mercy. Two weeks later, Lieutenant

8O RICHARD WURMBRAND

Grecu in his Security Officer's uniform came to Richard in

his patched prison rags and began to talk about his own sins

against God and his fellow men.

Thereafter, for a short time, the burden of the prisoners

was lightened in a number of tiny ways. Grecu still had to

give lip service to the Communist party and it was danger-

ous and difficult to do anything for prisoners without its

being noticed. But to a prisoner, even a kind glance is like

water in a thirsty land.

It did not last long. One day Grecu disappeared. For all

Richard knew, he could well now himself be in a cell be-

neath the Ministry of the Interior.

CHAPTER 9

Room Four

Richard was in solitary confinement for nearly three years

before he was tried. Towards the end of that time, he was

very near death. The T.B. was markedly worse; now he

brought up blood whenever he coughed.

'We're not murderers like the Nazis,' Colonel Dulgheru

said to him. 'We want you to live — and suffer.'

Judging by their determination to keep him alive but still

hidden, the Communists must have set great store on Rich-

ard's importance to them. He was moved by night to the

prison hospital of Vacaresti, a converted monastery on the

outskirts of Bucharest. Even though he was so weak that he

had to be carried to the ambulance on a stretcher, it was

wonderful to see the moon and stars again.

Before being lifted into the hospital, his head was

wrapped in a sheet lest he be recognised. He was put in a

separate cell from the rest of the hospital inmates. No-one

was allowed to see him except the prison doctor and then

only with a guard present. Richard was too weak to leave his

bed. Often he tossed in delirium, but there were lucid

moments when he could look through the small window and

see the sky. No longer was he cocooned in the silence of his

underground cell. Here he could hear a bird singing. There

was joy, too, in that his guard was a secret Christian. There

was little the man dare do to ease Richard's lot — warders

had been sentenced to as much as twelve years merely for

giving an apple or a cigarette to a prisoner — but it was like

a blessing to Richard even to be able to hear the name of

Christ whispered in his ear.

81

82 RICHARD WURMBRAND

His trial, if such it could be called, took place in one of the

rooms of the hospital. By the time he had stumbled along

corridors with a sheet over his head and a soaring tempera-

ture, he needed an injection before he could even sit upright

to listen to the proceedings. His judges were four men and

one woman.

'A lawyer has been nominated to defend you,' he was told

by the President of the court. 'He has waived your right to

call witnesses.'

The prosecutor gave a long catalogue of Richard's alleged

crimes: spy work through the World Council of Churches,

spreading imperialist ideology, infiltrating the Party ... The

accusations meant nothing to him. The room whirled. He

was slipping into unconsciousness again. Another injection

revived him. His defence lawyer was on his feet. They had

been given no opportunity to speak together but that did not

matter; there was nothing the lawyer could say. He was only

there to make a pretence of justice.

'Have you anything to say?' demanded the President.

'I love God,' murmured Richard as the room blurred

round him.

He was just conscious enough to hear his sentence, twenty

years' hard labour. Then he was hooded with the sheet and

dragged back to his bed. The trial had taken ten minutes.

Shortly afterwards, he was taken to the prison at Tirgul-

Ocna, a small town in the foothills of the Carpathians some

two hundred miles north of Bucharest. The train journey

took two days. There were some forty men and women in

the goods wagon with Richard, all of them sick with tu-

berculosis; all, like Richard, wearing fifty-pound chains

riveted round their ankles.

It was cheering to find that his new prison doctor was an

old family friend, Dr. Aldea — a prisoner like himself but

allowed to practise medicine among his fellows.

'I won't deceive you,' he said after examining Richard

thoroughly. You have about two weeks to live. Try to eat

ROOM FOUR 83

what you can. The food here isn't good but it is better than

nothing.'

Richard was moved into a bed in Room 4. That in itself

was a sentence of death. Only the hopeless medical cases

went there. No-one had ever left Room 4 except to be put in

his grave.

For two weeks Richard hovered on the brink of death. He

coughed up blood and pus, his body ran with sores. Dr.

Aldea had no drugs to offer him; there was no nursing of any

kind. Slightly less sick prisoners attended to the needs of

those who could not help themselves, but they could do little

for Richard except give him sips of water when he choked

and turn him on his side when he groaned.

But after the two weeks had gone by, he was still clinging

to life.

Room 4 contained twelve beds. It was quiet but not silent.

When men know they are dying, they have no time to quar-

rel; they need their companions for comfort and assurance.

No warders disturbed the peaceful fellowship of Room 4

because there were no warders. None was prepared to run

the risk of being infected with T.B. All chores were done by

prisoners from the other wards.

Richard spent two years in Room 4, from 1951 to 1953,

not the two weeks Dr. Aldea had predicted. He saw scores of

men die, some quickly, some after lingering illness, but all of

them at peace. Some men who were brought in were 'intel-

lectuals' like himself, some were former Fascists, others were

Communists already the victims of their own party. There

were saints and sinners, landowners and peasants, priests and

criminals. Many were declared atheists, yet not one of them

died without feeling the need to make his peace with God. If

Richard had had no other evidence, if he had had no experi-

ence of his own to justify his faith, this fact alone would have

compelled him to believe that God exists.

Richard had been sentenced to twenty years' hard labour

but the first two years he spent at Tirgul-Ocna he was rarely

84 RICHARD WURMBRAND

strong enough even to leave his bed. After the years of soli-

tary confinement, it was wonderful to enjoy fellowship with

other men.

There was old Filipescu who would recite long passages of

Shakespeare. He had been a revolutionary since 1907.

'Pah!' he would say scornfully of the present Communist

administration. 'I suffered for Socialism before any of them

were born.'

But Socialism is not Communism, so Filipescu was in

prison.

There was Moisescu, a small, middle-aged Jew who had

been persecuted in the anti-Semitic days of the Iron Guard

and the German occupation. When the Iron Guard lost their

power and the Russian Army drove out the Germans, Mo-

isescu bought up all the stocks of green shirts he could lay

hands on, with a view to dyeing them blue and re-selling

them at a profit. That way he could make capital out of his

persecutors. But before he could finish all the dyeing, his

house was searched and the green shirts were found. Al-

though he was a Jew, he was accused of supporting the Fas-

cists ! So Moisescu was in prison.

The courage of the prisoners was heartening. Men who had

suffered all manner of tortures could still hope, could still

make wry jokes about their torturers.

Have you heard the one about Hell?' they would ask. 'A

Communist and a Capitalist both died and went to Hell.

When they got there they found there were two entrances.

One was marked "Communist Hell" ; the other was marked

"Capitalist Hell". They were both very afraid of suffering

hell-fire so they decided to sink their differences. They dis-

cussed at length which entrance to use. In the end the Com-

munist won the argument. ctYou come into my Hell," he

said. "It's bound to be better in there for it's always the same

under Communism: when there are matches, there's no

coal; when there is coal, there are no matches; when there

are both coal and matches, the furnace breaks down!" *

ROOM FOUR 85

'Who were the first Communists?' asked a farmer named

Aristar.

*You tell us/ said the rest of the ward.

'Adam and Eve/ came the reply. 'And why? Because they

had no clothes, no house, they had to share the same

apple — and still thought they were in paradise!'

Jokes and stories helped the time to pass, took men's

minds off the pain of their illness. Richard, when he had the

strength, told dozens of stories. He told the parables of Jesus

which many of them had never heard. He gave the old

stories new settings to fit the prisoners' own conditions, bring-

ing wonder and hope into many an empty heart.

Prisoners from other wards sometimes came to Room 4

with small gifts to comfort the dying! At Easter a friend

brought a small twist of paper to a patient named Ga-

fencu.

'It's been smuggled in. Go on ! Open it!' he said.

Eleven pairs of eyes from the other beds watched while

Gafencu's fingers fumbled to open the screw of paper. There

were gasps of wonder. Inside the paper were two shining

white lumps of sugar. Such luxury had not been seen by any

of them for years. Gafencu carefully wrapped up the lumps

of sugar and put them by his bedside.

'Thank you,' he said to his friend, *but I shall not eat them

yet. Someone may be worse off than I am during the day.'

A few days later Richard's condition deteriorated and he

was again on the brink of death. The sugar passed from bed

to bed till it was in Richard's hands.

*Do take it/ Gafencu whispered across the ward 'as a gift

from me.'

Richard thanked him but he did not eat the sugar either.

Someone else's need might be greater. For two years the

sugar passed round Room 4, twice coming back to Richard,

but every man who received it saved it for someone worse off

than himself.

Each new batch of prisoners arriving at Tirgul-Ocna

86 RICHARD WURMBRAND

brought snippets of news from the outside world. To the

occupants of Room 4 it seemed that life inside their prison

was no worse than life outside in so-called freedom! But

their cheerful resignation was soon to come to an end.

For some time, rumours had spread through the prison of

a new and frightening form of 're-education' of pris-

oners — a polite word for beating-up and even viler treat-

ment. Some prisoners under threat of torture had agreed to

swear allegiance to the Communist party and were formed

into an organisation called the P.C.C. or 'Prisoners with

Communist Convictions'. The P.G.G. were put in charge of

the 're-education' programme. Terror gripped Tirgul-Ocna.

The P.C.C. went mad in their brutality and inhumanity.

The things they did to prisoners are too nauseating to record

— and they brought the required results. Prisoners who had

stood up to months of interrogation broke down under the

attentions of the P.C.C. and denounced wives, parents and

friends. Desperation led the prisoners to revolt. Even Rich-

ard approved the planned demonstration.

*Jesus was a fighter when the situation demanded it,' he

said. 'He was not always meek and mild like the figures in

religious paintings. He drove the merchants from the temple

with a whip.'

The demonstration was planned for May ist, 1952. On

this day, Labour Day, the birth of Communism was cele-

brated with a holiday. The inhabitants of the town of

Tirgul-Ocna always had a football match in the stadium

next to the prison. Soon after the game began, there was a

crash of broken glass as prisoners smashed their windows.

They hammered on metal mugs and plates, they shouted

'Help us! Help us!' 'We are bring tortured here!' *Your

fathers and sons and brothers are being murdered!' The

football match was abandoned and crowds gathered outside

the prison. However, no protest by weak and unarmed pris-

oners could last for long against guards lashing out with rifle

butts. The prison became quiet; the crowds dispersed. At

ROOM FOUR 87

Tirgul-Ocna, the régime was stiffened but merci-

fully— perhaps because news of the demonstration spread

throughout the country — there were no reprisals.

Each new prisoner had some different story to tell of the

oppression and misery under which Rumania laboured. One

account that particularly shocked Room 4 was that given by

Abbot Iscu of his experiences in the slave camp on the

Danube-Black Sea Canal at Poarta Alba.

The Danube rises in the Black Forest in Germany and

flows for 1,740 miles before it reaches its outlet in the Black

Sea. For many miles it forms the boundary between Bulgaria

and Rumania but when it is only forty miles from the coast,

it turns north and then east, meandering for three hundred

miles across Rumania's Dobrudja plain. The river's delta

covers a thousand square miles of marshland, a vast wilder-

ness of reeds and dwarf trees, threaded by innumerable shal-

low waterways. There are few human settlements here. The

area is the haunt of wolves, wild boar and otters; of pelicans,

flamingos and egrets; of whooper swans and sacred ibis.

There is, accordingly, no major port at the mouth of the

Danube.

In 1949 a vast project was put in hand to cut a ship-canal

through to the Black Sea from the point where the river

swings northwards. Engineers warned that the river did not

carry a sufficient volume of water at this point to supply a

canal as well as the river's natural channel. The engineers

were shot for their advice, and the project began. It was to

be a great prestige project for Rumanian Communism.

200,000 political prisoners and criminals toiled to build the

Canal, working in winter in temperatures of minus 25°C

and during the summer in heat like an oven. Living in ram-

shackle barracks, behind barbed wire, the slave labourers

had to shovel earth into barrows under the blows of the guards.

Workers died every day from exhaustion and hunger.

Richard was horrified. It was worse than the slavery of the

Israelites under Pharaoh. He would have been even more

88 RICHARD WURMBRAND

horrified had he known that his own beloved Sabina was a

slave there. The Secret Police had come for her in the

middle of the night of August 22nd, 1950. Fortunately, she

had sent Mihai away from the heat of Bucharest to have a

holiday with some family friends in the north. When he re-

turned, she was gone. Six months later— it was January 6th,

Mihai's birthday — she had left Jilava where she was being

held and started on the weary journey by prison train to

Cernavoda on the Danube. From there the new batch of

slaves were marched to the Canal.

Sabina suffered dreadfully. Being tiny, she was a par-

ticular butt of the guards who would toss her into the icy

water for sport and then fish her out again to shiver in her

wet clothes for the rest of the day. She ate grass and snakes

and rats and dogs to keep herself alive. If Richard had

known of her suffering, he might have broken down com-

pletely; mercifully, he did not know.

There were changes in the Government during 1952. The

three leaders who had ruled Rumania since the Communist

takeover were 'purged', including the hated Ana Pauker. It

made no difference at Tirgul-Ocna. Prisoners came and

went, men suffered and died just the same. It was a bitter

winter and the half-starved prisoners coughed and shivered

beneath their thin blankets.

In February 1953 something wonderful happened.

A prisoner called Avram Radonovici was brought into

Room 4 to die. He was another 'intellectual', a former music

critic from Bucharest. He was desperately ill with T.B. and

because it had affected his spine, he was encased in plaster of

Paris from chest to thighs. The other prisoners watched in

amazement from their beds as he put his hand into the top of

the dirty plaster cast and extracted a small, tattered book.

A book! Richard had not seen one since 1948!

•Would you like to borrow it?' Avram asked. Richard re-

ceived it reverently; it was a copy of St. John's Gospel.

The book went from hand to hand round the ward.

ROOM FOUR 89

Everybody read it, savoured it, discussed it, learned passages

by heart. To Richard the book was a special blessing for it

distressed him that he was beginning to forget so many pas-

sages of the Bible which had once been dear and familiar to

him. As he read again the beautiful words, he was reminded

how their truth was demonstrated every day of his im-

prisonment. 'The Comforter', as Jesus promised, was with

him all the time, calming his anxiety, enabling him to bear the

pain of his illness, giving him the strength not to surrender.

In March of 1953, Stalin died. When the news reached

Tirgul-Ocna prison, hopes ran high that conditions might

improve. An official high up in the prison department in-

spected their quarters and asked if they had any complaints.

Most of the prisoners feared it was a trick and kept silent but

Richard spoke what was in all their hearts to say:

'Can you not see that we are victims of injustice? Perhaps

in the Party's eyes we are guilty men but we were sentenced

to prison, not a long-drawn-out death sentence. Look at our

food, our lack of heating and medicine, look at the dirt and the

disease. Ask about the barbarities men have endured. In God's

name, do not wash your hands of us as Pilate did of Christ.'

Encouraged by Richard's outspokenness, some of the

others ventured to speak. The Inspector looked and listened

and went away to make his report. A week later, the prison

commandant was dismissed. After that, conditions at Tirgul-

Ocna improved. With better food, Richard became slightly

stronger and, for the first time in two years, was able to sit

out of bed and even begin to walk a little. Dr. Aldea brought

another doctor to see him and they examined him

thoroughly.

*We can't make you out,' said Dr. Aldea. Your lungs are

like a sieve, your spine is affected. You have had no drugs or

medical attention. You're no better than when I saw you

first two years ago — but you are certainly no worse. I think

we will move you back to the general ward.'

Richard was the first man ever to leave Room 4 alive.

CHAPTER IO

An Unexpected Reprieve

In 1955, Rumania was admitted to the United Nations. It

horrified those in prison that, despite the U.N. Charter bind-

ing members to political and religious freedom, they were

still kept confined. At least, however, there were changes for

the better.

Gheorgiu-Dej was now dictator of Rumania. He admitted

that grave mistakes had been made by the previous admin-

istration and promised to put them right. One of the worst

mistakes had been the Danube-Black Sea Canal. It had cost

millions of lei and thousands of lives, yet after nearly four

years only five of its projected forty miles were completed.

The project was abandoned.

While the prison discussed this news, one of Richard's

friends took him on one side and told him that Sabina had

been at the Canal. He had not dared tell Richard until he

was strong enough to take the news and now, piecing

together scraps of information gleaned from new prisoners,

he was able to assure Richard that his wife was alive, though

in hospital.

Richard was shattered by the news. For the first time in

years, he was unable to pray. Sabina in that place! How

many years had she been away from home? Where was

Mihai? But there was no answer to these questions.

For a while under the new dictatorship, each prisoner was

allowed one monthly parcel. With what expectation they

were opened and the food and cigarettes shared round! The

prisoners were allowed to state their requirements on a post-

card — this, in itself, a wonderful concession for up to now

go

AN UNEXPECTED REPRIEVE gi

they had not been allowed to write home at all — but the

items they could ask for were limited. Richard's card was

setting a problem for his friends in Bucharest. He asked for

'Dr. Filon's old clothes'. Dr. Filon was a small man, Richard

was six feet two. How could the doctor's clothes possibly fit

him? But it must mean something. At last they found a

solution. The 'old clothes' were only an excuse to mention a

doctor, and Tirgul-Ocna was known to be a prison specially

for prisoners suffering from T.B. They knew that Richard

himself had had the disease. The cryptic message must mean

that he was asking for any drugs that could be spared. The

Americans had discovered streptomycin ten years before and

it was producing wonderful results among T.B. sufferers.

When it was first announced, the discovery had been dis-

missed as Western propaganda but now, ten years later, the

drug's value was acknowledged. Richard's friends sent him

100 grammes of streptomycin — which he; promptly gave to

the inmates of Room 4.

Where some prisoners rejoiced only in the receipt of their

parcels, Richard had the added joy of knowing that his

parcel would be blessed with the prayers of all his friends«

They would know now for certain that he was still alive, that

their prayers for his safety had been heard.

A letter — the first over all the long years of his impris-

onment— arrived for Richard from Sabina. It contained

three sentences, all she was allowed to write, but it filled him

with joy. 'She was well. She was still confined to Bucharest.

Mihai would be coming to see him soon.' Mihai coming to

see him! Richard had left him when he was nine. Now he

was sixteen!

He was separated from his son by the length of the room.

Only a small grating allowed him to see the thin lanky youth

who answered to the summons of 'Mihai Wurmbrand'. All

Mihai could see on the other side of the grating was a shaven

head, a gaunt, grey face with enormous eyes and a white

stubble on the chin. But the smile had the sweetness he re-

92 RICHARD WURMBRAND

membered. The boy's words came with a rush, in case he was

interrupted by the guards: 'Mother's well. She couldn't

come. She says to tell you that even if you die in prison, you

must not be sad because we'll all meet in heaven.'

That told Richard much. He had worried in case Mihai

had lost his faith.

'Have you food at home?'

'Yes, our Father is very rich. Hë provides.'

The guards sniggered. They assumed Mihai meant his

mother had divorced Richard (as happened in many cases to

long-term prisoners) and had married again, but Richard

knew what Mihai meant.

But what could father and son do with a few minutes after

a separation of seven years? The last time they spoke

together, Mihai was a child ; now he was a young man. They

could not even reach out a hand to each other. Both were so

overcome with emotion that they could find no words to

say.

The new leniency did not last long. The old restrictions

were restored, new ones devised — even petty tyrannies like

closing up the windows in the wards and painting them over

so that the prisoners had no fresh air and could not see the

sky. Richard's illness flared up again. In June, he learned he

was to be transferred to another prison. Dr. Aldea was

worried.

^You're not fit to move but there's nothing I can do about

it. But if you receive any more streptomycin, don't give it

away!'

The prisoners who were being transferred had to lie on the

ground in the prison yard while the blacksmith chained their

ankles for the journey. One of the officers who knew Rich-

ard's stubborn courage stood over him and mocked :

'Surely you have something to say about being put in

irons?'

Richard replied from where he lay on the ground 'Yes,

lieutenant. I'd like to sing you a little song*, and he broke

AN UNEXPECTED REPRIEVE 93

into the opening words of the Rumanian Republic's new

national anthem : 'Broken chains are left behind us ...' For-

tunately for Richard, the transport arrived before the officer

had recovered from his shock.

This time Richard went to Craiova prison in southern

Rumania. Like Japanese porters packing commuter trains at

rush hour, the guards pushed the new prisoners into cells

already crowded. Bunks rose in tiers, each bunk containing

at least two men. More men squatted half-naked on the floor

or leaned against the walls. It was like a scene out of hell.

Richard spent two months there. It was noisy, insanitary and

squalid and these conditions made the prisoners hostile to

any attempt Richard made to preach the gospel. But all pris-

oners long for the same thing: relief from boredom. So Rich-

ard turned his sermons into thrillers. The prisoners hung on

his words, though one of them said : 'Pastor, I've heard many

crime stories, but none like yours, which always end with the

criminal, the victim and the policeman all going to church

together.5 He could have told stories for twenty-four hours a

day and still he would not have satisfied the demand. He told

them the life stories of well-known gangsters and criminals

and showed how lack of love had turned them to evil ways;

he broke up long novels he had read many years before into

serials : Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy's Resur-

rection, Hamsun's Hunger. The last of these brought tears to

many eyes for the food in Craiova prison was the worst that

any of them had encountered — and most of them had had

years of experience of prison food.

One day, however, the guards brought^in a huge canister

of onion soup, another of stew with real meat in sizeable

pieces. There were mounds of carrots and creamy white po-

tatoes, two bread rolls for each prisoner, a basket of fresh

apples. What could it mean? Had the American Army taken

over Rumania? They savoured every mouthful. An hour

later, one of the prisoners called excitedly from the window:

'Women! Look—there are women!' The rest crowded to

94 RICHARD WURMBRAND

look out. 'Oh, dammit, they're leaving.' Down below by the

prison gate they could see the Commandant saying good-bye

to a party of well-dressed ladies. 'A delegation from the

West,' a guard told them later. 'They thought the prison diet

was excellent,' he added maliciously.

The next day, the prisoners were back on rotten tripe and

cabbage.

During the next few months, Richard moved round sev-

eral different prisons. The journeys followed the same grim

pattern: the closed, crowded railway trucks; the shackles

that rubbed sores on his ankles that took months to heal. He

spent a short time at Poarta-Alba where Sabina had worked

in the forced-labour camp. The Canal project had been

abandoned and the old barrack huts where the slave labour-

ers had been housed were now derelict. Even so, they made

Richard feel very close to Sabina.

At his next prison, Gherla, Richard was allowed a brief

visit from his wife. They were separated from each other by

the length of the room, shouting distance away from each

other. An officer and guards looked on. Sabina looked so

tiny. Her hair was still dark, though streaked with grey. Her

face was lined but smiling, and filled with a peace and

beauty Richard had never seen before.

'Are you all right at home?'

Yes, we are all well. Praise be to God.'

'You are not allowed to mention God? interrupted the

officer.

'Is my mother still alive?'

'Praise God, she is stilt alive.'

'You are not allowed to mention God here!'

Sabina asked : 'How are you?'

Tm in the prison hospital...'

lYou are not allowed to say where you are in prison.'

'About my trial — is there any hope of appeal?'

lYou are not allowed to discuss your trial.'

Everything they tried to say to each other was blocked in

AN UNEXPECTED REPRIEVE 95

this way. Eventually Richard said : 'Go home, Sabina dear.

They won't let us speak.'

His tuberculosis worsened. He was sent back to the prison

hospital at Vacaresti where he had spent the month immedi-

ately prior to his trial. Two officers who arrived to interro-

gate him asked him what he thought of Communism now.

'I really cannot say,' was his reply. 'I only know it from

the inside of prisons.'

From Vacaresti hospital tb Jilava prison — the worst of

any Richard experienced. The name means 'wet place' in

Rumanian and it was aptly named. The prison was largely

underground, a warren of corridors and ill-lit cells where

water dripped constantly from the roof and trickled down

the walls. There was no spark of community spirit at Jilava.

It was a transit jail where men often met old enemies who

had denounced them and who were now denounced them-

selves. Here Richard met a familiar figure, Colonel Dul-

gheru. He was no longer arch-inquisitor of the Secret Police

but a prisoner himself, and terrified lest any of his former

victims should recognise him.

On a June day in 1956, Richard's name was called.

'Interrogation at once. Move!'

He rose to his feet wearily. The thought of more bullying

questions was almost more than he could bear.

'Come on ! Come on ! They're waiting !'

But there was no interrogator waiting. Outside the cell

there was only an official who thrust a piece of paper into

Richard's hands. It was a court order stating that under an

amnesty his prison sentence had been suspended. He was

free! He could not grasp the significance of what it said.

'But I've only done eight of my twenty years ...'

'Get going.'

'But look at me. I'll be arrested by the first policeman

I meet.. .'

'We've no spare clothes here. Move !'

The gate clanged shut behind him.

96 RICHARD WURMBRAND

Jilava is three miles from Bucharest. Richard shuffled

down the white dusty road in his broken shoes and tattered

prison garments. The air was full of the sounds and scents of

summer.

Dear God!1 he said out loüd. 'Help me not to rejoice more

because I am free than because You were with me in

prison!'

An old peasant and his wife came towards him. 'You come

from there?' they asked, eyeing his scarecrow appearance.

The man pulled out a leu, the smallest Rumanian coin, and

pressed it into Richard's hand.

A little farther, another woman stopped him. 'You come

from there?1 He nodded. They sat down on a wall together

in the sunshine and she asked if he had news of the priest of

her village, arrested some months before. She, too, pressed a

coin into his hand. 'For the tram fare,' she said.

People crowded round him at the tram stop. He was easy

to recognise as a released prisoner and all wanted to know if

he had seen their husband, their father, their brother, their

son. It seemed as if every family in Rumania had somebody

in prison. As the tram moved off from the terminus in the

direction of Bucharest, a policeman on a motor bike roared

up and yelled to the driver. Richard's heart almost stopped.

Surely they could not be coming to take him back ! But it was

only to report that a passenger had boarded the tram after

the doors were shut and was still clinging to the outside

step.

The woman next to Richard on the tram had a basket of

strawberries on her knee.

'Have you had any this year?' she asked.

*Not for eight years!'

She told him to eat his fill and he crammed his mouth

with the sweet fruit as the tram carried him into the familiar

streets of Bucharest.

When he opened the front door of his home, there were a

number of strange young people in the hall. They looked at

AN UNEXPECTED REPRIEVE 97

him curiously. He was filthy and in rags, but Mihai recog-

nised him.

Tather!'

Sabina came and Richard's eyes blurred with tears as he

held her in his arms.

There was still not to be any peace. People had recognised

him on the way home and had been telephoning all over

Bucharest. The door-bell rang continually with visitors and

Richard had to stand in the hall in his patched prison

trousers tied up with string and accept the greetings of his

flock. Their Pastor had returned.

It was late that night before they were alone together.

Richard lay beside Sabina in the strangely clean bed. He

could not sleep. He went across to Mihai's room and looked

down at his sleeping son. So often in prison he had dreamed

he was at home, only to wakè to the emptiness of his cell. But

Mihai was there, and Sabina was there. And God was there.

He had come home.

T-D

CHAPTER II

Back to Prison

Richard spent two weeks in hospital and then he returned

to the work of the Underground Church. The Mission was

still closed and he no longer had his job with the World

Council of Churches, so he and Sabina were very poor. But

at least they had a roof over their heads — quite literally so,

as they were now three people occupying the two small attic

rooms that had been allotted to Sabina and Mihai.

During Richard's imprisonment, Sabina had been unable

to obtain regular work and things would have gone hard for

her had it not been for their friends and for Mihai. The boy

had gone to work at the age of eleven for it was difficult to

find a school that would keep him. Whenever it was dis-

covered that he was the son of a political prisoner, he was

expelled. He managed to secure a job as assistant to the

piano tuner at the Opera House and with the small wage he

earned, he and Sabina had been able to survive. He had

continued his education at evening classes.

Richard could not rest. During his eight years in prison,

he had seen Communism at its most evil yet had seen how

the love of God could transmute that evil into a kind of

peace. 'Do not fear the Cross! You will find it the greatest of

joys!' He began to explain this to Sabina but found it did not

need explaining. She also had borne her cross in triumph

among the horrors of the slave camp and had come through

with a serenity that matched Richard's own. Now Richard

felt he must take that message of love to as many as would

hear it, and use that love to fight the evil of Communism.

He accepted an invitation to give a series of lectures at the

98

BACK TO PRISON 99

University in the ancient town of Cluj. A zealous 'informer'

reported to the authorities that the lectures were to take

place and an official from the Ministry of Cults, a fanatical

Communist called Rugojanu, was sent to report what se-

dition Richard preached.

On the first evening, about fifty students and a few tutors

attended. Richard recognised Rugojanu at once as a spy.

The first lecture was to be on the theory of evolution.

'Was it not strange,' Richard began, 'that the new Ruma-

nia, so advanced and Socialist, rejected all capitalist ideas

except the one put forward by the English bourgeois,

Charles Darwin?'

It was a brilliant lecture. On the surface, everything Rich-

ard said was entirely in accordance with the Party line but

everyone in the audience, including Rugojanu, knew that

Richard was preaching the Good News of Jesus.

The following evening, the audience had doubled, and by

the end of the week, the lecture hall was packed with over

a thousand students and lecturers. The atmosphere was

charged with expectation, like the time of Richard's defiant

speech at the Congress of Cults when the Communists first

came to power.

'Remember that there is always hope,' he concluded. 'The

wheel of life keeps turning. It put me in prison; now I ani

free. I have been ill ; now I am better...'

'Sedition! Sedition!' shouted Rugojanu. 'The wheel will

not turn. Communism is here for ever!'

'But I didn't mention Communism,' said Richard. 'I

merely said the wheel of life keeps turning...'

*But you meant it. Don't think you've heard the last of

this. I'll see you never preach again.' He did not interrupt

any more that day for he could see the enthusiasm with

which Richard's words were received, but the next day at

the Conference of Pastors he attacked Richard again. He

worked himself into a passion of anger and rushed out crying

'Wurmbrand is finished! Wurmbrand is finished!'

IOO RICHARD WURMBRAND

He flung out of the building in his rage. A car, swerving to

miss a dog in the road, skidded, mounted the pavement and

crushed Rugojanu against the wall. He died instantly.

Richard no longer had a licence to preach but that did not

stop him. He worked with a sense of urgency for he knew he

had not long. He held his services in attics and basements, in

open fields and once, even, in the home of a high-ranking

official in the Secret Police who was on holiday and whose

maid was a secret Christian. But there was always danger,

not least from former prison friends turned informers who

begged for help 'for old time's sake' in the desperate hope of

picking up information they could sell in exchange for

bread.

After the crushing of revolt in Hungary by the Russians in

1956 attacks on so-called 'superstition' in Rumania became

even more violent. Churches were closed and turned into

Communist clubs or cinemas or warehouses. Yet more minis-

ters and priests were rounded up and thrown into prison.

Richard prayed: 'Lord, if there are any in prison that I

can help, send me back there and I will bear it willingly.'

They came for him at one o'clock in the morning of Janu-

ary 15th, 1959.

This time both Sabina and Mihai were present at his

'trial'. It was a repeat of the secret proceedings that had been

held in Vacaresti prison hospital so many years before. Once

again the proceedings took ten minutes. Richard's suspended

sentence was restored and increased from twenty years to

twenty-five.

After a few days in Jilava prison just outside Bucharest

Richard was taken to Gherla in Transylvania where he and

Sabina had had that brief meeting three years before. The

prison was terribly overcrowded, 10,000 prisoners being

herded into accommodation intended for 2,000. Once

again, Richard had to share a bunk in one of the gloomy

barrack-like cells. Discipline was harsh. Prisoners were

flogged — twenty-five lashes — for the slightest offence.

BACK TO PRISON 101

Everyone committed at least one 'offence' during his stay.

Richard and a high-ranking member of the Orthodox

Church were assigned, among other jobs, the unplea-

sant task of emptying the slops for the hundred men in their

cell.

There were not only priests and intellectuals there but

murderers, thieves and war criminals. They were bitter,

angry men and some of them saw a chance to work out their

frustrations by beating up Richard because he was a Jew. A

warder broke up one such scuffle but in the poor light could

not recognise who was involved.

'Who did this?' he demanded of Richard.

'I can't say. As a Christian, I love my enemies. I don't

denounce them.'

So Richard was flogged for insolence — but at least he

earned the respect of his fellow-prisoners, even though they

did not understand him.

They did not understand him, either, when he refused to

taunt an ex-soldier for executing Jews during the war.

'Can't you understand that that was twenty years ago?'

Richard begged. 'He has paid for his crime with years of

hunger and beatings in prison. He's grown up since then.

Would you call a man illiterate all his life because he

couldn't read at the age of three?'

Once again, as at Tirgul-Ocna, the prisoners kept up their

spirits with riddles and jokes.

'A man travelling on a train has a wife called Eve and they

live in a red house. What's his name?' asked Gaston, a Uni-

tarian pastor. 'Can't you guess it? His name is Charles.'

*But why? We can't work it out.'

'Easy! I've known him for years.'

Archimandrite Miron (who shared Richard's job of

'slopping out') told what he swore was a true story: A prison

commandant was inspecting a batch of new prisoners.

'What is your crime?' he asked one man.

Tve done nothing, sir, and I've got ten years.'

102 RICHARD WURMBRAND

'And what is your crime?' the commandant asked the next

prisoner.

:cNothing, sir, and I've got twenty years.'

:cLying swine!' shouted the commandant. *Nobody in the

People's Republic gets more than ten years for doing

nothing!'

Richard was shocked one day to meet again among a

group of new prisoners Professor Popp whom he had known

at Tirgul-Ocna. Popp was one of the prisoners there who

had displayed great goodness and a strong Christian faith.

They had both been released during the 1956 amnesty but

had not seen each other since. Now Professor Popp

looked old, ill and depressed. He told Richard the reason

why.

On his release from prison, he had gone mad for pleasure.

He felt that time had passed him by; he wanted to make up

for the lost years so he spent every penny he had on pleasure;

he drank too much; he left his wife for a much younger

woman. Inevitably, for he was basically a good man, he felt

remorse for his foolishness.

'I wanted to come and talk to you,' he told Richard 'but I

lived miles from Bucharest. So I went to a local pastor and

confessed everything to him. I told him that if it hadn't been

for Communism, I'd never have been in prison in the first

place so really Communism was to blame for my troubles.

The pastor listened — and denounced me.'

Popp had been sentenced to another twelve years for

speaking against Communism but he seemed as if he could

no longer cope with imprisonment. One day soon after this

conversation, his control snapped and he attacked the room

leader like a madman. He was dragged off to the prison

hospital where he died the following day.

Inevitably, after this tragedy, there was much discussion

of life after death, even among the hardened criminals. A

man called Florescu, a professional thief, declared :

'I believe in what I can see, taste and feel. We're all

BACK TO PRISON IO3

matter, like this wooden stool I'm sitting on. When you're

dead, that's it.'

Richard kicked the stool from under him and Florescu fell

backwards to the floor. He scrambled to his feet and went for

Richard. 'What's the idea?' he demanded.

*But you said you were matter, just like the stool,*

reasoned Richard. 'I didn't hear the stool complain !'

Everybody laughed — even Florescu — and Richard went

on to develop his point that man has a spirit that makes him

different from inanimate objects. Everyone hung on his

words. When a man is in prison, with little expectation of

release, the idea of survival after death brings a message of

hope.

Pastor Gaston alone seemed unable to derive any comfort

from Richard's words.

'What is on your mind?' Richard asked him. 'You are

fretting over something. Why don't you take your problem

to Jesus. He will give you comfort and strength.'

Gaston sighed. 'You make it sound as if He was here with

us, alive.'

'Certainly he's alive,' Richard replied. 'I'll prove it to

you.'

Gaston shook his head sadly. 'How you persist!' he said.

'You're worse than a Communist!'

Shortly afterwards, Gaston was moved to a different cell.

They did not see each other again for several months and

then in bitter circumstances. Richard had been flogged yet

again on some trivial pretext. He was flung into the isolation

cell afterwards and found Gaston there in a dreadful

state. His back was a mass of bloody wounds and he was

weak and feverish. But despite his suffering, he insisted

that he must confess a big sin to Richard — the sin that

had been preying on his mind for months. He, Gaston,

had been the pastor who had denounced Professor

Popp!

'I was weak,' he sobbed. 'I couldn't stand it when they

104 RICHARD WURMBRAND

threatened me. But when I saw him here ... and then when

he died ! Ï can never forgive myself !'

Richard tried to comfort him. He told him how all

Sabina's family had died in a pogrom but how, when she met

one of the men who carried out the slaughter, she forgave

him and helped him to become a Christian and how, there-

after, the man's whole life was changed.

'Popp would have forgiven you, too,' Richard assured

Gaston. 'Particularly if he had known the pressures being

applied to you.'

But here was yet another tragedy of the Communist

system that caused a man to turn against his brother in the

faith, one member of a family to inform against the rest. At

least prison only made brutes of some; it made saints of

others.

Apart from an occasional change of population, there was

no relief at Gherla from the monotonous round of hardship,

cruelty and degradation. Month succeeded month, year suc-

ceeded tedious year. Sometimes it seemed that time and life

itself were standing still, like the clock over the prison gates

that had been stopped ever since anyone could remember.

CHAPTER 12

On The Brink

In March 1962 a new Commandant came to the prison at

Gherla. One of his first actions was to segregate prisoners

according to their former occupations rather than having

them all mixed up together. Richard should have been

placed in the cell with priests and clergy but because he

insisted that he was a 'pastor' he was grouped with agricul-

tural workers — 'pastor' in Rumanian means 'shepherd*.

However, the error was soon discovered and, after the usual

beating, Richard was moved into a cell with a hundred other

clergy.

This should have been the most peaceful and united cell

in the whole prison but such was not the case. Just as at the

time of his conversion, Richard had found it difficult to find

a denomination that seemed to him truly Christian, so now

he found that even Christian priests who were prepared

to suffer nobly in prison for their faith could not agree

together. Instead of having one united act of worship that

would witness for Christ before the Communist guards, they

squabbled over different forms of the Mass, over whether

the Virgin Mary was 'Queen of Heaven' or merely 'Patron

of Hungary*, and such-like questions of dogma. There were

scarcely two men of different sects who would say together

the Family Prayer, 'Our Father*. It was a tragic situation.

Time and again, Richard insisted :

'What matters is respect for the Scriptures as the only rule,

and salvation by faith in Jesus. The names and forms don't

count.'

The Commandant's purpose was succeeding most no-

105

IO6 RICHARD WURMBRAND

tably. By shutting up all the priests and clergy together, not

only did he deprive the other prisoners of any form of

spiritual comfort, he was also leaving the different priests to

destroy each other. Thus began for Richard what was to be

the very worst period of his whole long imprisonment.

It began with a series of 'indoctrination' lectures, often

ridiculous in themselves but all part of a clever long-term

plan.

The ridiculous side was apparent in the very first lecture

which was given by an earnest young political officer. It con-

cerned the eclipse of the sun that would shortly be taking

place. He explained the nature of the solar system and an-

nounced that since it was the desire of the People's Republic

of Rumania to broaden the views of the people, the prisoners

were to be allowed to watch the eclipse from the court-

yard.

Up went someone's hand. 'Please, if it rains, can we have

the eclipse indoors?'

'No!' replied the lecturer seriously, and went on with his

discourse.

The long-term strategy of the lectures was very clever. As

the weeks went by, the subjects of the lectures changed

subtly. From general information, they turned to politics,

from politics to atheism. All the time there were included in

the lectures reminders of what the prisoners were missing in

the world outside: food, drink, entertainment, sex. It stirred

up feelings and desires long kept under control. Men became

restless and frustrated. At first, the audiences at the lectures

were encouraged to ask questions — an opportunity Richard

seized on every possible occasion. With his quick brain, he

could usually run rings round the lecturer and show up the

weakness of his argument. If he was too impertinent in his

comments, Richard would be slapped around the face — but

that seemed a small price to pay for witnessing to his beliefs.

But it was all very puzzling. When years of torture, insult

and starvation had not weakened his Christian beliefs, how

ON THE BRINK IO7

could a few lectures make any difference? Richard had not

anticipated how sophisticated the Communists had become

in their methods of indoctrination.

Loud speakers had been installed all over the prison soon

after the new Commandant's arrival. Now, as the lectures

got under way, they crackled into life :

'Communism is good.

Communism is good.

Communism is good.'

It went on for hours and hours so that, even when the tape

had been switched off, the words 'Communism is good' con-

tinued to ring in everyone's ears. It was the beginning of a

technique of 'brain-washing' which Russian and Chinese

Communists have brought to perfection.

As the broadcasts continued, so the lectures con-

tinued — now with more emphasis on worldly things.

'So much pleasure waits for you outside,' the lecturer

would say. 'And you can enjoy it, if only you will be sensible.

Throw away the outworn ideas you have had for so long and

come over to our side.'

Prison food, hitherto so scanty as to keep men hopeless

and apathetic, was now slightly improved so that all aspects

of men's appetites revived and deprivation became the more

cruel to bear. Richard suspected also that the food was

drugged.

"You've only one life,' the lecturer said each day. 'It

passes so quickly. We want to help you to make the most of

it. Why waste it in prison? Why not throw in your lot with

us?'

In between the lectures, the tape-recorders continued

their insidious message: 'Communism is good! Communism

is good!'

Many prisoners gave way under the strain — good men

who had withstood as much as fifteen years of imprisonment

IO8 RICHARD WURMBRAND

and torture weakened under this persistent attack on their

senses.

'I have been a fool...' they would cry. 'I have been misled

by Capitalist and Christian lies ... Never again will I set

foot in a Church ... Let me embrace Communism and

live!'

Though many in the 'priests' room' did recant in this way,

the remainder became more closely-knit in loyalty to their

faith. Old divisions were set aside and the cell became ablaze

with renewed faith. They all knew that their stubbornness

would inevitably lead to further suffering but it seemed at

times, Richard said, as if there were angels all around

them. v ' •

One Sunday morning, all the occupants of the prison were

ordered into the. yard to watch an hour-long play. The

action mocked Christianity, and the Commandant and his

officers laughed and clapped. Every time this happened, the

prisoners were ordered to laugh and clap as well, and when

the play was over each prisoner in turn had to go to the front

of the audience and make comments on the play. It was not

just enough to say that he had enjoyed it; he had to give

reasons. One after another went up to the front and repeated

some slogan against religion. It was not worth another beat-

ing to be defiant. How much easier just to say what was

required and maybe not be noticed for a few hours.

This was the problem that faced Richard when his turn

came. He walked slowly to the front, conscious that every

eye was upon him. He was well-known at Gherla. His name

had become a by-word for courage throughout the prison

population of Rumania; and many of the priests in the yard

that morning had been at the Congress of Cults in 1945

when Richard had spoken so powerfully for his Lord and

Saviour. Would he praise Communism now?

'Go on, speak!' ordered the Commandant. If he could

only break the stubborn ones like Wurmbrand, the rest

would be easy.

ON THE BRINK IO9

Richard thought for a moment. What should he say?

Then he remembered Sabina's words, all those years before:

;cWash this shame from the face of Christ!'

He began: 'It is Sunday morning. At home, our wives and

mothers and children are praying for us at church or in their

homes. We should have liked to have been praying for them

but, instead, we have had to watch this play.'

There was absolute silence in the prison yard. He con-

tinued:

'Many of you here have spoken against Jesus, but what

have you against Him? You speak of the proletariat, but

wasn't Jesus a carpenter? You denounce wealth, but didn't

Jesus drive the moneylenders with whips from the

Temple?'

There was much more in this vein, with quotations from

Communism's own authors backing up Richard's case for

Christ. The Commandant shifted uncomfortably in his chair

but did not interrupt. Moved by the intensity of the listen-

ing, Richard forgot that he was in prison. He was no longer

cautious in what he said but openly preached Christ, what

He had done for mankind, what He should mean to every

man present.

*What is more,' Richard concluded. 'Just as every school-

boy is examined at the year's end, just as every factory hand

has his work scrutinised by the overseer, just so will every life

be judged by God !'

He turned and pointed an accusing finger at the Com-

mandant. Vou will be judged too, Major,' he said.

The prisoners broke into cheers but Richard knew it was

only a tiny victory. He would have to, pay for it. The next

day he was told two things : that his wife was in prison and

that he was to be flogged that evening for his insolence at the

play.

All the time he was waiting for the flogging, Richard was

worrying about Sabina. Her health had not been good since

her ordeal at the Canal. Where would she be sent this time?

HO RICHARD WURMBRAND

The hours dragged by. Someone in the next room was

beaten. Richard could hear the blows falling, and the screams

of pain, but nobody came for him that night... or the next

night... or the one after. For six days, he was warned each

morning to expect his punishment before nightfall so that he

spent six days in tense expectation of the ordeal to come. On

the sixth night he was flogged, brutally, then flung back into

his cell where the loudspeakers were blaring :

'Christianity is stupid.

Why not give it up?

Christianity is stupid.

Why not give it up?'

The beatings, the mocking, the brainwashing continued.

Some men gave way; others continued to hold fast. One day

Richard was taken out of the 'priests* cell' and thrust, alone

and handcuffed, into a white-tiled room. It was brilliantly lit

and terribly hot Loudspeakers kept up the insistent mes-

sage:

'Nobody believes in Christ now.

No-one goes to Church.

Give it up.

Give it up.

Nobody believes in Christ now...'

Hour followed hour. Sweat soaked his body and trickled into

his eyes. The white tiles glared in the electric light.

'Nobody believes in Christ now.

Give it up... Give it up... Give it up...'

He wanted to put his fingers in his ears to blot out the

insidious voice but he could not for his wrists were tied.

ON THE BRINK III

7 believe in God,' he shouted back at the loudspeakers. 7

won't give it up. / won't give it up. I believe!'

The cell became hotter as the heating was turned up.

'Nobody believes in Christ now.

Give it up... Give it up... Give it up...'

Richard began to say the Lord's Prayer. 'Our Father, who

art in Heaven ...' What came next? 'Our Father ... Our

Father ...' Surely there was more to it than that but he

could not remember the words. 'Jesus! Jesus!' he murmured.

Over and over again. 'Jesus ! Jesus ! '

He closed his eyes against the brightness and tried to turn

his thoughts inwards, away from the insistent message of

atheism. The Communists must be very afraid of God if they

were prepared to go to such lengths to defeat Him. That

thought comforted him and he became quieter, husbanding

his resources, for he did not know how many hours he would

have to endure this torture.

'Jesus lives,' he repeated to himself over and over again.

He lives. He lives.'

After a while he found his own thoughts were sounding

louder to him than the voices of the loudspeakers and he

knew that Jesus was with him in the cell, comforting and

sustaining him. He was even able to pray for the Com-

mandant who had decreed this treatment.

Tather, forgive them for they know not what they do.'

Jesus's words held a new depth of meaning. Could he blame

the Commandant for being ruthless if no-one had ever

shown him any other way of behaving? Richard lay on the

floor of the stifling, brilliantly-lit room and prayed for his

torturers.

The next morning, half-fainting from heat and lack of

sleep, he was led into another room and left alone. The room

was blessedly cool and fresh. There was a bed in one corner

with smooth, clean sheets; a change of clothes laid out on a

112 RICHARD WURMBRAND

chair; a table with flowers. Richard sat down on the chair

and wept. Comfort after so much suffering was just too

much to bear. When he had recovered his composure a little,

he noticed that there was a folded newspaper on the

table — the first he had seen since January 1959. It was now

July 1963!

The Commandant came in. What did Richard think of his

room, he asked. Was it not pleasant — an example of the

comfort he could enjoy under Communism if he would only

deny this foolish God of his, admit that it was all super-

stition. Richard pulled himself together with an effort. He

must not show weakness now. He picked up the newspaper

and pointed to the date.

'If there is no Christ,' he asked, liow is it that you date

your paper 1,963 years after the birth of someone who never

existed?'

He passed the next few weeks between the restful room

with the flowers and the white-tiled cell with the loud-

speakers and the blinding lights. On August 23rd, the day on

which Rumania celebrated the foundation of the People's

Republic, he was taken down to watch the television news

programme showing the celebrations and parades. He was

profoundly shaken by what he saw. There were bands and

processions, banners, crowds shouting 'August 23rd brings

us freedom!' Was this real — surely it was largely mass hys-

teria? When he was asked to give his opinion of the Freedom

Day Celebrations, he replied stubbornly:

'August 23rd freed our country from Fascism, but I was

free long before that. Jesus set me free from sin and

death.'

'Tell that nonsense to Yuri Gagarin,' laughed the Com-

mandant. 'He has been up in space and he saw no sign of

your God.'

'If an ant walked round the sole of my shoe,' Richard

retorted. 'It could say it saw no sign of Wurmbrand.'

More time in the punishment cell. 1963 moved into 1964.

ON THE BRINK Il3

Early that year, Richard was visited by a delegation of high-

ranking officials led by. Negrea, the Deputy Minister for the

Interior. They had been studying Richard's case, they told

him, and although they did not agree with his views, they

respected his stubborn integrity. They felt the time had

come to settle differences. They would meet him half way.

They would forget what he had done against the State. After

all, they could use a man of his calibre...

Richard was wary. Was this a new trap? Why should an

important Minister come two hundred miles from Bucharest

to Gherla just to see him? Negrea was confiding: 'We made

a mistake, Mr. Wurmbrand, in attacking your World Coun-

cil of Churches. You are widely known abroad and we still

get enquiries about you. We're offering you the position of

Lutheran Bishop-Elect of Rumania. The present Bishop is

old; you would soon succeed him. All you have to do is co-

operate with us, point out how we are all working together

for peace and friendship. Just think what it would mean — a

high salary, your family around you, comfort, freedom to

preach ...'

It seemed a reasonable enough suggestion. After all, Rich-

ard thought, a lot of good could come out of such a compro-

mise. He asked for time to think it over.

Till Monday, then ...' Negrea shook hands courteously.

'I'll put your release papers through immediately.' He was

very confident.

Richard returned to his cell and prayed. He said later that

that weekend was for him his Gethsemane. Must he accept

another eleven years in prison when he could be with Sabina

and Mihai? Had he not suffered enough? But his heart

answered him :

'You know what "co-operate" means: inform on your

congregation, only preach what is acceptable to the

Party. Do you want to be "Richard Wurmbrand, Lutheran

Bishop of Rumania, by appointment of the Secret

Police"?3

114 RICHARD WURMBRAND

He knew he must say 'No' and for the first time for days

felt tranquil in his soul.

He was kept on in the special block. The brainwashing

continued :

'Christianity is dead...

Christianity is dead . ..'

He was promised a visit from his family and sat all one

long day in a clean shirt waiting for them to come, not

knowing that there had been no visit arranged. He waited

and waited. Nobody came.

'They don't want to know you any more...' said the loud-

speakers. 'They don't want to know you any more ...' Rich-

ard wept with disappointment.

So the months slid by.

'Christianity is dead . ..

Christianity is dead . ..'

Almost, Richard began to believe the message of the

loudspeakers. Almost... but not quite. A tiny spark of faith

still flickered, despite fourteen years of imprisonment and

torture, despite the past two dreadful years of brain-wash-

ing.

In June, all the prisoners were gathered together in the

main hall of the prison. The Commandant addressed them.

There had been a general amnesty. All 'political' prisoners

were to be freed. It seemed unbelievable but it was true.

There had been a slight 'thaw' in the relationship between

the Communist countries and the West. Rumania's Prime

Minister, Gheorgiu-Dej, was making a gesture towards

greater liberality by releasing political prisoners.

Richard was one of the last hundred or so prisoners to be

discharged. They stood around in the shabby but clean suits

they had been given, waiting for their discharge papers.

ON THE BRINK II5

"Brother Wurmbrand!' A voice hailed him. 'I'm so glad to

have found you. I've heared so much about you from your

son.'

The man introduced himself as coming from Sibiu. Rich-

ard turned to him eagerly.

'How is Mihai? What is he doing now?'

'He was well when I last saw him. We shared a cell

together.'

'Mihai — in prison?' Richard was appalled.

*You mean you didn't know? He'd been inside for nearly

six years.'

Nearly six years! That meant he must have been arrested

almost at the same time as Richard.

The Commandant came up at that moment. 'Well, Wur-

brand. What will you do now that you are free?'

T don't know.' For once, Richard was lost for words. 'I've

nowhere to go. I was told officially some time ago that my

wife had been arrested and -now I find my son is in prison

too. I don't know what I shall do.'

Richard had longed so much for this moment of release

and now that it had arrived, the taste had turned bitter in his

mouth. He walked out of Gherla prison into the bustle and

colour of the little Transylvanian town. He had nothing

except the second-hand suit he was wearing and a few lei in

his pocket. He spent the money on a bus ticket to Gluj where

he had given the defiant lectures at the University in 1957.

The friends he had hoped to find there had moved. It was

just one more disappointment heaped on top of the other.

He tramped around the town, making enquiries, and at last

found their new address. They were at home. What a

welcome they gave him! How they pressed him to

partake of cake and fruit, of all the best they had in their

house! But the cake and the fruit could not compensate

for the thought of the two empty attics that awaited him in

Bucharest.

Richard asked if he could use his friends' telephone and

Il6 RICHARD WURMBRAND

put through a call to his next-door neighbour in the capital.

The voice that answered was Sabina's !

Tt's Richard,' he said. 'They told me you were in

prison.'

There was confusion at the other end of the line, then

Mihai's voice. 'Hold on. Mother's fainted.' A pause, then

'She's all right now. It was the shock. We'd been told you

were dead.'

So Mihai was not in prison either. Giving Richard false

news of his wife and son, giving Sabina false news of her

husband, had been just two last turns of the screw. What sort

of sadists were these people that they could so relish spoiling

a man's joy at his release?>

There were crowds to welcome Richard when he arrived

at Bucharest station. The word had soon gone round and his

friends turned out with flowers to greet him. His head was

shaven, he was so emaciated he only weighed seven stone,

but the hollow eyes were as blue as ever. People packed into

their two attic rooms to talk to him, to shake him by the

hand.

The Pastor was back with his flock.

CHAPTER 13

Not Peace, But A Sword

Richard Wurmbrand spent several weeks in hospital after

his release from prison. Despite his weakness and his need to

build up his strength, people flocked to see him. He had

become a legend in his own lifetime.

Even when he was barely strong enough, he resumed his

work in the Underground Church, risking his liberty yet

again in order to conduct secret services and to preach the

Word of God to people long starved of spiritual food.

In vain the authorities tried to silence him. He was given a

licence to preach and allotted an 'official' church at Orsova

on the Yugoslavian border. The appointment was hedged

round with restrictions and he was required to report on the

people attending the services. He was instructed that his

congregation could number 35 and no more; if 36 should

ever attend, the church would be closed down. Richard re-

fused to take the appointment. He would not turn informer.

He knew that people were bound to flock to the church as

soon as it was known that he was preaching there and he

would not want to harm the little Christian community in

Orsova by being the reason for its church's closure.

Prime Minister Gheorgiu-Dej died and the easier times

following the amnesty came to an end. Restriction was piled

on restriction, making church worship more and more

difficult. Richard was in constant danger from the Secret

Police; informers were everywhere.

He could not rest. Rumania had recently opened its doors

to tourists from abroad and was visited also by delegations

from the West. They were given specially prepared tours

117

Il8 RICHARD WURMBRAND

and programmes and went back to their home countries

praising the great strides made by Rumania under the new

Republic, expressing delight at the 'freedom of worship'.

Little did they realise that the 'services' they attended had

congregations of atheistic Party members 'packing the

house'.

:tYou must go to the West,' Richard's friends urged him.

'Tell them the truth about our martyred Church. Be our

voice in the free world. That must be your work from now

on.'

It was not easy to 'go to the West'. It was not easy to leave

Rumania at all — but there were ways. The country was

short of foreign currency so it sold Jewish citizens for the

sum of £ 1,000 per head. Richard, Sabina and Mihai put

their names on the list. It took them a year to obtain permits

to leave. Richard's 'price' was inflated to £2,500 but friends

in the West loyally raised the money and at last they were

free — though not without menaces.

'If you speak against our régime,' Richard was told, 'we

can have you discredited, or kidnapped, or even killed.'

On December 6th, 1965 — the feast day in the Rumanian

Orthodox Calendar of St. Nicholas, patron saint of pris-

oners — they flew from Bucharest to Rome. Right up to the

moment of landing at Cimpino Airport, they still wondered

whether something would happen to prevent their escape,

whether the plane would turn back, whether they would be

prevented from disembarking. But there was no hitch. They

were indeed free.

Their visas were for Israel but the Jewish Welfare

Agency, discovering they were Christian Jews, were not

anxious to receive them. After frantic cabling and tele-

phoning, they obtained fresh visas for Norway where friends

of the Mission to Israel awaited them.

Everyone wanted to hear about their experiences. From

Norway, they went to Britain, to America. Richard was

called to testify before committees of the U.S. Senate and,

NOT PEACE, BUT A SWORD IIQ

later, of Congress. He made a moving plea for some, for any

action to be taken that would help the thousands still being

persecuted for their faith under Communism. 'One third of

the world is entitled to one third of your prayers, of your

concerns, of your gifts,' he said. He stripped off his shirt

before the assembly and showed the marks of torture on his

own body. At the same time as he urged prayers for Chris-*

tians in Communist countries, Richard also warned of the

danger of allowing Communism to spread.

'Don't think you only have a few Communists in your

country,' he urged. 'That is what we thought in Rumania

and look what happened. The free world is full not only of

small but fervent official Communist parties but also of

hidden Communists, waiting their opportunity to seize

power. They never give up?

He came to the West as a poor immigrant, possessing

nothing except a vision — a vision that had been born and

nurtured in prison cells, a vision of founding a Christian

Mission to the Communist World. For this purpose, he feels,

he was tested and tempered throughout fourteen years of

imprisonment and torture; for this purpose his friends were

enabled to buy his freedom.

Despite the threats that he was given before leaving Ruma*

nia, he felt compelled to write about his experiences. Tor-

tured for Christ has been translated into twenty-five

languages. He has made the world realise that the least a

Christian can expect under Communism is the loss of his job

or any chance of promotion; the worst is imprisonment, tor-

ture or even death, simply for the 'crime' of worshipping

God. The policy of the Communist state is to make every

citizen completely subservient to the system. Freedom of

conscience, freedom of worship are forbidden.

In 1967, Richard began to circulate a monthly news-

letter, The Voice of the Martyrs. Two thousand copies of

the first issue were distributed in the United States. Now the

newsletter is translated into thirty-three languages and is

120 RICHARD WURMBRAND

distributed in sixty-one countries. *Read and pass it on' is

printed in large letters on every copy, whether it be in Xhosa

or Afrikaans, in English or Chinese. CI cannot be silent until

all have heard and respond', Richard writes. And people do

respond, with their prayers, with their services, with their

money. The new Mission grows and expands just as the

missionary work of the early Church spread like wildfire

round the world.

Christian Missions to the Communist World have been

founded in forty-eight countries, from Iceland to India,

from Australia to Peru, from the Cayman Islands to Canada.

First and foremost, the Missions work to spread to Commu-

nist countries the Gospel, the Good News of Christ. They

want the message to reach not only the TJnderground'

Christians who are denied Bibles or other forms of Christian

literature, but also the millions of people, particularly chil-

dren, who are influenced by Communist doctrine only be-

cause they have never had a chance to hear anything else,

who have been brain-washed from birth, who have never

even heard the name of Christ.

The methods used by the Mission are varied and some-

times dangerous. Couriers smuggle literature under the very

noses of Communist Customs officials. The early Christians

risked their lives helping their imprisoned brethren; so do

Christians today. Sometimes leaflets are dropped from

planes. Balloons carrying a quarter of a million portions of

the Gospels were released on „one day when the prevailing

wind would carry them into North Korea. Hundreds of thou-

sands of Gospels are cast overboard in plastic bags where

ocean currents will take them to the shores of Red China,

Siberia, Albania, Cuba. Much goes astray, but enough gets

through to make the expense and effort and risk worth while.

Visitors to the free world from Communist countries —

athletes, dancers, musicians, tourists, diplomats — are pre-

sented with 'free gifts' of Christian literature. During the

Winter Olympic Games of 1968, a team from the Mission

NOT PEACE, BUT A SWORD 121

went to Grenoble and distributed Gospels among competitors

from Communist countries. 'This is for old women,' objected

one of the Russians. The girl who handed him the literature

retorted 'Do / look like an old woman?' and that persuaded

the Russian to accept the proffered Gospel.

With the same dual role of encouragement and con-

version, broadcasts are relayed in fifty different languages

to countries under Communist influence. Money is smuggled

into Communist countries to enable secret Christians to buy

radios to receive these programmes or to finance the setting

up of secret printing presses to publish Bibles. Sometimes

the money goes to support the families of Christians im-

prisoned or executed for their faith, or to pay the extortion-

ate fines to which they are subjected.

The suffering of many of the underground Christians is

almost unbelievable. In China in 1968, three teachers were

publicly shot for teaching their class the Ten Com-

mandments instead of Maoism. Reports reach the free world

of the most cruel and sophisticated tortures being used to try

to break the reason and spirit of Christians — yet still they

maintain their faith and witness.

A Russian mother left with nine children to support after

her husband had been thrown into prison for his faith was

still able to write 'Glory be to the Lord that He has given us

also a little chip of His cross to bear.' Families such as these

need prayer support as well as food and clothing, so that

another important aim of the Mission is to encourage prayer

on behalf of the work — not only general prayer but praying

for Christian martyrs by name. To this end, individual cases

are described in the newsletters detailing the so-called

'crimes' of the persecuted Christians, together with their sen-

tences.

Richard Wurmbrand devotes all his energies to furthering

the work of the Missions. Through his books, articles, news-

letters and personal contacts, he organises protests on behalf

of persecuted Christians through Governments, Par-

122 RICHARD WURMBRAND

liaments and Press. He exposes Communist infiltration into

free societies. In particular, he works among young people

in the free world who are vulnerable to the sinister and

subversive propaganda of Communist agitators. It is work

that calls for courage, but Richard has never lacked that

quality. 'My manner of life is continual attack against the

enemy,' he wrote, in April 1971, 'against openly manifested

Communism, and against wolves in sheepskins, Communist

tools disguised as pastors and priests ... Cowardice is cow-

ardice even if you call it common sense, caution, cir-

cumspection. My doctrine knows none of these, but only one

word: temerity.'

On October 22nd, 1967, a vast pro-Communist rally of

some 60,000 persons marched to the Pentagon in Wash-

ington. Richard hired a truck with an extending crane

(a cherry-picker') which lifted him above the heads of

the protesters and kept pace with them as they marched.

From this commanding position, he preached Christ to

the marchers through a loud-hailer, and described some

of the horrors Christians endured under Communism.

Afterwards, many of the marchers crowded round him to

hear more.

In March 1969, during a debate-before students at San

Fernando Valley College, U.SA., he had to struggle with his

pro-Communist opponent to get hold of the microphone. In

support of such action, he quotes John Wesley, that you are

a real preacher only if, under your influence, some are con-

verted and others get mad at you. Some people certainly

'get mad at' Richard Wurmbrand — but radical students

accept Christ after such meetings, so the effort is worth

while.

He is not without his critics. Much of this is because

people are too credulous, too easily taken in by high-level

assurances that there is freedom of worship under Commu-

nism. Richard knows otherwise, from experience. He is at

times bitter in his denunciation of the apathy and com-

NOT PEACE, BUT A SWORD 123

placency of the Church in the 'free world'. If only the

Church in the West had the passion of the Underground

Church — how it would be on fire for God! What could it

not achieve!

Other critics attack the Mission's work of smuggling

Bibles into Communist countries as immoral. Richard

replies: 'We consider rather as immoral to leave souls with-

out the Word of God.' He justifies his methods by quoting

Paul's words in his first letter to the Corinthians, that he uses

'all means' to save men's souls.

But much of the criticism is due to the long arm of Com-

munism reaching out, as threatened, to discredit his work.

He has been accused variously of being a C.I.A. agent, a

member of the Russian Secret Police, a Jesuit agent, a Zion-

ist, an anti-Semite, a Fascist, a murderer, even that he has

never lived in Rumania and has never been tortured! None

of this deters him. He analyses and ridicules each new ac-

cusation in his newsletters as fearlessly as he faces each new

challenge on a public platform.

In March 1972 he was addressing an assembly of 4,000 in

Basle, Switzerland. The platform was invaded by some

seventy or so members of a Left-Wing youth organisation

who seized the microphones and began singing revolutionary

songs, with clenched fists raised in the Communist salute.

Richard's words were drowned by the noise. The singing

continued despite protests from the audience, so Richard

clapped his hand over the leader's mouth to silence him.

Pandemonium broke out. Richard was attacked. Even-

tually the police arrived and used tear gas to break up

the mêlée. The very violence of the attacks against Richard

is an indication of the truth and importance of his

message.

He is in constant danger of assassination or kidnapping

but that does not deter him. He was due to preach in

Munich early in 1970 but was advised not to go as a plot to

murder him had been discovered. Richard went to Munich

124 RICHARD WURMBRAND """

notwithstanding. *You never know,' he said. "The one hired

as a killer might be converted.' In India in 1972, he received

a letter written in blood, threatening him with death if he

preached. He still went into the pulpit in New Delhi and

addressed a packed congregation. Whatever the threats, no

matter how wearying the journeys, he still travels constantly

all over the world — to Australasia, to Latin America, to

Africa, to Europe — preaching, holding public meetings and

debates, lobbying the most influential people in the countries

he visits to join in the struggle against Communism. The

very force of his personality sweeps aside any apathy and

indifference in the people he meets.

He did not want to take on another struggle when he

came out of prison. In his youth he had been dynamic, out-

going, eager to buttonhole the world with the message of

Christ. Fourteen years in prison had changed that. The

desire to convert men to Christ had not disappeared — that

was as great as ever — but now he had become a more medi-

tative man. So many years in solitary confinement had shown

him the beauty of quietness. In 1965, he would have loved

dearly to pass the remainder of his days peacefully with

Sabina, in study and meditation and prayer. But, as his sub-

sequent life has shown, it was not to be. Once again, he was

to ask why 'as sons of peace, we do not bring peace, but a

sword?' There is another story yet to be written of his life

since 1965. The stage is wider than before but drama and

danger are still as much part of the action.

As long as he has breath in his body, Richard will hate

Communism — but he will still love the Communists, just as

Jesus hated sin but loved the sinner. 'One must feed even

those who curse God,' he has written. *We must not be selec-

tive in our good deeds.'

Richard is in his middle sixties now. Despite his physical

suffering, his hair is only streaked with grey and his tall

figure walks erect, daring his enemies to do their worst. But

his eyes have aie tenderness and the glow of a man who has

NOT PEACE, BUT A SWORD 125

descended into hell and, with Christ at his side, has come

back triumphant.

*A man really believes/ Richard once wrote, 'not what he

recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die

for.'

Such a man is Richard Wurmbrand.

Further Reading

Should readers wish to learn more details of the events

described, they are recommended to read the books listed

below. The author is sure they will be as much inspired and

challenged by them as she was herself.

Books by Richard Wurmbrand:

'Christ on the Jewish Road'

'If Prison Walls Could Speak'

'Sermons in Solitary Confinement'

'If that were Christ, would you give Him your blanket?'

'Tortured for Christ'

'The Soviet Saints'

'In God's Underground'

and by Sabina Wurmbrand:

'The Pastor's Wife'

and by Michael Wurmbrand:

'Christ or the Red Flag'

You will have read many true

stories of courage and faith, but

none greater than that of Richard

Wurmbrand who spent fourteen

years in Communist prisons.

Tortured, beaten, drugged, he

refused to deny his faith in God.

He came back, almost from the

dead, to tell the world of the

underground church which

worships in secret in many

Communist lands.

MARY DREWERY is the author of

ten other books, including nine for

young people.

Cover design/Vat Biro

UNITED KINGDOM 35p

AUSTRALIA (recommended) S 1.20

NEW ZEALAND 90c

CANADA S1.25

ISBN O 340 17769 1

Table of Contents

Richard Wurmbrand: The Man Who Came Back