Wurmbrand - In Gods Underground

I am a Lutheran minister who has spent more than 14 years in different prisons because of my Christian belief, but that in itself is not the reason for the existence of this book. I have always disliked the idea that a man who has been unjustly imprisoned must write or preach about his sufferings. Campanella, the great author of City of the Sun, was kept in prison for 27 years; but that he was tortured and lay 40 hours on a bed of iron nails we know from his medieval biographers, not from him.

The prison years did not seem too long for me, for I discovered, alone in my cell, that beyond belief and love there is a delight in God: a deep and extraordinary ecstasy of happiness that is like nothing in this world. And when I came out of jail I was like someone who comes down from a mountaintop where he has seen for miles around the peace and beauty of the countryside, and now returns to the plain.

First, I should explain why, in 1965, I came to the West. When I was released from jail in 1964 with several thousand other political and religious prisoners, it was because the Romanian Popular Republic had adopted a more friendly policy to the West. I was given the smallest parish in the country. My congregation numbered 35. If 36 people entered the church, I was told, there would be trouble. But I had much to say, and there were many who wished to hear. I traveled secretly to preach in towns and villages, leaving before the police could hear that a stranger was in their district. This, too, had to stop. Pastors who helped me were dismissed by the State, and I could become the cause of new arrests and confessions obtained by torture. I was a burden to those I wished to serve, and a danger.

Friends urged me to try to leave the country so that I might speak in the West for the Underground Church. It was plain, from the statements of Western Church leaders, that some did not know and others did not want to know the truth about religious persecution under the Communists. Prelates from Europe and America came on friendly visits and sat down to banquets with our inquisitors and persecutors. We asked them why. As Christians, they said, we have to be friendly with everybody, you know, even the Communists. Why, then, were they not friendly to those who had suffered? Why did they not ask one word about the priests and pastors who had died in prison or under torture? Or leave a little money for the families that remained?

The Archbishop of Canterbury came in 1965 and attended a service. Dr. Ramsey did not know that the congregation consisted of officials and Secret Police agents and their wivesthe same audience that turns out on every such occasion. It had listened to visiting rabbis and muftis, bishops and Baptists. After they had returned home, we read of their approving comments on freedom in Romania. A British theologian wrote a book in which he declared that Christ would have admired the Communist prison system.

Meanwhile, I lost my license to preach. I was blacklisted and constantly followed and watched. I still sometimes preached at the homes of friends who did not count the danger, so I was not surprised when, sometime after secret negotiations had begun for my departure to the West, a stranger asked me to his house. He gave the address, but no name. When I called he was alone.

I want to do you a service, he said. I recognized that he was a Secret Police agent. A friend of mine says that the dollars have been received for you. Probably youd like to leave the country at once. My friend is worried. You are a man who speaks his mind, and you are fresh from prison. They think it might be better if you were kept a whileor that a member of your family stays here to vouch for your good behavior. Of course, your release will be unconditional

I gave him no assurances. They had the dollars; that should be enough. Christian organizations in the West had paid them $10,000 in ransom money for me. Selling citizens brings in foreign currency and helps the Popular Republics budget. A Romanian joke says, Wed sell the Prime Minister if anyone would buy him. Jews are sold to Israel at $1,000 a head, members of the German minority to West Germany, Armenians to America. Scientists, doctors, and professors cost about $5,000 apiece.

Next I was summoned openly to police headquarters. An officer told me, Your passport is ready. You can go when you like, and where you like, and preach as much as you wish. But dont speak against us. Keep to the gospel. Otherwise you will be silenced, for good. We can hire a gangster wholl do it for $1,000or we can bring you back, as weve done with other traitors. We can destroy your reputation in the West by contriving a scandal over money or sex. He said I could go. That was my unconditional release.

I came to the West. Doctors examined me, and one said, Youre as full of holes as a sieve. He could not believe that my bones had mended and my tuberculosis healed without medical aid. Dont ask me about treatment, he said. Ask the One who kept you alive, and in Whom I dont believe.

My new pastorate on behalf of the Underground Church began. I met friends of our Scandinavian Mission in Norway, and when I preached there, a woman in the front row began to weep. Later she told me that years ago she had read of my arrest and had prayed for me ever since. Today I came to church not knowing who would preach, she said. As I listened I realized who was speaking, and I wept. I learned that thousands of people had been praying for me, as they still pray daily for those in Communist prisons. Children whom I had never met wrote, saying, Please come to our townour prayers for you have been answered.