Bokelskere.no

"I express here the grief and the great pain of a suffering country
and of a suffering church, and I apologize if I am a little unpolite."

[Senator Dodd]: I will call this hearing to order.
We have as our witness today Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who is
a refugee from Rumania. . . .

/ /

Reverend Wurmbrand: I came to the States 3 weeks ago.

Senator Dodd: Were you required by the secret police to make any
commitments before you could leave Rumania?

Reverend Wurmbrand: Before I left Rumania I was called twice
to the secret police.
The first time they said that they don't know yet if they will allow me
to leave the country with my family.
They said: "Dollars have been received for you. You will have to leave
the country, but perhaps we will let some time to pass, because
your remembrances of prison are too fresh and you have too good a pen."

Senator Dodd: What?

Reverend Wurmbrand: A pen. "You can too well write. Perhaps we will keep
somebody here of your family as hostage."

The second time they called me again and they said:
'Now you will leave the country, but be very cautious when you come out.

You may preach Christ as much as you like.
We know that you are a preacher, but don't touch us.

Don't speak against Communists.

If you will speak against communism, for $1,000 we can find a gangster
who will liquidate you.
We play with you with open cards. You come from prison.
You have met in prison men whom we have brought back from the West."

And that is the truth. I have been in prison with a Rumanian Orthodox
priest, Vasile Leul, who has been kidnapped from Austria.
I have seen his nail torn out and broken, and so they reminded me of that.
"You know how our prisons are and that you can come back in prison."

And the third thing which they said: "We have also another possibility
with you. We can destroy you morally outside.
We will find story with a girl or a money story or something else
and people will be stupid enough to believe it.
We will destroy you if you touch us."

Under these conditions I was allowed to come out.
And very sorrowfully, in the West - I found people in the West, even
religious leaders, who told me the same thing:
"Preach Christ as much as you like but don't touch Communists."

/ /   / /

Senator Dodd: How do the Communists use religion for their own
purposes if they do?

Reverend Wurmbrand: That is a very tragic side.
The worse thing in Rumania has not been the persecution of Christians.
Persecution has made the Christians to be of steel. The worst thing
has been the corruption of religion.

They have put their men as religious leaders.

A bishop, a pastor, a preacher, just a man like other men,
can commit sins.
Now if they found a preacher or somebody else in adultery or in some
money irregularity or I do not know what sin,
they called him and blackmailed him and said,
"Now you must become our man.
Otherwise we publish what we have found."

Or they found others who were weak ones, whom they promised
I do not know what. They never keep their promises.
And these men, they put at the leadership of religion everywhere.

(. .) I met in prison all those who had praised communism, all those
who have collaborated with communism, and they were treated just like me.
They had been the fools. There was only one difference:
that I was in prison with a good conscience and they were with a bad
conscience. In prison they had remorse.
Religion was used for Communist propaganda in our country.

/ /

Senator Dodd: What is the scar behind your ear?

Reverend Wurmbrand: Here they put the knife and said, "Give accusatory
statement against your bishops and against the other pastors.
Do you give or not?
And they cut. It is true that they did not cut very deeply.

Senator Dodd: These are all knife wounds?

Reverend Wurmbrand: They tortured by all means. They beat until
they broke the bones.
They used red-hot irons, they used knives, they used everything.
..,but how they did it. They interrogated you very politely,

and if you did not wish to say what they asked they said,
"Well, we have the first. On the 15th you will be beaten and tortured
at 10 o'clock in the evening."

Imagine what 14 days were after this. (...)

Senator Dodd: I wish you would turn around before you put your shirt on.

Reverend Wurmbrand: And that it may be very clear, it is not that I boast
with these marks. I show to you the tortured body of my country,
of my fatherland, and of my church,
and they appeal to the American Christians and to all freemen of America
to think about our tortured body,
and we do not ask you to help us.

We ask you only one thing.
Do not help our oppressors and do not praise them. You cannot be
a Christian and praise the inquisitors of Christians.
That is what I have to say.

Senator Dodd: All right. You may put on your clothes.
That scar on your right breast, do you remember how that was inflicted?

Reverend Wurmbrand: Yes; by knife.

Senator Dodd: By knife?

Reverend Wurmbrand: By knife. I have been in Oslo. I went to a hospital.

There were several physicians. I can give their names. I spoke with them
about religion.
In the beginning they said, "We are atheists,"
and then they saw my body and I asked them what treatment do I need.

They said: "About treatment, do not ask us. Ask only the one in whom
we don't believe,
but who has kept you alive, because according to our medical books,
you are dead.
A man who has what you have, with four vertebras broken, cannot live.

According to our medical books, you are dead. If you are alive,
then the one in whom we don't believe has kept you alive."...

I have been not the worst tortured. The proof is that I am alive.
So many died. Nearly all our Catholic bishops have been so handled
that they have died,
and in that time the Russians were in our country, they decided that the
Catholic bishops should be killed.
One of the members of the Government has been Gromyko,
one of the murderers of Christians. ...

.= = = = =

Disse varsomme utdrag er hentet fra dokumentet betegnet

Congressional Testimony May 6,1966 of Rev. Richard Wurmbrand
COMMUNIST EXPLOITATION OF RELIGION
Congressional Testimony of REV. RICHARD WURMBRAND
HEARING Before the Subcommittee to Investigate
the Administration of the Internal Security Act
and Other Internal Security Laws,
of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C.

UNITED STATES SENATE
EIGHTY-NINTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION
Friday, May 6, 1966
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:20 a.m.,
in room 18, Old Senate Office Building

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Voice of the Martyrs (intro.)