Richard Heinrich Wurmbrand, pastor: born Bucharest 24 March 1909; President, Jesus to the Communist World (Voice of the Martyrs) 1967-95; married 1936 Sabine Oster (died 2000; one son); died Whittier, California 17 February 2001.
Richard Heinrich Wurmbrand, pastor: born Bucharest 24 March 1909; President, Jesus to the Communist World (Voice of the Martyrs) 1967-95; married 1936 Sabine Oster (died 2000; one son); died Whittier, California 17 February 2001.
Richard Wurmbrand, a former political prisoner in his native Romania, became the leader of one of the most prominent of the anti-Communist bible-smuggling missions. Idiosyncratic and controversial, his work always remained at the margins of mainstream Christian life and, despite the impetus his work gave to a more balanced concern for the persecuted Church in Eastern Europe during the Communist era, he remained an outsider.
He was born in 1909 to Jewish parents, a dentist, Heinrich Wurmbrand and his wife Amalia (née Eckstein). In 1936 he married Sabine Oster, a writer who became a lifelong partner in his work. In the early 1930s it is believed Wurmbrand worked as an atheist agitator but, in 1936, he attended a revivalist meeting and converted to Christianity.
As a Protestant Christian of Jewish background, Wurmbrand soon became involved in the Romanian branches of several foreign-sponsored missions to Romanian Jews. In 1939 he was appointed the secretary in Romania for the Anglican Christian Mission to the Jews and in 1941 became a preacher for the Swedish Israel Mission in Bucharest, transferring in 1944 to the Norwegian equivalent.
He was imprisoned by the Communist government in 1948 during a harsh crackdown against Christians of all denominations. While ill with typhus he was sentenced at a secret trial to 20 years' imprisonment. By his own account, he was beaten, bound and subjected to brainwashing.
He was freed under amnesty in 1956. He worked for a short time as pastor of a small Lutheran congregation (and was possibly ordained) before denouncing the government and going underground. He was again arrested in 1959 in a further wave of persecution and sentenced to 25 years. In 1964 he was released during the thaw that brought freedom to thousands of religious and political prisoners, and the following year was brought out of Romania by the Norwegian Mission he had worked for 20 years earlier, together with the Jewish-Christian Alliance.
He and his family flew to Rome on 6 December 1965 with visas for Israel. But the Jewish Welfare Agency was reluctant to send them on to Israel when it discovered they were Christian Jews. Wurmbrand settled in the United States in 1966, where he was naturalised in 1971.
It was in his adopted homeland that his new career took off. In 1967 he set up Jesus to the Communist World (later Voice of the Martyrs), a bible-smuggling mission and anti-Communist crusading organisation based in Glendale, California. Its first international congress was held in April 1969 in London. Wurmbrand was president and high-profile leader of the organisation. Thousands turned out to hear him on speaking tours and he made a powerful impression on many of those who came to hear him. He succeeded in raising large sums of money for the mission.
In 1967 he published Tortured for Christ, his account of his suffering in Romanian Communist jails, a book that became an international bestseller. This was the first in what became a stream of books praising the Eastern European "heroes" of the faith and denouncing Communist persecution.
Wurmbrand's view of the Church was simplistic; he believed that all suffering Christians were united in one underground church that had overcome denominational rivalries. He identified the Soviet and other Communist governments as "the Beast of the Apocalypse". His testimony received an eager hearing, and in August 1967 he made a presentation to the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington. He constantly denounced the World Council of Churches, to which Soviet-bloc countries belonged, accusing it of "collaborating with the Communists".
Wurmbrand's publications were full of unsubstantiated (though possibly true) stories. He frequently claimed that there were "tens of thousands" of Christians in prison in the Soviet Union, when the numbers were probably in the region of a thousand. This was not a deliberate distortion - Wurmbrand simply did not see any significant difference between the worst times of Stalinism and periods when repression was more subtle.
As for the West, he denounced its "complacency" and alleged that "the Communists have already murdered many leading figures in the USA", including the two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. He was once arrested on the campus at Berkeley for opposing what he considered were Communist-inspired anti-war demonstrations.
Doubts persisted over the veracity of some of his testimony and about his origins and many Western Churches gave him a wide berth. In particular, it was difficult to establish whether he had ever received a theological education or been validly ordained. However, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree at Indiana Christian University in 1972. With the passing of Communism in his homeland in December 1989, Wurmbrand immediately revisited Romania to preach in various churches. He retired in 1995, remaining in California.
Wurmbrand suffered - like so many Christians of all denominations - at the hands of Romania's Communist rulers, but his identification of Communism as "the most dangerous sin in the world" reflected his obsession. His fervour as a public speaker allowed emotion to obscure critical examination of his wild claims. Nevertheless, his relentless preaching, speaking and writing helped put the issue of the persecuted Christian Churches of the Communist-ruled world on the agenda, even if in distorted form.
"I'll never forget the first time I heard him speak," one British Christian recalled:
It was at the famous Tron Church in Glasgow. The place was packed with well-to-do Church of Scotland types. This gaunt man dressed in black robes made his way to the high pulpit and surveyed us all, looking pale and ill, like an Auschwitz survivor. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead a high-pitched scream of agony echoed round the church. Everyone went deathly silent. Leaning over the pulpit he whispered into the silence: "You have just heard the authentic voice of the suffering church."
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