And then one morning—quietly, without fanfare, as God’s turning points so often come—I picked up a magazine, and my life has never been the same since.
The week before graduation I went down into the basement of Number 10 to get my suitcase. There on top of an old cardboard box in the musty cellar was a magazine that neither I nor anyone else at the school ever remembered seeing before. How it got there I shall never know.
I picked it up and flipped through it idly. It was a beautiful magazine, printed on glossy paper and bright with four-color pictures. Most of them showed masses of marching youths parading the streets of Peking and Warsaw and Prague. Their faces were animated, their steps vigorous. The text, in English, told me that these young people were part of a worldwide organization 96 million strong. Nowhere was the word Communist used, and only occasionally did the word Socialist appear. The talk was all of a better world, a bright tomorrow. And then, toward the back of the magazine, there appeared an announcement of a youth festival to be held in Warsaw that coming July. Everyone was invited.
Everyone?
Instead of putting the magazine down, I stuck it under my arm and carried it with my suitcase back to my room. That night with no idea where it would lead, I dropped a line to the Warsaw address mentioned in the magazine. I told them frankly that I was training to be a Christian missionary, and that I was interested in going to the youth festival to exchange ideas: I would talk about Christ, and they could talk about socialism. Would they be willing for me to come under these circumstances? I posted the letter, and back bounced an answer. Most certainly they wanted me to come. Since I was a student, reduced rates were available. A special train would be leaving from Amsterdam. My identification was enclosed. They looked forward to seeing me in Warsaw.
The only person in the world I told about this trip was Uncle Hoppy. He wrote back, “Andrew, I think you should go. I am enclosing fifty pounds sterling for your expenses.”
And in that moment—just as I left Scotland to head back home for Holland—a dream began to take shape. It had flashed formlessly in and out of my thoughts since the days at Ringers’, always vaporous and ill-defined—until now.
It began my last day at the factory. There was a single card-carrying Communist employed at Ringers’, a short, stout woman whose close-cropped gray hair stood up on her head like a brush. She had a standard pronouncement on everything from our wages (“slave”) to the Queen (an “oppressor”). My evangelistic efforts, when she detected them, pushed the button in her that released such statements as: “God-is-the-invention-of-the-exploiter-class.” Being an utterly humorless person herself, she never realized that people were laughing at her. In twenty years at the factory she had not made a single convert.
I found her a pathetic, rather than a laughable, figure and at lunchtime would often go to the table where she sat alone. The day I left Ringers’ I stopped by the bench where she worked to say good-bye.
“You’re getting rid of me at last!” I said, hoping at least to keep our parting friendly.
“But not of the lies you’ve told!” she flared back at me. “You’ve hypnotized these people with your talk of salvation and pie-in-the-sky! You’ve blinded them with . . .”
I sighed and settled myself for the opiate-of-the-people lecture. But to my surprise, the angry voice faltered.
“Of course, they believed you,” she went on less certainly. “They’re untrained. They haven’t been taught dialectical argument. They think just what they want to think.
“After all”—her voice was so low I could scarcely hear—“if you could choose, who wouldn’t choose, well God—and all that.”
I glanced at her swiftly and thought I saw the unthinkable: I thought I saw tears in her eyes.
7
Behind the Iron Curtain
Coming back to Witte after two years in England was like living through one of those experiences that “has happened before.” Just as when I returned from Indonesia, everything in the village that hot morning in July 1955 was so precisely as it had been when I left it that at first I had the uncomfortable feeling that no time had elapsed at all. Geltje was out in the garden hanging up clothes when I stepped across the little bridge onto our plot of land. Here, though, there was a difference: A little boy was playing on the front stoop—Geltje’s son.
“Hi!” I called around him. “Anybody home? It’s Andy!”
And once again, everyone suddenly appeared. There were the shouts and hugs, the catching up, the attack on the problem of logistics: who would sleep where when Uncle Andrew was home.
The next several days were spent visiting friends. I went to see Mr. Ringers at the factory. I visited Miss Meekle, who threw her hands into the air with astonishment at my English, and with Kees’s family. I called on the Whetstras, where I discovered to my surprise that they were about to move to Amsterdam. They had done well in their flower-export business and wanted to be closer to the big shipping offices.
Last of all, I went down to Ermelo to visit my brother Ben and his wife. Very casually I asked him if he had heard anything about Thile.
“Yes,” he said, just as casually. “I read last year that she’d been married. A baker, I believe.”
And because there seemed nothing more to say, neither of us said anything at all.
———
The train for Warsaw left Amsterdam July 15, 1955. I was astonished at the number of students who had been attracted by the festival. Hundreds of young men and women milled about the station. For the first time I began to believe the extravagant figures I had read in the magazine.
My suitcase was heavy. In it were just a few clothes—a change of linen and some extra socks. Most of the bag was filled with small 31-page booklets entitled “The Way of Salvation.” If the Communists had attracted me to their country with literature, I was going to carry in literature of my own. Karl Marx had said, “Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world,” meaning of course the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Well, this game could be played both ways: I was going to Poland with editions of this powerful little book in every European language.
And so, with the suitcase almost tearing away from its handle, and my new corduroy pants squeaking at every step, I climbed aboard the train. A few hours later I was standing in Warsaw’s Central Station, waiting for my hotel assignment. I felt very alone. I knew not a single person in all of Poland, nor a single word of the language. From all over the world thousands upon thousands of young people were converging on Warsaw for purposes opposite my own. As we waited, I found myself praying, and I wondered if mine were the only prayers offered in this enthusiastic, laughing, confident throng.
My “hotel” turned out to be a school building that had been converted into a dormitory especially for this occasion. I checked in and was assigned to a mathematics classroom that held thirty beds. As soon as possible I left the hotel and went out into the Warsaw streets, wondering what I was supposed to do next. Rather aimlessly I boarded a public bus and suddenly, as we wove our way through traffic, I knew what I was supposed to do. I had learned a little German during the occupation, and I knew that there was a large German-speaking minority in Poland. So, taking a deep breath, I said aloud in German: “I am a Christian from Holland.” Everyone near me stopped talking. I felt horribly foolish. “I want to meet some Polish Christians. Can anyone help me?”
Silence. But then, as she rose to leave the bus, a fat woman pressed her face near mine and whispered an address in German. Then she said the words “Bible shop.”
My pulse raced. A Bible shop? In a Communist country? I found the address, and sure enough there it was: a Bible shop plain as day. The window was filled with Bibles, red-letter editions, foreign translations, pocket Testaments. But the shop was barred with a heavy grill, and the door was padlocked. There was a notice pasted on the door, which I carefully copied word for word and took back to the hotel.
My group leader smiled. “It’s a notice of va
cation,” he said. “‘Closed for holidays. Will open again July 21.’”
So I had to wait.
———
Our routine for the three weeks was established early. We were supposed to go on the official sightseeing tour in the morning and to listen to speeches in the afternoon and evening.
I followed the routine for a few days. It was clear that we were being shown a well-scrubbed face of Warsaw. New schools, thriving factories, high-rise apartments, overflowing shops. It was all very impressive. But I wondered what I would see if I managed to get off by myself, alone.
One morning I decided to try just that. I rose early and, before the rest of my group came down for breakfast, was out of the building.
What a day it was. Up and down the broad avenues of Warsaw I walked, saddened by the signs of war violence everywhere. Whole blocks were bombed out, blocks the sightseeing tours had avoided. Slum areas abounded, meat shops with long queues, men and women with rags for clothes. One scene in particular stands out in my memory. There was a bombed-out section of town in which families lived like rabbits in a warren. These people had dug their way into the basements and were making their homes in them. I saw a little girl playing barefoot in the dust and debris. I had a Polish booklet with me, which I handed to her, along with a small banknote. She looked at me in surprise and ran up the mound of rubble. In a moment a woman’s head appeared, sticking up out of the ground. She stumbled forward, holding the tract and the bill. Behind her came a man. They were filthy, and they were both drunk.
I tried speaking to them in German and in English and even in Dutch, but they just looked at me blankly. I told them in pantomime to read the booklet, but from the way they held it I realized at last that they could not read. They simply kept shaking their heads, and at last with a smile and a shake of my own I left them.
Sunday came. This was a big day on the agenda. We were to take part in a demonstration at the stadium. Instead, I went to church.
Newspapers in Holland had carried so many stories about the house arrest of Polish church leaders and the closing of seminaries that I had had the impression that all religion in Poland had gone underground. Obviously this was not so. The Bible shop was apparently still operating. I had passed Catholic churches with the doors wide open. Were there, I wondered, Protestant churches still functioning too?
I didn’t want to ask at the school for directions to a church, since I was supposed to be at the rally. So I slipped out and found a taxicab. “Good day,” I said in Polish. The driver smiled back and rattled off a long happy sentence. But “good day” was all the Polish I had learned, and when I asked him in German to take me to a church, his face fell. I tried English and he looked blanker still.
I folded my hands as in prayer, then opened them as if reading. Next I crossed myself and shook my head. No, not a Catholic service. Again I pantomimed reading the Bible. The driver was smiling again. He started across town, and sure enough he had understood: We stopped at a red brick building that boasted two spires. Ten minutes later I was seated at a Reformed Church service behind the Iron Curtain.
I was surprised at the size of the congregation; the church was about three-quarters full. I was surprised, too, at the number of young people. The singing was enthusiastic, the sermon apparently Scripture-centered, as the preacher was constantly referring to his Bible. When the service was over, I waited in the rear of the sanctuary to see if I could find anyone who spoke a language I spoke. My clothes must have marked me as a foreigner, for before long I heard the word:
“Welcome.”
I turned and found myself looking into the face of the pastor. “Could you wait a moment?” he said in English. “I should like to speak with you.”
And I with him!
After most of the congregation had left, the pastor and a handful of young people volunteered to answer my questions. Yes, they worshiped openly and with considerable freedom, as long as they stayed clear of political subjects. Yes, there were members of the church who were also members of the Communist Party. Well, the regime had done so much for the people that one just closed an eye to the rest. “It is a compromise, yes,” said the pastor with a shrug of his shoulders, “but what can you do?”
“What church do you belong to at home?” one of the young men asked in excellent English.
“Baptist.”
“Would you like to go to a Baptist service?”
“Very much indeed.”
He got out pencil and paper and wrote down an address for me. “There’s a service tonight,” he said.
And that evening, after learning from the rest of the Dutch delegation how boring the day’s endless speeches had been, I set out by taxi once again, this time armed with a specific address.
The service was already in progress when I arrived. There was a smaller turnout here. The people were less well-dressed, and there were almost no teenagers. But an interesting thing happened. Word was passed to the minister that a foreigner was in the congregation, and I was immediately asked to come up on the platform and speak to them. I was astonished. Did they have this amount of freedom?
“Is there anyone here who speaks German or English?” I asked, not realizing that I had discovered a technique I would use often in the future. It happened that there was a woman in the congregation that night who spoke German. Through her I preached my first sermon behind the Iron Curtain. It was short and insignificant except for one inescapable fact: Here I was, a Christian from the other side of the Iron Curtain, standing up and preaching the Gospel in a Communist country.
At the end of my little talk the pastor said the most interesting thing of all. “We want to thank you,” he said, “for being here. Even if you had not said a word, just seeing you would have meant so much. We feel at times as if we are all alone in our struggle.”
That night, lying on my cot in the mathematics classroom, I got to thinking about how different these two churches had been. One, apparently, was following the route of cooperation with the government: It attracted larger crowds, it was acceptable to young people. The other, I felt, was walking a lonelier path. When I asked if Party members attended their services, the answer was “Not that we know about!” I was learning so much so fast that it was difficult to assimilate it all.
———
I had been in Poland nearly a week! At last it was July 21, the day the Bible shop reopened. I left the hotel early and walked through the almost empty avenues until I got to the address on New World Street.
Just before nine o’clock a man hurried down the street, stopped in front of the Bible shop, bent over, and inserted a key in the lock.
“Good morning,” I said in Polish.
The man stood up and looked at me. “Good morning,” he said a trifle distantly.
“Do you speak either English or German?” I asked in English.
“English.” He looked up the street. “Come in.”
The proprietor switched on lights and began raising shades. While he worked I introduced myself. The proprietor grunted. Then it was his turn. He showed me his shop: his many editions of the Bible, the wide range of prices available. And all the while he was eliciting fragments of information from me, trying to establish just who I really was.
“Why are you in Poland?” he asked suddenly.
“If one member suffers, all suffer together,” I quoted from 1 Corinthians.
The proprietor looked at me steadily. “We have not been talking about suffering,” he said. “On the contrary, I have been telling you how free we are to publish and distribute Bibles.” And with that he started to tell a story that would illustrate, he said, how well Christians got along with the regime. Even Stalin, before his recent death, had smiled on the work of the Bible shop.
One day, he said, two officials came into the shop and handed him a written order. To celebrate Stalin’s birthday, every shop was to display his picture in its window surrounded by a selection of its choicest wares.
“Of cours
e,” the proprietor said, “I was eager to cooperate. I went shopping that very day and found just what I wanted: a very large color picture of Stalin, arms folded, looking downward with an affectionate smile on his lips. I placed the picture in my window. Then I chose my most expensive Bible and opened it to some words of Christ written in red, just below the approving eyes of Stalin. Everyone seemed to like my display, for soon a crowd gathered and every face was smiling. The People’s Police arrived. ‘Take that down!’ they ordered. ‘Oh no, sir,’ I said. ‘I could not do that, for here are my orders from the Government in black and white.’”
I was laughing, but the proprietor was not. There was not even a twinkle in his eye. It was my first encounter with the dry double entendre that plays such a part in the life of the Christian community behind the Iron Curtain. Hastily I arranged my features to match the sober expression of his own.
As we talked several customers came in. I was interested to see how busy the little shop was. When we were alone again, I asked the proprietor if there were Bible stores in other Communist countries. “Some yes, some no,” he said. He began dusting the shelves. “I understand that in Russia Bibles are very scarce indeed. In fact, they tell me fortunes are being made there. A man smuggles ten Bibles into Russia and sells them for enough to buy a motorcycle. He drives the motorcycle back into Poland or Yugoslavia or East Germany and sells it for a fat profit, with which he buys more Bibles. That’s just hearsay of course.”
All that morning I visited with the Bible shop owner, and when it came time to say good-bye, I did it regretfully. Walking back to the school, I tried to make sense of the visit. Here was a store selling Bibles openly to anyone who wanted one—hardly an example of the religious persecution we had so often heard about in Holland. And yet my friend was as circumspect in his talk as if he were carrying on an illegal trade. There was an uneasiness, a tension in the air that told me all was not as it seemed.
As yet I had not attempted the principal thing I had come to do. I wanted to hand out my “twenty-six lead soldiers” openly on the street, to see what would happen.
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