Richard Wurmbrand

Richard Wurmbrand was born on March 24, 1909, in Bucharest, Romania, the youngest of four sons in a Jewish family. His father died when he was nine, and the family was left in poverty. He grew up in a secular home, without religious training, and became an atheist as a young man. He was a gifted student who studied at the University of Bucharest and was a lover of literature and philosophy. He was a stockbroker by trade, and he was successful in business. He lived the life of a pleasure-seeking man and a cynic. At the age of twenty, he contracted tuberculosis and spent a year in a sanatorium in the mountains.

In the sanatorium, he met a carpenter who was a Christian. The man gave him a New Testament and spoke of Christ. He read the book and was struck by it. He had a deep experience that he described as a conviction of sin. He came to faith in Christ and was baptized. In 1936, he married Sabina Oster, a Jewish woman who had also come to faith. The two were soon active in the Christian community. They had a son, Mihai. He was a man of intellect, who studied the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. He also studied at a seminary and was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1938.

He served in the Lutheran church in Bucharest, and he was also a missionary to the Jews. In the Second World War, the Romanian government was allied with Nazi Germany. He and Sabina helped Jews who were persecuted, and they took in children who had been orphaned. They sheltered those who were hiding. In 1944, the Soviet Army entered Romania, and the Communists took power in 1947. The new regime sought to control the churches. Many church leaders were pressed to cooperate. In 1945, Wurmbrand started an underground ministry. He worked among the Soviet soldiers who were stationed in Romania, and he distributed Bibles and literature in Russian. He was active in a network of believers who met in secret.

In February 1948, he was arrested by the secret police, and he disappeared. He was held for three years in solitary confinement, in a cell in the basement of the Ministry of the Interior in Bucharest. He was tortured and beaten with rubber truncheons, burned with hot irons, and was kept without food and sleep. He was drugged. He was forced to spend months in a cell without light. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement. He was placed in an unheated room, where the temperature was far below freezing. He suffered from tuberculosis and other diseases. He said that in the darkness, he composed sermons in his mind and preached them to himself every night, and that he came to know the presence of Christ in a deep way.

He was released in 1956 after eight and a half years. He took up the underground ministry again. In 1959, he was arrested a second time, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. In 1964, after a total of fourteen years in prison, he was released as part of a general amnesty. Many people had pressed for his release. In 1965, he was ransomed by Christian friends in Norway and Britain, who paid the Romanian government a sum of ten thousand dollars, and he and his family were allowed to leave the country.

He went to the West and began to tell the story of the suffering church. In 1966, he testified before the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. He took off his shirt and displayed the scars of his torture, which numbered eighteen on his body. The scene made a deep impression. In 1967, he published his story in a book, Tortured for Christ, which has been translated into more than sixty languages and has been read by millions. It was a landmark book. In the same year, he founded Jesus to the Communist World, now known as The Voice of the Martyrs, an organization that supports persecuted Christians and distributes Bibles.

He was a man of strong words and strong faith. He was also a man of tenderness. He said that he forgave his torturers. His wife, Sabina, who had also been imprisoned for three years, was a partner in his work. He was criticized by some for claims that he made, and some of the details of his story have been challenged. His critics said that he exaggerated. His defenders say that his account was sincere and that his scars were real. He also was subject to a number of controversies in the leadership of the organization that he founded.

He died on February 17, 2001, in Torrance, California, at the age of ninety-one. His life shows the cost of a faith held in the face of torture, and the power of a witness who was released to tell the story to the world. He was a voice for those who could not speak.