Persecutions in Romania under Dictator Antonescu

September 27, 2011 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

Before the war, Pentecostal churches in Romania did not have official state registration, but they were treated with considerable tolerance. Much also depended on the attitude and mood of the local authorities. As a result, treatment varied widely: in some places there was quite a lot of freedom, while in others, gendarmes mockingly harnessed followers of evangelical churches to carts and made them haul stones. Gavril Christian ended his life as a martyr — gendarmes seized him, laid him between two boards, and beat him for a long time. He died a few weeks after this beating. They did not allow him to be buried in the common cemetery — evangelical Christians were forced to create their own cemeteries.

This ambiguous attitude towards the Pentecostal movement on the part of the administration, gendarmerie, and Orthodox priests continued until 1939, when the fascist government led by General Ion Antonescu came to power. Relative freedom suddenly ended, tolerance came to an end — and truly mass, brutal persecution and repression began against evangelical Christians of all streams and denominations. The activity of churches that did not have official legal status in Romania — including Pentecostals — was banned. To a great extent, the believers’ suffering was also linked to the adopted laws persecuting communists and left-wing parties. Local authorities and gendarmes arbitrarily branded as communists everyone who did not attend the Orthodox church and did not have icons at home. Houses of prayer were closed. Services could only be held illegally, deep in the night in secret places or in the forest, just as in the time of the early Church. At dawn, believers already had to be at home, because the secret service kept a sharp watch on them, especially on church ministers. Nevertheless, services were held, no matter what.

The churches of Northern Bukovina had a short respite in this regard — in 1940, these lands were transferred to the Soviet Union and became the Chernivtsi region. However, with the outbreak of war in 1941, Romanian rule was reestablished there.

Trials and persecutions began. Many believers, especially church ministers, were tried and sentenced to long years of imprisonment. Those who labored in Bukovina and Moldavia were tried in Chernivtsi, while those in Arad were tried in Iași. In Chernivtsi, the Curtea Marțială (military court) mercilessly handed down 10, 15, 20, 25-year prison sentences. Very often believers had to pay crushing fines. Brutal beatings and monstrous tortures were common practice. In 1940, another method of fighting evangelical believers began — conscription into Antonescu’s army. There, they were shot for refusing to obey orders or were usually simply placed in the front lines to perish.

In 1942, even those unions and churches of evangelical direction that had held official state-recognized status before the war (Baptists, Adventists, etc.) were annulled. Under the pretext that these “sects” endangered the “dominant Church” and that they were supported by the United States and England, all non-Orthodox confessions were prohibited. The leaders of these churches and unions were also thrown into prison at the demand of the Orthodox Church, which reigned supreme, having the status of state religion. The state gave full support to the Orthodox Church; large funds were allocated to it, even despite wartime. Huge forest tracts in Bukovina belonged to the Orthodox Church fund.

Then began the forced “conversion” of believers to Orthodoxy, reminiscent of the methods of the Inquisition. Many believers were forced to “baptize” their children with priests, who without embarrassment accepted this method of “conversion.” Active propaganda was carried out to force evangelical believers to convert to Orthodoxy. The pastor of the church in Repujenți, Mihail Ivanovich Chuhriy, was brutally beaten many times by the local gendarmerie commissioner and, along with other evangelical believers, was forcibly taken to services in the Orthodox church.

Also in 1942, local authorities in Bukovina began demanding a written renunciation of faith from evangelical Christians. For example, in Solca, all believers were summoned to the gendarmerie post. With threats and intimidation, they were required to fill out an official renunciation form. Some people, out of fear, filled out these forms. Many, together with their pastor Zamfir Dumitru, firmly declared that they would not renounce their faith. They were severely beaten and warned that they would be deported for forced labor in Ukraine. This was in October 1942. However, fateful events soon began to unfold on the Eastern Front. On December 17, the front on the Don was broken through near Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad entered its decisive phase of crushing defeat for the German-Romanian forces. In these conditions, the Romanian authorities had no time for deporting disobedient evangelical Christians. The deportation order was canceled.

During the war in such circumstances, it was impossible to travel around and visit churches regularly — and here it played a very important role that even before the war, pastors of local churches had been trained and ordained everywhere. The church minister from Petroiuț, Leon Năstase, recalled that together with the district pastor Vasile Răscol, he would go and visit churches, carrying out church ministry, with a hoe over his shoulder, as if for agricultural work. Or sometimes they would go “to buy sheep.” Sometimes they were arrested. Once, Vasile Răscol had to sell both of his cows to pay a fine of 48,000 lei. Despite such living and working conditions, they continued to preach, support church work, and even plant new churches.

It should be said that the attitude of some gendarmerie chiefs in 1942–1944 in certain areas of Bukovina was more or less tolerant – they turned a blind eye to the reality and compiled reports for their superiors stating that there were no evangelical Christians in their locality. But such officials were few.

Matei Cornea and Vasilii Kelba (church ministers from Vicovu de Sus) witnessed how, on 15 May 1942, arrested believers were tried in Chernivtsi. The trial was harsh – all the accused were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of 10, 15, or 25 years. Some of the believers, having spent months in stuffy, suffocating casemates, fainted. The defendants were guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Ivan Basovik was also tried – he received 15 years. One woman, sentenced to 25 years, after the verdict addressed the head of the military tribunal, Colonel Cristescu, and said that she would soon be free, but that he would soon have to serve her term in prison. These words proved prophetic: after the war, Colonel Cristescu was tried as a war criminal and received a 25‑year prison sentence from the Romanian communists.

After Stalingrad, and especially after the Soviet Army’s victory at the Kursk Bulge in the summer of 1943, the ruling circles of Romania began to think seriously about what awaited them in the event of defeat. As the situation changed, the authorities’ attitude shifted noticeably – both toward political prisoners and toward evangelical believers in prisons. In the Chernivtsi prison, a minister of the Pentecostal church, Ion Fiscu (who had been sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment), was appointed senior over all the Christian prisoners and was allowed to gather for worship services in the prison. Fiscu openly declared during prison services that freedom would soon come. When Soviet troops approached the Prut River, the prison commandant, before fleeing, summoned Ion Fiscu and handed him the keys to the cells. Ion went and opened the cells of the imprisoned Christians and Communists, proclaiming that the Lord had preserved their lives. (It must be said that, later on, the Pentecostal minister Fiscu enjoyed enormous authority in the administration of communist Romania).

In 1944, Romania broke off its relations and treaties with Germany. The Romanian army turned its bayonets against the Germans. By order of King Mihai, General Rădescu arrested Antonescu and his government. Antonescu was sentenced to death and executed in the notorious Jilava prison in Bucharest, together with his brother and other former Romanian leaders. 23 August 1944 is regarded as the day of Romania’s liberation.

After the war the persecutions ceased. The new communist government under Gheorghiu‑Dej, and later under Nicolae Ceaușescu, despite its whole communist and atheistic orientation, treated evangelical Christianity with a certain sympathy – probably a result of having sat together in prisons during the Antonescu regime. Already in October 1944, some ministers, for example Zamfir Dumitru, were working quite freely in churches, putting them in proper order after the period of persecution. At the time when Red Army units were on Romanian territory, life was unstable and poor, but the new authorities did not interfere in religious matters.

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