TORTURED FOR HIS FAITH
A Contemporary Epic of Christian Courage and Heroism
Haralan Popov
TORTURED FOR HIS FAITH
Copyright © 1970, 1975, 1978 by Haralan Popov Revised edition 1975 ISBN 978-1-4524-4095-8 All rights reserved
No portion of this book maybe reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers, except for brief excerpts used in magazine reviews.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-102834
Published by Door of Hope International
Smashwords Edition
This book is available in print at most online retailers.
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http://www.TorturedForHisFaith.com
Table of Content
"Welcome to the White House, Prisoner Popov"
A "Hard-Core" Atheist Finds Christ
Bulgaria Becomes "Little Russia"
Better Spies Than Christian Martyrs
Preaching the Gospel to the Secret Police
The Tragic Suffering of Our Families
"You're a Dead Man, Haralan Popov!"
Bible Classes in the Prison Yard
A Message From the Persecuted Church
Father's Greatest Desire Was to See the Open Bible
Father Yearned to Visit His Homeland
The Tremendous Sorrow I Experienced
The Changing Faces of Communism
Forward
August 2005
Each time I read my father’s story and confront again the agony he endured amid God’s great and faithful deliverance I am filled anew with both tremendous sadness and thanksgiving.
Tortured For His Faith is an extremely difficult book for me to read. And it’s an emotionally arduous task for me to be involved in its proofing and revision. I still remember when the Communists arrested my father, waking our family in the early dawn. I was five-years-old that dreadful morning and it would be 15 long years before the Communists freed Dad and we were able to be together again.
Recently, I was permitted to read and review the archived transcripts of his one-week-long trial at the secret police headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria. The officials allowed me to photocopy volumes of the transcripts, too many to include or mention here. I also possess a photocopy of my father’s forced confession on November 30, 1948, my birthday. This was a cruel trick of his torturers to use the prisoners’ children as instruments to force confessions. But God sparred Father to minister His Word to His children during periods of extreme adversity. Praise be to the Lord!
Father’s book also brings me joy and happiness in that I think of the millions who have read Tortured For His Faith in 25 different languages since Zondervan’s first publishing and been blessed as a result. I’ve received thousands of letters from people telling me how this book was the inspiration and motivation which brought them to serve the Lord. A multitude of ministries have sprung up as a direct result of my father’s testimony. We rejoice in this as did Father. Yet another outcome of his story was our own mission Door of Hope International (DOHI).
June and Lee Theodore, an American couple, who had read his book and contacted him while he was on a speaking tour in the United States were instrumental in encouraging Dad to start the mission. At that time, I was still living in Sweden. As it happened Lee and his wife, June, a former secretary with World Vision, were touched and wanted to help.
Subsequently, our family started the mission in the garage of our modest home in Glendale. Dad used his savings to publish the first magazine and newsletter. The Theodores helped and continue to be involved. Lee is a long-standing member of Door of Hope’s U.S.A. board. Since that small beginning hundreds of staff have joined in our mission. Many of these should be mentioned but space considerations permit me to list only those who have long been with us and who are still with us such as: Ivette Moradian from Iran, our office manager; Valerie Zaitseff, the director of Door of Hope Canada who was born in China and grew up in Australia; Jeff and Jeana Kendrick from Texas who started as our courier coordinators for Bible distributions (smuggling) into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In their work behind the Iron Curtain, both were known by their secret code names, Phillip and Kathryn Jefferson. Jeff is Door of Hope’s International VP. I especially want to thank Jeana for revising, editing and updating this book and all the books the mission publishes in English.
Much has happened since Father first published his story. In this latest edition, we have striven to briefly update the reader on both Father’s life and the growth of Door of Hope International. Within these pages you will read of daring Bible translation projects such as the Russian, Romanian and Bulgarian Thomas Nelson Open Bible, the Chinese Spoken Bible, the Haley’s Handbook translated into Romanian and of our couriers who had the courage to smuggle proofs and Bibles through hostile borders and finally of Father’s visit to his native Bulgaria after an enforced absence of twenty-six years.
His testimony is being translated into even more languages, presently Arabic and Vietnamese versions are in the process thanks to clandestine publishing. It is a joy for me to know that many new people in oppressed countries will have the opportunity in the near future to read this book in their own language and that my father’s testimony will be a sustaining one offering support and encouragement to them in difficult times.
Together in His ministry,
Paul Haralan Popov
Preface
There were two things that sustained me during thirteen years and two months in Communist prisons. First, there was the knowledge that my life was truly in God's hands and not the hands of my Communist jailers. Second, I was sustained by the hope that I might live and someday give my testimony to the world and tell what I witnessed.
My purpose in this book is not to show man's depravity; that depravity tells its own story and I experienced it day and night for more than thirteen endless years. No, my purpose is to show God's overwhelming love. If anything should stand out in this book, let it be the overwhelming truth of God's love in the midst of man's bestiality.
This book is not only my story. As you read, it is important to keep this in mind. And it is most important for the reader to keep in mind that more than sixty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, the repression, the persecution of the Suffering Church, had not abated. This book centers in my beloved Bulgaria. Endless chapters of it are being written still in that small country; volumes more are being written elsewhere in the expansive Soviet bloc and in Communist China. Although this book tells what happened in Bulgaria to me and my fellow Christians, don't for a moment consider its confines to be so small. If you do, you will miss the point.
This is a history, in a way, of all the Persecuted Church in Bulgaria, because I was not alone in prison. Scores and hundreds—even thousands—have suffered similar and worse fates.
The situation in Bulgaria before my arrest must be understood as it was to get a grasp of what the Communists had set out to do. It was, and always is, a case of divide and conquer. And for Protestants in Bulgaria, the idea of unity, even though there was diversity, was a matter of paramount importance. The country historically is not Protestant at all; Greek Orthodox Christianity was the state religion. Protestants in effect, even though they were allowed freedom to propagate, still were regarded as religious interlopers.
We Protestants, fired with evangelical zeal, considered the Greek Orthodox faith to be presenting the Gospel in a deficient manner. We could not see lives changed; we could not see vitality in the everyday life; we viewed the religion, as practiced, more a matter of form and culture than representative of the living reality of the love of our Savior. We therefore considered Greek Orthodox Bulgaria a mission field, ripe unto harvest not for Protestantism, but for the living Christ. That is why we had the United Evangelical Churches in Bulgaria, led by the Supreme Council of the United Church of Bulgaria, a body of church leaders elected every four years—an idea which came to fruition in Bulgaria, and an idea unique to my country. The four Protestant denominations of Bulgaria—Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, and Pentecostal—could sit as aliens in one church under the umbrella of the United Church of Bulgaria. This was necessary because, to the Greek Orthodox mind, the division and differences which existed earlier cut hard against our missionary efforts among them. In their mind, the Church can be only one. The divisions so evident before the formation of the United Evangelical Church only added to our difficulties.
No, this is not my story alone. We were all arrested — all the members of the Supreme Council of the United Evangelical Churches, including the religious representative, a liaison pastor before the government and the churches.
In June of 1948, all the members of the Supreme Council including the chief religious representative were called to the office of the Minister of Religious Affairs. Our moment of truth had come, and within days there would be no mistaking it. "Gentlemen, today in the National Peoples' Republic of Bulgaria, there are no two ways about it but only one: You are either for the Soviet Union or you are for the United States." He then made it very clear what it means to be with the Communist party and to be loyal to its aims.
Then came the crunch. He wanted each of us, in each of the churches, to make a statement from the pulpits declaring our loyalty to the Bulgarian Communist party, the Bulgarian government, and the objectives of the Communist world and to accuse the United States as imperialists, of interfering in the affairs of Bulgaria.
We considered this a brutal interference into the realms of the churches. We told the minister of religious affairs in clear terms that we as churchmen in our churches are not a political people. After we discussed the proposition, we told him that rather than do this we would close our churches. "We cannot do this," we insisted.
Then we made a written statement and gave it to the minister. He read it and became absolutely livid and began to swear with every epithet and imprecation he could bring to mind. He threatened to arrest us immediately. A tense altercation ensued—provocative enough, given the state of the man's mind, to have had us put in prison on the spot.
"Mr. Minister," one of our spokesmen said, "we did not come here to have you swear at us and to threaten us. We are men of God and we must serve God as our consciences dictate. Why, if we must have this freedom, do you make such an impossible demand on us? We cannot go along with your request. We would be forced to close our churches before we would do that."
"Don't talk to me like that. I can take that telephone and have you arrested right this minute!"
He didn't pick up the telephone and make good his threats. Instead, he gave us a week to think it over. But our minds were set, and the week's Communist grace was only a matter of form. We returned and repeated our stand. Our character and conviction as Christians could not permit any other position.
This, of course, in the situation of the day, was counted as betrayal of Bulgaria — not only betrayal, but as we soon were to find out, collaboration with the United States. There was no way out for us but to be loyal to the Christ within us. And this we were determined to do. The Communists were just as determined to do us and our churches in. It was not long after our arrest that the United Churches were divided by the Communists and handpicked pastors were put in charge of each of the four denominations — with the Minister of Religious Affairs, a member of the Secret Police — as the real head.
That, then, is the setting. That is how we, and many like us, went to prison. That is why many more in the Suffering Church still go to prison, though perhaps not at the moment in Bulgaria which has seen great change, but in enough places around the globe to cause grave concern.
This book, I repeat, is not to show man's depravity, but God's overwhelming love in the midst of man's depravity. In prison I learned the lesson of love as never before. Though I had preached of God's love from many pulpits, I came to see His love in a new way in the black despair of subterranean cells and in the faces of countless fellow-prisoners. Stripped of all material things and distractions, I found a greater reality in God than I had ever known before. The truth shines clearest where the circumstances are darkest.
Kidnapped From My Home
At 4 in the morning on July 24, 1948, my doorbell suddenly started ringing insistently over and over. Sleepily I arose, put on my robe and went to the door. There stood three strangers, two of whom were in ordinary clothes and the other in a uniform. "We have come to search your house," the leader in civilian clothes said and pushed his way past me into the sleeping house. My wife Ruth heard the noise and joined me in the living room where we watched with bewilderment as the three men searched the entire house. As they were searching I thought, It's finally come. The time is here at last.
They searched everywhere — through books, beds, bookshelves, storage chests, drawers — for three hours. They didn't miss anything! As the sun came up around 7 a.m. they turned to me and ordered me to come along with them. I must come along but it was only for "a little questioning," they explained.
Little did I know that this "little questioning" would last for thirteen endless years of torture and imprisonment. As they were shoving me out the door half-dressed, Rhoda, my little daughter, awoke and came running into the living room. With a child's quick perception, she realized her father was being taken away. She burst into tears and began crying her little heart out — her body trembling and shaking from the sobbing.
"They're taking daddy. They're taking daddy!" she cried.
The scene was just too much for me, and tears came into my eyes as I hugged Rhoda. Repeatedly, I assured her I would be right back, though deep inside I knew this was the blow I had been expecting. But Rhoda's heart was broken in spite of my assurances. She couldn't be consoled. I think that somehow — in a child's own way — she knew she might never see her father again. With tears quietly brimming in my eyes I kissed Ruth and Rhoda good-by, knowing that I might never see them again.
Through all this my little son Paul slept and I never had a chance to say good-by to him. Ruth told me later she fell on her knees after we left and tearfully prayed that I would be returned before nightfall. After two or three hours she was visited by Pastor Manoloff's wife who told her that her husband had also been taken.
Walking to the police station between the three men around 7 a.m., I held my head high. As the four-man "parade" walked down the street, I could feel the eyes of my friends, neighbors and church members on me. I knew that since my conversion I had served only God and I was in God's hands. From the depths of my heart I cried out to God, asking for His grace to endure whatever was before me.
At the police station I was searched from head to toe and then locked in a cell. Inside I found another man, an Armenian. The cell was filthy and littered with paper and rubbish. In one corner stood an old cracked clay pot which served as our “toilet.” It was overflowing and the stench from it was terrible. I paced back and forth from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., deeply concerned about Ruth, Rhonda and Paul.
The Endless Nights Begin
At 8 o'clock that evening, my cell door opened and a young man commanded me to accompany him. He took me down to the second floor to a beautifully furnished office where he introduced me to another young man. I was told he was to be addressed as "Mr. Inspector." I stood in front of "Mr. Inspector," and he fired his first question at me.
"Do you know the difference between the militia and the police?"
I thought the question was a joke, and said, "No, I don't. I have never been interested in such police matters."
My reply irritated him and he shouted, "Don't play games with me, Prisoner Popov. Stand facing that wall and don't move!"
This sounds like a light punishment, but I can assure you it is most tiring and painful to the whole body, especially to the small of the back.
"Mr. Inspector" continued to ask me the same question from 8 p.m. to midnight as I stood stiffly. Every five or 10 minutes the question was repeated: "Do you know the difference between the militia and the police?" I tried to explain I didn't know. When I saw that I was getting nowhere I stopped answering. He screamed, "We'll teach you a lesson! Hold your arms straight up and don't move a muscle!"
Finally, around midnight, "Mr. Inspector" said, "I will tell you the difference between the militia and the police. Police are employed to guard the interests of the rich capitalists and the militia guards the interest of the honest working people." I was then allowed to lower my arms.
It was a hard "lesson" in communist semantics I had learned!
My arms felt as heavy as logs. I was then asked another question. "State just why you are here." I answered that three men had come to my home that morning and brought me there. I had been in a cell all day and no one had told me anything. "No," he replied, "you know why you are here."
"But I don't know for sure," I answered, though I had a very good idea.
After he had repeated the question for an hour, the "inspector" said, "I am going now. Stand there until morning. I'll return for your answer tomorrow morning and we'll see if you're any smarter by then."
He left me in the care of the young man named Jordan who had brought me from my cell. Jordan spent the night sitting in a chair behind me while I stood facing the wall. Little did I know I was not merely facing one night "at the wall," but would later be forced to stand for two weeks!
The last hours of the night between 3 and 7 a.m. were the most difficult. After standing with my face to the wall all night without a wink of sleep, these hours seemed as long as eternity. At last dawn came and Jordan took me back to the cell. The Armenian wanted to give me something to eat but I preferred to stretch out on the board bunk and rest. I was so tired I wanted just to sleep, but the swarming bedbugs and other assorted crawling creatures kept me awake. Soon my body was covered with insects and it was impossible to sleep. I had to get up and pace back and forth. Later I heard rumor the cells were purposely infested with bedbugs, lice and vermin to make it worse for the prisoner. I never found out if this was true, but I suspect it was. There were armies of them.
It was now Sunday, July 25, and for the first time in many years I did not spend Sunday in a church. In my cell I knelt and my thoughts went out to my brothers and sisters in Christ who would be at worship at this moment. For my children and for my wife, whom I had left without money or food — how I would have loved to be with them! I prayed, “Lord take care of them in the future, whatever it may hold.” I knew that the Great Persecution for the sake of Christ had begun. Throughout Christian history this had happened again and again, and I cried from deep within that God would give me strength to measure up to the disciples and martyrs of the Early Church. I surely couldn't do it on my own. A cricket sang from somewhere amongst the rotten floorboards of the cell block and my downtrodden soul was lifted up and my faith in God renewed.
The all-night interrogations continued for a week. The pattern was always the same. As soon as it was dark I was taken downstairs and made to stand exactly eight inches from the wall. There, from 7 p.m. until about 8 the next morning I was questioned and not permitted to close my eyes. If my eyes nodded, Jordan would leap up shouting, "Stop! Stop! That's not allowed." In the day I fought the swarming bedbugs so I had no chance to rest then either. No one was given any food in the prison, but my wife managed to find out where I was and sent food from home. I wanted desperately to see my family, to know how they were, but was not allowed to do so.
On Saturday night, no one came to take me downstairs. But around midnight I heard a key in the lock and an unfamiliar voice shouted, "Popov, get out here! You're being transferred."
I said good-by to the Armenian. We had become fast friends and I discovered in the year ahead close and true friendships developed between prisoners who shared common sufferings.
The police led me outside where a police car, commonly nicknamed "Black Raven," was waiting with two policemen in it. We drove off down the main street of Sofia and in minutes we arrived at a big white building. It was the headquarters of the "DS" — the dreaded Secret Police.
"Welcome to the White House, Prisoner Popov"
The Secret Police was called Dershavna Sigornost, or DS. It was headquartered in a large white building nicknamed by the people, "The White House." But I assure you this "White House" was very different from the American White House! Many of our country's finest men have gone into the "White House" and have never come out alive. It was rumored that the "White House" even had its own subterranean "graveyard" for disposal of bodies of its victims.
To the people of Bulgaria the name DS meant disappearance, suffering and death. Over one cell door was written a quotation from Dante's The Divine Comedy: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." How appropriate! More people have died here than have come out alive, and those who survive do not live very long because of the torture to which they have been subjected. There was talk that people who passed the DS building could hear screams coming up through the cobblestone street from the sprawling complex of subterranean cells below. I later found out this was true.
When the "Black Raven" stopped and I was led into the building, fear and insecurity swept over me. It had been a week of sleeplessness and interrogation, and my body trembled and shook. As I was led through the door, the words from Psalm 73:28 came to me, “…I have put my trust in the Lord God….”
I couldn't expect help from anyone else here in the "White House." I breathed a silent prayer, "God, my life is in Your hands." My fears began to melt away. I had a very strong feeling of peace. The tension in my body was gone. Death was perhaps waiting for me in the DS "White House," but my heart praised and worshiped the Lord.
When a man faces death, he examines himself and thinks of how he stands in relation with God. He sees things very clearly. I had resigned myself to the thought that my life on earth would soon be over and that shortly I would be with the Lord. It was obvious to me that I had been brought here to die. In the past week I had lost everything that was dear to me on earth — my wife, my family, my church, my home — but I felt God right beside me as I walked through the doors into the DS headquarters.
The guard looked at me mockingly and said, "Welcome to the White House, Prisoner Popov." Once more I was stripped and searched, then led upstairs to the third floor. Going up the stairs I noticed a wire net over the stairwell, put there so no prisoner could escape the DS by throwing himself over the stairs. Evidently so many prisoners had tried to commit suicide, this wire net had to be put up to catch them.
Up on the third floor, I was led down a long dark hallway, with grimy barred windows on one side and rows of rusty, dark cell doors on the other side. Each cell door had a little "Judas hole" with a sliding cover over it. These "Judas holes" allowed the guards to watch the prisoners. Barely audible moans came from the occupants of the cells. Guards had on thick cloth shoes so the prisoners couldn't hear their approach.
But let me tell you how I arrived at this point in my life.
A "Hard-Core" Atheist Finds Christ
I was born and spent my youth in the beautiful small town of Krasno Gradiste, in Bulgaria. There were four of us children, three brothers and a sister. We were born in an old Turkish-built farmhouse, consisting of one room and a kitchen. The ceiling was so low that my father had to duck so as not to hit his head on the beams above. The house had a dirt floor, which mother painted with a mixture of manure, clay and water. It didn't smell very nice, but it was a disinfectant, and the manure kept the floor from cracking.
We all slept in one room, on the floor covered with rugs made of plaited reeds. On one wall of the kitchen was the large blackened fireplace on which stood an array of sooty, cracked clay pots. The beans which mother cooked for us in those days were as good as the daily diet of any of the other villagers. Mother used to say, "If you want good beans, you must cook them in good water." So we children were sent down to the river, several hundred yards away, to fetch water for the beans. They were then cooked in the clay pot to give them a special flavor. I have many pleasant memories of my childhood years. The days went by quickly, some filled with laughter and some with wranglings, childish pranks and adventures.
There were days of poverty, hard work and grief in our home, but none of these caused our love for one another to diminish. In fact, they drew us closer together. We didn't have a big farm, so the children were sent to larger farms to work. It was especially difficult for us during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Father was called into military service and the following year brought us virtual starvation. During the winter of 1917-18, when I was ten years old, I was sent to work for the richest man in our village, "Grandpa" Kolyo. I received no wages, but in return for food I led the oxen while Grandpa, who was 87 but looked and acted much younger, ploughed his fields. Then in the summer I tended sheep on my uncle's farm nearby. The war ended and my father came home. This allowed me to resume my schooling. Even though we were poor, my parents managed to send me to a little school in a nearby village. They were especially proud of my ability to read and did everything they could to continue my education. I began attending school dressed in patched, home-woven clothes and homemade moccasin-like shoes made of raw pigskin, with the pig bristles turned out. I looked a sight! When I got to the higher classes, I was ashamed that I did not have the regulation uniform and nice shoes. The result was that I shunned the company of other boys and kept mostly to myself.
I had my first pair of proper shoes when I turned 17 years of age. When I put them on, my self-esteem grew enormously (probably too much!) and I began to look for friends among my classmates. I grew up as rather egotistical, and as an atheist. That's a bad combination! When I finished the town school I went to Ruse, a large city on the Danube River, to find work. I knew only one person in Ruse, a former neighbor named Christo who had moved there several years earlier. Christo had a job at the water works and lived on the premises in a tiny room about six by six square feet. Although it was so small and most of the space was taken up by abed, he agreed to let me share the room and we became close friends. This was in November 1925. At that time there was much unemployment in Bulgaria and I couldn't find permanent work. I got an occasional job at the railway,
but mostly lived off the salary of my friend, Christo.
One evening, Christo invited me to go with him to the nearby Baptist church, though he knew that I was a convinced atheist. Because of my friendship with him, it was impossible to turn him down. It was my first visit in a Protestant church. I had known only of the Orthodox Church and thought that all churches were alike, so I was surprised to find that the interior of the Baptist church was quite different from the Orthodox Church. In fact, everything was different! The service was conducted in Bulgarian instead of the old Slavic language which the priests usually used, which few could understand anymore.
Instead of the monotonous singing of the Orthodox mass, I heard beautiful hymns sung to melodies of Bach, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and other great composers. Here the whole congregation took part; in the Orthodox churches, only the priests and the choir sang.
I even saw songbooks! Christo had already learned the songs and sang along while I followed the words in the hymn book. The beautiful words, written to the praise of God, made a deep impression on me. I had never expected to hear an educated, intelligent pastor preach so gloriously of his faith in God, and in a language I could understand. In our neighborhood, there was no intelligent person who dared to acknowledge that he believed in God. "Religion" was for the old and feebleminded in my opinion.
After the meeting we talked with two elderly ladies who were known in the city as having a good education. They talked to us about God and tried to prove to us that He existed, but despite what I had seen and heard in the church and all that the ladies had said, my proud intellect refused to acknowledge that there was a God.
For the first time, however, I began to wonder whether I was right.
That night a spiritual struggle began within me that lasted many days. The question was: Is there a God? In the Greek Orthodox Church of that period the priests didn't need to have any schooling and just old men and women attended the services. You never saw any educated people believing in God. At least, that was the way we atheists liked to think. We who had an education looked down on those "simple" men and women who claimed to have "religion" or believed in God. And now I heard educated and cultured people openly testifying that God exists! They told what Christ meant to them and had done for them. This impressed me more than all the sermons, and to this day, I am a strong believer in the effectiveness of "living testimonies" in bringing men to Christ.
I discussed my conflict with Christo and he said he would introduce me to a man who could help me. Shortly after, Christo invited a man to visit us. His name was Petroff. He read to us from his Bible. He was not an eloquent preacher but every word he uttered proved to me that God existed. He witnessed of how he knew of God's personal presence. When he told of what Christ meant to him, his face shone with the love of God. It was obvious to me at that moment that there was a God.
I saw Him in this godly man.
Petroff's testimony convinced me of God's existence and I began earnestly and intensively to seek God. I found I wasn't so much seeking God as God was seeking me. I received a wonderful life-changing experience of salvation in Jesus Christ, and Petroff became my spiritual father. Shortly afterward I went to live with Petroff to be closer to his Bible teaching and with his assistance got a job on the State railways. The work was heavy, but the joy of my newfound salvation in Jesus Christ made me buoyant with joy and peace. I was very happy in Christ!
The Hand of God on a Man
Each night, Petroff and I would read from the Bible and talk together for hours about God's Word. Eventually others joined us until we had quite a little "flock" of believers. Gradually our little gathering took the form of a proper church and under the deeply spiritual ministry of Petroff we were greatly blessed by God. It was February, 1929, when Petroff said, "Haralan, God has His hand on you. He wants you for His work." I, too had felt His hand upon me and leading me in this direction. I deeply loved my new found Christ, and prayed all night promising, "God, my entire life is Yours. I am ready to give unto You all I have."
That promise was put to severe testing in the years ahead, but I never regretted it.
To serve Him is wonderful, but to suffer for Him is an even higher privilege.
To prepare myself for Christian service I attended Bible Institutes in Danzig and London England, where I met a young Bible student from Sweden. Her name was Ruth. Like her Bible namesake, she was deeply dedicated to the Lord. She said, "Haralan, wherever you go, I go also." So I went back to Bulgaria not only with a knowledge of God's Word, but with a wife as well.
The seasons that followed were nothing less than a gift from God. A great period of spiritual harvest came to Bulgaria and in a few short years I was pastoring the largest Protestant church in the nation. At the same time, I evangelized across the land.
God's hand was so abundantly upon all of us and the Word of God grew mightily in Bulgaria. For more than 16 years I pastored my church and "doubled-up" as an evangelist in mountain towns and villages where the Word of God had not yet secured a foothold. The war duration came and the situation grew very difficult, but this was a minuscule testing period for the great tribulation which lay just ahead.
In 1944, a dark menace came riding into our homeland on the heels of the Russian Army: the menace of communism. The communists slowly gained power while our country was lying prostrate at the feet of the Red Army.
Initially, the Communist Party was most cooperative with other political parties and even formed a coalition government. In three years, the other parties were banned, their leaders imprisoned and the Communist Party was in full control.
Bulgaria Becomes "Little Russia"
We had heard of our fellow-Christians in Russia and what they had suffered for their faith, but little did we know that Bulgaria would become so like Russia it would be called "Little Russia." We braced for the worst, but strangely the blow we expected did not come. In fact, a "twilight" period of religious freedom set in. It wasn't because the communists were for religious liberty. It was simply that they were too busy consolidating their political power and getting everything firmly in hand before turning to "deal" with us — as they put it. So instead of the blow we expected we suddenly had a great gift from God: three years — from 1944 to 1947 — during which God restrained their hand and allowed us to work.
And work we did! Day and night, month after month we evangelized, spread the Gospel and built up the faith of the believers before the dark night of communism fell upon us. As they had warned, we knew the communists would soon "deal" with us. Feverishly, with a sense of running out of time — we labored and God honored our labors with a great season of harvest across Bulgaria. I conducted several mass baptisms in the Black Sea for the many young people who had found Christ. Undoubtedly, our feverish work for Christ during this three years "before the storm" caused us to be singled out for the "special" treatment which was to follow in communist prisons.
The very intensity of our work during the "calm before the storm" made us marked men. We didn't have long. As soon as the communists had consolidated their power it would be our time.
Better Spies Than Christian Martyrs
The initial sign that it had come was a whispering campaign to slander the country's leading pastors. Despite this campaign, revival spread and new churches formed so the government devised a more subtle procedure. Gradually the pastors of the churches were taken away and replaced by persons who would be "willing tools" in the hands of the communists. They concentrated on putting their puppets into the pulpits.
When puppet pastors had been put into many pulpits, the next target was chosen: the top Evangelical
Bulgarian church leaders from Baptist, Methodist, Congregational and Pentecostal denominations. I was one of them.
A vicious slander campaign started. We were accused of being "spies." Better "spies" than Christian martyrs. We were described as "instruments of imperialism." At first when I heard this I laughed.
The real truth meant nothing to those who were determined to destroy the Christian Church. We, the fifteen leaders of Bulgaria's Evangelical denominations, were publicly defamed.
It was obvious that we were not guilty of the charges laid against us, but a smear campaign was started to distort everything that we had said and done in order to blacken us. It was noised about through the press and other media that we had betrayed our country to the English and the Americans. Thus began the campaign that was to lead us into prison and torture. During the following thirteen years and two months that I spent in prison I often wondered why God allowed such a thing to happen. The long period of self-examination helped me better to understand the Bible's teaching that we must go through suffering to enter the kingdom of God. Paul and Barnabas told the disciples in Asia Minor, "we must go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God”
(Acts 14:22). The Apostle Peter says the same thing (I Peter 1:6-7) “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Man's first natural reaction when looking at suffering is to think it is too hard to bear. We try to avoid it, but later we find that the suffering becomes of great value and is more precious that gold. Suffering was a fire which our churches had to undergo so that all that was hay and stubble would be burned up, leaving the pure gold shining more brightly than ever. In the process the "structure" of the church would be destroyed or subverted, but there would remain a true, living Church, the Body of Christ, the Suffering Church.
This was all just ahead of us.
These were the events that had led me from being an ardent atheist to my position now as a pastor facing torture for Christ in the dreaded "White House."
The Cell Walls Speak
I was led down the corridor to cell number 21. The big key rattled in the lock and I was shoved in and once more was cut off from the outside world. In the cell was a young man named Tsonny. He told me he had been there for three months and was never given any reason for his imprisonment. In a corner of the cell was the bucket which for the next six months was our toilet. These buckets were a standard feature of prison life. They were emptied rarely and sometimes overflowed. Often they took away the lid and the foul smell was overwhelming. There was only the bare cement floor on which to sleep and the walls were of grimy stone. They were cluttered with mottoes, prayers, slogans and quotations scratched into the surface with some hard object by previous occupants.
The walls were almost like a "diary" or chronicle of condemned men. In places they seemed to be painted dark red, but on closer examination I found the red wasn't paint. It was the blood of countless bedbugs which had been killed by former prisoners as the insects crawled up the wall. The "red walls" of other such cells were also to become common sights in the years ahead. The first night in the DS I killed 539 bedbugs, many after they had taken blood from me. To help take our minds off our situation Tsonny and I counted them. (We never tried that again!)
On the walls one could read of the afflictions and longings of former inmates. I could almost tell their personalities, their nightmares, their hopes, their dreams, reflected in these sad etchings. One etching read, "When you enter here believe in God and pray to Saint Theresa," evidently written by a Catholic. A Pushkin Elegy was written in Russian the full length of the wall. It contained three verses which I memorized. Above the door someone had scratched an old Latin proverb, "Dum spiro spero," which means, "As long as I breathe, I hope. " I felt I knew the former inhabitants of that cell by their scratchings on the wall.
What stories of human bravery, despair and crushed dreams I saw on this cell wall and countless others during 13 years!
I made it a practice to scratch Bible verses and words of comfort on the walls of every cell I occupied, hoping those words would bring comfort and help to the next occupant. Cell walls were not only the "paper" on which I scratched Bible verses, but later were the "sounding board" for the "Prison Telegraph" on which I tapped the Word of God to the men in the adjacent cells.
How wonderful and just, I thought, that walls built to imprison men would become "paper" for the Word of God and the "wire" for the Prison Telegraph to send forth the Good News. But because this was the first time I had experienced such an ordeal, and because the first week had been such a shattering time, it was difficult for me to keep up my courage.
All prisoners will tell you that the first few months are always the worst. I said to myself, If the man who scratched into the wall the words, "As long as I breathe, I hope," could keep hope alive, surely I as a believer can put my life entirely in the hands of God. I gave myself a "lecture" and felt better. Even though I didn't know what the day would bring I had assurance, serenity and peace in my heart. Like Paul I was determined that "for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”
I spent exactly five months in cell number 21, from August 1 to December 31. Cell 21 in the DS "White House" became a "chamber of suffering" for me. Every time I think of it today the cold chills run up my spine. In 2 Corinthians 12:4, the Apostle Paul speaks about "unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. " However, I should like to tell about the unspeakable suffering which is difficult to express with the human tongue or to put into writing.
Since I was exhausted from standing on my feet every night for a week, I lay on the bare floor and stretched out. All of a sudden there was a loud, cracking sound like automatic rifle fire coming down the corridor. "What was that?" I asked Tsonny. He smiled and explained that it had been done intentionally by the guards to scare the prisoners and prevent them from sleeping. The sound was caused by hitting sharply on the cell doors with an iron bar, making sounds like loud rifle shots. It was repeated every ten minutes throughout that night and every night for five months. It was almost impossible to sleep and that's exactly what was intended.
On the morning of August 2, I was taken from my cell to a comfortable office on the ground floor. To my great astonishment I found there a young man whom I knew very well. His name was Veltcho Tchankov Burgas.
My heart leaped for joy when I saw Veltcho! I had known him since he was a boy.
I knew also that he was a communist. When the communists had come to Bulgaria on the heels of the Red Army in 1944, Veltcho had joined them immediately. In the three years since, he had become the Chief of the Secret Police in Burgas. Despite the differences in our ways of life, we had long seemed to hold a kind of mutual respect for each other. So I was glad to see him again and thought this was the first ray of hope since my arrest. But how Veltcho had changed! A month later I learned that Veltcho, my "old friend," was the one who had staged the whole campaign against all the evangelical pastors! I saw what power can do to a man.
The communists when out of power are often congenial, cooperative and mild. But let them gain power and you will see what they are really like! Let those who "play" with communism remember the lesson of Veltcho, the "kind" communist who gained power.
Communist parties out of power purposely seem reasonable and kind, but let them come to power and their true nature will be revealed. The prisons were full of men who thought the communists were just another political party. Many of the people who said they were "just another political party" and tolerated communists were the first executed when the communists took over. Let the Western countries who tolerate communist parties beware! Those "little" parties may seem mild now, but if they gain power, you will see their true nature just as we did!
I said, "Veltcho, it's so good to see you again." He looked at me with hostility and said, "We know each other, Popov, and I warn you if you want to see your wife again you must do exactly as I say."
"But what have I done, Veltcho?"
He shouted back, "Never call me Veltcho again. I am Comrade Tchankov and you are Prisoner Popov. Never forget that!"
He went on, "You must confess your crimes. If you plead guilty it will be much easier for you. The People's Government is very lenient and we will forgive all your crimes. We know you are a good person, but you must conform to us and the new society we are building."
These words, "conform to us," I heard the whole thirteen years.
Then a torrent of words poured forth from Veltcho's lips: "I repeat, you must conform and confess your crimes!" he shouted again. "If you refuse to obey me, you will be making the greatest mistake of your life and will live to regret it. You will learn we don't play around, and we aren't going to let you be a religious martyr. You would like that, wouldn't you, Popov? Well, we're not going to give you that chance. If we made you a religious martyr it would just make the Christians stronger. We're not about to let that happen. Do you think we are stupid? We're going to slander and blacken you until even the Christians will say your name in disgust."
I was stunned by Veltcho's words. His plan was satanically clever and he spoke like an inspired man.
I replied, "The people of Bulgaria know me. They will know the real reason." He laughed. Only later did I realize I was up against specialists who were expert at making black appear white, and the truth look false.
The nazis were cruel, but the communists were both cruel and satanically clever. That is the one real difference between the nazis and communists in practice. Veltcho's threats were later carried out with mathematical precision, point by point.
Veltcho ordered me back to my cell. I went in utter despair and told Tsonny about my conversation with Veltcho. He advised me never to confess to anything I hadn't done. The advice was good, but impossible to carry out during the following months.
I sat in my cell in semi-shock. I had thought the communists were just misguided people. But this encounter with Veltcho shook me deeply. I realized I was up against the cleverness and evil of Satan himself. For the first time the enormity of what I faced and the cunning of these satanically inspired men hit me.
The "Death Diet"
It started with starvation. The feelings of starvation like the feelings of love — are impossible to describe. My daily food ration was two slices of bread and six tablespoons of "soup" which was mainly flavored water, slimy and putrid. The diet was carefully and scientifically designed to barely sustain life — nothing more. The prisoners called it "the Death Diet." It was enough to maintain a weak pulse. At the same time, it was enough to stimulate the gastric juices, causing one to feel hunger more acutely than if one had nothing to eat at all.
If a person doesn't eat he gradually dies, but his taste buds are dormant and he is mercifully spared the hellish pangs of hunger. I wasn't spared. The two slices of bread and six tablespoons of "soup" came at 6 p.m. They were gone in two minutes and there was no more food until the next day at 6 p.m. The goal was to "break" me and I confess that starvation is a horrible and effective tool. The hunger made my body feel as if it had malarial fever. These feelings were with me day and night for the next five years.
It must be understood that the communists were not attempting to "brainwash" me. They knew they could never accomplish this. Brainwashing means to completely and permanently change a person's mind and make his mind over to be totally dedicated to another and different way of thinking. The communists knew they could never do this with me and they didn't try.
They were out to break my will — bludgeoning, battering, torturing, abusing and starving me to the point where my will was totally broken and I just collapsed. They knew that after my will was totally broken and they had what they wanted from me, I would regain my will and come back to myself. Thus, their tactic was not to brainwash me, but to so batter and drive me beyond human endurance that temporarily I would simply lose my will. Brainwashing calls for alternating between good and bad treatment. Destroying a person's will is simpler — it requires merely brutal, unrelenting beatings, starvation and torture building up to a rising peak and crescendo of horror until a person no longer has a will of his own. This was their tactic . . . and they began it with a fury and brutality.
Starvation, sleeplessness and standing with one's face toward the wall week after week are the chief "tools" in breaking a man's will. This treatment can transform an intelligent and rational person into an animal. The only thing that remains after such treatment is the animal's instinct to look for something to eat. My guard used to say that I "must become stiller than water and lower than grass."
The Punishment Cell
On August 5, under the "death diet" I was put into solitary confinement and subjected to a 24-hour-a-day, nonstop interrogation. I had three interrogators, each one working an eight-hour shift. This allowed them to keep up the physical and psychological torture 24 hours a day. This solitary confinement cell had one very unusual feature. The wall was shiny white, painted with a high gloss enamel. I was ordered to stand facing the glaring white wall at a distance of eight inches and to keep my eyes open — wide open.
My interrogator began to shout —
"You must not move one inch!"
"You must not close your eyes for one moment!"
"You must not shift your weight!"
"You must not move a muscle!"
"You must not . . . You must not ...” on and on he ranted as I stood at the wall. After a few moments my eyes burned like hot irons. At eight inches I was so close to the glaring white enameled wall my eyes couldn't focus. I suggest that my readers try this for only a moment. One's eyes rebel. They fight to close or to focus and they can't. It is terribly painful and yet when I merely blinked, my interrogator struck me across the face.
The pain in my eyes became unbearable. "Tell me about your spy activities!" shouted the interrogator.
"I am a pastor," I replied, "I have worked for Christ all my life. I have never spied." The interrogator gave me another blow to the side of my head. My ear rang from the impact of the blow and again he shouted, "Tell me how you spied for the Americans!"
Again, I replied, "I am a pastor, a servant of God. I have only worked for God. I don't know anything about your spy charges."
Later, as the years of brutality passed, I became hardened to such beatings and they affected me only physically. But back then early in my imprisonment these blows affected me and disoriented me, psychologically as well as physically.
The interrogator who beat me was a big, grim man. In the years ahead, I had time to reflect on these guards and interrogators. I always tried to pray the most for a guard while he was beating me. I realized that in one sense they were sadder cases than those of us they beat.
What a tragedy was theirs!
Step by step, as they brutalized prisoners and beat us, they descended down the ladder of humanity to the level of beasts. Their faces, after a time, defied description and they became like animals.
We prisoners would eventually recover, but the guards suffered a permanent crippling of their humanity. Thus, during the beatings I tried to keep my perspective and prayed for them. I found that it actually eased the pain of the blows.
"Tell me about your spy work!" screamed the interrogator. "I am a pastor, I — " and before I could finish the sentence another ringing blow hit the side of my face. A pattern emerged during that first long day. I was forced to stand absolutely still, not moving a muscle, my eyes burning like balls of fire staring at the shiny white wall eight inches in front of me. From behind me the voice of my interrogator would shout, "Tell us about your spy activities!" I would reply, "I am only a pastor. I have never done anything but preach the Gospel."
A ringing blow to my head followed, then several minutes of silence. Then again the question, again my reply and again the blow to my head. As the hours passed, the questions came less frequently and I wondered why the interrogator waited so long between questions. After an hour or two it dawned on me; time itself was their weapon. Time was on their side and they counted on its wearing effect to drag me down. Hour after hour that first day, the pattern of question, answer, blow, pause, question, answer, blow, continued. I lost all track of time. I had only the terrible burning in my eyes and to close them for a mere minute became an obsession with me. My body went numb, jarred into reality solely by the different sound of a new interrogator's voice, signaling that eight hours had passed and a new shift had begun.
Now the pauses between questions were longer, as much as an hour. They were in no hurry. The night came and passed like an eternity. Sleep weighted my eyelids, but even a brief closure would bring a blow. My legs ached. My whole body rebelled, yet I could not move a muscle. Everything became hazy and time itself seemed to cease.
Dazed, I suddenly heard the sharp, fresh voice of my first interrogator shouting, "So, Popov, you are still here! Well, I am rested. We shall start again!" Then it struck me. A full day had passed and the first of my three interrogators was back on duty.
Hunger welled up in my stomach. I had been starved before, given only crumbs of bread, but now I didn't even have crumbs. When I had received them the crumbs had seemed so little. Now with nothing even the thought of crumbs seemed like a feast!