Part 3: Living with the Communists

The following excerpts are mostly from interviews with younger members who were born shortly before, during, or after the war and who went on missions in the 1950s and early 1960s. These are the members who grew up in a communist country, went to communist schools where atheism was officially taught, and had to wend their way carefully between church and state. Some of them hardly mention politics, the State, or communism in their interviews; for them politics were merely a background to their normal life in the Church. In some cases, this silence was, they informed us, out of a habit of avoiding any discussion of a political nature. Others were more anxious to talk about their confrontations with a political system that was in large part antagonistic to their religious beliefs. The following excerpts are from the members who kept the Church together in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s and who lived to see “the dawning of a brighter day.”

Branch house in Wolgast, 1965. As District President Walter Krause had prophesied, members now had their own cars. Courtesy Edith Krause.