Hofman Fund · source · 1982

Truths Which Cannot be Hidden

A 1981 report on persecution, written by a committee in Romania and reprinted at Keston College. This is our summary. My father is in the light, with the family papers beside their line.

Who wrote it. The Romanian Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights (ALRC), affiliated with the Swiss organization Christian Solidarity International. The printed signature is “The Romanian Committee of Christian Solidarity International.” The printed close says Romania, 22 March 1981. The same text also describes hearings in 1982, into March.

Who published it. Keston College, in the journal Religion in Communist Lands, vol. 10, no. 2, 1982, pp. 218–226. The journal title is Document, “Truths Which Cannot be Hidden.” Notes marked “—Ed.” belong to the Keston editors. The last page of the copy also carries a notice for the College’s Annual General Meeting on Saturday 9 October. That notice is separate from the report.

Credit, and the full text. Theology on the Web hosts the scan by permission of the Trustees of the Keston Institute. The journal continued as Religion, State and Society. The volume list is here. Hofman Fund does not upload the PDF. This page is the summary, in our own dress.

Gheorghe Hofman, my father

Near the end of the report, on journal page 225, five names stand together. In January 1981, the committee writes, five believers accused of distributing Bibles in Romania and the USSR were imprisoned for periods of two to three years, after a trial in Botoșani. The English text prints them as Gheorghe Hofman, Mathias Fahner, Paul Gross, Manfred Herbert, and Mihai Closs.

The report goes on to say that the security police tortured them before the trial, and that Paul Gross and Mihai Closs were injected with drugs, to break their will and make them tell what they knew. In connection with the same case it names searches and interrogations of Mihai Romaniuc, Ioan Latan, Filip Tăbăcaru, Pricob Tărniceru, and Bocan. Other Christians, it writes, were beaten. A Keston editor’s note, not the committee’s, says they were all released under the amnesty of August 1981. On page 218 the same editors explain the presidential decree of 23 August 1981: sentences of up to five years were amnestied, and sentences between five and eight years were reduced by one-sixth.

Those words stay the report’s. The family papers sit beside them.

As the report prints it

Two to three years. A trial in Botoșani, January 1981. The charge, in their English: distributing Bibles in Romania and the USSR.

Names in the journal: Mathias Fahner, Manfred Herbert, Mihai Closs.

The editor’s note: released under the amnesty of August 1981. The decree, in the note on page 218, is dated 23 August 1981.

As the family papers have it

Hofman Gheorghe, a mechanic from Rădăuți, taken on 31 October 1980. The working transcription joins two terms into one year and six months in prison. Sentence no. 13 of 10 January 1981. The certified copy is not in the house. It is requested from CNSAS, file P 2551/2026. The transcription puts the trial at Rădăuți. The photographed penal file is 337/B/1980. Botoșani was the prison. The appeal: Criminal Decision no. 49, Suceava County Tribunal, 31 January 1981, file 161/1981, rejected. Pre-trial detention was deducted.

The charging act of 30 November 1980, file 337/B/1980, prosecutor Buceșchi Constantin, sends five men to trial. On the page: Gross Paul, Câlnic, Alba County; Fakner Matei, resident at Sebeș; Kloos Mihail, Miercurea Sibiului, the village of Dobârca; Herberth Manfred, Sibiu; Hofman Gheorghe, Rădăuți. The journal’s spellings, Fahner, Herbert, and Closs, stay the translation’s. Farner and Kloss stand on other Romanian papers.

The order of 26 October 1980, the same file 337/B/1980, heads the distribution under article 94 of Law no. 3/1974. On the page, the penalty the law provided is from 3 months to 2 years. That is the range in the statute, not the sentence. On Gross’s papers, the referral of 30 November 1980 writes Decree 210/1978, article 37 paragraphs 1 and 3, and distribution without authorization. Decree 210/1960 appears on the line that takes the foreign means of payment. None of these lines is the sentence.

The state did not write “Bible smuggling.” The transcription puts two heads: illegal holding of foreign currency, 170 rubles in August 1978, and unauthorized distribution of graphic and sound prints, 1971–1980. The two terms were joined into one year and six months. He and Kloos Mihail, jointly, 2,822 lei. The passage already cited on the homepage, from Dorin Dobrincu, dates Paul Gross’s pardon to 22 August 1981 and, through the CNSAS study, four years for Gross. Four years is not my father’s term.

The night of 18/19 October 1980, the Suceava checkpoint: two cars with Alba plates, sacks of Russian Bibles from Karlsruhe. That opened Canalul-80. The torture and the injections remain the committee’s sentence. Amnesty, Keston and the CNSAS study sit together on the printed sources.

The map Clipa, Canalul-80 The calendar on the homepage

Summary

The report gathers 1981 and the start of 1982 under seven kinds of blow. It opens with Matthew 10:28. It closes with Psalm 58:1, and with an appeal to public opinion and to the government to keep its own laws and the human-rights agreements. What follows is the frame, not their page word for word. The many names in the journal stay in the journal. Here we keep the shape of the report, the Suceava places, and my father.

  1. Prison, for those counted dangerous. A Baptist, Ionel Prejban in the scan, three months in March 1981 for vagrancy, though his emigration papers were almost ready. Silvia Tărniceru and Elena Boghian, Baptists from Iași, two years for crossing the frontier; pardoned in August 1981, the report says, after their family protested. Father Gheorghe Calciu stays in prison on a ten-year sentence, outside the amnesty. The report says his jailers were supported by Patriarch Justinian, by Metropolitan Nicolae of the Banat, and by the president of the Baptist Union, Cornel Mara. Ioan Teodosiu of Cluj, arrested on 16 December 1981, held without a charge until March 1982. Ioan Maier of Bucharest and the Christian literary review Veghe: the archive confiscated, article 153, then the press law. The Dragu family of Târgu Jiu, between a hunger strike, work, school, and prison.
  2. The churches. Locked doors, fines, baptism mocked, walls built through a meeting room. In Suceava the report describes the Baptist church in Fălticeni, its front damaged, the baptistry demolished, the way in walled up; the Pentecostal church in Rădăuți, a cardboard roof, and slate the believers had bought, taken to a state shop; a caricature of the baptism at Iaslovat, pinned at the council in Milișăuți, and fines — thirteen Pentecostals at 2,000 lei each, the pastor 3,000, 29,000 in all. At the village the translation calls Tipeni, in the Satu Mare district of Suceava county, fourteen Baptists, most of them between seventy and eighty, 1,000 lei each for a service. Among the printed names: Dumitru Prelipceanu, Constantin Costea, Margareta Costea. At Bădăuți, in the Emil Bodnăraș district, the report says Marx was read during a service, and that two children were put back a class because their father, Ioan Lucescu, invoked the Constitution. In Mehedinți, at Cloșani, doors locked in March 1981, a Bible thrown into the Motru, the deacon Ion Corlan beaten and fined 1,000 lei. The editors note that 1,000 lei were then worth a little over £50.
  3. Active people, taken one by one. In this part the report speaks of Ioan Clipa of Suceava, questioned in the autumn of 1980 over Bibles. The committee writes that the police destroyed his mind and that they answer for his death. His wife, Eugenia Clipa, remains on the page with young children. That is their sentence. Also here: evangelists beaten and attacked in the papers at Arad and Timișoara, Haralambie Ploșcariu threatened at the Motru bridge with “another baptism,” a Baptist pastor in Bucharest questioned, a seminary student pressed to report once a month, and Traian Morar of the committee, his notebook confiscated in January 1982.
  4. The children. At a school in Arad, on Easter 1981, pupils called in and threatened with marks if they went to church on Sunday. A Baptist camp at Ohaba Română, Timiș county, broken up. At Dumbrăveni, Sibiu county, the report says thirty Adventists were taken, and the children sent to a hostel and pressed to eat meat. The children from my own house are not named on this page.
  5. Work. A reprimand and a dismissal for belief: an Orthodox researcher in Bucharest, a Baptist music teacher. For one of them the report gives the official reason in a single line: he believed in God.
  6. The press. Libel in place of a file. Aurel Chiu, a Baptist doctor in Arad, in the local paper on 3 December 1981. Five Baptist pastors in Bucharest, Vasile Taloș among them, in Flacăra of 29 October 1981. The aim, as the committee writes it: to stain the pastors who refused the title of correspondent of the Ministry of Cults.
  7. The passport, and Bibles again. Emigration requests left without papers, hunger strikes, years or months for trying to cross the frontier. Then the wave of Bibles, which includes the Botoșani trial, set out above. After the five, the report moves to a fine of 1,000 lei for Pricob Tărniceru, a Baptist from Iași; to two sacks of books taken from a Pentecostal pastor in Bucharest; to night searches in Arad; to arrests in Ploiești on 10 November 1981, with sentences of more than five years. The committee itself writes that this length was probably chosen so as to sit outside the amnesty that covered the five from Botoșani. Further on: six years for Klaus Wagner of Sighișoara; five years for two women from Cărpiniș, Hunedoara, sentenced with him; seven years for a ship’s captain, Constantin Firu on their page, after two thousand Bibles on a barge at Orșova; 5,000 lei for a Baptist from Timișoara, Nicolai Eva in the journal’s spelling.

How to read this

The report belongs to the committee, reprinted by Keston. The sentence is in the file. A CNSAS page is a different thing. The torture, the injections, and the death of Ioan Clipa stand here as the committee’s sentences.

A statement taken at a house search is not a recruited informer. The names from an interrogation do not receive a new label on this page. Living people are not posted here without their own word. Researchers write to daniel@hofmanfund.org. A certified copy is requested from CNSAS, file P 2551/2026.