excerpt from In God’s Underground  by Richard Wurmbrand
By Richard Wurmbrand
Copyright 1968 The voice of the Martyrs

[Wurmbrand relates this story from his life during World War Two to comfort a fellow prisoner in the Communist gulag they shared; who has betrayed another prisoner out of fear and at the time could not forgive himself]

When Rumania entered the war on Germany’s side, a pogrom began in which many thousands of Jews were killed or deported. At Iasi alone 11,000 were massacred in a day. My wife, who shares my Protestant faith, is also of Jewish origin. We lived in Bucharest, from which the Jews were not deported, but her parents, one of her brothers, three sisters and other relatives who lived in Bocovine were taken to Transmistria, a wild border Province which the Rumanians had captured from Russia. Jews who were not murdered at the end of this…