Victims of communism: Many members and associates of the Family Federation paid the ultimate price for their faith
Dr. Thomas J. Ward, Professor of Peace and Development Studies at HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership (HJI), New York, USA, spoke at a special online program on October 24, 2024 hosted by HJI and the Higher Purpose Forum (HPF). The theme was “Imprisoned for Their Faith – Reflections on the 1974 Sentencing of Unification Missionaries in Czechoslovakia”.
I just want to say a couple of things to hopefully try to contextualize all this for those of you who are not aware of the incredible work of our True Parents and of the work of the Unification movement, and the price that has been paid over the years in terms of dealing with the challenge of communism. Communism is really a faith, almost a counter-faith, that really encouraged people not to believe in God, and encouraged the hate of God, and the hate of those who dared to believe in God.
I’m reminded that shortly after the Cold War and the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, I visited the New York Times because of an article that they had written. And the article gave the impression that we in the Unification Church were opportunists, just trying to take advantage of the downfall of communism to quickly get into those countries and affect change.
And I spoke to the foreign editor at that time at the New York Times, and the editor-in-chief. And what I said to them was, “We did not go into the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe in 1998 or 1992. We were there beginning in 1968 and the early 1970s. You don’t understand us.”
And so, I just want to track a little bit of the sacrifices that have been made over the years by our movement in the fight against communism.
Many of you know about the Unification Church missionary, Masaki Sasamoto (1950-1980), who was shot dead in Tanzania [Editor’s note: 18th December 1980, murdered by soldiers from the government of Julius Nyerere, who influenced by Marxism ruled Tanzania as a one-party state from 1964 to 1985].
And many of you are aware of the 1976 bombing in Paris, where one Norwegian Unification Church member, Anne Brit Kommedal, was maimed horribly as a consequence of that bombing. And we know that behind that were communist terrorists.
Likewise, many of you might be aware that Martin Bauer, was shot dead and thrown into the trunk of a car back in 1985. [Editor’s note: Bauer was a German emigrant, born in 1925. He headed the Popular Christian Party and served as President of CAUSA International (an anti-communist educational foundation founded by Sun Myung Moon in 1980) in the Dominican Republic]
And some of you might know Jesus Gonzalez [Editor’s note: CAUSA’s Central American Director, who lectured to more than 20,000 national and community leaders in Honduras and El Salvador from 1984 to 1990]. He worked for four years at the very center of the struggle, the war between the Nicaraguan Contras and the Sandinistas. And twice he fell into the hands of the FMLN people. And somehow, he was just blessed by God that he was able to get out without any harm being done. [Editor’s note: FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) was a communist guerilla group formed in 1980 with the backing of Cuba and operating mainly in El Salvador]
But he likewise, many times went for the Salvadorean army behind the enemy lines where the communists were located and tried to educate people there about why communism was wrong.
And really, it was an amazing course he took. And there in El Salvador, among his CAUSA members, six of them were shot dead, were assassinated, because of their involvement with CAUSA.
And many of you know Lee Shapiro who in 1987, was shot dead in Afghanistan while he tried to film, produce a film to tell the story about what was going on inside of Afghanistan. [Editor’s note: Lee Shapiro, an associate of CAUSA International, undertook journeys with Nicaraguan Resistance forces (Contras), facing significant personal risks. He filmed, wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning documentary Nicaragua Was Our Home, which documents firsthand testimonies of the atrocities inflicted upon the Miskito Indians by the communist Sandinistas.]
Some of you might be aware that in the late 1970s, all of our members in Ethiopia, were lined up and shot dead because they were affiliated with the Unification Church. [Editor’s note: They were regarded as anti-communists by the Marxist-Leninist authorities that came to power after a coup d-état 12th September 1974.]
And many of you also are aware of Yu Kikumura, who was a member of the Japanese Red Army and was sent specifically to the United States [Editor’s note: arrived 8th March 1988] to engage in terrorism. One of his terrorist targets was Father Moon. We know it from Mike McDevitt, our chief of security at the time. The FBI informed him that the True Parents were on the list of people that Kikumura was supposed to harm during that period.
One thing I just want to recall is that the True Parents could forgive and finally, they could meet Kim Il-sung in 1991. And it was because of the heart that the True Parents had, never to see someone as a permanent enemy, but to know that finally, all things would be able to change.
And I’m sure that some of that heart kept these precious “brothers” and “sisters” well in Czechoslovakia all those years.
However, those of us who had a chance to be around the True Parents know that they always thought about our missionaries in Eastern Europe and our brothers and sisters in Eastern Europe.
And I still remember having the chance to meet with a number of them in the early 1980s when the True Parents brought them here to have a chance to engage with so many brothers and sisters in the West.
And some of you are aware of “Mission Butterfly” [Editor’s note: Project with underground missionaries to many East European communist nations 1980-1992]. But I want to emphasize, and I learned that this week more deeply, that this is even before Mission Butterfly.
There’s a wonderful book called The Faith That Broke the Iron Curtain. It tells this story of our Czechoslovakian “brothers” and “sisters” and the things that they went through in order to be able to go forward.
And in Prague in 1968, there were all kinds of hope that socialism was going to be different in Czechoslovakia than elsewhere. And Alexander Dubček (1921-1992), who led Czechoslovakia at that time, offered a great hope to people. However, we know that in August of 1968, everything turned around. [Editor’s note: The Prague Spring was a short period from January to August 1968 of political liberalization and widespread protests in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The country was then led by reformist Alexander Dubček, the First Secretary of the Communist Party. 21st August 1968, the Soviet Union, along with most Warsaw Pact members, invaded to halt the reforms.]
Dubček called his reforms “socialism with a human face”. A French writer by the name of Bernard-Henri Levy said, however, “No, it’s not socialism with a human face. Communism is barbarism with a human face. That’s what it is in reality.”
And there was a profound change in attitudes towards communism during that period. And yet, amazingly, in October 1968 – can you imagine, just two months after the Soviets went in – one of our “sisters”, Emilie Steberl, an Austrian, crossed the border and went into Czechoslovakia. She went to begin to find those people that were prepared by God. And the people who are here talking to us today, not just the missionaries, but every one of them, they sat down and listened to the Divine Principle. At one point along the way, they all surely felt, “This could get me into a lot of trouble doing what I’m doing, sitting in this room, hearing these lectures, this could get me into a lot of trouble.”
But they nevertheless made the determination and went forward. We have so much for which we’re indebted to these precious “brothers” and “sisters”.
One of whom, as we know, Marie Živná even gave her life in the midst of this. And all of them were willing to give their lives for the cause that they believed in.
If you can get a hold of this book, The Faith That Broke the Iron Curtain, I would encourage you to read it. It’s a remarkable story, and the people that we’re going to hear from today are truly remarkable people.
Thank you very much.
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Featured image: A monument erected in 2019 by the Czech market town of Svojanov to honor Marie Živná, who died under mysterious circumstances while in a communist prison in Bratislava. The text says, “Marie Živná – victim of the despotic communist regime”. Photo: FFWPU