Richard Wurmbrand

Born March 24, 1909 Richard was the youngest of four boys, he was born in Bucharest into a Jewish family. He lived with his family in Istanbul for a short while; his father died when he was 9, and the Wurmbrands returned to Romania when he was 15.
As an adolescent, he was sent to study Marxism in Moscow, but returned clandestinely the following year. Pursued by Siguranta Statului (the secret police), he was arrested and held in Doftana prison. Wurmbrand subsequently renounced his political ideals.

He married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. Wurmbrand and his wife became believers of Christ in 1938 through the witness of Christian Wolfkes, a Romanian Christian carpenter. Wurmbrand was ordained twice - first as an Anglican, then, after World War II, as a Lutheran pastor.

In 1944, when the Soviet Union occupied Romania as the first step to establishing a communist regime, Wurmbrand began a ministry to his Romanian countrymen and to Red Army soldiers. When the government attempted to control churches, he immediately began an "underground" ministry to his people. He was arrested on February 29, 1948, while on his way to church services.

Wurmbrand, who passed through the penal facilities of Craiova, Gherla, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Văcăreşti, Malmaison, Cluj, and ultimately Jilava, spent three years in solitary confinement. His wife, Sabina, was arrested in 1950 and spent three years at penal labour on the Canal.

Pastor Wurmbrand was released in 1956, after eight and a half years, and, although warned not to preach, resumed his work in the underground church. He was arrested again in 1959, and sentenced to 25 years. During his imprisonment, he was beaten and tortured.

Eventually, he was a recipient of an amnesty in 1964. Concerned with the possibility that Wurmbrand would be forced to undergo further imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance negotiated with Communist authorities for his release from Romania for $10,000. He was convinced by underground church leaders to leave and become a voice for the persecuted church.

Wurmbrand traveled to Norway, England, and then the United States. In May 1966, he testified in Washington, D.C. before the US Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee. That testimony, in which he took off his shirt in front of TV cameras to show the scars of his torture, brought him to public attention. He became known as the "The Voice of the Underground Church", doing much to publicize the persecution of Christians in Communist countries. He compiled circumstantial evidence that Marx was a satanist.

From Richard's son Mihai Wurmbrand- The next day over 80 percent of the major newspapers in America had my father’s picture without his shirt, on their front page, with articles on what made this Lutheran minister take off his shirt and break the pro-leftist demonstration. Invitations poured in and Rev. Wurmbrand had to extend his stay in the United States by two months and return again twice for extended periods. Eventually we immigrated permanently to the United States.

In April 1967, the Wurmbrands formed Jesus To The Communist World (later renamed The Voice of the Martyrs), an interdenominational organization working initially with and for persecuted Christians in Communist countries, but later expanding its activities to help persecuted believers in other places, especially in the Muslim world. However, when in Namibia, and confronted with the case of Colin Winter, the Anglican Bishop of Namibia, who had supported African strikers and was eventually deported from Namibia by South Africa, Wurmbrand criticized the latter's anti-apartheid activism, and claimed resistance to communism was more important.

In 1990 Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand returned to Romania for the first time in 25 years. The Voice of the Martyrs opened a printing facility and bookstore in Bucharest. He engaged in preaching with local ministers of nearly all denominations. The Wurmbrands had one son, Mihai, now 70. Wurmbrand wrote 18 books in English and others in Romanian. His best-known book is entitled Tortured for Christ, released in 1967.

Pastor Wurmbrand died on February 17, 2001 in a hospital in Torrance, California. His last address was in Palos Verdes, California. In 2006, he was voted fifth among the greatest Romanians according to the Mari Români poll. His wife, Sabina, died August 11, 2000.

Books by Richard Wurmbrand
100 Prison Meditations
Alone With God: New Sermons from Solitary Confinement
Answer to Half a Million Letters
Christ On The Jewish Roads
From Suffering To Triumph!
From The Lips Of Children
If Prison Walls Could Speak
If That Were Christ, Would You Give Him Your Blanket?
In God's Underground
Jesus (Friend to Terrorists)
Marx & Satan
My Answer To The Moscow Atheists
My Correspondence With Jesus
Reaching Toward The Heights
The Oracles of God
The Overcomers
The Sweetest Song
The Total Blessing
Tortured for Christ-His worldwide bestseller, translated into more than 85 languages.
Victorious Faith
With God In Solitary Confinement