Persecution, Then and Now: Putting Names on Russia's Catholic Holocaust

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — For years Father Bronislaw Czaplicki worked in Russia, documenting the virtual annihilation of the Church in the Soviet Union.

The Polish priest helped compile a 600-page book of memories on Russian Catholics who were tortured, exiled and executed during a Soviet reign of terror on the Church that lasted decades. Old KGB files that were briefly opened to public scrutiny after the fall of communism helped him in his work.

The files are now closed, and so, it would seem to Father Czaplicki, is Russia.

The Polish priest has been ordered out of the country after 11 years as a parish priest and more recently as program coordinator of the Catholic Newmartyrs of Russia Program, created last year by the Russian Conference of Catholic Bishops to compile data on Catholics who might be considered for beatification as a result of their deaths at the hands of Soviet authorities.

Father Czaplicki is the latest Catholic priest kicked out of Russia, which suggests that while the 20th-century pogrom against Catholics might have ended, the persecution has ways of continuing.

The same world that is so enlightened about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust remains largely oblivious to the crimes of the communists, the Soviet war on religion being a case study.

From 1917, when the Bol -sheviks rose to power, to 1939, when only two functioning Cath olic churches remained in Russia (largely showpieces to the existence of religious freedom for Moscow's diplomatic corps), Catholic priests, religious and laity were rounded up, tortured and sentenced to death after show trials that made no secret of the Soviets' contempt for religion and human rights.

In recent years, the extent of the terror has been documented by initiatives such as Newmartyrs as well as by Memorial, Russia's foremost human-rights organization. Me -mori al has been detailing the persecution extensively, making much of its research available, mostly in Russia, on its Web site at www.memorial.ru.

A Tragic Story Told

Irina Osopova worked for five years on Memorial's research into repression of the clergy from 1918 to 1953. Seven years ago, she released a landmark Russian book based on long-sealed, newly released police and other files.

With its depressing and gruesome details, the book attaches names to the mind-numbing statistics that fail to tell the tragic story of life and death in a country that regarded religion as the enemy.

Now an English version of the book, Hide Me Within Thy Wounds (Germans From Russia Heritage Collection, 2003), has been re -leased, and the people responsible for it hope it will disturb the West in the same way the original upset Russian authorities.

Ted Gerk, one of Canada's leading Christian pro-life activists, has long been troubled by the fact that Western society “has no idea what went on” under the communist re gime. Hide Me Within Thy Wounds, for which he helped find a North American publisher, might open eyes about that period of history.

“It's very embarrassing, the material in these files,” Gerk said. The book, he said, sheds light on “the bravery and courage of a lot of these people that ministered to their flocks.”

Father Alois Kappes, for example, figures both in Osopova's book as well as in the life of Gerk's own family. Gerk grew up hearing stories about the Russian-German priest who pastored the Catholics of Russia's Volga region in the 1920s and '30s. Gerk's grandmother shared stories about the family's friendship with Father Kappes (pronounced KOP-iss), whose warm personality endeared him to his people.

Unexpectedly, it was Gerk's fascination with Father Kappes that eventually led to his involvement with Osopova's book and its English translation.

While compiling a history of his own Russian-German family, Gerk became absorbed in the life of Father Kappes. He knew from his grandmother that Father Kappes had managed to flee Russia, but that he had also later returned covertly to continue his work. His eventual fate was unknown.

Not every priest was able to withstand the Chekisty (the notorious Russian secret police)-administered “severe interrogation,” and some gave up information that in criminated their fellow priests. “They were beaten to a pulp,” Gerk said.

The Vatican's efforts to establish a top-secret band of undercover missionary priests is another of the fascinating revelations in the book, which despite its methodical and sometimes uneven style is rich with accounts of intrigue amid its raw data. There is an ongoing theme of priests' attempts to elude authorities, often to be betrayed by secret police posing as sympathetic parishioners.

Equally disturbing is the book's chronicling of the ongoing hostile relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, heavily infiltrated and compromised by the KGB.

The material in the book “personalizes” the persecution, Gerk said, but “it's only the tip of the iceberg.” Nearly 20,000 priests were arrested in 1931-32 alone.

Seminarians were instructed to memorize the Mass and Scriptures, knowing that upon ordination, most would be arrested and many would be killed or die in prison. Indeed, many were executed and Father Casimir Vasilauskas was consigned to the Gulag prison camp system, working for 10 years in the mine shafts followed by years of exile.

Clearly impressive was the spiritual life the Russian priest was able to bring to his prison existence. Father Vasilauskas celebrated clandestine Mass nearly every day, out of view of the camp police, with a piece of bread and a teaspoon with a few drops of wine as the chalice.

Future Uncertain

Father Myron Effing, an American priest who arrived in Vladivostok in 1992, said the fathers and brothers of many of his current parishioners were shot.

He told the Register that those who lived through the persecution are now very elderly, but they remember the persecution they underwent.

Father Effing expects Rome will eventually canonize large groups of Russian martyrs, but the status of the Church in Russia remains a huge question mark.

“Their children's suffering lies more in the fact that they've been denied the knowledge and practice of the faith,” he said. While 40% of Russians are baptized, only 1% go to church.

Then there are the continuing tensions between Rome and the Russian Orthodox Church, which “lived in isolation for a long time and was heavily infiltrated by the KGB,” Father Effing said. “It's a dismal state.”

Paul Schratz writes from

Vancouver, British Columbia.