As Andrew was about to put the magazine down and pick up his suitcase, something in the magazine caught his eye. It was a half-page advertisement, an invitation to be part of a giant youth festival being held in Warsaw in July. “Everyone Welcome” the advertisement read. Everyone! I bet they don’t want any Christian young people like me there, Andrew chuckled to himself. But as the words crossed his mind, a strange compulsion overcame him. Somehow he knew he had to write to the address in the advertisement and ask if they would be willing to send him the visa materials and passes to go to the youth festival.
Knowing that Communists did not like or welcome Christians, Andrew decided not to hide his reasons for wanting to attend the youth festival. He wrote a straightforward letter, stating that he would like to hear firsthand the Communist point of view and explain his own Christian perspective. He dropped the letter into the mail that night, not knowing what kind of response, if any, he would get.
Within two weeks Andrew had received a reply. Yes, the letter he received said, the organizers of the youth festival would love to have Andrew come and listen to the superior ideology of Communism, and he was welcome to debate Christianity with anyone as well. The letter also informed him that a special train was leaving from Amsterdam for Warsaw and that because he was a student, he could get a discount on his train fare. And as if that were not surprising enough, identification passes fell out of the opened envelope.
The letter was all the guidance Andrew needed. As soon as the training school was over, Andrew headed back to Holland to prepare for his trip to Warsaw, Poland. On the way to Holland he stopped in to visit Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins in Kent. When he explained his new direction to them, at first Uncle Hoppy was shocked. “But you can’t go behind the Iron Curtain, can you, lad?” he asked.
The Iron Curtain was a term made famous by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who used it to signify the line that separated the West from the countries of Eastern Europe, where the Soviet Union had established puppet governments at the end of World War II. Traveling in these countries was very difficult, since visas were hard to come by. And travel there could also be dangerous, especially for Christians. Most Communist leaders seemed to be paranoid about outside information and influences in their countries, especially when it came to matters like religion, which they saw as a challenge to their authority and as undermining Communist values.
“I don’t know why I can’t go behind the Iron Curtain. I’ve been invited, and I’ve been honest about why I want to go,” Andrew replied.
Uncle Hoppy nodded his head thoughtfully. “In that case let me be the first one who blesses you on your journey,” he said. With that he reached into the pocket of his threadbare coat and pulled out a wad of five-pound notes. He counted off some of them and handed them to Andrew. “This should get you on the way,” he said, handing over the notes. “Be sure you keep in touch, now.”
Holding the five-pound notes in his hand, Andrew stood speechless. Uncle Hoppy was truly one of the most remarkable men he had ever met.
Back in Holland Andrew found Sint Pancras as he had left it. Time seemed to stand still there. He had one week at home to see everyone and pack for his trip to Poland. He made a hurried round of visits to Kees’s family, Miss Meekle, who was amazed by the “strange” English he could now speak, and the workers at the chocolate factory. The Whetstras also were in the process of packing. They were moving to Amsterdam so that they could expand their flower-export business.
During the week Andrew also took the bus to Ermelo to visit his brother Ben and his wife. They were doing well, but Andrew had to gulp back tears when Ben told him that Thile had married a local baker in Gorkum. Any hopes he had of reconciling with her were dashed. But as he rode the bus back to Sint Pancras, Andrew came to the conclusion that Thile’s marriage was probably for the best. He was twenty-seven years old now, and he had even less to offer a bride than he had before going off to train in Scotland. Still, he hoped that one day he would find a wife, though he realized she would have to be a very special woman to enter into a partnership with him.
On the morning of July 15, 1955, Andrew made his way to the railway station in Amsterdam. He lugged with him a heavy bag. He had packed the barest minimum of clothes and filled the rest of the bag with copies of a thirty-one-page booklet titled The Way of Salvation in Polish and a number of other European languages. He was aware that Karl Marx had once said, “Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world.” By this Marx was referring to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet cast in lead that were used to set type on a printing press to print literature. Andrew had decided to play the Communists at their own game, using literature to help spread the gospel behind the Iron Curtain.
When he reached the station in the heart of Amsterdam, Andrew was surprised by the size of the crowd of young people waiting for the train. He had expected perhaps fifty people at most to be heading to the youth festival, but several hundred people were lined up on the station platform. When the train pulled up beside the platform, the people surged aboard for the trip to Warsaw. Andrew lugged his heavy bag aboard, stowed it on a luggage rack, and found a seat for the journey.
In the evening, as the summer sun was beginning to set, the train pulled into the station in Warsaw. Once the group had arrived, they were met by guides who took them to their “hotel,” which turned out to be a school building that had been converted into a dormitory for the youth festival. Andrew was shown to a math classroom, where thirty beds were laid out side by side.
That night one of the guides explained to the newly arrived group that over thirty thousand young people would be in Warsaw for the three-week-long festival. The guide then explained that in the mornings they would be loaded onto buses for sightseeing tours of the city and in the afternoons and evenings they would listen to inspiring speeches from a range of Communist leaders.
To Andrew this did not sound like a very exciting way to spend a day, but the next morning he boarded one of the sightseeing buses that pulled up in front of the school building. As the buses ferried the young people through the streets of Warsaw, even Andrew had to admit that what they were seeing was very impressive. The sightseers were shown new schools, factories that throbbed with the sound of machinery turning out all sorts of manufactured goods, blocks of apartment buildings that towered over the city, and shops that overflowed with things to buy.
After two days of sightseeing and listening to tedious speeches by grim-faced men and women, Andrew decided he wanted to see Warsaw for himself. He wondered what the city was like beyond the facade they were being shown from their sightseeing buses. Early one morning he got up and dressed before anyone else and hurried down the stairs and out the front door of the school building. For the rest of the day he wandered up and down the streets of Warsaw.
What Andrew saw as he walked shocked and dismayed him. Ten years after the end of World War II, whole blocks of the city were still in ruins from German and Russian bombs. Many of the people he saw were dressed in threadbare, ragged clothes, and at meat markets and vegetable stands, long lines of customers waited to buy food. The Warsaw he was seeing bore no resemblance to the gleaming Warsaw he had been shown from the sightseeing buses.
As if things could not get any worse, Andrew turned onto a rubble-strewn side street. All the buildings on this street had been reduced to rubble by the bombing. But much to Andrew’s surprise, people still lived on the street. Like rabbits they had burrowed down through the rubble and set up homes in the basements of the bombed-out buildings. As he walked along, Andrew noticed a young girl playing amid the rubble and debris. He took one of the copies of The Way of Salvation in Polish that he had with him and handed it to her. She took the booklet and scampered away.
Moments later two heads appeared from amid a pile of rubble. A man and a woman, followed by the young girl, clambered out of the opening that led to their warren below ground. They were all dressed in filthy rags, and the man held up the booklet Andrew had given his daughter and shook his head. Andrew tried to talk to the man first in English, then in Dutch, and finally in the fractured German he still remembered from the Nazi occupation of Holland. But the man understood none of it. He just held up the booklet and shook his head. Then it dawned on Andrew that the man was trying to indicate that he could not read. Andrew gestured for the man to keep the booklet and walked on. He had stumbled onto a part of Warsaw that he was sure the Communist government had not intended for him to see.
As he walked, Andrew noticed a curious thing. He had come expecting to find the doors to the churches shut and barred, but instead he walked past Catholic and Protestant churches alike and found them open. He decided that he would attend one of the churches on Sunday.
Back in his dormitory room that night, Andrew sat depressed at all he had seen that day. Meanwhile Hans, a Dutch Communist who slept in the same dormitory room, talked on enthusiastically about the achievements of Communism.
Andrew could share none of Hans’s enthusiasm, and finally he said, “Hans, why don’t you skip tomorrow’s tour and speeches and go and see Warsaw for yourself. Go into the streets and see the things I saw today.” He then gave Hans directions to some of the most shocking parts of the city.
The following evening Andrew found Hans sitting dejected in their dorm room. Hans explained to Andrew that he had taken his advice and gone to see the city for himself. “Andrew, I am leaving on the midnight train for home,” Hans declared. “What I saw today scared me more than I have ever been scared in my life. I have to get out of this place.”
On Sunday Andrew found his way to a Reformed church, where a service was already in progress. He slipped into a seat at the back of the sanctuary and was surprised by the size of the congregation: the church was three-quarters full. The singing was enthusiastic, and although he could not understand the sermon, since it was in Polish, Andrew believed it to be Bible based, judging by the way the pastor held up his Bible and read from it.
At the end of the service, the pastor came up to Andrew and spoke to him in English. Andrew expressed his surprise that Christians were allowed to worship so freely. In the West, he explained, all they had heard was how the Communist authorities had closed seminaries and arrested pastors. The pastor nodded and explained that they were allowed to worship freely so long as they stayed away from addressing political matters. “Yes, it is a compromise,” the pastor noted, “but what can we do?”
Andrew nodded.
“Tell me, what church do you belong to at home?” the pastor asked.
“A Baptist church,” Andrew replied.
“Then perhaps you would like to attend a Baptist church here in Warsaw?”
Andrew nodded again.
With that the pastor took a piece of paper and wrote down the address of a Baptist church and handed it to Andrew. “They will be having a service this evening,” he said.
That evening Andrew found his way to the address the pastor had written down and slipped into the back of the service already in progress. His entry did not go unnoticed, however. People began to turn and look at him. Andrew decided that his clothes gave away the fact that he was a foreigner. On learning that a foreigner was in their midst, the pastor invited Andrew to come to the platform and speak to them.
Andrew walked to the front and asked whether anyone in the congregation spoke either English or German. A woman acknowledged that she spoke German, and Andrew invited her to the front. Then, in German, he spoke to the congregation, stopping after every sentence or two to let the woman translate his German into Polish.
