Thanks for the simple wisdom of your post.
Your words reminded me again of one book and two men who helped me enormously in my faith and spiritual life: Fr. Walter Ciszek and Fr. Emil Kapaun.
Fr. Ciszek, American-born Jesuit (yes-—a good Jesuit he was) who was commissioned by his superiors to go to Russia to form a Jesuit center there. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, he was picked up by the NKVD and declared a “Vatican spy” and was sent to the dreaded Siberian gulag labor camp, Lubianka, where he spent 23 years before being liberated in 1963.
His remarkable book “He Leadeth Me”, which has become a “classic”, is a wonderful, life-changing account of his years there, where he shared suffering with Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish prisoners; it could be read by anyone of faith and be an unforgettable testimony to a life lead by one desire: to do the will of God (”Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will”). Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist and Jew, all sharing the same agony at Lubianka, experienced what you mention here, Joe.
Fr. Emil Kapaun was a Kansas farm boy who became a priest and served as a chaplain in the army. During the Korean conflict he was captured by the Communists on the Korean battlefields-—and eventually, because they feared the good he was doing among his fellow prisoners, the Communists killed him.
Fr. Kapaun was loved by prisoners of all faiths, and he ministered to them all. Those who survived their captivity and returned home to America joined together to honor his memory-—they were Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics. Together, they had suffered evil and Fr. Kapaun had been there to serve all of them in their need.
Yes, Smokin’ Joe, you are right. This is not a time for alienation among the believers in Christ Jesus. It will only strengthen those who are militating against us.
“Behold the Christians; see how they love one another”.
Siberian gulag labor camp, Lubianka A technical detail: There were thousands of labor camps in Siberia as well as in Northern Russia. Their location was dictated by the needs of the slave labor industry, which, economically speaking the Soviet penitentiary system was. The chief occupation in these was logging and mining; the chief killers were cold, malnutrition, guard cruelty and disease. The names were by nearby towns and villages, or just as likely simply by number.
Lubyanka or Lubianka is a street in Moscow, on which the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) building stood and still stands. The organization is now called FSB, Federal Service of Security. One change since the Soviet times was the removal of the Dzerzhinsky (founder of NKVD) statue in front of it. The building also housed a interrogation prison for those under trial, and execution chambers. It is those who were not executed there who went to labor camps. "Lubyanka" came to signify the entire repression apparatus, in the same sense as "Wall Street" signifies American big business. It was not likely that there was a prison camp actually named "Lubyanka", -- the toponymic is not common in Russia and its derivation is obscure; the sound faintly suggests "Lubov" -- "love".
The NKVD complex (prior to 1991)
Lubyanka is the side street to the left of the older building. The Dzerzhinsky statue, removed in 1991, is visible near the left edge of the larger building. The traffic circle is still there, with no statue.
Holding cells in the 6-storey basement of the Lubyanka prison
Logging in labor camp, 1950's
This one was called Ozerlag (lake-camp, abbreviated). The caption says "prisoners of Ozerlag on logging and building of Tayshet-Lena railroad. V. P Ablamsky, photographer, from private collection of the author" (Source)
This can happen again, easily, anywhere.