Introducing the Viskys

Julia and Ferenc Visky, September, 1974

Though there was plenty of suffering and guilt to go around in Romania,  I would like to focus on Grace through excerpts from the story of Julia and Ferenc Visky, especially his reflections on the Psalms. If you would like to learn more than I include here, search for Ferenc Visky on the internet. You will find dozens of articles and references. First, though, a bit of context.

Reformed Differences

While the Fulops represent the classically Reformed, Ferenc and Julia Visky would fall within the renewal wing of the Reformed church. Following World War II, the remewal branch, sometimes called Bethania, experienced a powerful revival that touched thousands in Hungary, Romania, and Transcarpathia, Ukraine. By 1950 the movement had been forced underground by Communist persecution. Its leaders were kept under surveillance, and by 1958, many had been arrested and sentenced, some up to 22 years, including Ferenc Visky. Because of her continuing witness, Julia and her seven children were soon after sent to one of the camps of the infamous Danube Delta gulag. Their son, playwright Andras Visky, told her story in the play, Julia.

March 2003

When we first met Julia and spoke with Ferenc Visky, I soon sensed that they lived and breathed in the presence of God. It was also apparent that one needed to be ready for his sharp wit. We had crowded into his small study close to the kitchen, and with a gleam in his eyes Visky began,

“Come, let us get close together like small piggies in this small room. I don’t mean that you are pigs; I don’t want to begin by hurting anyone . . . If the shirt doesn’t fit, don’t wear it!”

I described our mission of recording his understanding of faith and his perception of how the psalms reflected his life under Communism. The gleam had not yet disappeared and Visky inquired sweetly whether my congregation back in Grand Rapids ever sang any of the Genevan Psalms. Sensing a trap, I answered quickly that we sang some, but never Psalm 119 in its entirety.  He smiled and appeared satisfied with my answer. Having thus established that we were not complete nincompoops, the conversation could begin.

Regarding the Genevan Psalms

“From a biblical perspective, singing and choirs or liturgical musical singing is prophetic according to Holy Scripture. Singing itself is not significant; it is significant only when inspired from above, and only when it’s directed from above, not only based on our emotions or other factors. It is most important that I listen attentively and wait for the one from above to touch with his fingers the person, the string. Somehow it is very nice when someone strums me. So this is very crucial that singing also be treated as the preaching of God’s word. Singing of the Psalms in itself is preaching too.”

I’d like to include everything from that first meeting here, but will jump to an excerpt from the June interview.

Singing the Psalms

"After my release, I was appointed to serve a congregation in the Nagyvarad area. In that congregation, every Sunday afternoon, after the worship, we spent ten minutes learning songs. We started to study the psalms, and somehow people began to like them. How does the Hungarian proverb go? “It’s easy to take Kate to the dance if she likes to dance. 

If you teach with love, they learn more willingly, and if you sing with joy, then the songs stick. Maybe depression sticks too, but happiness does as well. If I like the psalms and sing them with love, they stick. We sang the Genevan Psalms from the official psalm book of 1672, according to the music’s prescribed tempos and rhythms.

The meaning of Selah

We were diligent, and in many of the Psalms we read the expression, Selah. When we visited Richard Wurmbrand in Los Angeles, he told me that the meaning of Selah had been unlocked. Some said that this was a musical pause, and some thought that it meant de capo al fine. There were arguments about this, but Selah – even its sound is fine –  means something different. When a song finishes, it leaves an echo in the congregation or in the singer. It leaves a sense of holiness and happiness that lingers. Selah is the moment when you hear at once what has been sung, an impression beyond the melody and beyond the text. This congregation was not especially spiritually sensitive, but when we studied these ninety Psalm melodies, they understood that God was taking care of them.

What Happened in Romania

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, 

so far from the words of my groaning?  

Psalm 22: 1

In recent posts, I introduced Denes Fulop, a well-read thinker, a gifted pastor, and an engaged member of the community. He wasn’t a crackpot; he wasn’t a Hungarian nationalist. He was a deeply committed Reformed Christian. And when he was enduring in a concentration camp, I was entering college, an absorbed member of the free to be generation, concerned with a kind of justice that did not include a critique of Communist societies. In this post, I’d like to describe just a little part of what Denes endured. Though the stories themselves are powerful, I’ve included a few references, and if you wish, a quick internet search reveals dozens of related documents. This is a good one:                                                                                                                                       http://www.thegulag.org/

Here's how the state handled dissent.

Unflinching Stalinism: Communism in Romania  ". . . the Dej leadership unleashed ruthless purges of the Bucharest, Cluj and Timisoara universities.

The repression of 1956 set the stage for another wave of terror from 1958 until 1961. The targets were intellectuals who, in the late 1940s were not arrested, but had been only marginalized. This social cleansing accompanied a new offensive toward completing the process of collectivization."                
                                              http://romania.globalmuseumoncommunism.org/content/history0?page=2                                                                                                                                                                  
In the book, Gulag, Anne Applebaum described the gulag system in Romania as concentration camps, places where "enemies of the state" were worked and starved to death. It used methods perfected and exported by the Soviet secret police. p. 454

Crime and Punishment 

As a seminary student and a Hungarian, Denes was certainly aware of the 1956 events in Hungary. When Russian tanks  helped crush the revolution, like other students, he became the target of the Romanian securitate (secret police). He escaped the purge of dissidents in 1956, and after graduating from the seminary, became the assistant in the castle church in Marosvasarhely (Targu Mures).

He was caught in a later wave of terror and arrested. Following his arrest, Denes was flown to Kolozsvar (Cluj) and lodged in the Gherla prison where for six months he was interrogated and then beaten when he refused to reveal names or events. He soon learned that though he didn't talk, others did.

Gherla Prison

Though Denes had never confessed anything, he was brought to trial because the prosecutor had produced a witness he thought was reliable. Wearing chains and shackles, Feri, the young seminary student who, under torture had talked about Denes, now in court denied it all. The judge was furious and ordered him out of the courtroom. Here’s how Fulop described the scene many years later, "In the deathly silence that fell over us, Feri turned to leave. The only sound to be heard was the clanking of his chains as he made his way down the hall."

The Danube Concentration Camp

At a second trial, Denes was  convicted and sent to one of the labor camps at the delta of the Danube River."For a while, I lived on a wreck of a boat decaying in the middle of a field of bamboo located between the dike and the river. During the winter, we were herded out on to the ice to harvest this bamboo. The rusting boat was home to 400 men crowded into stacks of metal bunkbeds. The whole boat was made of thick metal, If it was warmer inside than out, water condensed and dripped down, black and dirty. The fetid smoke from smoldering wood mixed with the humid air creating filthy conditions."

The cold was terrible, especially because we were very thin, and due to lack of nutrition had little strength. Many times we were so hungry that we collected leaves growing at the edges of the fields where we worked, plants we used to feed the pigs at home.  We also gathered another source of food, the snails attached to our pants."

One of his most terrible memories was of a Sunday morning early in the spring, a day when the milder weather had caused the ice to begin to thaw.  It was not strong enough to hold the weight of the prisoners, the bamboo cutters. Like the days before, the men marched out on to the ice. It caved in under their weight and with a sickening whoosh, they fell through. Those who followed tried to stop, but with guns and dogs the guards forced them to continue into the icy water. The whole group of prisoners reacted as one with an animal shout, frightening the guards. The sergeant was a cruel man and forced the men to stay in the icy water all day long. The cold and suffering was so great that prisoners begged the guards to shoot them.


While researching the camps in Romania, I found a site constructed by high school students in Romania. Given the status of the world today, it was heart wrenching to read of their hope that the genocides of the 20th century would never be repeated. To see how they described Gherla Prison, the Pitesti Prison, and the Danube Delta camps, see their website:                                                                                                                                                          http://library.thinkquest.org/o8aug/1956gherla_en.html

I must confess that the impact of the stories grew on me, especially when we began to translate and transcribe them. At first I was immersed in the organizational and personal details of the project, keeping track of costs, of the schedule, and always aware that I was the foreigner in the group. When we began to translate and transcribe them, I began to realize that I and my generation had been deaf to stories of unspeakable horror. We justified our deafness with a selective definition of justice that did not include our Reformed brothers and sisters behind an iron curtain whose existence we barely acknowledged.

When atrocities happen,

those who remain silent and don't speak or act against evil

become its accomplices.