Vânați de Regim: Martorii lui Iehova sub comunism

In the 1950s, the communist regime in Romania launched one of the harshest campaigns of religious repression in Eastern Europe. Jehovah’s Witnesses – a group without churches, without official hierarchies and without the protection of a recognized cult – became the direct target of the Securitate. Total ban, accusations of “conspiracy against social order”, underground networks, clandestine printing presses, couriers who transported leaflets through the mountains, mass arrests and sentences of 20–25 years composed a mechanism of terror that affected hundreds of people between 1957 and 1959. This episode tells the story of the Ungvári, Fülöp and Kovács lots – three forgotten trials that reveal how a totalitarian state tried to destroy a religious community through surveillance, violence, manipulation and fear. But it is also the story of a silent resistance: simple people, peasants, workers, women and men who chose faith over compromise, regardless of the price. The episode is based on documents and analyses published in the academic volume “Repression and Social Control in Communist Romania”, coordinated by Adrian Cioflâncă and Luciana M. Jinga, Yearbook of the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism and the Memory of Romanian Exile (vol. V–VI, 2010–2011). Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:29 An American Sect on Romanian Soil 08:28 Underground Resistance 21:55 The Pioneer 27:34 The Regional Servant 36:08 The Successor 42:58 Article 209 49:53 Sentences and Silences