On the recordSeptember 14, 2011
I yield myself the balance of my time. I just want to again thank Congressman Frank Wolf, Chairman Wolf, for his eloquence and for his passion for those men and women and children of faith who suffer terrible, terrible injustices around the world, including persecution. There were two books that got me involved, in all candor, in religious freedom issues--there were two incidents in my first year in Congress in 1981--``Tortured for Christ,'' by Richard Wurmbrand, who was a great evangelical pastor who spent years being tortured by the Securitate in Romania because of his faith. He made an appeal, and he said, Do not sit idly by while men and women of any faith are being tortured and persecuted because of that faith, because it's not just the individual who suffers; the entire family suffers; and very often they're incarcerated and tortured as well. The other was the trip to the Soviet Union with the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in 1982, January. It was 10 days in Moscow and Leningrad, meeting Soviet Jewish refusniks who were persecuted, who were put into psychiatric prisons simply because of their faith. A couple of years later, Mr. Wolf and I went to Perm Camp 35 in the Ural Mountains. It took years to negotiate our way in. This was in 1987. We met with persecuted Jewish refusniks and Christians and political prisoners who were there simply because of their faith.…
