• Russia
    2008 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • OBSERVING THE MEMORIAL

      Each year, the brothers tried to observe the Memorial in the camps. In all the years that they spent in one camp in Mordvinia, none of the brothers missed this event. The camp administration, of course, tried to prevent the observance. They knew the date of the Memorial, and usually on that day, they would mobilize all the camp units to be on high alert. Toward evening, however, most guards got tired of watching the brothers closely, since no one knew the place or the exact time when the Memorial was going to be held.

      The brothers always made efforts to obtain wine and unleavened bread. One time a surveillance guard unit discovered the emblems in a drawer on the day of the Memorial and confiscated them. Later, that unit was replaced by another guard unit, and a brother who cleaned the unit commander’s office was able to retrieve the emblems and pass them to the brothers without being seen. That evening the brothers observed the Memorial with the emblems during the third surveillance shift. The emblems were especially needed since one of the brothers was a partaker.

      OBSERVING THE MEMORIAL AT A WOMEN’S CAMP

      Other camps had similar problems. Valentina Garnovskaya remembers how extremely difficult it was to observe the Memorial at a women’s camp in Kemerovo. She says: “This camp held about 180 sisters. We were forbidden to meet together. In ten years we were only able to observe the Memorial twice. One time we decided to hold the Memorial in one of the offices that I was in charge of cleaning. The sisters secretly began to gather there, coming in gradually over a period of several hours before the Memorial was to begin. About 80 sisters made it. We placed unleavened bread and dry red wine on the desk.

      “We decided to start without the song, so a sister gave the opening prayer, and everything began in a worthy and joyful manner. But then we heard unexpected noises and shouts and realized that the foremen were looking for us. Suddenly, we saw the unit commander himself looking through the window, although the window was high off the ground. Simultaneously, there was a loud banging at the door, and someone demanded that we open it. Bursting in, the foremen grabbed the sister giving the talk and led her away to solitary confinement. Another sister courageously took her place to continue the talk, but they grabbed her too. Right after her, a third sister tried to keep the talk going, so they herded all of us into another room, threatening us with solitary confinement. There we finished observing the Memorial by singing a song and closing with prayer.

      “When we returned to the barracks, the other prisoners greeted us with these words, ‘When you all suddenly disappeared, we decided that Armageddon had come and that God had taken you up to heaven and left us here to be destroyed!’ These prisoners had already been with us for a few years without accepting the truth. But after this, some of them began to listen.”