Wartski: A Boat to Nowhere

 

A Boat to Nowhere

Maureen Crane Wartski

Published 1980

Historical Fiction

⭐⭐⭐

I read this historical fiction to my kids as part of our study on communism in Asia. 

A grandfather and his two grandchildren, Mai and Loc, whom he had cared for after their own parents died, lived in a remote village on the farthest point of South Vietnam. The Vietnam War had ended and the communist government had moved into the South, though it had taken some time to get into this particular area. 

The day the government officials made their way into the village, it was apparent they meant to make changes immediately, instituting the confiscation of half of everything the villagers manufactured, produced, sold, or caught from the sea. If one did not agree or comply, he must attend a re-education camp. That is precisely why they intended to take Grandfather since he knew too much already. 

However, before the officials could take him away, Kien (his adopted teen grandson), along with Mai and Loc, encouraged him to escape by way of the village fishing boat, Sea Breeze. Only Grandfather knew how to navigate the stars at night and the sun by day. With his knowledge and Kien's fishing skill, they could make it to Thailand. With very little food or supplies, they evaded the officials and headed west, hopeful to make a temporary home elsewhere with the promise to return to Vietnam in the future. 

They became known as the Boat People. 

It is estimated between 800,000 to two million South Vietnamese escaped between 1975 to 1995. They fled to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and  Indonesia. Some were turned away and countless died at sea. 

Why did people flee Vietnam after the Vietnam War? Because communism is incessant and promises only hell on earth. The South Vietnamese feared retaliation, re-education (brainwashing), and imprisonment (torture). They would rather face death on the open sea -- dehydration, starvation, sharks, storms, and shipwreck -- than fall into the hands of an ideology that is cruel, wicked, and inhumane. 

While I was reading this book, I was sure it was a true story, but it is not. At best, it is an historical fiction. Sadly, Vietnam still embraces Marxist/Leninist ideologies and is governed by only Communists, but today it is considered to be a Socialist Republic. I do not know much more about what it is like to live there now and I wonder if any Boat People returned to Vietnam, like Grandfather had hoped to. 

Grandfather had never made it back to Vietnam. And he never got to see his grandchildren rescued at sea. 

* * *

Popov: Tortured for His Faith

Tortured for His Faith

Haralan Popov

Published 1970

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

reread

A lie is always a lie. Neither Marxists nor Leninists 

will ever succeed in building an earthly paradise upon a lie.

Haralan Popov (1907-1988), a Bulgarian Christian pastor, was arrested in 1948 for "treason" (ie. being  Christian) by the communist state government. [Recall: following WWII, Eastern Europe fell under the authority and influence of the Soviet Union.] In prison, Popov survived thirteen years of unimaginable hard labor, starvation, isolation, separation from loved ones, and barbaric mental and physical torture. He did not see his wife and children for at least eleven years. 

This is a startling, shocking, and yet, inspiring story about perseverance through persecution; by God's grace, Haralan Popov lived to tell it. 

COMMUNISM REQUIRES BRAINLESSNESS 

So, why did the communist government arrest pastors? Because communism (like most tyrannical governments) cannot compete with religion, particularly Christianity, especially because Satan knows that  God's Word demands that we use our mind to think about why we believe. Communism cannot afford for people to think. It requires absolute empty-headedness, that one would be ripe for brainwashing. 

As Popov explained in the breaking of one's will and brainwashing, one meant imprisonment, the other  freedom...

Let me point out again the difference between breaking our will and brainwashing us. My will was broken after six months of being beaten into helplessness, until my human body reached its very limits and physically crumbled. It was temporary. 

Breaking the will led to imprisonment, starvation, and suffering.  

Brainwashing is permanently convincing someone communism is good. They could break my will, but they could never brainwash me! 

Successful brainwashing brought the false sense of freedom. 

UNDERSTANDING COMMUNISM, IN POPOV'S WORDS:

Popov saw a sign posted on [the guard house] that read * Man is something to be proud of, a Maxim Gorki quote. Popov found this ironic considering they were treated like animals. He thought about how "God's Word teaches that man is the crown of creation," and that "nothing on the face of the earth is greater than man." And yet, how odd that commies who refuse to receive Christ and do not value human life would post such a quote for all to read. 

He said,

This is the difference between communism in theory and communism in reality...four or five thousand men had been gathered inside the barbed wire enclosure. We were called enemies, because we hadn't surrendered and hadn't permitted the communists' ideals to triumph over our minds and hearts. Communism demands complete conformity and subservience. We had refused to conform and were the vilest enemy. According to the words* on the guard house, these men, at one time, had been something to be proud of. In reality the quotation is a good argument against communism. It hurt us that only we, the enemies of communism, could read them.  

WHILE IN PRISON

Popov courageously rose to the occasion and continued preaching the gospel to his fellow prisoners, and with God's help, he did move mountains. 

We have faced not men, but Satan himself. Though he has done his work well, I for one am more determined than ever that in the end God will triumph. Brethren remember, 'He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world.' they have won the battle, but with God's help we will win the war.

I remind my readers, when man is without God there is no limit to his depravity or to the depths to which he will sink. These guards descended the ladder of humanity step by step until they had no humanity or kindness left. 

Popov admitted that "men in prison are at the end of themselves." Their normal lives consist of a family  and a job, as well as material things, "which can dull a man's need for God." In prison, "all this was taken away. Men had time to think. Their values became clear in prison and many genuinely realized their need of God." Hence, Popov found great demand for a prison pastor.  

Once a Bible was found tucked away in the prison library. (How that escaped the noses of the commies, only God knows.) From it, Popov memorize 47 chapters before it was discovered and confiscated. Popov also taught Scripture while pretending to teach English to other prisoners. The guards did not know or understand English, and therefore were ignorant of these truth-sharing opportunities.

As more men wanted to hear the truth, they learned a kind of morse code and tapped it out on the prison walls to one another. This way the gospel spread and prisoners were saved. Popov praised God: "Thank you, Lord, for the new congregation you sent me."

HIS RELEASE!

Finally, after thirteen years of witnessing and experiencing savage horror, Popov was released from his prison sentence. He admitted this:

I could honestly and truthfully say that it was worth those 13 years of torture, beatings, starvation, suffering and separation from loved ones to be a pastor to the thousands of communist prisoners my path had crossed. 

Outside of prison he prayed that "he could faithfully serve God in freedom as he tried to do in prison." Since he was prevented from traveling outside of Bulgaria, much time would pass before he would be reunited with his wife, who was living in Sweden, and his grown children. 

Therefore, he made himself useful to God. His next mission was to help the local churches. He found that the commies took over the Churches and destroyed them. Uncooperative pastors were replaced with malleable types. Attendance had fallen from two and three hundred to under twenty. 

HOW TO BEAT A COMMIE

As Winston learned in 1984, you cannot overcome the communists; the best you can do is break their rules. Therefore, the underground Secret Church was formed. People started to meet in homes for faux funerals and birthday parties. Lots of birthday parties. People had multiple birthdays all year long. 

A beautiful thing began to happen in the Secret Church. As the fires of persecution grew, they burned away the chaff and stubble and left only the golden wheat. The suffering purified the Church and united the believers in a wonderful spirit of brotherly love such as must have existed in the Early Church. Petty differences were put aside. Brethren loved and cared for one another and carried one another's burdens. There were no "lukewarm" believers. It made no sense to be a halfhearted Christian when the price for faith was so great. 

And to the Commies great regret, this was the healthiest thing they could have done for the church, for the insincere gave up but the true Christian became aware of what Christ meant to them...

But there was one more obstacle. Bibles were very difficult to find. People started handwriting their own Bibles from a lone Bible, which was a lengthy and arduous project. Popov realized that someone needed to get word out to the Church and "awaken fellow Christians living in the free world," to find a way to get Bibles to the persecuted Christians. Then by God's will, Popov was granted a passport, and on New Year's Eve 1962, he made his way Stockholm to reunite with his wife. He would be the one to carry the message to the free world.

Some years later, he founded a mission, Door of Hope International, to help persecuted and imprisoned Christians all over the world. And today that mission is still doing a good work all because of the love of Christ by one man, Haralan Popov, and his wife, Ruth. 

 * * * 

First review can be read HERE. 

Buck: Sons

Sons

Pearl S. Buck

Published 1932

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was one of my more challenging books to read aloud. Not for context's sake, but because the words did not glide off my tongue as easily. I had this same issue with The Good Earth, the first book in the Good Earth Trilogy. I have not researched Buck's writing style, if it was intentional to the story; it did not read smoothly like butter but more like refrigerated whipped unsalted butter in a tub, which is supposed to be fluffy and smooth and easy to spread, but is actually coarse and rugged. I know...all that to describe how I struggled with reading aloud. 

But on to the context.

Sons continues where The Good Earth ended. The patriarch, Wang Lung, dies, and his three sons prepare his funeral and divide his property. Each son, who is referred by family name, Wang, and his placement at birth, or later, by a personal characteristic, is unique in his ideals, individuality, and interests. 

Wang the Eldest is an avaricious, overweight, indolent husband and father who prefers women and idleness. He is known as Wang the Landlord. Wang the Second is business keen and does not complicate his life with wastefulness or extra wives. He is known as Wang the Merchant. But the third brother, Wang the Tiger, who rebelled against his father's will in The Good Earth, has returned briefly for the funeral, and he has been expanding his ambition to build and lead his own military. 

He realizes he has no son to train up as a soldier to pass on his army of warriors, and he convinces his two older brothers to spare one of their sons each, which they agree. One proves to be fit to serve, but the other fails. Guess which one failed.

Meanwhile, the majority of the story focuses on Wang the Tiger's successful schemes to take over existing armies and regions of land. He expands his military and extends his small empire. But what he desires more than anything in the world is a son of his own. He later contradicts his own principles on women and takes two wives in the hope that one of them will give him a son, which does happen. And it is his greatest pride, to the point of worship. 

Wang the Tiger conditions his son for the military, but as is common, his son does not share his father's desire. He does not want to be a warrior or lead his father's army. For whatever reason, he is more interested in the farmer, agriculture, and the land. It is as if the story has come full circle, back to Wang Lung, the Patriarch.

As the story closes, Wang the Tiger's son has returned from "military school" in a new uniform. His father asked, 

What strange garb is that you wear?

To which his son replied,

It is the garb of the new army of the revolution.

Wang the Tiger shouted:

It is the army of my enemy! You are my enemy -- I ought to kill you, my son!

The story ends, but it is not final. There is one more in the trilogy: A House Divided. 

Overall, Sons reads like a soap opera. Though I did not include the details of every character in this little blurb, Pearl Buck does not forget about anyone. There is old age and tragedy and death, and plenty of growing up and marriage. The times of China are changing, too. So, we shall see what will become of the House of Wang.

 

Pearl S. Buck  (1892 - 1973) 

* * * 

Hautzig: The Endless Steppe

 

The Endless Steppe

Esther Hautzig

Published 1968

⭐⭐⭐⭐

And I think that someplace inside of me there was something else -- some little pleasurable pride that the little rich girl of Vilna had endured poverty just as well as anyone else. 

The Endless Steppe is a true story, a memoir about young Esther Hautzig and her immediate family living in exile on the steppes of Siberia during WWII. During the war, life was comfy and privileged in Poland until Esther and her family were arrested by the Soviet government, accused of being "capitalists," -- what a crime! It took two months by crowded cattle car to arrive in Siberia, where they were assigned to hard labor camps and had little access to food or clothing to sustain themselves through winter.

However, thanks to the intervention of Britain, Esther's family was released from their initial assignments and permitted to live in a village where they shared a home with other poor villagers. Esther's parents found menial work in order to survive, and Esther was allowed to go to school. 

For the next five years, Esther grew up assimilating to the Russian language, the culture, and Soviet  nationalism. She made friends and even had a crush. Life was typical for this young teenager; all she desired was to be liked by others and to make friendships. Absolute poverty and near starvation could not suppress her coming-of-age experience. Even a lack of school books and supplies did not prevent her from studying, learning, and excelling.

When Esther's father was ordered to the front lines of Russia, Esther, her mother, and grandmother had to be extra resourceful to find food. Esther did her part and learned how to sew to make clothes for others in exchange for milk and potatoes. She also collected food that fell from passing trains, which she did apprehensively because she believed it was theft. 

At the end of the war, Esther's father returned to Poland, and he wrote to his wife to come home. Esther protested because she felt connected to the steppe -- she had fallen in love with it.

I had come to love the steppe, the huge space, and the solitude. Living in the crowded little huts, the steepe had become the place where a person could think her thoughts, sort out her feelings, and do her dreaming. 

But obviously, she must return to Poland. Unfortunately, someone else was living in their home now, and all of their belongings were gone, including the photo albums that Esther had wanted to take when they were arrested. It was a "crushing blow," Esther remembers, that nothing of their past remained.

And then came the most terrible news of all. It came from survivors of the concentration camps,...all the members of my father's family -- not one of them had survived the German massacre of the Jews. Of my mother's family...My mother's brother, sister, her mother, her aunts and uncles, my beloved cousins, all were dead. 

Here they discovered that their own deportation to Siberia had saved their lives. "Hunger, cold, and misery were nothing; life had been granted" to them. They thanked God. 

* * *

I am thankful to have found this little gem because it is a history I knew nothing about. Esther was just a sweet girl full of love for family with an encouraging and joyful spirit. Under such hardship, she rose to the occasion, demonstrating resourcefulness, perseverance, and courage. 

It was only after an American presidential candidate had encouraged Esther to write about her personal experiences that she did so. She wrote this autobiographical story as if she were that young girl reliving her days in Siberia again, though over twenty years had passed. Now, gratefully, we have her story forever.

Esther (Rudomin) Hautzig

1930 - 2009

Top Ten Tuesday (late edition): ten books on my spring tbr list

 

If it is at all possible for me to have a seasonal reading list, then this is what it would look like:

These are a given because I mean to read them with my kids as we finish up our school year before June:

Buck: A House Divided

Park: In Order to Live (reread)

Wartski: Boat to Nowhere

Ji-li Jang: Red Scarf Girl

And the next books are personal choices. I am slogging through Les Mis right now and am longing for more enjoyable reads, which these would be. So, as soon as I finish LM...:

Kovaciny: One Bad Apple

Williams: selected poetry (WEM)

Pound: selected poetry (WEM)

Stewart: Letters of a Woman Homesteader (reread)

Lewis: The Four Loves

Rand: Anthem

By the way, I am still reading and will continue to read these through the spring...

Fraser (ed): The Little House Books 

McGee: Through the Bible (Vol. 1 - V)

...and a few others.

🙄