Boris Kornfeld

(I wrote this back in 2002, near as I can date it.  This was a part of my very first blog - destroyed by hackers and apparently, I never re-posted it!  Very surprising to have run across and then discovered I had not re-blogged.  I only learned about it via an old email from a publishing company wanting to use this as one of their devotionals!  Wow, someone liked something I wrote!  I think the original title was, You Can Change The World, back then.  I re-titled it Boris Kornfeld in the second blog, which was also destroyed, and the follow four!  This was part of a long conversation I had with Francis Schaeffer, on a Lucerne, Switzerland bridge - perhaps during spring of 1967?  His story moved me so much, I wrote it down that afternoon back at the hotel! Hope you like the memory ...)

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Whether you realize it or not, your faith in Christ is not without cost to you. 

Unfortunately, you live in a country where, if you live the typical American dream, about the worst thing that can happen is someone might make fun of you at school for being a Christian – assuming anyone even knows or cares.  But, this has not been true throughout the past two thousand years – to hold fast to your faith in Christ does come with a price and often that price is your life, the love of your family, fellowship with your friends and/or financial freedom. 

We have a God who promises “…all things will work for (HIS) good…”.  What good can possibly come from the loss of your life, family, friends and/or possessions?  Well, just ten years ago, the world changed mightily, though you may have been too young to care.  And, that change can be directly traced back to the workings of God during the winter of 1956, in the lives of three men.  

Our story takes place in the old Soviet Union, in order to rebuild their country destroyed during the war, they were in need of massive amounts of wood.  To gather the incredible amount of wood needed, required millions of men to build railroads, river barges, terminals, sawmills and ships, plus the cutting of wood and getting it to a river or railhead.  Along the way, gold and platinum were found in great amounts throughout Siberia and even more men were needed to mine these precious metals – conquering the world is expensive business!

So, let us see exactly how God used this situation and the lives of three men to change the world:

Boris Kornfeld, was a Russian medical doctor who ran a foul of the post war Soviet government and was exiled to a Siberian wood cutting camp for an unspecified political crime.  Siberia was more than a land of slave labor camps, it was a land of death camps – to be condemned to Siberia was to be condemned to death.  The hard work and danger of cutting timber, combined with a poor diet and lack of warmth, guaranteed few survivors and no successful escapes.

Unlike most of the prisoners, Kornfeld was a Jew – and not a very religious one at that.  With a name like Kornfeld, he was probably also of German extraction, perhaps a Volga German, exiled by Stalin by the millions to Siberia following the war.  Of the estimated 50 million Russians Stalin exiled to Siberian camps, about 32 million were Christian’s - sent in order to purify the land of their influence.

Kornfeld, across time, came to understand Christianity and, under the influence of a devoted Christian in his barracks, accepted Christ as his savior.  This Christian friend and him were deeply troubled by the treatment of prisoners by the guards and began reporting beatings, thefts of foods, etc. which they witnessed daily.  First, they complained to the camp commander and then the International Red Cross workers who would come for an inspection.  His Christian friend was not to live much longer and died from an accident with a mallet in the camp wood shop one night.

Fearing for his own life, Kornfeld moved into the camp hospital, in hopes that the guards would not be so brazen as to kill him in the hospital with 24 hour witnesses present.  He understood he was a marked man and that he could die at any time – and having accepted this as fact, he found the freedom to take a stand for Christ in that camp.  He continued to report on the inhumanity he observed in the camp and to witness for Christ – not only to other prisoners but also to the guards.

One night, a young prisoner was brought in from another camp, who had been operated on for stomach cancer.  As he cared for this unknown man, Kornfeld began to talk with him, during those times when the young man was awake.  All through the night he shared the story of his life, what Christ had done for him and the freedom he had now found.  The young man, also a Jew and also with a doctorate education, could not believe what he was hearing.  But, he continued to question and discuss throughout the pain filled night, the story Kornfeld shared with him.  Eventually, the young man was to drift off into a deep sleep.

The following day, once he was awake, he asked an intern to speak with the doctor whom had been with him throughout the previous night, only to learn that his caregiver had an accident with a large mallet during the night and was now missing a part of his head.

As he lay confined to his bed, he thought long on the discussions he had with Boris Kornfeld during that long and fateful night.  “Of what value was life, if a man could comfort him and yet the next second be obviously murdered beside his bed?”  The question haunted him until the night he too made the decision to accept Christ as his savior.

That man, who was to come to Christ, was Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Peace laureate, a major player in the creation of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb and future author of the “Gulag Archipelago” - the book smuggled out of Russia, a few pages at a time, by Swedish Red Cross workers.

It wasn’t until 1969 that a sufficient number of pages had been assembled in Sweden so that the book could finally be published in 1970.  Prior to this work, the world only saw the Soviet Union as a country of tremendous military and scientific achievement.  No one knew of the horrors of the Soviet Gulag system – not about the 8.5 million Christian dead, nor the estimated 32 million killed without “due process of law”, nor of the 18 million barely surviving in Siberian camps, nor that there ever was an insignificant Jewish doctor named Boris Kornfeld – whose legacy was to change map the world.  And, this book told the entire world for the very first time the shameful secrets of the Soviet system.

People were in disbelief - the story could not possibly be true.  Numerous governments and the UN began investigations to find out exactly what was true.  But by 1973, the truth was fully known.  Not only had satellites mapped the locations of thousands of camps in Siberia, but a botched attempt to expand Soviet influence into the middle east, by wiping out Israel, had left Soviet military might in question.  It still took 19 more years and millions of lives more before the Soviet Union finally collapsed.  The country that had once banned God, burned Bibles, leveled church buildings and killed more believers than had died in all of history’s persecutions combined, was now itself dead - as were many of its leaders.

Today the threat of communism is mostly gone.  But, the price paid by the Russian believers trapped under the dictates of their government was high.  Where will those opposed to Christ raise their banner next?  Russia still struggles – torn between those who still believe in the old system of godlessness and those who are pushing for religious liberty in their land.  The lesson they have learned is that government can not be trusted to protect your right of religious worship.  But, they also have seen that God will call into account those who oppose Him.  And, now they struggle to live in a country that is under God’s judgement – life is no easier for the Christian than it is for the atheist.

If one man could be pointed to, as being solely responsible for the downfall of the Soviet state, it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Yes, the western countries, lead by the US economy and military innovations, forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy through excessive military expenditures, but the “Gulag Archipelago” showed the world that the Communist hierarchy was morally bankrupt as well.  And, with this bankruptcy, God raised up a tiny army of people willing to put their lives on the line to bring Christ to this atheistic country and comfort to the persecuted believers.

But, that will be another tale - for me to share another time.