At the heart of any decent life lies remembering. It is a generous thing to remember what people before us have done and endured. It also strengthens our own sense of what we are about. Gerard Rummery’s book is a memorial mainly of endurance. For many years he was a bridge with the De La Salle Brothers behind the Iron Curtain. It records the stories of brothers who worked in Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. They were abused, imprisoned, separated and spied upon and restricted in their ability to work as Brothers for many years. They remained faithful, and now work again with youth. They have fulfilled John Baptist De la Salle’s hope that his followers would be brothers to one another and brothers to the young. The book offers a short overview of the brothers’ experience in the three countries, presents some of their own accounts and pen pictures of notable brothers, and sketches the beginnings of their renewed activities since the downfall of Communism. The Communist governments treated the brothers in ways that tried to ensure that they could be brothers neither to their students nor to one another. They confiscated their schools and expelled them from their communities. They imprisoned some brothers for up to fifteen years, and separated the others so that they had to do hard labour in different parts of the country. Despite that, many found time to teach Catholic families at night. and to teach at night. The rigour of their experiences and the heroism needed to survive them are best caught in the brothers’ own words. Romanian Brother Dominic describes in words both chilling and triumphant the end of his day’s hard labour by the Danube: Far above us fly these happy free birds of the Danube, this swamp in all its uncreated abundance for thousands, for millions of years this same peaceful picture. Below them is a water paradise. The sun has set and the long train of prisoners is marching. Never far away smoulders the half burning same dead pain as the poorest of men under heaven suffer. Endless rows of barbed wire: then the gate like the enormous maw of a dragon; hot, hot maize-bread; then the thought of a pleasant shower from head to toe; then the palliasse. This is a story that needs remembering. It is a human story of courage and of the strength of an international brotherhood. Gerard Rummery is an Australian-born De La Salle Brother whose post-graduate studies in Europe led him to become fluent in a number of languages. He served as a staff member and Director of the International Lasallian Centre, Rome, 1978-1986 and was an elected member of the De La Salle General Councuil, 1986-2004. These international positions in his congregation enabled him to come to know and visit Brothers who lived behind the Iron Curtain between 1948 and 1990. This book is his personal and inspirational tribute to the memory of some outstanding members of his religious congregation.
