"Whose book is this?"
The voice of the policeman was sharp, insistent. As an officer of the Securitate—the secret police force of Romania's communist government—he was once again visiting the home of that troublemaker, Ion Caba. Pastor Caba who never did what he was told, despite imprisonments, beatings, torture. Pastor Caba who continued to preach that Christ the Savior was greater than Ceauşescu the dictator. Pastor Caba who—he was fairly certain—was smuggling shipments of illegal Bibles into Romania, under their very noses.
But this was no Bible. It was a children's story: a slim little volume, translated into Romanian from the original English: "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."
In truth, it had indeed come into the Caba home along with a shipment of Bibles. While the rest of the shipment had been safely hidden away, this book had remained behind in the eager hands of Pastor Caba's second daughter, Corina.
Corina had been awake half the night devouring the story: a beautiful land, locked in the iron grip of a merciless tyrant who forbade even the celebration of Christmas. A pervasive atmosphere of secrecy, brutality, and fear. Spies everywhere. Even the trees might be listening.
It all sounded so very . . . familiar.
The Securitate officer seemed to see it too. "This book is a wicked, mocking parody of our glorious socialism!"
Corina never again saw that little book she'd carelessly left by her bedside. But its themes remained in her mind. If the White Witch could be conquered, maybe Ceauşescu too could fall. Maybe one day she'd awake to find that the spell had been broken and Father Christmas had come.
That day finally did come, when Corina was nearly grown up. It was December 1989, and Ceauşescu's starving, imprisoned people had finally had enough: enough of the bread lines, enough of the fear, enough of the lies about their glorious socialism. Unrest began in Timişoara and then began to spread like a wildfire in the wind. When the dictator emerged from his balcony in Bucharest to give a speech to throngs of assembled Romanians on December 21, he heard a sound he'd never heard before: booing. And then, chanting: "Timişoara! Timişoara!" Live TV cameras broadcast the tyrant's face—shocked, even panicked—into every Romanian home. It was the beginning of the end.
Four days later—Christmas Day 1989—the end came. It was a swift judgment upon the head of the dictator and his equally tyrannical wife, not so much a model of judicial fairness as an example that "he who lives by the sword will die by it." Of the many Communist governments that crumbled across Eastern Europe that year, Romania's revolution was the only bloody one—the only one where the government slaughtered its own people, and was repaid in kind.
As for Corina, in the coming months she, along with most of her fellow Romanians, was shocked to learn that Ceauşescu had warehoused half a million children in concentration-camp-like orphanages. Helping these abandoned, neglected, and abused children became the cause of her life.
Today, 30 years later, Corina is still working to overcome this, the most shameful part of Communism's dreadful legacy. While much has changed and improved in Romania over three decades, the Communist mindset—especially as it relates to vulnerable children—is slow to fade. It's a battle, and we are honored to be a part of it, fighting alongside Corina and her staff. Together we have been able to place hundreds of vulnerable children into loving, forever families.
We invite you to join us in this work, in the fight for children. You can start by reading more right here or giving today.