Witnessing for Jehovah in a Communist Country

About this book

Jan Černý was twenty years old, a rising academic and national-level volleyball player in communist Czechoslovakia, when a chance encounter at a summer resort led him into the clandestine world of Jehovah's Witnesses. What followed was twenty-five years of total immersion in an underground religious movement. Černý recounts how his faith cost him everything: expelled from Charles University a year before graduation; evicted from his dormitory; interrogated four times by the State Secret Police; subjected to house searches; and committed for three months to Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital. He describes operating at the highest levels of the Czech Witness leadership, serving as secretary to the movement's legendary head Bohumil Müller; conducting secret missionary work deep in the Bulgarian mountains; and interpreting for members of the international governing body. He knew who of the Witness leaders collaborated with the communist secret police; how its literature was censored; and how loyalties were bought, broken, and betrayed.