FACING TESTS DURING ISOLATION

All those seeking to please Jehovah were put through various tests, both during and after the Civil War, but the men especially were tested. If the start of the war found them living in territory controlled by the Republicans, they were expected to fight with them. However, if they were in “rebel” territory, they were expected to fight for the right-wing Catholic forces. Let us not forget that this issue arose in 1936, and although the brothers had a basic understanding of Christian neutrality, they did not have the benefit of The Watchtower dealing with that subject, which did not appear in English until November 1939. So, each brother knew that he had to maintain integrity one way or another, but lacked the clear vision that came later, as well as contact with the visible organization so as to resolve any doubts he had.

To illustrate the problems of those days, let us consider the case of Nemesio Orús, a married man with three small children living in Huesca. A few days after the war started, he was visited as a suspected Communist or Freemason, and his visitors tried to obligate him to applaud the soldiers as they were going off to war. Pressure also was applied to get him to join the local Fascist group. When he refused to do these things, he ended up on the “blacklist” for future reprisals.

One night in August 1936, Nemesio was arrested, interrogated by the police inspector, and jailed. Eventually he found himself in the Zaragoza jail, where he spent twelve days in a cell without a mattress, sleeping on just a blanket doubled on the floor. For witnessing to the other prisoners, Nemesio was put in solitary confinement for thirteen days. Finally, on December 16, 1936, he was released from prison.

This, however, did not end matters. The Orús family moved to Ansó where, in the winter of 1937, Nemesio received a notice from the Town Hall that he should present himself for military service. Desiring to maintain Christian neutrality, he did not comply, was jailed once again and finally freed as being medically unfit for military service. Thereafter, the Orús family moved to Barbastro, another town in the province of Huesca, where Nemesio again established his watch-repair business. He then lost all contact with God’s people for some ten years.

The new rulers were determined to eliminate all vestiges of the previous republican rule, and so there was strict censorship of the mail and the press. Accordingly, when Sisters Natividad Bargueño and Clara Buendía decided to write to the Watch Tower Society in Brooklyn to obtain literature, their correspondence was mailed in vain. Their letters never left Spain, but were intercepted by the censor. A few days later the police called at the homes of these sisters and, after questioning them, and in one case searching the house, they warned them to drop their interest in these “lies.”

At that time it was required that all letters sent should have patriotic phrases written on the envelope. Otherwise, the mail would not be delivered. Therefore, in order to preserve their neutrality, God’s people did not write to the Society.