Efforts to Legalize the Preaching Work

After the 1925 ban on the preaching work, the brothers at the branch office in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, submitted a 50-page, typewritten report to the minister of cults. Along with a brief statement of our teachings and beliefs, it included an official request to lift the ban. Subsequently, in September 1927, one of the brothers was granted a personal audience with the minister on three separate occasions. He left the final meeting hopeful that the law would be changed to favor freedom of worship. Regrettably, though, the government disregarded the brothers’ appeals. In fact, officials continued to frame trouble by decree, making things worse for Jehovah’s people, not better. (Ps. 94:20; Dan. 6:5-9) In this regard, an official document dated May 29, 1932, stated that “every kind of activity” of the International Bible Students “is totally prohibited.”

On May 6, 1937, the brothers in that very district wrote to the prefect asking that Jehovah’s Witnesses be removed from the list of illegal sects. The official response was made clear in a letter from the county chief of the district of Soroca to the prefect of that same district. Dated June 15, 1937, it said: “The activity of [Jehovah’s Witnesses] is prohibited by . . . the Ministry of Cults and Arts. Therefore, we cannot satisfy their request to be taken off the list of [illegal] sects, since they continue to work actively for the interests of that sect.”

Affirming that hostile stand, the official government journal, Monitorul Oficial, said, on July 12, 1939, that Jehovah’s Witnesses and any legal entities they might use are “totally prohibited.”