UD Mother Shares Her View on Communism
Monica Tomutsa
Issue date: 4/25/07 Section: News
Former PBS correspondent, author, and human rights activist Barbara J. Elliot, presented a fresh view of why communism fell in her UD lecture, Character and Courage: Risking it All From John Paul II to the Berlin Wall.
Elliott lived in Germany for several years during the Cold War, and although she worked closely with news and politics, she was shocked when the Wall fell.
"I missed my biggest story as a PBS reporter even though I was sitting right on it. The Berlin wall was about to come down, but I stood there gesticulating for PBS about trade, and why Reagan needed to arm in response to the USSR. But I didn't know what life was like on the other side of the Wall. I had visited, but I didn't know," Elliott said.
In 1989, Elliott prayed asking God to show her what He wanted her to do with her life.
"I was to scoop up all the refugees fleeing across the border into Western Germany. 300,000 people were fleeing into a territory about the size of Oregon. Someone needed to go shelter and love them and help with the transition," she said.
While helping the refugees, Elliott realized that there was a whole side of the story that she had missed as a reporter, and she started to interview refugees discovering that their motivation for resisting communism was their Christian faith.
"Communists believed their ideology like people believe their faith. Resisters confronted not only a totalitarian government, but also false values and morals. Communists were aggressively atheistic and redefined truth, culture, and even language promising the perfected state of man," she said.
It seemed as if Communism was impenetrable, but Poland sparked the revolution.
"In 1979, Pope John Paul II, made his first international visit as pope to Poland. Anybody who lived in Poland described it as a seismic event. The fact that a Pole could become pope was improbable, but that he could come back to speak, galvanized people who were so hopeless. The battles of the spirit and culture are more important than the political climate." She continued, "People had forgotten the truth, and he reminded them that they were children of God, with rights and responsibilities that transcend the rights of the state."
Elliott lived in Germany for several years during the Cold War, and although she worked closely with news and politics, she was shocked when the Wall fell.
"I missed my biggest story as a PBS reporter even though I was sitting right on it. The Berlin wall was about to come down, but I stood there gesticulating for PBS about trade, and why Reagan needed to arm in response to the USSR. But I didn't know what life was like on the other side of the Wall. I had visited, but I didn't know," Elliott said.
In 1989, Elliott prayed asking God to show her what He wanted her to do with her life.
"I was to scoop up all the refugees fleeing across the border into Western Germany. 300,000 people were fleeing into a territory about the size of Oregon. Someone needed to go shelter and love them and help with the transition," she said.
While helping the refugees, Elliott realized that there was a whole side of the story that she had missed as a reporter, and she started to interview refugees discovering that their motivation for resisting communism was their Christian faith.
"Communists believed their ideology like people believe their faith. Resisters confronted not only a totalitarian government, but also false values and morals. Communists were aggressively atheistic and redefined truth, culture, and even language promising the perfected state of man," she said.
It seemed as if Communism was impenetrable, but Poland sparked the revolution.
"In 1979, Pope John Paul II, made his first international visit as pope to Poland. Anybody who lived in Poland described it as a seismic event. The fact that a Pole could become pope was improbable, but that he could come back to speak, galvanized people who were so hopeless. The battles of the spirit and culture are more important than the political climate." She continued, "People had forgotten the truth, and he reminded them that they were children of God, with rights and responsibilities that transcend the rights of the state."
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