In 1939 Fr Walter Ciszek, a Polish-American Jesuit serving in Poland was swept up by the Red Army and sent to a labor camp in Russia. When his identity was discovered he was arrested as a spy and confined for 5 years of solitary confinement in Moscow: his “school of prayer.”
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Then sentenced to 15 yrs of hard labor in Siberia. All the while his Jesuit family believed him dead. He survived this ordeal plus extra years in remote Siberian towns before he was suddenly returned to the US in exchange for Soviet spies. 23 years in USSR. He died Dec 8 1984
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What enabled his survival was his “abandonment to providence”—conviction that in every moment he was where God wished him to be. Thus he found freedom and peace. “I realized that true freedom meant nothing else than letting God operate within my soul without interference.”
Gordana Biernat, Fr. Ciszek sounds like someone you would be interested in. Some differences of language but major overlap in thought.
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