Perspective

"With God in Russia" by Walter J. Ciszek is an autobiographical account of the author's experience as a political prisoner in the Soviet prison camp system during World War II. The book is written in the first-person narrative as Ciszek recalls actual events. No one could better relate his reactions and feelings to the horrid situation that he found himself in that the priest himself.

Religion is a big part of this story, especially religious suppression. With his consecration as a Jesuit priest, he felt the frustration and hurt when his attempts to serve the abandoned Catholics of Russia were repudiated by the Soviet officials who served in a Communist society that rejected religion wholesale.

Ciszek provides a valuable historical account of the behavior of the paranoid Soviet officials who were unafraid of conflict and violence but were terrified of truth. Since he went through the ordeal himself...