The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Nazis
Persecution, Deportation, and Murder, 1933-1945
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
The Jehovah's Witnesses endured intense persecution under the Nazi regime, from 1933 to 1945. Unlike the Jews and others persecuted and killed by virtue of their birth, Jehovah's Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs. The vast majority refused and throughout their struggle, continued to meet, preach, and distribute literature. In the face of torture, maltreatment in concentration camps, and sometimes execution, this unique group won the respect of many contemporaries. Up until now, little has been known of their particular persecution.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Prophecies about the return of the Jews to the Holy Land... classified the Witnesses in Nazi eyes as Zionists," writes Michael Berenbaum, president of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, in his introduction to The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Nazis: Persecution, Deportation, and Murder, 1933-1945 by Michel Reynaud, founder of the publishing house Editions Tiresias, and deportation scholar Sylvie Graffard, trans. from the French by James A. Moorehouse. Approximately 5,000 Witnesses were "voluntary prisoners" in concentration camps they could leave if they renounced their religion; most refused freedom. Many continued practicing their religion within the camps; one woman still free baked biblical passages into cookies to smuggle into Dachau. The previously untold history receives scholarly, sensitive treatment in this important addition to Holocaust studies. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Insightful information, respectful of JW’s feelings and beliefs
This is an insightful history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted during the infamous Holocaust. It is a non-fiction account that is written by non-Witness scholars but remains respectful of the JW’s feelings and beliefs. It is a moving chronicle of a lesser known perspective of the genocide that often gets (perhaps unintentionally) ignored. These people suffered along with their fellow brothers and sisters, the Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others who were brutally hunted down and sent off to be murdered because they were judged “a dangerous ideological threat” to the unreasonably patriotic and racist Nazi state. The interesting thing about the Witnesses (or “Bibelforscher,” that is, “Bible Students,” as they were more commonly known at the time, having only recently adopted the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” in 1931) that they could have left the concentration camps at any time, if they had only signed a document renouncing their faith and pledging allegiance to the Hitler ideology. Very few signed, and there is at least one known case where some who were coaxed into signing scratched out their signature after witnessing one of their faithful brethren being executed by firing squad. Imagine! They had already signed their ticket out of that horrible place, but then chose to return and suffer, perhaps die, along with the others because they knew that what the Nazis were doing was wrong and were brave enough to stand up and say so!Whether you believe in the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses or not, this book is a warming narrative of courageous people who could have chosen to support the Nazi regime, as many religious denominations in Germany had done at the time, but chose instead to stand up for what the Bible taught, as they perceived it. “Thou shalt not kill.” “It is the LORD God thou must worship, to Him alone thou must render sacred service.”