Product Description

The Johovah's Witnesses, members of a religious sect founded in 1872, see themselves as citizens of Jehovah's Kingdom, and thus decline to swear allegiance to any worldly governments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #852782 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From 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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Nazis: Persecution, Deportation and Murder, 1933-1945
It is rewarding to read a book that has attempted to present the facts as accurately as possible, free from personal interpretation of events that they are not personally familiar with. I have read various accounts of the experiences of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Holocaust, as well as, in other lands. More often than not, the author has a personal opinion which obscures the reality. I appreciate the authors' attempt to put this book into the words of the victims.

"Jehovah's Witnesses" or Bible students?
It is important that people realize the many groups that suffered during that time. This is why the following is so important:

The Jehovah's Witnesses in the U.S. changed their name in 1931. However, in Germany those Bible students affiliated with the Watchtower Society officially changed their in the 1950s. In the early 1920s there were around six thousand in Germany (and perhaps Switzerland) cooperating outside the IBSA (WT), which was typical in a few other populous countries in Europe, such as England. By the time Hitler grabbed power, the number was probably significantly larger. Two ecclesias in what was later East Germany had each reached 400 (one was Leipzig).

There were no distinctions between the TWO GROUPS of Bible Students. Thus the two groups were known as simply "Bible Students." During the Hitler Era, Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses were both lumped together as "Bibelforscher" in Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps. At Auschwitz they were identified by wearing a violet patch. I don't know after World War II how many were in East Germany, but there had at one time been 400 in Leipzig. (For a few years they were able to publish 'Weinberg.')

The Bible Students were persecuted because of their pro-Israel stand, the Jehovah's Witnesses for their anti-Hitler stand. Both groups wore the Purple Triangle. In fact at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, some of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" pictured are actually Bible Students, NOT affiliated with the Watchtower.

Today there remain a number of Bible Students who are descendants of those WWII Bible students, who are not affiliated with the Watchtower in any way. In other words, not all Bible students became "Jehovah's Witnesses". And a number of those individuals suffered or died in the concentration camps too.