Whereas Jehovah’s Witnesses were not deliberately hunted down for death, originally, they stiff suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazi regime. Meetings were broken up, printing presses shut down or destroyed, materials burned, archives confiscated, and followers beaten. By 1933, Jehovah’s Witnesses (also called International Bible Students) were banned in Bavria and throughout most of Germany Germany Germany and other areas occupied by Germany
In the concentration camps, they were made to wear purple triangle patches or purple armbands, denoting them as conscientious objectors (5). Though not outright slaughtered as wholly as Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, between 2,500 to 5,000 died in prison or the camps. More than 200 were tried in German War Courts and sentenced to death for refusing military service. These sentences were carried out (6).
According to the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolph Hoss, “How different each person’s approach to death was. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were in a way strangely satisfied. One could say they had an almost transfigured mood and had a rock-hard awareness that they were to be allowed to go into Jehovah’s kingdom. The draft dodgers and the saboteurs calmly composed and reconciled themselves to the inevitability of their fate. The professional criminal and the truly asocial appeared to be quite different, either cynical, insolent, or apparently vigorous. Trembling inside with the fear of the great unknown, they raged and fought all the way or whined for a priest to help them (7).”
Sources:
(1) Terese Pencak Schwartz. Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Jehovah.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).
(2) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(3) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(4) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(5) Terese Pencak Schwartz. Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Jehovah.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).
(6) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
(7) Hoss, Rudolph, and Primo Levi. Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz . Edited by Steven Paskuly. Translated by Andrew Pollinger. New York City
In the late 1960s, the WatchTower Society commissioned an exact and comprehensive history of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany, which was to include exact and precise statistics for the Holocaust period, which were to be extracted from not only government archives, but, more importantly, from the WatchTower Cult's own METICULOUS RECORDS in Germany and other European countries. That report was published by the WatchTower Cult in 1973.
ReplyDeleteApparently, the WatchTower Cult was greatly disappointed in the Holocaust statistics uncovered by its own legal researchers, because that report has rarely been cited by the WatchTower Cult in its' own Holocaust-related articles published subsequent to the 1973 report. Instead of using its' own documented exact statistics, both the WatchTower Cult and individual Jehovah's Witnesses routinely cite inflated statistics from non-WatchTower sources whose numbers are inflated "guestimates", or are inflated numbers from unreliable and inaccurate records.
Accordingly to the WatchTower Cult's own 1973 report, only 6019 Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested in Germany during the 12 year Nazi period of 1933 through 1945. Only 2000 German JWs were ever sent to concentration camps. Only 203 were executed. Another 432 German JWs died while in custody in all German jails, prisons, and camps.
Exact numbers for other Nazi-occupied countries are unknown. Even Holocaust experts who inflate German JW statistics guestimate that only
600-800 non-German JWs from Nazi-occupied countries were ever sent to concentration camps. Mortality figures are not known.
Thus, only 2600-2800 Jehovah's Witnesses were ever sent to Nazi concentration camps. Death statistics are not known, but can be reasonably estimated to be in the 500-700 range. The JW TOTAL for 1933-1945 is about HALF the DAILY AVERAGE of Jewish deaths -- 1370 every single day for the 12 year Nazi period.
During this same 1933-1945 time period, there were more Jehovah's Witnesses arrested and jailed in the United States than in Germany. In fact, just during 1941-1945, approximately 4500 American Jehovah's Witnesses men "elected" to go to prison rather than serve in the U.S. Military and help stop Nazis atrocities against their fellow JWs.
Approximately 3000 of those 4500 American JWs were even offered "conscientious objector" status, in which they were offered "non-combatant" work as a substitute for military service, but 99% of those 3000 American JWs refused to help out even that much.
It is an insult to memorialize the small handful of anti-societal, trouble-seeking Jehovah's Witnesses alongside the 6,000,000+ Jewish Holocaust victims given that Jehovah's Witnesses view the Jewish people much as did the Nazis.
The WatchTower Cult preaches its own version of "replacement theology", which teaches that YHWH rejected the Jews as His "chosen people", and
replaced the Jewish people with today's "Jehovah's Witnesses". The WatchTower Cult teaches that modern-day Jews are YHWH's enemies, and that all of the YHWH's promises of restoration for the Jewish people now belong to the followers of the WatchTower Cult.
In fact, the title "Jehovah's Witnesses" was originally applied to the Jewish people by the Prophet Isaiah, and that scripture is even memorialized on the wall inside the front entrance of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
The WatchTower Cult, in calling its own members -- "Jehovah's Witnesses" -- is attempting to steal that designation away from the Jewish people. This is the very reason that for the past three decades that the WatchTower Cult has had a corporate department dedicated to making certain that every single Holocaust rememberance of any size or type -- newspaper article, book, speech, museum, etc -- anywhere in the world, publicize the fact that the WatchTower Cult's own "Jehovah's Witnesses" were equally persecuted alongside "natural" Jews. This is the WatchTower Cult's way of claiming that "Satan" and his human supporters hate "Jehovah's Witnesses" as much or more than they hate natural Jews -- thus attempting to prevent the Jewish people from laying claim to any spiritual significance that might be interpreted from the Holocaust experience.
ReplyDeleteIn 1933, after the Nazis first started arresting some German JWs, the WatchTower Cult issued a public proclamation of appeasement which condemned an imagined partnership between "Jewish Big Business" and the governments of the United States and Great Britain, which supposedly oppressed and exploited other countries, including Germany. The WatchTower Cult's proclamation condemned the Americans and the British as "the most oppressive empire on earth".
A conciliatory letter also was sent to Hitler, which highlighted those areas in which the WatchTower Cult supported the new Nazi government. The letter even claimed that the U.S. Government had imprisoned the leaders of the WatchTower Cult during WW1 because they refused to print anti-German propaganda.
During the early years of World War 2, when Germany and Japan were having much success on the battlefields, the WatchTower Cult started teaching that the Bible prophesied that the Axis Powers would defeat and rule over the United States, Britain, and other Allies.
In the United States, JWs went to the homes of families of American service men and women and told those parents, siblings, and spouses that Germany was prophesied to win the war, and that in fighting against Hitler, American and British soldiers were fighting against God's will. A Jehovah's Witness named Taylor was arrested after going to two homes of dead servicemen and telling their families that their sons had died while opposing God's will. Don't believe this? Read 1943 U.S. Supreme Court case TAYLOR v. MISSISSIPPI. Remember the actual historical context the next time you read some liberal newspaper or book's account about how some poor innocent Jehovah's Witness was beaten during WW2 for doing nothing except preaching the Bible door-to-door.
While it is true that a small number of German and other European JWs suffered greatly during the early stages of the Holocaust, it is also true that during the latter stages of the Holocaust that imprisoned JWs became exemplary Nazi collaborators highly valued by the Nazis.
Over the decades, the WatchTower Cult itself has published numerous biographical stories in which imprisoned JWs are praised for having been given positions of authority and responsibility within the various Nazi concentration camps. Various Nazi officials are quoted praising those JWs for not only their work, but their work ethic and supportive attitudes.
In fact, one of Heinrich Himmler's deputies even sent Himmler a report suggesting that after Germany won the war that conquered non-Germanic christian countries be forced to convert to the Jehovah's Witness religion, so as to maintain a controlling religious element in those people's lives which would pose no threat to Nazi political control.