In his book A History of Christianity, Paul Johnson wrote about the activities of the churches in Nazi Germany during World War II and said: “The bravest were the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who proclaimed their outright doctrinal opposition from the beginning and suffered accordingly. . . . Many were sentenced to death for refusing military service . . . or they ended in Dachau or lunatic asylums. A third were actually killed; ninety-seven per cent suffered persecution in one form or another.”

After reading an account on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Nazi concentration camps, a Jewish rabbi who survived the Sachsenhausen camps wrote: “Knowledge that there were men and women [Jehovah’s Witnesses] who chose death rather than sacrificing their innermost faith and their deeply held convictions will forever remain for me one of the truly inspiring and ennobling experiences of my life.”