In the late 1920’s, we met Vinzenz Platajs, whom we called Vinko, a youth of Yugoslav descent. He was in contact with the Bible Students, as Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known. Shortly afterward one of the Bible Students began visiting our family. Since Father had forbidden Mother to attend church, she asked Vinko if God could be worshiped at home. He pointed to Acts 17:24, which says that God “does not dwell in handmade temples,” and explained that the home is a proper place to worship him. She was pleased and began attending meetings in the homes of the Bible Students.

In 1928, Vinko and my sister, Josephine​—or Pepi, as we called her—​symbolized their dedication to Jehovah by water baptism. Later they married. The next year their daughter, Fini, was born in Liévin. Three years later they were invited to take up the full-time ministry in Yugoslavia, where the work of the Witnesses was under restrictions. Despite many difficulties, their joy and zeal for Jehovah’s service remained undiminished. Their fine example instilled in me the desire to become a full-time minister.

Vinko’s Faithfulness to Death

The German army had marched into Yugoslavia in 1941, obliging Pepi as well as her husband, Vinko, and their 12-year-old daughter, Fini, to return home to Austria. By then most of the Witnesses in Austria had been interned in prisons or concentration camps. Being stateless​—in other words, not German citizens—​they were assigned to do forced labor on a farm in southern Austria, near our home.

Later, on August 26, 1943, the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) arrested Vinko. When Fini tried to bid her father good-bye, the chief of police hit her so hard that she went flying across the room. Vinko was often interrogated and brutally beaten by the Gestapo and was taken to the Stadelheim Penitentiary in Munich.

On October 6, 1943, the police arrested me at my place of employment, and I too was sent to the Stadelheim Penitentiary, where Vinko was. Since I could speak French fluently, I was used as a translator for French prisoners of war. During walks in the prison compound, I had opportunity to exchange news with Vinko.

Eventually Vinko was sentenced to death. He was accused of providing Witnesses with Bible literature and of giving financial help to Witness women whose husbands were in concentration camps. He was transferred to the same penitentiary near Berlin where Willi had been executed. There he was beheaded on October 9, 1944.

The last meeting Vinko had with his family was heartrending. They found him chained and battered, and it was difficult for him to embrace them on account of the chains. Fini was 14 when she last saw her father. She still remembers his final words: “Take care of your mother, Fini!”