In August 1943, Adolphe Messmer, a German Witness, arrived in Salvador to help organize our first assembly. After permission was obtained from the authorities to hold the assembly, advertisements for the public talk “Freedom in the New World” were placed in local papers, and posters were displayed in shop windows and on the sides of the trams. But on the second day of the assembly, a policeman informed us that our license to meet had been canceled. The archbishop of Salvador had pressured the chief of police to stop our assembly. The following April, however, we were finally granted permission to hold the advertised public talk.

[Picture on page 9]

Witnesses advertising the public talk at the first assembly in the city of Salvador, 1943