Brutal Treatment in Concentration Camps

In Adolf Hitler the clergy had a willing ally. During 1933, the very year that a concordat between the Vatican and Nazi Germany was signed, Hitler launched a campaign to annihilate Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany. By 1935 they were proscribed in the entire nation. But who instigated this?

A Catholic priest, writing in Der Deutsche Weg (a German-language newspaper published in Lodz, Poland), said in its issue of May 29, 1938: “There is now one country on earth where the so-called . . . Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses] are forbidden. That is Germany! . . . When Adolf Hitler came to power, and the German Catholic Episcopate repeated their request, Hitler said: ‘These so-called Earnest Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses] are troublemakers; . . . I consider them quacks; I do not tolerate that the German Catholics shall be besmirched in such a manner by this American Judge Rutherford; I dissolve [Jehovah’s Witnesses] in Germany.’”—Italics ours.

Was it only the German Catholic Episcopate that wanted such action taken? As reported in the Oschatzer Gemeinnützige, of April 21, 1933, in a radio address on April 20, Lutheran minister Otto spoke about the “closest cooperation” on the part of the German Lutheran Church of the State of Saxony with the political leaders of the nation, and then he declared: “The first results of this cooperation can already be reported in the ban today placed upon the International Association of Earnest Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses] and its subdivisions in Saxony.”

Thereafter, the Nazi State unleashed one of the most barbaric persecutions of Christians in recorded history. Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses—from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, France, and other countries—were thrown into concentration camps. Here they were subjected to the most cruel and sadistic treatment imaginable. It was not unusual for them to be cursed and kicked, then forced to do knee-bending, jumping, and crawling for hours on end, until they fainted or dropped from exhaustion, while guards laughed with glee. Some were forced to stand naked or lightly clad in the courtyard in midwinter. Many were whipped until they were unconscious and their backs were covered with blood. Others were used as guinea pigs in medical experiments. Some, with their arms tied behind their back, were hung by their wrists. Though weak from hunger and inadequately clothed in freezing weather, they were forced to do heavy labor, working long hours, often using their own hands when shovels and other tools were needed. Both men and women were thus abused. Their ages ranged from the teens into the seventies. Their tormentors shouted defiance of Jehovah.

In an effort to break the spirit of the Witnesses, the camp commander at Sachsenhausen ordered August Dickmann, a young Witness, to be executed in the presence of all the prisoners, with Jehovah’s Witnesses out front where they would get the full impact. After that, the rest of the prisoners were dismissed, but Jehovah’s Witnesses had to remain. With great emphasis the commander asked them, ‘Who is now ready to sign the declaration?’—a declaration renouncing one’s faith and indicating willingness to become a soldier. Not one of the 400 or more Witnesses responded. Then two stepped forward! No, not to sign, but to ask that their signatures given about a year earlier be annulled.

In the Buchenwald camp, similar pressure was brought to bear. Nazi officer Rödl notified the Witnesses: “If anyone of you refuses to fight against France or England, all of you must die!” Two fully armed SS companies were waiting at the gatehouse. Not a single one of the Witnesses gave in. Harsh treatment followed, but the officer’s threat was not carried out. It came to be well recognized that, while the Witnesses in the camps would do almost any sort of work they were assigned, yet, even though punished with systematic starvation and overwork, they would firmly refuse to do anything in support of the war or that was directed against a fellow prisoner.

What they went through defies description. Hundreds of them died. After the survivors were released from the camps at the end of the war, a Witness from Flanders wrote: “Only an unswerving desire to live, hope and trust in Him, Jehovah, who is all-powerful, and love of The Theocracy, made it possible to endure all this and win the victory.—Romans 8:37.”

Parents were torn away from their children. Marriage mates were separated, and some never heard from each other again. Shortly after he got married, Martin Poetzinger was arrested and taken to the infamous camp at Dachau, then to Mauthausen. His wife, Gertrud, was incarcerated in Ravensbrück. They did not see each other for nine years. Recalling his experiences in Mauthausen, he later wrote: “The Gestapo tried every method to induce us to break our faith in Jehovah. Starvation diet, deceitful friendships, brutalities, having to stand in a frame day after day, being hung from a ten-foot [3 m] post by the wrists twisted around the back, whippings—all these and others too degraded to mention were tried.” But he remained loyal to Jehovah. He was also among the survivors, and later he served as a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Imprisoned Because of Their Faith

Jehovah’s Witnesses were not in the concentration camps because they were criminals. When officers wanted someone to shave them, they trusted a Witness with the razor, because they knew that no Witness would ever use such an instrument as a weapon to harm another human. When SS officers at the Auschwitz extermination camp needed someone to clean their homes or care for their children, they selected Witnesses, because they knew these would not try to poison them or try to escape. When the Sachsenhausen camp was being evacuated at the end of the war, the guards positioned a wagon on which they had their loot in the midst of a column of Witnesses. Why? Because they knew that the Witnesses would not steal from them.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned because of their faith. Repeatedly they were promised release from the camps if they would only sign a declaration renouncing their beliefs. The SS did everything in their power to entice or force the Witnesses to sign such a declaration. Above all else, this was what they wanted.

All but a few of the Witnesses proved unbreakable in their integrity. But they did more than suffer because of their loyalty to Jehovah and their devotion to the name of Christ. They did more than endure the inquisitional torture that was inflicted on them. They maintained strong ties of spiritual unity.

Theirs was not a spirit of personal survival at all costs. They showed self-sacrificing love for one another. When one of their number became weak, others would share their meager food ration. When deprived of all medical treatment, they lovingly cared for one another.

Despite all the efforts of their persecutors to prevent it, material for Bible study reached the Witnesses—concealed in gift packets from outside, through the mouths of newly arriving prisoners, even hidden in the wooden leg of a new inmate, or by other means when they were on work assignments outside the camps. Copies were passed from one to another; sometimes they were surreptitiously duplicated on machines right in the offices of camp officials. Although there was great danger involved, some Christian meetings were held even in the camps.

The Witnesses kept right on preaching that God’s Kingdom is mankind’s only hope—and they did it there in the concentration camps! Within Buchenwald, as a result of organized activity, thousands of inmates heard the good news. In the camp at Neuengamme, near Hamburg, a campaign of intensive witnessing was carefully planned and carried out early in 1943. Testimony cards were prepared in various languages spoken in the camp. Efforts were made to reach each internee. Arrangements were made for regular personal study of the Bible with interested ones. So zealous were the Witnesses in their preaching that some political prisoners complained: “Wherever you go, all you hear is talk about Jehovah!” When orders came from Berlin to disperse the Witnesses among the other prisoners in order to weaken them, this actually made it possible for them to witness to more people.

Regarding the 500 or more faithful female Witnesses in Ravensbrück, a niece of French General Charles de Gaulle wrote following her own release: “I have true admiration for them. They belonged to various nationalities: German, Polish, Russian and Czech, and have endured very great sufferings for their beliefs. . . . All of them showed very great courage and their attitude commanded eventually even the respect of the S.S. They could have been immediately freed if they had renounced their faith. But, on the contrary, they did not cease resistance, even succeeding in introducing books and tracts into the camp.”

Like Jesus Christ, they proved themselves conquerors of the world that sought to make them conform to its satanic mold. (John 16:33) Christine King, in the book New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society, says regarding them: “The Jehovah’s Witnesses offered a challenge to the totalitarian concept of the new society, and this challenge, as well as the persist[e]nce of its survival, demonstrably disturbed the architects of the new order. . . . The time-honoured methods of persecution, torture, imprisonment and ridicule were not resulting in the conversion of any Witnesses to the Nazi position and were in fact back-firing against their instigators. . . . Between these two rival claimants on loyalty, the fight was bitter, even more so, since the physically stronger Nazis were in many ways less sure, less rooted in the firmness of their own conviction, less certain of the survival of their 1,000 year Reich. Witnesses did not doubt their own roots, for their faith had been evident since the time of Abel. Whilst the Nazis had to suppress opposition and convince their supporters, often borrowing language and imagery from sectarian Christianity, Witnesses were sure of the total, unbending loyalty of their members, even to death.”—Published in 1982.

At the end of the war, over a thousand surviving Witnesses came out of the camps, with their faith intact and their love for one another strong. As the Russian armies neared, the guards quickly evacuated Sachsenhausen. They grouped the prisoners according to nationality. But Jehovah’s Witnesses stayed together as one group—230 of them from this camp. With the Russians close behind them, the guards became excited. There was no food, and the prisoners were weak; yet, anyone who lagged behind or dropped because of exhaustion was shot. Thousands of such were strewed along the line of march. But the Witnesses helped one another so that not even the weakest was lying on the road! Yet some of them were between 65 and 72 years old. Other prisoners tried to steal food along the way, and many were shot while doing it. In contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses seized opportunities to tell people along the evacuation route about Jehovah’s loving purposes, and some of these, out of gratitude for the comforting message, supplied them with food for themselves and their Christian brothers.

[Box/Picture on page 661]

Translation of Declaration That the SS Tried to Force Witnesses to Sign

Concentration camp .......................................

Department II

DECLARATION

I, the ...................................................

born on ..................................................

in .......................................................

herewith make the following declaration:

1. I have come to know that the International Bible Students Association is proclaiming erroneous teachings and under the cloak of religion follows hostile purposes against the State.

2. I therefore left the organization entirely and made myself absolutely free from the teachings of this sect.

3. I herewith give assurance that I will never again take any part in the activity of the International Bible Students Association. Any persons approaching me with the teaching of the Bible Students, or who in any manner reveal their connections with them, I will denounce immediately. All literature from the Bible Students that should be sent to my address I will at once deliver to the nearest police station.

4. I will in the future esteem the laws of the State, especially in the event of war will I, with weapon in hand, defend the fatherland, and join in every way the community of the people.

5. I have been informed that I will at once be taken again into protective custody if I should act against the declaration given today.

.................................., Dated ................ ...........................................................

Signature

[Box on page 662]

Letters From Some Who Were Sentenced to Death

From Franz Reiter (who was facing death by guillotine) to his mother, January 6, 1940, from the detention center Berlin-Plötzensee:

“I am strongly convinced in my belief that I am acting correctly. Being here, I could still change my mind, but with God this would be disloyalty. All of us here wish to be faithful to God, to his honor. . . . With what I knew, if I had taken the [military] oath, I would have committed a sin deserving death. That would be evil to me. I would have no resurrection. But I stick to that which Christ said: ‘Whosoever will save his life will lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same will receive it.’ And now, my dear Mother and all my brothers and sisters, today I was told my sentence, and don’t be terrified, it is death, and I will be executed tomorrow morning. I have my strength from God, the same as it always was with all true Christians away back in the past. The apostles write, ‘Whosoever is born from God cannot sin.’ The same goes for me. This I proved to you, and you could recognize it. My dear one, don’t get heavyhearted. It would be good for all of you to know the Holy Scriptures better still. If you will stand firm until death, we shall meet again in the resurrection. . . .

“Your Franz

“Until we meet again.”

From Berthold Szabo, executed by a firing squad, in Körmend, Hungary, on March 2, 1945:

“My dear sister, Marika!

“These one and one half hours I have left, I will try to write to you so that you will be able to let our parents know about my situation, immediately facing death.

“I wish them the same peace of mind that I experience in these last moments in this world fraught with disaster. It is now ten o’clock, and I will be executed at half past eleven; but I am quite calm. My further life I lay into the hands of Jehovah and his Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the King, who will never forget those sincerely loving them. I know too that there will soon be a resurrection of those who died or, rather, who went to sleep, in Christ. I should also like to particularly mention that I wish you all Jehovah’s richest blessings for the love you bestowed on me. Please kiss Father and Mother for me, and Annus too. They should not worry about me; we shall be seeing each other again soon. My hand is calm now, and I shall go to rest until Jehovah calls me again. Even now I shall keep the vow I took for him.

“Now my time is up. May God be with you and with me.

“With much love, . . .

“Berthi”

[Box on page 663]

Noted for Courage and Convictions

◆ “Against all odds, Witnesses in the camps met and prayed together, produced literature and made converts. Sustained by their fellowship, and, unlike many other prisoners, well aware of the reasons why such places existed and why they should suffer thus, Witnesses proved a small but memorable band of prisoners, marked by the violet triangle and noted for their courage and their convictions.” So wrote Dr. Christine King, in “The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity.”

◆ “Values and Violence in Auschwitz,” by Anna Pawełczyńska, states: “This group of prisoners was a solid ideological force and they won their battle against Nazism. The German group of this sect had been a tiny island of unflagging resistance existing in the bosom of a terrorized nation, and in that same undismayed spirit they functioned in the camp at Auschwitz. They managed to win the respect of their fellow-prisoners . . . of prisoner-functionaries, and even of the SS officers. Everyone knew that no ‘Bibelforscher’ [Jehovah’s Witness] would perform a command contrary to his religious belief.”

◆ Rudolf Hoess, in his autobiography, published in the book “Commandant of Auschwitz,” told of the execution of certain ones of Jehovah’s Witnesses for refusal to violate their Christian neutrality. He said: “Thus do I imagine that the first Christian martyrs must have appeared as they waited in the circus for the wild beasts to tear them in pieces. Their faces completely transformed, their eyes raised to heaven, and their hands clasped and lifted in prayer, they went to their death. All who saw them die were deeply moved, and even the execution squad itself was affected.” (This book was published in Poland under the title “Autobiografia Rudolfa Hössa-komendanta obozu oświęcimskiego.”)