• Latvia
    2007 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • “FREEDOM FOR THE PEOPLES”

      In September 1927, some 650 delegates from Estonia, Latvia, and Scandinavia gathered in Copenhagen to hear Joseph F. Rutherford from world headquarters deliver the talk “Freedom for the Peoples.” The following year a booklet bearing that title was translated into Latvian, and the colporteurs, or pioneers, took the lead in distributing it.

      Those early pioneers included at least ten brothers from Germany who came to Latvia to help with the work. One of these was 22-year-old Johannes Berger. He wrote: “Delivering public talks was the first thing pioneers did when they arrived in their assigned city. The result was that we gave talks in nearly all the cities of Latvia. In the city of Sloka, we rented a cinema, and every Monday in the winter, I gave talks. The people came from far away on their little horses.” Looking back on those times, he added: “My privileges of service were very great, despite my limited education.”