One Voice in the Midst of Silence

FIFTY years ago a monster was slain. When the world finally drew aside the curtain to look on the fallen Third Reich, the ghastly sight was too much of a nightmare to comprehend. Soldiers and civilians alike could only stare in silent horror at the gruesome remains of a monstrous killing machine.

Earlier this year thousands celebrated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps by quietly tramping through their desolate grounds. They struggled to fathom the enormity of the crime. Why, some 1,500,000 people had been killed in the death camp at Auschwitz alone! It was a time for silence, a time to reflect on man’s inhumanity to man. Haunting questions echoed in the cold ovens, in the empty barracks, across the undisturbed mountains of plundered shoes.

Today there is horror; there is outrage. The Holocaust, during which several million were systematically murdered, reveals what a monstrous evil Nazism was. But what about then? Who spoke out? Who did not?

For many, their first knowledge of the mass slayings came only at the close of World War II. The book Fifty Years Ago​—Revolt Amid the Darkness explains: “The still photographs and newsreel films of the killing centers and camps liberated by the Allies in 1944 and 1945 first brought the shocking reality to the broad public, especially in the west.”

Yet, even before the death camps were set up, a voice was proclaiming the dangers of Nazism, through Awake!, the magazine you hold in your hands. It was first known as The Golden Age and was renamed Consolation in 1937. Beginning in 1929, these magazines, published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, boldly warned of the perils of Nazism, living up to the proclamation on the cover, “A Journal of Fact, Hope and Courage.”

“How can one remain silent,” asked Consolation in 1939, “about the horrors of a land where, as in Germany, 40,000 innocent persons are arrested at one time; where 70 of them were executed in a single night in one prison; . . . where all homes, institutes and hospitals for the aged, the poor, and the helpless, and all orphanages for the children, are destroyed?”

How, indeed, could one remain silent? While the world in general was unaware or skeptical of the horrific reports trickling out of Germany and occupied lands, Jehovah’s Witnesses could not keep quiet. They knew firsthand the cruelties of the Nazi regime, and they were not afraid to speak out.

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U.S. National Archives photo

Why Unafraid to Speak Out

IN RETROSPECT, it could be said that the clash between Jehovah’s Witnesses and Nazism, or National Socialism, was all but inevitable. Why? Because of the Nazis’ unyielding demands that conflicted with three of the Witnesses’ fundamental Bible-​based beliefs. These are: (1) Jehovah God is the Supreme Sovereign. (2) True Christians are politically neutral. (3) God will resurrect those who have proved faithful to him until death.

These Bible-​based beliefs determined the steadfast stand of Jehovah’s Witnesses against the Nazis’ ungodly demands. Thus, they courageously spoke out and exposed Nazism as the evil that it was.

Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to heil Hitler. They refused because they attribute their salvation to God and have dedicated their lives to him alone. The Bible says of Jehovah: “You alone are the Most High over all the earth.”​—Psalm 83:18.

Actually, “Heil Hitler” implied that salvation was by Hitler. So the Witnesses could not be faithful to God and at the same time heil any human. Their lives as well as their loyalty and allegiance belonged to God.

Jehovah’s Witnesses had clear precedents for refusing to obey Hitler’s wrongful demands. For example, when Jesus’ first-​century apostles were ordered to cease declaring the good news about Christ, they refused. They said: “We must obey God as ruler rather than men.” The Bible says that for their determined stand, the authorities “flogged them, and ordered them to stop speaking upon the basis of Jesus’ name.” Yet, the apostles refused to obey that God-​defying order. “They continued without letup teaching and declaring the good news.”​—Acts 5:29, 40-42.

Many early Christians died because they obeyed God rather than men. Scores perished in Roman arenas because they refused, in effect, to heil Caesar by rendering an act of worship to him. But to such persons it was an honor and a victory to prove faithful to God even to death, similar to a valiant soldier’s being willing to die in behalf of his country.

Because Jehovah’s Witnesses advocate only one government, God’s Kingdom, some have viewed them as subversive. But nothing could be further from the truth. In imitation of Jesus’ apostles, “they are no part of the world.” (John 17:16) They are politically neutral. Because of their loyalty to God, they obey the laws of their respective human governments. Indeed, they are exemplary in their “subjection to the superior authorities.” (Romans 13:1) Never have they advocated rebellion against any human government!

There is, however, a line that cannot be crossed under any circumstances. It is the line between the duty of Jehovah’s Witnesses to man and their duty to God. They render to Caesar, or governmental authorities, what belongs to Caesar but to God what belongs to Him. (Matthew 22:21) If anyone tries to exact from them what belongs to God, that attempt will fail.

What if a Witness is threatened with death? Well, Jehovah’s Witnesses have unshakable confidence in God’s ability to restore them to life. (Acts 24:15) So Witnesses have the same attitude as did three young Hebrews in ancient Babylon. When threatened with death in a fiery furnace, they told King Nebuchadnezzar: “If it is to be, our God whom we are serving is able to rescue us. . . . Let it become known to you, O king, that your gods are not the ones we are serving, and the image of gold that you have set up we will not worship.”​—Daniel 3:17, 18.

Thus, as noted earlier, when Hitler began to climb onto his pedestal as a self-​appointed god, an ideological battle was inevitable. The Third Reich, sword drawn, found itself face-​to-​face with a tiny band of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had sworn loyalty to the true God, the Almighty God, Jehovah. Even before the battle began, however, the outcome was decided.

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Faithful to Death

WOLFGANG KUSSEROW was one of those put to death because he maintained faithfulness to God and refused to support Nazism. Shortly before he was beheaded on March 28, 1942, he wrote his parents and siblings: “Now, as your third son and brother, I must leave you tomorrow morning. Do not be sad, for the time will come when we will be together again. . . . How great our joy will then be, when we are reunited! . . . Now we have been torn apart, and each of us must stand the test; then we will be rewarded.”

Shortly before his execution on January 8, 1941, Johannes Harms wrote in a final letter to his father: “My death sentence has already been announced and I am chained both day and night​—the marks (on the paper) are from the handcuffs . . . My dear father, in spirit I call to you, remain faithful, as I have attempted to remain faithful, and then we will see each other again. I will be thinking of you up until the very last.”

The Evils of Nazism Exposed

IN THE 1920’s, as Germany struggled to recover from its defeat in World War I, Jehovah’s Witnesses were busy distributing tremendous amounts of Bible literature. Not only did this offer comfort and hope to the German people but it alerted them to the rising power of militarism. Between 1919 and 1933, the Witnesses delivered an average of eight books, booklets, or magazines to each of the approximately 15 million families in Germany.

The Golden Age and Consolation magazines often drew attention to the militaristic stirrings in Germany. In 1929, more than three years before Hitler came to power, the German edition of The Golden Age boldly stated: “National Socialism is . . . a movement that is acting . . . directly in the service of man’s enemy, the Devil.”

On the eve of Hitler’s taking power, The Golden Age of January 4, 1933, said: “There looms forth the menacing promontory of the National Socialist movement. It seems incredulous that a political party so insignificant in its origin, so heterodox in its policies, can, in the space of a few years, develop into proportions that overshadow the structure of a national government. Yet Adolf Hitler and his national socialist party (the Nazis) have accomplished this rare feat.”

An Appeal for Understanding

Hitler became prime minister of Germany on January 30, 1933, and a couple of months later, on April 4, 1933, the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses was seized. However, the order was rescinded on April 28, 1933, and the property was returned. What would happen next?

In spite of the evident hostility of the Hitler regime, Jehovah’s Witnesses organized a convention in Berlin, Germany, on June 25, 1933. Some 7,000 persons assembled. The Witnesses publicly made their intentions clear: “Our organization is not political in any sense. We only insist on teaching the Word of Jehovah God to the people, and that without hindrance.”

Thus Jehovah’s Witnesses made a good-​faith effort to state their case. What were the consequences?

The Attack Begins

The immovable neutral position of the Witnesses, along with their loyalty to God’s Kingdom, was unacceptable to the Hitler government. The Nazis did not intend to tolerate any refusal to support their ideology.

Immediately after the Berlin convention concluded, the Nazis again seized the branch office at Magdeburg, on June 28, 1933. They broke up Witness meetings and made arrests. Soon Witnesses began to be dismissed from their jobs. They suffered raids on their homes, beatings, and arrests. By early 1934 the Nazis had seized from the Witnesses 65 tons of Bible literature and had burned it outside Magdeburg.

Witnesses’ Resolute Stand

Despite these initial attacks, Jehovah’s Witnesses stood their ground and publicly denounced the oppression and injustice. The November 1, 1933, issue of The Watchtower featured the article “Fear Them Not.” It was prepared especially for the German Witnesses, exhorting them to take courage in the face of mounting pressure.

On February 9, 1934, J. F. Rutherford, the president of the Watch Tower Society, sent a letter of protest to Hitler stating: “You may successfully resist any and all men, but you cannot successfully resist Jehovah God. . . . In the name of Jehovah God and His anointed King, Christ Jesus, I demand that you give order to all officials and servants of your government that Jehovah’s witnesses in Germany be permitted to peaceably assemble and without hindrance worship God.”

Rutherford set March 24, 1934, as the deadline. He said that if by that time relief did not come to the German Witnesses, the facts about the persecution would be published throughout Germany and the rest of the world. The Nazis answered Rutherford’s demand with stepped-​up abuses, sending many of Jehovah’s Witnesses to the concentration camps that had recently been set up. Thus, they were among the first inmates of these camps.

Witnesses Expose Nazi Atrocities

As Jehovah’s Witnesses had promised, they began exposing the atrocities occurring in Germany. Witnesses around the globe repeatedly registered protests with the Hitler government.

On October 7, 1934, all congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany assembled to hear a letter read that was being sent to the officials of the Hitler government. It said: “There is a direct conflict between your law and God’s law . . . Therefore this is to advise you that at any cost we will obey God’s commandments, will meet together for the study of His Word, and will worship and serve Him as He has commanded.”

On the same day, Jehovah’s Witnesses in 49 other countries met in special assembly and sent the following telegram to Hitler: “Your ill-​treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses shocks all good people of earth and dishonors God’s name. Refrain from further persecuting Jehovah’s witnesses; otherwise God will destroy you and your national party.”

The Nazis responded almost immediately by stepping up their persecution. Hitler himself screamed: “This brood will be exterminated in Germany!” But as opposition intensified, the determination of the Witnesses stiffened correspondingly.

In 1935, The Golden Age exposed the Inquisitionlike torture methods of the Nazi regime and its spy system. It also revealed that it was the aim of the Hitler Youth organization to purge Germany’s youths of their belief in God. The following year a nationwide Gestapo campaign resulted in the arrests of thousands of Witnesses. Soon after, on December 12, 1936, the Witnesses answered with their own campaign, blanketing Germany with tens of thousands of copies of a resolution protesting the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

On June 20, 1937, the Witnesses who were still free distributed another message that was unsparing in its detail about the persecution. It named officials and cited dates and places. The Gestapo were appalled at this exposure and the ability of the Witnesses to carry it off.

Love of neighbor is what compelled the Witnesses to warn the people of Germany not to be fooled by the grandiose vision of a glorious thousand-​year rule by the Third Reich. “We must tell the truth and give the warning,” said the booklet Face the Facts, published in 1938. “We recognize the totalitarian government . . . as the product of Satan brought forth as the substitute for God’s kingdom.” Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first targets of Nazi abuse, but they also loudly decried atrocities against Jews, Poles, the handicapped, and others.

The resolution “Warning!,” adopted at a 1938 convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., said: “The Fascists and Nazis, radical political organizations, have wrongfully seized control of many countries of Europe . . . All the people will be regimented, all their liberties taken away, and all will be compelled to yield to the rule of an arbitrary dictator and then the ancient Inquisition will be fully revived.”

Rutherford regularly took to the airwaves, delivering powerful lectures on the satanic nature of Nazism. The lectures were rebroadcast globally and were printed for distribution by the millions. On October 2, 1938, he delivered the address “Fascism or Freedom,” in which he denounced Hitler in no uncertain terms.

“In Germany the common people are peace-​loving,” Rutherford proclaimed. “The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control, a man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious and ruthless . . . He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah’s covenant people and bore the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew.”

As the Nazi rage against Jehovah’s Witnesses reached new heights, the Witnesses’ denunciations became ever more scathing. The May 15, 1940, issue of Consolation stated: “Hitler is such a perfect child of the Devil that these speeches and decisions flow through him like water through a well-​built sewer.”

Horrors of Camps Exposed

Although the public was largely unaware of the existence of the concentration camps until 1945, detailed descriptions of them appeared often in Watch Tower publications in the 1930’s. In 1937, for example, Consolation told of experiments with poison gas at Dachau. By 1940, Witness publications had named 20 different camps and had reported on their unspeakable conditions.

Why were Jehovah’s Witnesses so well acquainted with the concentration camps? When World War II started in 1939, there were already 6,000 Witnesses confined in camps and prisons. German historian Detlef Garbe estimates that the Witnesses constituted at that time between 5 and 10 percent of the total camp population!

At a seminar on the Witnesses and the Holocaust, Garbe stated: “Of the 25,000 persons who admitted to being Jehovah’s Witnesses at the beginning of the Third Reich, about 10,000 were imprisoned for any length of time. Of these, over 2,000 were admitted to concentration camps. This means that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were, with the exception of the Jews, the worst persecuted by the SS of all the religious based groups.”

In June 1940, Consolation said: “There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland when Germany began its Blitzkrieg . . . , and if reports which reach the Western world are correct their destruction seems well under way.” In 1943, Consolation noted: “Whole nations like the Greeks, Poles and Serbs are being exterminated systematically.” By 1946, The Golden Age and Consolation had identified 60 different prison and concentration camps.

Nazis Frustrated by Witnesses

Although the Nazis tried to stem the flow of Watch Tower literature, a Berlin official admitted: “It is hard to find the secret places in Germany where the Bible Students’ literature is still being printed; no one carries names or addresses and no one betrays another.”

Despite their frantic efforts, the Gestapo were never able to capture more than half the total number of Witnesses in Germany at any given time. Imagine the frustration of the elaborate Nazi spy system​—it could not round up and silence this tiny army or stop the flow of literature. The literature found its way to the streets and even penetrated the barbed-​wire fences of the concentration camps!

Triumph Over Barbarism

The Nazis, who were considered masters at breaking the human will, tried desperately to get Jehovah’s Witnesses to violate their Christian neutrality, but they failed miserably. The book The Theory and Practice of Hell said: “One cannot escape the impression that, psychologically speaking, the SS was never quite equal to the challenge offered them by Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Indeed, the Witnesses, backed up by God’s spirit, won the battle. Historian Christine King, chancellor of Staffordshire University in England, described the opponents in the conflict: “One [the Nazis] enormous, powerful, seemingly invincible. One [the Witnesses] very, very tiny . . . with only their faith, no other weapon . . . Jehovah’s Witnesses brought morally to their knees the might of that Gestapo power.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses were a small, peaceable enclave within the Nazi realm. Yet, they waged and won a battle in their own way​—a battle for the right to worship their God, a battle to love their neighbor, and a battle to tell the truth.

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Witnesses Exposed Existence of Camps

ALTHOUGH Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen were names unknown to most people until after World War II, they were well known to readers of The Golden Age and Consolation. The reports of Jehovah’s Witnesses, smuggled out of the camps at great risk and publicized in Watch Tower literature, exposed the murderous intent of the Third Reich.

In 1933, The Golden Age carried the first of many reports of the existence of concentration camps in Germany. In 1938, Jehovah’s Witnesses published the book Crusade Against Christianity, in French, German, and Polish. It carefully documented the vicious Nazi attacks on the Witnesses and included diagrams of the Sachsenhausen and Esterwegen concentration camps.

Nobel prize winner Dr. Thomas Mann wrote: “I have read your book and its terrible documentation with deepest emotion. I cannot describe the mixed feeling of abhorrence and loathing which has filled my heart while perusing these records of human degradation and abominable cruelty. . . . To keep quiet would serve only the moral indifference of the world . . . You have done your duty in publishing this book and bringing these facts to light.”​—Italics ours.

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Witnesses Among First in the Camps

MADAME Geneviève de Gaulle, niece of former president of France Charles de Gaulle, was a member of the French Resistance. Upon her capture and her later imprisonment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944, she met Jehovah’s Witnesses. After World War II, Madame de Gaulle lectured throughout Switzerland and spoke often of the Witnesses’ integrity and courage. In an interview on May 20, 1994, she said of them:

“They were among the first deportees in the camp. Many had already died . . . We recognized them by their distinctive badge. . . . It was absolutely forbidden for them to talk about their beliefs or to have any religious books, and especially the Bible, which was considered the supreme book of sedition. . . . I know of [one of Jehovah’s Witnesses], and there were others I was told, who was executed for having a few pages of Bible texts. . . .

“What I admired a lot in them was that they could have left at any time just by signing a renunciation of their faith. Ultimately, these women, who appeared to be so weak and worn out, were stronger than the SS, who had power and all the means at their disposal. [Jehovah’s Witnesses] had their strength, and it was their willpower that no one could beat.”

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Conduct of Witnesses in the Camps

OUT OF love of neighbor​—cell mate, barracks mate, camp mate—​the Witnesses shared not only their spiritual food but also whatever physical food they had.

A Jew who survived the Buchenwald concentration camp explained: “There I met the Bibelforscher. They constantly testified to their beliefs. In fact, nothing would stop them speaking about their God. They were very helpful to other prisoners. When the pogrom sent a mass influx of Jews to the camp on November 10, 1938, the ‘Jehovah’s schwein’, as the guards termed them, went round with a bread ration to the aged and famished Jews, going without food themselves for up to four days.”

Similarly, a Jewish woman imprisoned in the Lichtenburg camp said of the Witnesses: “They were a brave people, who bore their fate patiently. Though the gentile prisoners were forbidden to talk to us, these women never observed this regulation. They prayed for us as if we belonged to their family, and begged us to hold out.”

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Efforts to Deny the Holocaust Predicted

IN ITS September 26, 1945, issue, Consolation noted that future attempts might be made to revise history and deny what had happened. The article “Has Nazism Been Destroyed?” said:

“Propagandists think the people have short memories. It is their intention to erase past history, presenting themselves in the modern disguise of benefactors, their incriminating record being covered up.”

The magazine gave this perceptive warning: “Until Jehovah does fight Armageddon, Nazism will continue to raise its ugly head.”

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These diagrams of concentration camps appeared in Witness publications in 1937

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The 150 workers at the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931

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Publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses exposed church collaboration with Nazism