Holocaust Survivors

One survivor, Franz Wohlfahrt, 73, saw a total of 15 members of his immediate family and relatives arrested because they were Witnesses. “Seven of them were executed, the majority by guillotine. One was gassed, and the others died in concentration camps and Gestapo jails,” he recounts.

Did he think he would ever survive the camps? “I had real doubts,” Franz says. “Almost every day I was reminded by the guards that if Germany lost the war, they still would have enough ammunition to execute me.”

Does he regret having been a prisoner because of his religious beliefs? “Never! Never!” says Franz, as though the thought were an insult to his resoluteness. “We were always in a happy mood. Many times I was stopped by guards who would ask: ‘In all this misery, you still have a smile on your face? What’s wrong with you?’ Then I’d say: ‘I have a reason to smile because we have a hope beyond this difficult time​—a hope in God’s Kingdom when everything will be restored and everything made good for what we have to go through today.’”

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Holocaust survivors Franz Wohlfahrt (left) and Joseph Schoen with historian Dr. Christine King at the exhibit “The Victims”

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Boxcars similar to this one hauled Wohlfahrt and Schoen to concentration camps

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Above: Survivors Wohlfahrt (left) and Schoen at the “Enemies of the State” video history display that includes Jehovah’s Witnesses

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Below: Maria and Franz Wohlfahrt at exhibit that includes the Bible of Johann Stossier, Maria’s brother. “Johann somehow hid it for quite a while before it was discovered,” says Franz. “The Bible was the only belonging that was sent back to his mother after his execution”