Foreword

"Time and again, Jehovah's Witnesses were the most courageous."(1) - The communist prisoner Gertrud Keen in the Moringen concentration camp used these words to describe the behavior of Bible Students.
The Deutschland-Berichte of the exile Social Democratic party in Prague is typical for many other sources. It stated about Jehovah's Witnesses in the Sachsenburg concentration camp: "The Earnest Bible Students' conduct is most astonishing. These … people showed an implacable spirit of opposition and martyrdom and were unyielding as no other group in the camp."(2)
Both quotations express great respect for the conduct of Jehovah's Witnesses. Both also reveal that this conduct by the persecuted was considered conspicuous and unusual. In many concentration camps, they represented the majority of prisoners, although in general they usually constituted only 5-10 percent of the prisoners, and nevertheless, this small group was noticeable.
Furthermore, immediately after 1945, concentration camp prisoners wearing the purple triangle were especially remembered. Hanns Lilje, for many years bishop of the Lutheran church in Hanover, emphasized in 1947 that "no Christian community can stand even the slightest comparison with the number of their matyrs."(3)
Nevertheless, the history of Nazi persecution of this group was increasingly overlooked. The fate of Jehovah's Witnesses is virtually unknown to a wider public today. In some school books, they receive marginal attention, if at all; they are sometimes placed in an incorrect context, included in the "destruction of life not worthy of living."
Of the approximately 25,000 members of this religious community at the beginning of the Third Reich, nearly 10,000 of them were arrested for various terms. Nearly 2,000 of them were incarcerated in concentration camps. About 1,200 died or were killed, including ca. 250 Jehovah's Witnesses who were executed for refusing military service. In fact, Jehovah's Witnesses were "fought with inexorable severity."(4)
Not only former fellow concentration camp prisoners emphasized the behavior of Jehovah's Witnesses. Similar analyses are found in historical literature. The most incisive formulation was by Friedrich Zipfel. He stated that the Nazi persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses "was an unusual process."(5) Detlef Garbe also pointed to several "very significant peculiarities" in Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.(6) The most important are that Jehovah's Witnesses were among the first groups to be persecuted, that Jehovah's Witnesses resolutely and unitedly resisted the Nazis, that the Witnesses were stigmatized and marked as a distinct group by the "purple triangle" in concentration camps, and that they represented the largest number of those sentenced by military tribunals for refusing military service.
An additional characteristic is that they represented the largest number of female prisoners in Moringen, Lichtenburg, and, until 1939, in Ravensbrück concentration camps for women.
All of these facts stand in stark contrast with historiography about Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. Until well into the 1990s, researchers showed little interest in this subject. The classic monograph about this topic by Detlef Garbe was only published in 1993. For the first time, several conferences under the auspices of the Watch Tower Society and various partners (Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt, the concentration camp memorials at Wewelsburg and Neuengamme, as well as the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung [the Federal Agency for Political Education]) took place in Germany in the fall of 1997 (characteristically as a result of a program in 1994 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.). These symposia found substantial response and frequent requests for a documentation of the various presentations and lectures. Only the conference at the Wewelsburg District Museum on October 4, 1997, was published under the title Widerstand aus christlicher Überzeugung: Jehovas Zeugen im Nationalsozialismus [Resistance out of Christian Conviction: Jehovah's Witnesses under National Socialism].(7)
We have therefore assembled the additional presentations in this anthology. After reviewing the various essays and with increasing distance from the symposia, it was rapidly apparent that it would be desirable to include additional contributions in order to present a comprehensive picture of the status of research about specific aspects of the Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The first section of this anthology focuses on the history of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi concentration camps. Henry Friedlander's essay explains the various categories of concentration camp prisoners and presents a summary of the concentration camp system. Christoph Daxelmüller explores the religious and social behavior of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi concentration camps. In addition to these introductory essays, several articles focus on Jehovah's Witnesses in specific concentration camps: Moringen concentration camp for women (Jürgen Harder and Hans Hesse), Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Kirsten John-Stucke), Sachsenhausen (Antje Zeiger), Moringen as a concentration camp for juveniles (Martin Guse), and Bergen-Belsen (Thomas Rahe).
These specific analyses of the daily realities of Jehovah's Witnesses in the concentration camp system are completed by a series of paintings about the Buchenwald concentration camp made by the surviving Jehovah's Witness prisoner, Johannes Steyer, years after liberation (Johannes Wrobel essay).
Sybil Milton's essay throws an impressive light on the religious association of Jehovah's Witnesses as a "forgotten victim group."
Even today, there are few documents published about Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, let alone a systematic documentation, as Sybil Milton makes clear in her contribution. For the first time, this anthology presents various aspects of Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, including translated and facsimile documents. This includes a collection of more than twenty letters by Hans Gärtner, a Jehovah's Witness incarcerated in the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camp (Angela Nerlich and Wolfram Slupina essay).
The final essays in Part A summarize specific aspects of Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses. Ursula Krause-Schmitt focuses on women's experiences and Hubert Roser investigates regional aspects of persecution in Baden and Württemberg.

We were gratified to be able to add essays by two additional authors (Hans-Hermann Dirksen and Göran Westphal) concerning the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in the German Democratic Republic. This is a very new area of research.
Two additional contributions from the perspective of a historian (Detlef Garbe) and from the viewpoint of a staff member of the Public Affairs department of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany (Wolfram Slupina) discuss the reasons for the belated attention to the history of persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The contributions in Part B of this anthology focus on the controversies about the documentary video "Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault" produced by the Watch Tower Society and shown at many symposia and exhibitions and the attendant reservations expressed by public officials and other critics.
The purpose of this section is not to provide expert opinions about different aspects of the documentary video and to reach a conclusive judgement. Our intention is to provide diverse views that can be compared. We are especially grateful to Dietrich Hellmund and Lutz Lemhöfer, who agreed to write their opinions. They did this despite the very tight deadlines given to them.
This section is completed by Gabriele Yonan's expert opinion and an essay by one of the directors of the video documentation, Johannes Wrobel of the History Archive of the Watch Tower Society in Selters. These essays are supplemented by a presentation about responses to the screenings of the documentary video "Jehovah's Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault" (Wolfram Slupina).
In her essay, Jolene Chu strives to highlight parallel developments in the persecution of the Jews and of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Two essays introduce and conclude Part B of this anthology; they provide information about Jehovah's Witnesses today (Walter Köbe) and an evaluation of the significance of Nazi persecution by a staff member from the New York headquarters of the Watch Tower Society in Brooklyn and the responsible director of the documentary video (James Pellechia).
To enable the reader to see the totality of Nazi persecution, a chronology was prepared by Jürgen Harder and Hans Hesse. This chronology and the attached bibliography do not claim to be comprehensive or definitive.(8)
This book project could not have been realized without the assistance and support of many others. We would particularly like to thank Dr. Detlef Garbe and Dr. Hubert Roser for their willingness to help and their critical suggestions. We also wish to acknowledge the assistance of Wolfram Slupina and Johannes Wrobel as well as their colleagues from the Watch Tower Society, who provided us with documents, responded to numerous specific questions, and facilitated solutions to technical problems. I would like to thank Karlo Vegelahn for his assistance in producing the bibliography as well as the publishing house EDITION TEMMEN for their supervision of the project.
Special thanks to the team of translators who worked diligently to produce the English version of the original German text: Angelika Diekmann, Shirley Dommett, Audrey Gedminas, Clarissa Hartung, Stephanie Hartung, Anette Loßner, Hanne Mitchell, Ruth Moreno, Silvia Porzelt, Shirley Quo Vadis, Sally Swan, and Brigitte Weiss.
I owe special thanks to Sybil Milton for undertaking the final editorial reading of the translation. She accomplished this with both excellent mastery of the language and diligence. Unfortunately, her editorial work ceased in October 2000 after her sudden death. We mourn the loss of this great researcher and historian in the field of Nazi history. Sybil Milton's approach to the theme of Nazi persecution was a very special one, and with her death, we lose a weighty voice speaking up in favor of other groups persecuted under the Nazi regime, such as the Sinti and Roma.
Finally, I want to thank the many individuals who provided valuable data about the subject of this anthology. I want especially to credit my wife, Dr. Elke Purpus, who critically reviewed portions of this manuscript, but above all for her patience, composure, and support in many critical phases of this project.

Göttingen, Winter 2000
Hans Hesse

Notes

1 Gertrud Keen, video interview with Loretta Walz, in Moringen Concentration Camp Memorial Archives.

2 Deutschland-Berichte der SPD (Sopade) 1934-1940, reprint in 6 vols. (Salzhausen and Frankfurt, 1980), v. 4 (1937), p. 707. Quoted here from Detlef Garbe, Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im "Dritten Reich" (Munich, 1997), p. 406.

3 Hanns Lilje, Im finsteren Tal (Nuremberg, 1947), p. 64.

4 Garbe, p. 9.

5 Friedrich Zipfel, Kirchenkampf in Deutschland 1933-1945: Religionsverfolgung und Selbstbehauptung der Kirchen in der nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Berlin, 1965), p. 176.

6 Detlef Garbe, "Die Verfolgung der Zeugen Jehovas im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland - Ein Überblick," in Widerstand aus christlicher Überzeugung: Jehovas Zeugen im Nationalsozialismus; Dokumentation einer Tagung, sponsored by Kreismuseum Wewelsburg, Fritz Bauer Institut, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, ed. by Kirsten John Stucke and Andreas Pflock (Essen, 1998), pp. 16-28, quote at 24.

7 Ibid.

8 A number of additional studies are currently being prepared and are as yet not published. These include:
- Hans-Hermann Dirksen, Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung der Zeugen Jehovas in der DDR. Dissertation at Greifswald University;
- Karola Fings, "Himmlers Baubrigaden: Eine Studie über KZ-Außenlager und Käftlingseinsatz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Einsatz von Häftlingen in den Kommunen" (Ph.D. Dissertation in preparation at the University of Düsseldorf, includes the larger group of Jehovah's Witnesses in "1. SS-Baubrigade");
- Brigitta Hack, "Kinder und Jugendliche in der NS-Zeit am Beispiel der Zeugen Jehovas" (Ph.D. Dissertation in preparation at the University of Mainz);
- Jürgen Harder and Hans Hesse, "Und wenn ich lebenslang im KZ bleiben müßte…" Die Zeuginnen Jehovas in den Frauen-KZs Moringen, Lichtenburg und Ravensbrück, Essen 2001;
- Christian Herrmanny, "Die Zeugen Jehovas im Spiegel der Printmedien: Eine Untersuchung zur Selbstdarstellung einer religiösen Sondergruppe im Vergleich mit ihrem Bild in Tagespresse und Nachrichtenmagazinen (Master's thesis at Bochum University, in preparation);
- Waldemar Hirch, "Die Zeugen Jehovas im Visier des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der ehemaligen DDR: Observierungs-, Unterdrückungs- und Zersetzungsmaßnahmen gegen eine Glaubensgemeinschaft" (Ph.D. Dissertation in preparation at Stuttgart University);
- Eva-Maria Tanja Kloos, "Widerstand der Zeugen Jehovas im ›Dritten Reich': Mit Hinweisen zu methodischen Möglichkeiten und praktischen Anwesndungen im Geschichtsunterricht (first state exam for teachers at Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg);
- Andreas Pflock, KZ-Herzogenbusch (Ph.D. Dissertation at Hanover University, in preparation); and
- Robert Reichel, "Jehovas Zeugen in der DDR: Verbot und Verfolgung einer Glaubensgemeinschaft am Beispiel Chemnitz/Erzgebirge" (State exam in history, Freiburg University).