I am extremely disappointed in Leolaia's one-sided presentation. For instance, it is true that Christine King cites a Nazi source as attributing anti-Semitism to German Jehovah's Witnesses. On the other hand, King also wrote, in a later article in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, that in her personal research she encountered many stories of Jehovah's Witnesses helping Jews escape the Nazis.
Was my citation of King one-sided? What you just wrote above is exactly what I quoted King as saying: (1) there are cases of Witnesses condemning the Jews as 'murderers of Christ' AND (2) there are cases of individual Witnesses helping Jews. If you missed that in my quote, you did not read it very carefully.
BTW, my purpose is not to give a full picture of the whole affair but to shed light on something that is still little-known by many....Rutherford's anti-Jewish statements in the literature. The actual attitudes of individual German JWs of course varied considerably. There is no doubt that, as Garbe documents, there were many cases of JWs going out of their way to help Jews. My point is that this is not the whole story. That some were clearly anti-semitic and that the leadership itself made anti-semitic statements is clear. Paul Balzereit, branch overseer in Germany, was certainly just as bigoted as Rutherford, if one looks at his letter to Hitler and his version of Rutherford's Declaration, which goes much further than philosophical anti-semitism to express his agreement with the Nazi Platform, Section 24 (which expresses opposition to Jewish businesses which was realized via the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933) and his criticism of the American boycott of Germany in response to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. If that is how Balzereit expressed himself, and if other anti-Jewish statements were published in the literature by Rutherford from time to time, it is not a difficult inference to conclude that many other JWs held similar attitudes.
Edit: I should also add that the above pertains only to the situation in 1933; the leadership came down very hard on the Nazis subsequently, and the publications in the later period also did much to expose the Nazi persecution of the Jews (tho anti-semitic statements did also appear from time to time).
From what I have read, some had the attitude: "that is a shame what is happening to the Jews, but they have only themselves to blame after all they rejected Jehovah - too bad, let us not make the same mistake", which is certainly a somewhat flawed perspective, but it is also rather to be distinguished from a more malignant view along the lines: "I am glad the Jews are suffering, they deserve all that they get, and I'll help out if I get the chance."
I agree that it is more accurate to say that the former was more representative instead of the latter (which also comes close to violating neutrality and basic Christian morality as well), as expressed by robhic as well in the first post to this thread. And JWs during the period of persecution also looked to Jews as a sympathetic people to witness to, with hopes of conversion to the movement. Such a "flawed perspective" however is anti-Semitic as well, as it blamed the Jews for their own perseuction and extermination...
