by jwfacts 15 Replies latest watchtower bible
The Watchtower still proudly highlights that they were the only religion sent to concentration camps, due to their neutral war stance. However there are many other religions that are neutral or pacificts and so must have disobeyed Hitlers request for them to join his SS.
So what is the real reason JWs were put into concentration camps? Was it because they refused to join in the war effort, or was there another reason, perhaps Rutherford's distasteful messages of religious hate?
Ehhh guessing here but maybe none of the other religions would wake you up early on a Sunday morning just to offer you a crappy mag about coffee beans.
Plenty of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers who stood up to the regime were sent to the concentration camps. Don't believe everything you read in a Watchtower...
BTW, the WTS does not consider themselves a pacifist religion.
What do you consider a pacifist religion? Were there any groups like that practicing in the countries under Nazi control?
Blondie
Hitler jailed some Adventists and Catholics for pacifism. In fact the Adventist Church split because of the war in Germany the part of the Adventists that wouldnt take part in the war became The SDA reform movement and they are still in existance today all over the world.
Pacifict groups include Church of the Brethren, Mennonites and Society of Friends, Amish, Hutterites, and others in the Anabaptist tradition, Doukhobors, Molokans, Bruderhof Communities, Schwenkfelders, Moravians many groups of Brethren, and many groups within the Pentecostal movement. Several other smaller groups have been peace churches, including some now extinct or nearly so such as the Shakers. I am not sure how many of these were in Germany in WW2 though.
Thanks Barry, SDA's are well known for not engaging in war so I wondered about how they fared. There had to be more to Hitlers motives than simply pacifism. I was wondering if it had to do with the letters that Rutherford sent to Hitler.
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While not all Protestants are pacifists, many were and are. And even those who are not strictly pacifist (as in they would take up a weapon to defend themselves or others) did not support the aggressive, murderous and genocidal actions taken by Hitler and his followers. Many civilians put their own lives and those of their families between those who needed protection from Hitler's armies. Please research two who are very well known - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant minister hanged in a concentration camp for protecting Jews, and Corrie TenBoom (sp?) a Dutch women who along with her family hid Jews in their home. There are many books and movies about both and they are held in high regard and quoted often in Protestant churches.
Maybe there is a parallel with Malawi...I have always believed that the "party card" issue was made all the worse because of those crazy "letter writing campaigns" that flooded the dictator with protest mail. It would be so typical of the society to actually magnify the persucation of these poor third world people just to "prove" in effect that they were God's people being persecuted. Didn't anybody besides Ray Franz say "wait a minute - there isn't any scripture on a cardboard part card -" "wait a minute, we are causing our people to get raped and killed -"
Probably Rutherford manipulated the propaganda in the same heartless way in the thirties to call attention to himself. And Adolph Hitler was a very poor choice of someone to get pissed off at you.
I read a letter from the society to Hitler a few years back. They appeared very sympathetic with his views about the jews, obviously trying to save their own hides. I'm sure he saw right through it as it did not change his mind.
r.
