Does this count as Nazi collaboration?

by Julia Orwell 12 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  Julia Orwell

  A JW friend of mine visited the site of Auschwitz-Berkenau and bought a book on JWs in Auschwitz which documents which JWs were in the camp, which ones died, and what they did while they were there. Known as honest and industrious workers, a lot of them, especially women, were employed as domestic help in the homes of the SS commanders. This is well documented. These women looked after the kids, did the housework and ran errands to the shops and other places in town.

  By contrast, there were several small religious groups in the Soviet GULAG who like the JWs were considered decent workers who refused to work for the camp commanders. Even non-religious (at the time) prisoners refused to work for the commanders because it was considered immoral. The writer Alexandr Solzhenitsyn himself when he was a prisoner refused to work on a project that would harm his fellow Soviet people.

  And like the bosses of the GULAG, these SS commanders were responsible for the hideous oppression going on around them. They knew damn well Jews were being sent to the gas chambers; they were the ones running it! And JWs went and worked in the homes of these murderers. Of course I shouldn't judge the the JWs because they were faced with painful death and this a way to snatch some more life. I can't help thinking though, that by helping the SS they were collaborators in what the SS were doing at Auschwitz. Compare that to the people who lost their lives or health in the GULAG because they wouldn't help in the oppression of fellow humans. By collaborating with the SS as domestic help, were they not party to the work of murder and oppression the SS were doing?
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  Phizzy

  This work was always presented by the WT as proof that the JW's were truly neutral, and so were considered as safe employees by the S.S

  I never thought much beyond that claim when I was in, until I learned of a guy who eventually became a JW after the war, but said he did not consider them neutral enough during WW2.

  I think you make a valid point, this is another area where WT spin fails when you examine it closely.

  As I pointed out on another thread, it seems as well as though the WT's claiming these "JW" prisoners as their own is somewhat doubtful, it seems that after the war many of them left the WT for doctrinal reasons, not "materialism" as the WT claims.

  So while taking nothing away from these prisoners as heroic opposers of the Nazis, there stance seems lacking in full moral vigour.

  The WT it seems are quite happy to claim their bravery as something that redounds on the WT, but would have viewed them as Apostates as soon as they left, and down to this day.
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  Julia Orwell

  The SS also identified many of them as just Bible Students, ones who didn't follow Rutherford when he took over in 1917. There also were ones who didn't take the name Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931 and remained "Bible Students", and the SS distinguished the Bible Students from the JWs, while the WT today claims them all.
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  villagegirl

  Technically I see your point. In reality, in those circumstances many did what they could to survive. For the JW women; they are trained to be brain dead and submissive to male authority, and also trained to never take a political or social position on anything ( example: JW's never participated in any Civil Rights protests, on helped end Apartheid, in South Africa, they just went along with it ) so their actions submitting to Nazi authority is understandable. The only political stand they took was passive, not salute a flag or not vote, or not participate in any political action. It is this very isolation from community that enabled this behavior. It was failure to "openly participate politically ", that landed them in the camps and failure to recognize any moral obligation to the Jews being slaughtered that made them the passive obedient servants that the WT had molded them into being. The JW female position is to "let the men do the thinking" while we wash the floor. JW's are also, male or female, conditioned to isolate themselves from their social surroundings and isolate themselves from any sense of connectiveness to the community at large or sense of obligation, to the sufferings of others, especially not the suffering of "worldly people", so the Jews being tortured and slaughtered were of no concern to them.
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  Julia Orwell

  Good point, passive resistance. The ones who did view it as Nazi collaboration and turned it down probably didn't live to tell about it, like the people in the Soviet GULAG.
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  designs

  Those become like Sophie's Choices. An experience I heard at a Holocaust forum was of a Jewish woman who approached the electric fence surrounding her barracks and was ready to touch the wires when another woman came up and said "don't, you won't know how this will end".
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  Syme

  Julia, I think you're going a little too far with this. The Nazi commanders did not *employ* the JWs into their houses; they were prisoners, as in slaves.

  It's like saying black slaves who worked inside the landlords' houses in the American South, instead of out in the fields, had part in the crime of slavery in the US.

  There's no need to let our feelings towards the ''Org'' and its practices, make us feel hatred for simple JWs who fought honestly for what they thought was God's cause. Especially people who did not betray their beliefs in the face of death (even if their beliefs were ill-placed).

  In my country young JWs have been shot in the past (post-War), others beat to death, because of the neutrality issue. Were they mislead? Well, yes, apparently. All of the 1st century martyrs were mislead as well (for an atheist like me); Others who died for their political ideology were also mislead; this does not diminish the respect they deserve.

  Sorry for the 'advisal' tone
• 

  villagegirl

  The Watchtower's version of history, like its version of reality, is distorted

  and bent to fit their fairy tale world. JW's believe they are "protected"

  by the insular philosophy of "separteness", this isolated mindset

  makes them believe that they literally have no connection to whatever

  is happening around them. The world they mentally live in, has "two classes"

  and "special knowledge" and they see themselves as acting out some

  Divine Plan in which they are the heroes and only survivors. The only

  community they can see is the one "in the organization" they see no

  obligation to connect or contribute, to "those on the outside". Including

  members of their own family.
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  PaintedToeNail

  Being domestic help and watching children did not contribute to the war effort. I agree with Syme, there is no reason not to feel true human compassion for the incredibly unfortunate people who were enslaved, starved, tortured, gassed and incinerated...
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  Julia Orwell

  Oh I don't judge them like that. I know that people generally act according to the best knowledge they have when faced with unbelievable pressures, and these JWs were in a very bizarre situation. They certainly got off better than the Jews. I wonder if, like the Soviet prisoners, some chose death over giving the SS any help whatsoever...