Why the fixation on the Nazis?

by eyeslice 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  eyeslice

  Is it just me but do the Society have a fixation on the Nazis and the relatively few Witness martyrs?

  I was skimming through the Jan 15th 2003 Watchtower, and came across a couple of photos of brothers who were in concentration camps that I must have seen a 100 times before. Then, on the back there something about ones who died at the hands of the Nazis in Hungary.

  Now dont get me wrong, I know that what happen at the hands on the Nazis was truly awful, and that many of those who died were people whose faith at least I can admire. However, there must be a limit to what mileage the Society can make from these horrific experiences.

  Rather than harping on about the past, I believe that Christian believers today can find hope and encouragement amongst their peers. People we know today may not be experiencing the same level of brutality as under the Nazis, but we all know of ones who are battling with ill health, some times terminal illness such as cancer, emotional problems and economic reverses. Often these are the ones who lift our spirit by their dogged determination and will to make the most of life.

  I am sure that all Christian martyrs rest in Gods love, and there is little we can do to help those who died decades or even centuries ago. We can be there, though, for those who are suffering today and extend them our loving support while we still have them.

  Eyeslice
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  IronGland

  Because they feel that being persecuted is a sign of being gods chosen people. They bring it up as a sort of proof for doubters I guess. Also it makes for a convenient guilt trip to make people work harder selling magazines. You know, like ' why did you let a little bad weather keep you from going out in service when the brothers under the nazis suffered much worse'.
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  RandomTask

  Milking it for all its worth
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  orangefatcat

  Fear Factor!!

  Orangefatcat...
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  Focus

  The replies from RandomTask and IronGland are absolutely correct. Shameless and Disproportionate Milking. orangefatcat's comment is too apocryphal for me to comprehend (guessing what is meant, I disagree with him).

  While the lowest estimates for jW deaths at Nazi hands are almost certainly underestimates - they originate with a DF'd JW, the shameful Ditlieb Felderer (a truly despicable anti-semite and Holocaust-Denier convicted of the criminal offense of hate-mongering in Sweden, and the author of some of the most sickening, depraved and insulting material most could imagine) - it is improbable that more than a thousand so died.

  Absolutely precise data on the Holocaust is not available as the Nazis did a lot to cover their tracks, destroy the evidence and incinerate the records. Contrary to the idiotic babbling of the Holocaust-Deniers, intelligent Germans in positions of power knew the war was probably lost (in the longer term) two years - perhaps up to three years - before Allied troops actually overran the killing camps. From the time of the German declaration of war on the U.S. (Pearl Harbor + 4 days, as I recall, i.e. December 11, 1941) and the major reversals suffered by the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union in 1942, the writing was on the wall.

  Given the margin of error, a cool analysis, as to be found at http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.aspx?id=39853&site=3 (please ignore the propaganda introduced later on in that thread), shows that survival rates among jWs taken into the Nazi's "benevolent custody" were from 10 to 50 times higher than survival rates for Jews and "Romansch" people similarly encountered by the Nazis, and that for every one Earnest Bibelforster (Bible Student) who died at Nazi hands, as many as eight thousand Jews plus six thousand others were slaughtered.

  So, compared to the major groups hated by the Nazis, many of the jWs must have been treated relatively well for their relative survival rate to be so enormously higher. Note the word "relatively": given the unbelievable inhumanity the S.S. showed to the Jews, gypsies and so on, this does not mean the poor jWs were treated at all decently; I am not minimizing their suffering. The bosses in Brooklyn were safe, of course.

  The jW tragedy was, in terms of numbers, a drop in the Holocaust bucket.

  Solve the anagram in my signature, and my agenda becomes clear.

  --
  Focus
  (Anti- "CONTRADICTORY BETHEL TWIST ABC AwE" Class)
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  Incense_and_Peppermints

  persecution and milking, like irongland and randomtask said. my sister loved to say "oh, we had people die in concentration camps too", but she said it in a way that made it seem like she knew someone at the great "be-in" of '69, or something.
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  garybuss

  
  
  The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation has long bragged that it was alone in resisting the German Nazi movement in the 30's and 40's but they do not say a word about how they are not doing one thing to oppose the modern Nazis. Neo-Nazism is alive and well. How about it Watch Tower, why no articles or protests against neo-Nazis?
  
  Afraid they might walk right into Patterson and kick some ass?
  
  gb
  
  

  The Way I See it http://www.freeminds.org/buss/buss.htm
  
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  OUTLAW

  The WBTS would have us believe,they are the spokesmen for a goverment,that will commit far greater genicide,that the world has ever seen..Everyone who doe`s not join their religion,when presented with it,will die at their armagedon.If the WBTS has their way ,the government they support will make the genicide of the Jews and other undisirables(anyone who dosen`t support the WBTS),look like a childrens pinic..After a global sensless murder of the worlds population,JW`s will be hip deep in dead bodies..This will be the first day of JW paradise.....Why would anyone support such evil?...OUTLAW

  Edited by - OUTLAW on 5 December 2002 0:6:4
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  Realist

  the JWs in germany were executed not for being witnesses but for refusing to become soldiers...big difference in my opinion.
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  metatron

  Check out many of the Nazi articles in the magazines and you'll see why they LOVE Nazis.

  Often, the articles talk about NATIONS in which the organization is rapidly decaying
  like northern Europe. There was a recent article about past hard times in Slovakia
  where growth isn't too good.

  Their love of the Nazi past is a desperate effort to fight the dying zeal of countries
  In Europe especially - and elsewhere generally.

  metatron