freeman wrote:
I think maybe it was Allen F
Alan Feuerbacher was not the depraved apostate responsible. The author of the piece mentioned was my Norwegian friend Mr Norman Hovland ("Norm"). Here it is: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.aspx?id=19553&site=3
I entirely concur with all but one of the contributions to this thread (which one I simply do not understand), so what I say here should be read as an addendum to the correct analysis and interpretation that appears above.
Here is some more information, not before brought up in JW forums or sites AFAIK. At the War Crimes trial at Nuremberg conducted by the International Military Tribunal in 1945-6, one of the defendants (rightly convicted and sentenced to death by hanging) was the 53 year old Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party's ""intellectual"". While the testimony he rendered included some huge lies (no doubt whatsoever about this - one has but to read the transcript), in parts where he could not himself be blamed he appears to answer questions truthfully. Here I quote from page 513 of the court transcripts, covering his evidence given on April 16, 1946, and speaking about S.S. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, the most powerful Nazi after Hitler himself.
Himmler himself spoke to me about the matter of the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses .. Himmler told me only that it was certainly impossible to put up with conscientious objections, considering the situation the Reich was in, that it would have incalculable consequences; and he went on to say that he had often talked personally to these internees in order to understand them and eventually convince them. That, he said, has been impossible, however, because they replied to all questions with quotations - quotations from the Bible which they had learned by heart, so that nothing was to be done with them. From that statement by Himmler I gathered that since he was telling me such a story he could not possibly want to plan or carry out executions of these Jehovah's witnesses.
I think it is quite possible that the highlighted comment is correct. Himmler was more intrigued by the JWs - and frustrated with the failure of all attempts to "reason" with them to join the German armed forces, to vote etc. - than anything else. This testimony is also in accordance with what we know of Himmler's attitude (akin to admiration?) from http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/ushmmjeh.htm :
According to Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler often used the 'fanatical faith" of Jehovah's Witnesses as an example to his own SS troops. In his view, SS men had to have the same 'unshakable faith' in the National Socialist ideal and in Adolf Hitler that the Witnesses had in Jehovah. Only when all SS men believed as fanatically in their own philosophy would Adolf Hitler's state be permanently secure.
There was no real deep ideological hatred for the JWs (except that a totalitarian system, the Nazi Cult, cannot tolerate a competitor totalitarian system, the Watchtower Cult), and therefore there was no specific plan for the Earnest Bibelforscher to be exterminated (unlike the Jews, gypsies, invalids, mentally ill, homosexuals etc., for whom specific plans for elimination were set out by the Nazis, and then duly and often gleefully executed). This is why (I quote my own words from http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.aspx?id=39853&site=3 :
the survival rate for German Jews and gypsies who failed to flee the country once Hitler came to power was under 2% .. the survival rate for German JWs in the same period in the same period was about 90%
Have no fear that I am exaggerating.
(a) The only Jews and gypsies in Germany proper who survived the war had disguised themselves as being something else, or were one of the starving handful found in the camps.
(b) For JW deaths, I am wholly ignoring the work of the Holocaust-denier, convicted hate-criminal and rightly-DF'd (if only done to avoid embarrassment for the WTS) Ditlieb Felderer, who will almost doubtless have understated things in his "research" (which is consistent with a 97+% JW survival rate).
In some areas outside Germany but under Nazi control, there was no specific action taken against JWs at all, or such steps as were taken principally involved the confiscation of property (as in Holland). The principal civilian enemies (as already named) of the Nazis were not so fortunate.
I am minimizing nothing. Torture was used against some individual JWs. On June 12, 1942, S.S. General Mueller, the Chief of the Gestapo proclaimed (on behalf of the SIPO/SD) the following order:
"Third degree may .. only be employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements, parachutists, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet Russian slackers; in all other cases my permission must first be obtained.. Third degree can, according to circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet (bread and water), hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep, exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more than 20 strokes a doctor must be consulted)."
Cruel, yes, but not on a par with what was endured by those the Nazis actively wished to exterminate (for whom a quick bullet from the Einsatzgruppen or a few moments of agony in a 'gas kammer' was a release from hell).
Conclusion? Without taking anything away from the blind courage of the poor R&F JW, the zeal with which the Watchtower Whoreganization milks the issue - its Patterson- & Bethel-based "researchers" have for years been crawling all over related internet forums and sites, attempting to squeeze every bit of propaganda they can for "Mother" - is, in my opinion, something of an insult to those millions tortured and murdered during the Holocaust..
To any such interested researchers - please read http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.aspx?id=19553&site=3 for perspective.
--
Focus
(Truth, not "The Truth", Class)
Edited by - Focus on 5 December 2002 21:24:23
