Happy Guy, I point among others to Hesse, Harder, Garbe, Graffard, Tristan, Reynaud, Imberger, Weinreich, Roser, Dirksen, Hirch, Besier, Vollnhals, Geist, Nattland, Hacke, Beerenbaum, Krug, Walz, and personal stories by Rammersdorfer, Engleitner, Mueller, Hollweg, Hillinger, Kusserow, Klein, John, Varga, Steinacker, Jobst, Schmidt, Liebster, Woehlbitsch, Reppas, Arnold, de Mure, Streyczek, Uran. You asked about an expression I used, and as I have written before, I am not English-speaking, so I back-translate from my own language, and that is why expressions might be a bit strange. I meant historians, if that is the phrase. But read the books written by the historians and victims I have quoted above, I have read many of them and have them all, so I am currently in the process of going thru them all, and I repeat that while by all means critisism against the traitors is needed, one should not include those who stood up for their faith, like Steinacker and his likes. Do not nullify it all because of some traitors, I continue to urge you to walk gently around the graves of Steinacker and numerous other nameless and forgotten victims. Other questions include to what extent one can rely on Nazi records, when you know how the Stasi falsified records etc., and also what each one of us would have done after days and weeks of beatings and torture - how many names and dates and places would not have poured out of our mouth? It is easy 60 years afterwards to blame the ones who could not take it any more.
New book by Jim Penton, and revised book by Carl Jonsson.
by cyberguy 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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GermanXJW
The WTS has been running an official Watchtower History Archive in Germany since the 1990s. Johannes Wrobel is responisble for this.
Maybe he could not deny access to Penton because he is professional researcher or he used some strawmen to get the information he needed.
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Brummie
Every exjw should draw a distinction between the suffering JWs and their selfish arrogant leaders who tried to court Hitlers favour. The JWs who suffered or wore purple triangles have my utmost respect and admiration. The leaders of the WT at that time were hypocriticle selfish bigots living a lifestyle of luxury. The JW and the WT leaders part company when it comes to loyalty and dying for their faith.
I havent read this book but I am friends with J Penton and his wife and am sure he would have handled this case very sensitively, he was working on this book when I last saw him 3 years ago, he hasnt brashly put a book together attacking JWs, he has, no doubt, spent years honestly researching and has challanged the crooked re writing of the WT history.
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Max Divergent
When I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC we were given an identity card of a person who died in the Holocaust.
Mine was of a Witness, Willibald Wholfhart (1927-1945) of Austria. His family were active in the ministry and his father was the local overseer, despite Govt opposition. After the Nazi's invaded in 1939, his father was arrested and executed. His older brother went to a concentration camp and his other brother was executed for refusing to join the military. The rest of his brothers and sisters were taken away later by the Germans.
Willi was sent to a convent where a Nazi instructor attempted to indoctrinate him. He later refused to salute Hitler and was sent to dig trenches in front of the invading allies in 1945.
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Brummie
Max, what a sad story about a great family who suffered :(
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Happy Guy :)
I am not English-speaking, so I back-translate from my own language, and that is why expressions might be a bit strange
Ah that explains it Hippie. Thank you for pointing that fact out to me.
As far as the book goes, I have not read it but I do know Jim Penton and have spoken with him over the phone (mind you it was over ten years ago). I know him to be a very honest person. I suspect that even if he was to critisize the WT for it's alignement with Hitler or it's anti semetic views he would not neglect to mention the rank and file who were victimized and mention them in a sympathic light. Penton's views have always been balanced and fair (which is probably why he did not last as a JW).
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TheOldHippie
That's OK, Happy Guy. It's only that I have become so moved, touched, by some of the stories, that I wish to caution certain people. It's so easy to say that because some leaders compromised, all Witnesses were just maniacs of some sort, and their suffering was worth nothing. (Like because Usama is a terrorist, all Moslems are terrorists too.) But it was, it shows how one can keep one's dignity in terrible periods. Steinacker was executed as a 20 years old boy, he had left the Catholic church in 1938 as a boy of 18, amidst the Nazi occupation of Austria, and suffered totally alone, in solitude, as he was not taken to a concentration camp, but was imprisoned, tried and executed by the ordinary judicial system, because he refused to join the military. 25 years later, his letters were found, and 30 years after that again, the little book was published, where his letters are photocopied. OK, I end this discussion with his overgrown and fading tombstone in a remote Austrian churchyard, a hero worth remembering:
