Hello again! I remember reading somewhere that Jehovah'w witnesses tried to somehow make friends with hitler during the holocaust,
Is this true? Cause this past weekend, my biblestudy conductor brought this elder over who kept talking about "our brave brothers who lost their lives in the holocaust" as part of his faith without works/go to the KH speech. I wanted to say hey didn't you guy try to buddy up with hitler then,
Yes...and anyone who says the Witnesses werent persecuted and killed by the nazi Party ,is quite stupid.
I think the confusion arises if one goes back to the beginning of Hitlers reign..and the GB of the day tried to cosy up to Hitler.Again,this was before the persecutions kicked in.Many witnesses made a brave,noble stand against the Reich.
Here is a quote from my web sitealong with another link.
In 1934, it appears the Watchtower Society wrote a letter to Hitler indicating they supported some of his plans and even made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements.
I must disagree. While individuals experienced horrible mistreatment and even death, they suffered it because of religious fervour to comply with the WT leadership, not because of opposing the Reich in any real way. The anti-government anarchist sounding rhetoric of Rutherford enraged Hitler (and U.S. officials, resulting in imprisonment). And the leadership's sorry-ass attempts to hoodwink Hitler fueled his rage. This occurred AFTER the Jews were being arrested and property seized. Further, the letter itself implies their awarness of HiItler's determination to likewise destroy the WT's assets in the new Reich. The average JW did not suffer because of any efforts to oppose Hitler, they suffered because their leadership was crude and offensive and because of their their messsage of near universal execution and governmental destruction. The actual numbers of those killed will probably never be known but the WT's figures are impossibly exaggerated. What happened to them was tragic on many levels. JWs were in positions of trust such as barbers and houskeepers to high ranking Nazis thoughout the war, with WT approval, yet refused to work in hospitals serving the Allies or even just donate money to the efforts to oppose him. These strange compromises in ethics impossed upon the average JW must have caused all kinds of dissonance and inner confusion. Bravery is a slippery thing. Even convicted killers facing execution can be brave. Crusaders killing Muslims were brave. Irish IRA and Palestinians suicide bombers must be brave. None of these cases of bravery were/are noble. In the war, people died for all kinds of causes. Some people just died for no good reason.
Yes, in fact it was only when the Society decided that it should object to saluting the American flag in 1935 that Witnesses worldwide were told to refuse to salute flags or stand for national anthems. The consequences in Germany were horrendous. Witnesses were thrown into the first concentration camps for refusing to 'Heil Hitler'. (Penton, 'Jehovah's Witnesses & the Secular State', Journal of Church & State, 21, 1979)
Best book for this information is Christine King, 'The Nazi State & the New Religions', Edwin Mellen Press, NY, 1982.
The Declaration of Facts the Witnesses sent to Hitler in 1933/4? is also reprinted in their Yearbook of 1934/5? available on cd. Indisputable.
An entire book has been written on this topic: Jehovah's Witnesses & the Third Reich by James Penton (also the author of the landmark Apocalypse Delayed).
