https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Balzereit
Paul Balzereit
Paul Johannes Gerhard Balzereit , pseudonyms Paul Gehrhard and PBGotthilf (* 2 November 1885 in Kiel ; † 6 July 1959 in Magdeburg ) was a German journalist and as a "branch servant" (Country Director) of the Watchtower Society an important figure in the history of confrontation Jehovah's Witnesses with Nazism .
Born in 1885 Balzereit attended elementary school and completed a business education. After several years working in this profession, he joined the Jehovah's Witnesses to. 1916 transitional editor of the Watchtower , he advanced to 1923 for managers of newly established Golden Age , the German edition of the US Witness publication The Golden Age . In 1925, he was reported for an anti-clerical pamphlet, but acquitted in the following process. Even after the ban of the religious community in 1933 Balzereit allowed the publishing operation initially continue, albeit limited. He sat down for a withdrawal of the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses, became Increasingly criticized for its ready to compromise line. On May 10, 1935 Balzereit was arrested and in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp internment. 1936 Balzereit was the Jehovah's Witnesses of the disfellowshipped . Balzereit went to the prison time for his part at a distance from Jehovah's Witnesses. After the war, he served as head of the association of freestanding Christians , with the support of the Ministry for State Security against the Jehovah's Witnesses of DDR agitated.
See Also:
http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0845.htm
Before and after the Nazi ban on Jehovah's Witnesses from 24.06.1933 (Prussia), B. tried in vain to the authorities, the first of the production "harmless writings" (calendars and Bibles) granted to him, over the non-political, purely religious character of IBV enlighten. Especially after 1934 tended as to compromise that did not accept the Brooklyn line so that it distanced itself from the meanwhile on 05/10/1935 arrested and judged in court in October before the Special Court Hall B.. At the Lucerne Congress (04.-07.09.1936) sat Watchtower president Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869-1942) Erich Frost as the new country manager. In Sachsenhausen concentration camp as renounced his faith and went after 1945 own way (establishing the general Bible Training Association; in 1958 renamed Association freestanding Christians, with the support of the Ministry of State Security against the IBV ,Jehovah now witnesses, acted). While B. was a respected speaker before 1933, he is now almost unknown among Jehovah's Witnesses.
The 1974 Yearbook mentions him quite a bit. pg. 88, 97, 98, 100, 109, 110, 148-150.
pg 150
After serving his term in prison Balzereit was put in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was forced to play an extremely inglorious role. He had signed the declaration abdicating association with the brothers and avoided all contact with them. Because of his conduct he was released about a year later, but meanwhile he was forced to put up with many a humiliation, for, basically, the SS hated traitors too. It was the SS themselves who gave him the name "Beelzebub," and once an SS man required him to stand in front of all his brothers - there wee some 300 in the camp at the time - and repeat his signed declaration abdicating association with Jehovah's witnesses, and this he did!
In 1946, by which time Balzereit had become a violent opposer of the truth, he wrote a letter to reparations authorities revealing the hostile attitude that he had even before the trial was held. Thus ended a dark chapter in the history of God's people in Germany, the first lines of which had already been written in the 1920's.
He is also discussed in: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics Under Persecution
By M. James Penton
