Of course JWs have always felt they are the most persecuted people on the planet. But, when it comes to how many JWs died in concentration camps, WT has been all over the map. Regardless, the number of JWs in comparison to Jews isn't even a comparison by any styretch of the imagination:
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- Arrested: 6,019
- Total number of arrests (some were arrested many times): 8,917
- Total number in concentration camps: 2,000
- Died in prison: 635
- Actually executed: 203
With these numbers in mind, let us then investigate what the Watchtower has claimed elsewhere. The above figures is from 1974 and was given the year before Armageddon (that was supposed to be in the autumn [October] 1975). Let us look at other figures:
1950
- 1,000 Witnesses executed
- 1,000 died in prison and concentration camps
- The Watchtower, December 15, 1950, p. 500: "Already during the Hitler regime about 1,000 Jehovah's witnesses were executed as traitors, because they not only refused to serve in the war but openly opposed Hitler's authority. Another 1,000 of Jehovah's witnesses died in prisons and concentration camps."
1951
- 2,000 Witnesses died cruel deaths
- The Watchtower, February 15, 1951, pp. 105-106: "That is why during the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945 Jehovah's witnesses in that land refused to heil Hitler! as their Fuehrer or Leader, and went to concentration camps and prisons, where 2,000 died cruel deaths, and of the 8,000 that came out alive, 2,000 were invalided for the rest of their lives."
1960
- 10,000 Witnesses were tortured
- The Watchtower, June, 1, 1960, p. 327: "Hitler failed to break them in prisons and concentration camps where he tortured10,000 of them, and the Communists are failing to do it in their frightful prisons and slave-labor camps."
1964
- Over 4,000 Witnesses died
- 10,000 Witnesses were put in concentration camps
- The Watchtower, January 1, 1964, p. 13: "Hitler, a Roman Catholic, the arm of his church in Germany, forbade Jehovah's witnesses to preach the kingdom of God, and these modern-day Christians had to say to Hitler's Gestapo police: 'Whether it is righteous in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves.' They kept preaching even though 10,000 of them were put in concentration camps and over 4,000 died there. The rest nearly starved to death. The war's end aided their survival."
1976
- 203 Witnesses executed
- 635 Witnesses died in prison
- A total of 6,019 Witnesses was arrested
- The Watchtower, February 1, 1976, p. 82: "a total of 6,019 had been arrested, several of them two, three, or even more times, so that, all together, 8,917 arrests were registered; and these persons served sentences amounting to 13,924 years in prison. Many of these faithful men and women were put into concentration camps and thus collectively spent 8,078 years undergoing vicious treatment there. A total of 635 died in prison, 253 were sentenced to death, with 203 of these actually being executed."
1979
- 203 Witnesses executed
- 635 Witnesses died in prison
- A total of 6,019 Witnesses was arrested
- The Watchtower, July 1, 1979, pp. 7-8: "By way of illustration, please consider the years 1933 to 1945, when Adolf Hitler's "Third Reich" tried to exterminate Jehovah's Witnesses in the German Reich. Their activities were banned and 6,019 were arrested, several of them two, three or more times. Two thousand suffered in concentration camps. A total of 635 Witnesses died in prison, 203 being executed."