Could The HOLOCAUST Happen Again? -BY AWAKE! WRITER IN SWITZERLAND

The Holocaust and Jehovah's Witnesses

In 1933, there were about 25,000 of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany.  Thousands of them were among the first people to be thrown into Nazi camps and prisons.  They declared their neutrality as Christians toward all kinds of political and military activity.  They did not heil Hitler.  They refused to accept the Nazi racist ideaology and to share in Hitler' war machine.  About 2,000 died, more than 250 of them by execution.

Furthermore, Witness prisoners helped fellow prisoners to endure, including Jews and others.  They did so by instilling Bible-based hope in them and by sharing whatever they had with sick and weak ones, often offering some of their last piece of bread.  During the early years of Nazi persecution, the also smuggled out information about the existence of concentration camps and about what was going on in them. Since then, in their globally circulated magazines, The Watchtower and Awake!  they have published numerous articles dealing with Nazi atrocities as well as survivor's life stories. 

Fear of a revival of Nazism was evident among the delegates at the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. Professor Yehuda Bauer, director of the International Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Israel, expressed it this way:  "Because it happened once, it can happen again, not in the same form, not necessarily to the same people, but to anyone by anyone. It was unprecedented, but now the precedent is there." 

Next time: THE BIBLE'S VIEWPOINT/Was Jehovah the Tribal God of the Jews?

From the jw.org publications