Nobody can fail to admire the courage and integrity of many, if not most, JWs in Hitler's Germany. My problems with the Society's incessant trumpeting of their impressive record are as follows:
(1) The appropriation of their praiseworthy conduct for propagandistic purposes by a leadership who seek to supress disclosure of their own cowardly conduct; i.e. attempts to appease Hitler by scapegoating the Jews and vilifying the western democracies whose enlightened system of justice affirmed and protected JWs freedom of worship.
(2) Their incessant, obsessive recourse to the past (invariably sanitised and idealised in the WT) as validation of their credentials; it seems today that JWs are preaching themselves more than the Gospel.
(3) Fostering the impression created in their handing of such material that somehow JWs have a monopoly on Christian martyrdom.
Then in Germany as now, we note a huge dichotomy between the sincere, often praiseworthy record of the rank and file, and the contemptible, ofen unprincipled behavior of the leadership.
(1) The appropriation of their praiseworthy conduct for propagandistic purposes by a leadership who seek to supress disclosure of their own cowardly conduct; i.e. attempts to appease Hitler by scapegoating the Jews and vilifying the western democracies whose enlightened system of justice affirmed and protected JWs freedom of worship.
(2) Their incessant, obsessive recourse to the past (invariably sanitised and idealised in the WT) as validation of their credentials; it seems today that JWs are preaching themselves more than the Gospel.
(3) Fostering the impression created in their handing of such material that somehow JWs have a monopoly on Christian martyrdom.
Then in Germany as now, we note a huge dichotomy between the sincere, often praiseworthy record of the rank and file, and the contemptible, ofen unprincipled behavior of the leadership.