Thanks MadApostate for posting this info.
I am a 4th-generation JW - although today on my way out of the JW and the WTS - and my grandfather has spent almost 5 years in 3 concentration-camps in Germany and 4 more years in prison under the Nazi-Regime. I have the greatest respect for his decision to reject any cooperation with the Nazis whatsoever, because of his being a christian - even if that meant that he wasn't able to be with my grandmother and my (at that time newborn) mother. He suffered for the rest of his life and was not able to work again, as they had smashed his hands in the concentration-camp and tortured him. I think what the Bibelforscher did, what my grandfather did was courageous - in my eyes they were heroes, he was a hero. Nothing can change my mind about that!
What I don't like and makes me feel sick at times: The way in which the WTS today uses and unscrupulously exploits what these women and men have gone through in those years in the camps for their own PR. When the only thing they want today is reparations for destroyed and confiscated material at the branch-offices, and - seems obvious after letters that have been read at meetings - look for the money that nazi-victims, still alive, might get as a restitution.
Maybe that's too simply put - but it's the way I feel, after I have seen and experienced, how my grandfather has been treated through the years. A mr. James Pellechia from the WTS, talking on behalf of JW-victims of Nazi-persecution, cannot express what my grandfather has felt, nor what my family has felt about this issue in the past 56 years. That's why I personally find the WTS-agenda for participating in such a conference disgusting!
cecil