Many of us know of him and his remarkable story during the dark years of WWII. As a Jehovah's Witness he went to the death camps rather than renounce his faith and pacificism. He was 107.
RIP
Leopold Engleitner, oldest survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps dies, 107
by designs 7 Replies latest social current
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AndDontCallMeShirley
"Millions Now Living Will Never Die"
Oops, there goes another one. RIP.
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designs
Leopold heard all of the Wt. leader's failed promises, Rutherford, Knorr, Franz and the newer GB. I wonder what his thoughts were at the end.
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Dagney
Did he claim to be of the "you know what" class?
He was quite the celebrity. I wonder what he thought also. I remember when my mom was about 89, and one day out of the blue she looked at me and said, "I don't think I'm going to see it." (As in surviving the "end" and seeing paradise, never dying.)
RIP Leopold.
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steve2
I would imagine it would be too damn soul-destroying in your twilight years to actively question the religious faith you almost sacrificed your life for in your distant younger years. I am sure any discomforting life review by the elderly is not unique to Jehovah's Witnesses - although the Witnesses have been perhaps among the most publically adamant about two main points:They alone "have" the "truth" and the end is (permanently) so very near. How do you reconcile these two "certainties" as the decades pass, your contemporaries die off, the organization keeps "elasticizing" the duration of the end-times and the end seems no closer than when you were a lad with an urgent need to not only warn your fellow country folk, but were prepared to die for those two certainties? I do not know what that would be like. But if this old man who passed his 100th birthday 7 years ago ever doubted his aging faith, dementia and death would easily keep their promises to bring relief from the torment of the end of "this wicked system of things" failing to arrive in your lifetime - despite the publicized urgent certainties of a long gone youth and one's dramatic preparedness to die for a faith that never delivers on its arrogant promises..
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mP
Lets not forget the Russians people and soldiers, who lived through hell to win the war.
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wha happened?
We're getting close to the generation of 1914 becoming a memory
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designs
wh- yes, if my father were alive he also would be 107.