by Sue 29 Replies latest jw friends
Hi kent,
Do you know exactly when the Wt has stopped to autorize the non-combattant service instead of the military service.
I think that Rutherford in his letter to Hitler spoke about the young JW that make an alternative service at this time.
True or not ?
Bye
Charles
Watching the “Stand Firm” Video you would think that JW’s were the only ones persecuted and they won the war single handedly. It would be interesting if they Gay community came out (no pun intended) and made similar claims as the WTS. Perhaps a video called “Pink Triangles”.
"But it does move"
Galileo
I'm not sure of that, but they authorized it again in 1996. You will find a little something here:
The statements in the Letter to Hr. Hitler can be read on my website as well, just look in the Hitler-files. (Left handside you'll find a menu).
But you should remember that Jehovah's Witnesses did serve in the army in WWII, and the Watchtower even stated that in a Declaration of Facts from Berne. You will find this declaration on my web as well.
So, when military service were actually forbidden, I don't know that either - since statements in the lit(t)erature isn't to be trusted on this point.
Yakki Da
Kent
"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide."
Daily News On The Watchtower and the Jehovah's Witnesses:
http://watchtower.observer.org
Hi Kent,
Thanks for the reply to my inquiry about authentication. Your site is excellent and I really am 'enlightened' by it.
Pat
Hi Kent,
I didn't realize that JWs served in the army during WWII. As far as I knew (from JW literature of course), they stopped serving in the army after WWI, and that was part of the reason that they were chosen as the one true religion by Jesus in 1919, or something like that.
Can you provide any more info on JWs serving in the army during WWII?
Thanks Kent...and as always, you provide A LOT of us with a wealth of information that is really appreciated!
Sincerely,
Peter Stride
Toronto, Canada
Peter,
I don't know what Kent is referring to. Where I lived, Witnesses went to prison during WWII. My mother's cousin spent 3 years of a 5 year sentence in prison during the war.
I realize that in Canada & the US, as well as most European countries, the JWs were not allowed to go in the army during WWII...but I think Kent was trying to tell us that in Germany that may not have been the case for some JWs. Maybe it was their patriotic duty...who knows.
I'll wait for Kent to elaborate on the army issue.
Peter Stride
Toronto, Canada
I have to find the document, but German Watchtowers printed lots of messages from the "brothers by the front" some time in history. I just need to find the material. During The Great War this was common.
Yakki Da
Kent
"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide."
Daily News On The Watchtower and the Jehovah's Witnesses:
http://watchtower.observer.org
fascinating thread. Pushing it up..........
Here's something I got in my e-mail from the Watchtower Observer...it may have already been posted, but it's a goody worth re-posting! Thanks to Kent & James for the info!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Kent Steinhaug" < [email protected]>
Subject: Can you spell hypocrite?
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:54:32 +0200
The Watch Tower Society's Attempted Compromise with Nazism
by M. James Penton
Since the Second World War, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
has taught Jehovah's Witnesses that while the German churches, both
Catholic
and Protestant, were guilty of compromise with Hitler and
the Nazi Party, their German brethren, then commonly known as
"Earnest Bible Students," stood solidly against the
principles of the Third Reich. Because of the brave stand taken by most
ordinary German Witnesses in the face of a terrible persecution that
cost
many of them their lives in Hitler's concentration camps, they have
rightly
been praised by secular historians-a fact which the Watch Tower Society
has
used to buttress its assertions.
For example, The Watchtower magazine of October 1, 1984 (p. 8),
reported the findings of Christine E. King and
Michael Kater to the effect that the number of Witness
imprisonments and deaths brought about by Nazi persecution had been
greatly
underestimated. Quoting Dr. King, it stated:
"`Theological principles were adhered to; Witnesses remained
"neutral," they were honest and completely trustworthy and as such,
ironically, often found themselves employed as servants of the
S.S.'"
What has not generally been known either by most Jehovah's
Witnesses or many independent scholars, however, is that while ordinary
German Witnesses did generally maintain their integrity and commitment
to
their principles, their leaders--the Watch Tower's second president,
Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, and the man who succeeded him
in office in 1942, Nathan H. Knorr, plus high German Watch
Tower officials-did not.
Furthermore, Rutherford and his lieutenants tried to save the German arm
of
their movement by scapegoating the Jews and attacking Great Britain, the
United States, and the League of Nations.
During the first half of their history, the Bible Student-Jehovah's
Witnesses
were notable for their sympathy to the Jews. Even more than most late
nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Protestant premillennialists,
the
Watch Tower's first president, Charles T. Russell, was a thoroughgoing
supporter of Zionist causes. He refused to attempt the conversion of the
Jews, believed in the Jewish resettlement of Palestine, and in 1910, led
a
New York Jewish audience in singing the Zionist anthem, Hatikva
For more than a decade after Russell's death in 1916,
Judge Rutherford followed in his footsteps.
In 1925 he produced a small book entitled Restoration,
based on a series of radio broadcasts he had given, and in 1926 he
published
a similar volume called Comfort for the Jews. In both, he proclaimed
himself a friend of the Jewish people and asserted that Jewish migration
to
the ancient Holy Land was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Identical
Publisher's Forewords to Restoration and Comfort for the Jews
stated:
THE rebuilding of Palestine is claiming the attention of Jews
throughout the earth. Some of the Gentile world powers are outwardly
favoring
the movement but manifestly for selfish reasons.
JUDGE RUTHERFORD, known throughout the world as a friend of the
Hebrew people, is vigorously supporting the claim of the Jews to the
Holy
Land. He is opposed to proselytizing the Jews, holding that such is not
only
wrong but contrary to the Scriptures. His lectures to large audiences,
which
have been broadcast throughout the world, on "JEWS RETURNING TO
PALESTINE",
have created an intense interest. There is a good demand for them in
printed
form. He has simplified these lectures and now presents them in book
form.
This volume will be of profound interest to Jews and Gentiles alike. It
is
the first unbiased presentation of the subject from the Scriptural
viewpoint
published.
The Publishers send forth this volume confident that it will do much
good.
In 1930 Rutherford produced a larger volume on the same theme called
Life.But suddenly he repudiated his beliefs respecting the Jews.
Life was withdrawn from circulation and in 1932 Rutherford proclaimed
that "fleshly Israel" had
no specific role to play in salvation history. He wrote:
The Jews were evicted from Palestine and `their house left unto
them desolate' because they rejected Christ Jesus, the beloved and
anointed
King of Jehovah. To this day the Jews have not repented of this
wrongful act
committed by their forefathers. Many of them have been returned to the
land
of Palestine, but they have been induced to go there because of
selfishness
and for sentimental reasons.
During the long period elapsing from the time of their expulsion to the
present day the Jews have not "borne the shame of the heathen" for
Jehovah's
sake, nor for the name of Christ. During all this period of time, and
particularly during the World War, the true followers of Christ Jesus
devoted to God, and to his kingdom, have been bearing the shame of the
heathen and have been hated by all the nations for Christ's sake and
the
sake of Jehovah's name. (Matt. 24: 9: Mark 13: 13)
In contrast to this, during the World War the Jews received recognition
of
the heathen nations. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration, sponsored by the
heathen governments of Satan's organization, came forth, recognized the
Jews, and bestowed upon them great favors. In this the seventh world
power
[the British Empire] took the lead. Now Big Business and other wings of
Satan's organization place the Jews alongside of and in the same
category
as the Gentiles. Heretofore even God's people have overlooked the fact
that
the affairs of God's kingdom with reference to the things of the earth
are of
far greater importance than the rehabilitation of that little strip of
land
on the eastern side of the Mediterranean sea. The Jews have received
more
attention at their hands than they have really deserved. Therefore this
prophecy [of Isaiah] must have its chief fulfillment upon the true
people
of God's kingdom which are now on earth.
Perhaps the judge was simply anxious to assert that Jehovah's
Witnesses were the "true Israel of God," but it seems that he had other
reasons for making such a dramatic doctrinal switch without any more
detailed
explanation. While he may formerly have proclaimed himself a pro-Zionist
"friend of the Hebrew people" in the tradition of his predecessor, he
occasionally manifested a streak of deep-seated anti-semitism.<br>
For example, while giving a talk on biblical prophecies respecting the
return of the Jews to Palestine at a Canadian Bible Student convention
in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the early 1920s, he interjected:
"I'm speaking of the Palestine Jew, not the hooked-nosed,
stooped-shouldered little individual who stands on the street corner
trying
to gyp you out of every nickel you've got."
But there were no doubt other factors in 1932 which impelled him to
abandon the Bible Students' long tradition of philo-Judaism besides
simple
personal bias. During the late 1920s and early 1930s anti-semitism was
becoming rampant in the United States and Canada with the rise of a
variety
of movements both religious and political. And with the start of the
Depression in 1929, it
began
to appear possible that the violently anti-Jewish Nazis could come to
power
in Germany - something which happened on January 30, 1933. So it seems
clear
that Rutherford was anxious to dissociate the Witnesses from the Jewish
community as definitively as possible. Yet these facts can in no way
excuse
what he and his aids were shortly to do during the first year of the
Third
Reich.
Early in April 1933 the Nazis moved against Jehovah's
Witnesses. Their branch headquarters at Magdeburg were seized, and their
religious activities were temporarily stopped. But on April 28, German
authorities returned the properties to the Watch Tower Society to their
American owners, no doubt to keep from offending the United States.
However, Witness leaders and Jehovah's Witnesses in general knew that
they were not popular with
the
Nazis. So according to an official Witness account, Judge Rutherford and
the German Witness community decided to take a bold stand against the
Hitler dictatorship.
The book Jehovah's Witnesses in The Divine Purpose, published by
the Watch Tower Society in 1957, states:
Judge Rutherford had been watching the German situation closely
and was well acquainted with its development as it affected the witness
work.
With this serious turn of events he lost no time in going to Germany,
accompanied by N. H. Knorr, to see what could be done. On June 25..., a
convention was called in Berlin. There a Declaration of Facts was
presented
to the 7,000 in attendance in protest against the Hitler government for
their highhanded interference with the witness work of the Society, and
was
unanimously adopted. The declaration was mailed to every high officer of
the government from the president down to the members of the council,
and
2,500,000 copies were given public distribution. Retaliation came
quickly.
Three days later, on June 28, for the second time the Society's property
was seized and occupied, and by government decree its printing plant was
closed.
But was the seizure of Watch Tower property by the German government on
June 28, 1933 really because the Declaration of Facts was a bold protest
against Nazi actions? No, quite the contrary. In a tape-recorded account
of the history of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany, former Watch Tower
Society "branch servant" or "overseer" Konrad Franke tells
that when he and another Jehovah's Witness arrived at the Berlin
Sporthalle
Wilmersdorf where the 1933 Witness convention was being held, they were
shocked. The building was bedecked with Swastika flags - evidently to
please the Nazis. Then during the convention itself, the Witness
faithful
were called on to sing a hymn that they had not sung in Germany for
years.
While they had no objection to the words, the music was the same as that
of the German national anthem, "Deutschland, Deutschland uber
alles."
As for the Declaration and an accompanying letter sent to
Adolf Hitler personally, they were nothing short of
self-serving statements which attempted to ingratiate Jehovah's
Witnesses
with the Nazis. Under a sub-section entitled "Jews," the Declaration
reads:
It is falsely charged by our enemies that we have received
financial support for our work from the Jews. Nothing is farther from
the
truth. Up to this moment there never has been the slightest bit of money
contributed to our work by Jews. We are the faithful followers of Christ
Jesus and believe upon Him as the Savior of the world, whereas the Jews
entirely reject Jesus Christ and emphatically deny that he is the Savior
of the world sent of God for man's good. This of itself should be
sufficient
proof to show that we receive no support from Jews and therefore the
charges against us are maliciously false and could only proceed from
Satan,
our great enemy.
The greatest and most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American
empire. By this is meant the British Empire, of which the United States
of
America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of the
British-American
Empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of
exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations. This fact
particularly applies to the cities of London and New York, the
stronghold
of Big Business. This fact is so manifest in America that there is a
proverb
concerning the city of New York which says: "the Jews own it, the Irish
Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills." We have no fight
with
any of these persons mentioned but, as witnesses for Jehovah and in
obedience to his commandment set forth in the Scriptures, we are
compelled
to call attention to the truth concerning the same in order that the
people
may be enlightened concerning God and his purpose.
That was not all. Besides damning the League of
Nations, the Declaration said:
"The present government of Germany has declared against Big Business
oppressors and in opposition to the wrongful religious influence in the
political affairs of the nation. Such is exactly our position...."
Then it proclaimed:
"Instead of being against the principles advocated by the
government of Germany, we stand squarely for such principles, and point
out that Jehovah God through Christ Jesus will bring about the full
realization of these principles."
The letter sent to Hitler was equally compromising in nature. To
ingratiate the Witnesses with the Nazi Fuhrer, it claimed that the
Watch Tower Society had been and was "outstandingly friendly to
Germany."
But more than that, it falsely asserted that Rutherford and seven
members
of the Board of Directors of the Watch Tower Society had been sentenced
to
eighty years in prison "because the [Watch Tower] president refused to
use
two magazines published by him in the United States for war propaganda
against Germany."
As Jehovah's Witnesses were soon to discover, the Nazis were not
impressed by either their Declaration or the Society's letter to Hitler.
Many Germans were thoroughly aware that they had long been pro-Zionist,
and Nazis officials were hardly so stupid as not to know that in many
ways
they stood in direct opposition to what the Hitler and his associates
proclaimed and demanded. The Witnesses were internationalists in a
religious
sense and were generally quite tolerant of persons of other races; they
regarded secular authority as of the devil; and, above all, they were
openly anti-militaristic-all factors which caused the nationalistic,
racist, and militaristic
Nazis
to despise them. Thus the German government unleashed a wave of
persecution
against the Witnesses almost immediately.
On June 27, 1933, one day after they begin sending copies of the
Declaration by registered mail to German officials, the Prussian Land or
state banned them, and the police began to carry out widespread raids on
their homes and places of business. As has been noted above, the
Society's
Magdeburg offices were seized again on June 28.
Ultimately, between two and three million marks worth of Watch Tower
property was confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis.
But it was then, and only then, that Rutherford and the Watch Tower
Society decided to oppose
Nazi
policies in an uncompromising fashion. For some time thereafter, German
Witnesses were divided over what they should do.
Although after the Second World War most Jehovah's Witnesses and others
were unaware of the compromising actions of Witness leaders in the
Germany
of 1933, there were some who still remembered the Berlin convention.
Furthermore, copies of both the Declaration and the Watch Tower letter
to Hitler remained extant. So when the Watch Tower Society published a
history of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany in the 1974 Yearbook of
Jehovah's Witnesses, it was necessary to deal with what were very
embarrassing data in a way which would not make the Society's Brooklyn
leaders look guilty of violating their own teachings. Thus the full
responsibility for the attempted compromise with Hitler and the Nazis
was
placed on the shoulders of Paul Balzereit, the Society's German branch
servant at the time.
Because of the importance of the Society's present official position on
this matter, the 1974 Yearbook account of the 1933 Berlin convention
is given in full. It reads:
"By the summer of 1933 the work of Jehovah's Witnesses had been
banned in the majority of German states. the brothers' homes were being
searched regularly and many brothers had been arrested. The flow of
spiritual food was partially hampered, although only for a time; still
many
brothers were asking how long it would be possible to continue the work.
In
this situation the congregations were invited on very short notice to a
convention to be held in Berlin on June 25. Since it was expected that
many
would be unable to attend because of the various bans, the congregations
were encouraged to send at least one or several delegates. But, as it
turned
out, 7,000 brothers got there. For many of them it took three days, some
riding bicycles the entire distance, whereas others went by truck, since
the bus companies refused to rent buses to a banned organization.
Brother Rutherford, who, together with Brother Knorr, had come to
Germany
just a few days before in order to see what could be done to ensure the
safety of the Society's property, had prepared a declaration with
Brother
Balzereit to be presented to the convention delegates for adoption. It
was
a protest against the meddling of the Hitler government into the
preaching
work we were doing.
All high government officials, from the Reich's president on down, were
to
receive a copy of the declaration, if possible, by registered mail.
Several
days before the convention started Brother Rutherford returned to
America.
Many in attendance were disappointed in the "declaration," since in many
points it failed to be as strong as the brothers had hoped. Brother
Muetze from Dreseden, who had worked closely with Brother Balzereit up
until that time, accused him later of having weakened the original text.
It
was not the first time that Brother Balzereit had watered down the clear
and
unmistakable language of the Society's publications so as to avoid
difficulties with governmental agencies.
A large number of brothers refused to adopt it just for this reason. In
fact, a former pilgrim brother [traveling evangelist] by the name of
Kipper refused to offer it for adoption and another brother substituted.
It
could not rightfully be said that the declaration was unanimously
adopted,
even though Brother Balzereit later notified Brother Rutherford that it
had
been.
The conventioners returned home tired and many were disappointed. They
took
2,100,000 copies of the "declaration" home with them, however, and made
fast work of distributing them and sending them to numerous persons in
positions of responsibility. The copy sent to Hitler was accompanied by
a
letter that, in part, read:
"The Brooklyn presidency of the Watch Tower Society is and always has
been
exceedingly friendly to Germany. In 1918 the president of the Society
and seven members of the Board of Directors in America were sentenced to
80
years' imprisonment for the reason that the president refused to let two
magazines in America, which he edited, be used in war propaganda
against Germany."
Even though the declaration had been weakened and many brothers could
not
wholeheartedly agree to its adoption, yet the government was enraged and
started a wave of persecution against those who had distributed it."
The question now arises, how well does this account stand up?
In the first place, it continues to assert wrongly in the tradition of
Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose that there were 7,000
present at the 1933 Berlin convention. The Declaration is clear in
repeatedly asserting that there were only 5,000 delegates there. But
that
is a small matter.
What is more significant is that the 1974 Yearbook account
assumes - apparently on no more authority than the unsubstantiated
beliefs
of a "Brother Muetze from Dreseden"-that
Paul Balzereit was the one who "weakened" the Declaration.
Balzereit may well have been responsible for having the
Declaration translated into German, and he may also have been
responsible
for drafting the letter to Hitler. Yet there is clear evidence to
suggest
that he did not tamper with the wording of the Declaration.
First, the Watch Tower Society published the English version
of the Declaration - which is virtually identical to the German version
-
in the 1934 Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses as its official
statement to Hitler, the German government, and German officials, high
and
low; and this it would not have done without Rutherford's full approval.
Second, the English version of the Declaration is clearly written
in the judge's own bombastic style.
Third, the statements directed against the Jews in the
Declaration are more in keeping with what an American such as Rutherford
would have written rather than a German. How, for example, would
Balzereit
know the "proverb," so called, concerning New York which says: "the Jews
own
it, the Irish Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills"?
Fourth,
Rutherford had been guilty of a similar compromise with secular
authority
in the United States in 1918 in a vain attempt to escape imprisonment.
Then finally, he was an autocrat supreme who would not have
brooked the serious type of insubordination that Balzereit would have
been
guilty of had he "weakened" the Declaration.
While it must be admitted that this evidence, although strong, is
circumstantial rather than direct, this makes little difference in the
long
run. Regardless of who wrote the Declaration, the fact is that it was
published as an official document of the Watch Tower Society.
Thus the American leaders of the Society - and Judge J. F.
Rutherford in particular - were directly responsible for what was
outright
anti-Semitism and a willingness to compromise their loudly trumpeted
principle of "Christian neutrality" in order to continue their
publishing
and preaching work in Germany.
So the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses, like the those who led almost
every other church, sect, and cult in the Third Reich were willing,
under
the circumstances of the times, to betray their most sacred values.
But that is not all.
The Watch Tower Society is guilty of an ongoing cover-up of its past
concerning these matters. While the Society still boasts of the bravery
of German Jehovah's Witnesses in their refusal to submit to the dictates
of
Nazism, it also continues to try to hide its leaders' attempt to
compromise
with the Nazis in 1933. Although The Watchtower of October 1, 1984
quoted from Christine King's The Nazi State and the New
Religions, its publishers failed to note what Dr. King had written about
the Society's 1933 Declaration of Facts.
For example, in a brief evaluation of that document, she makes what,
from a Witness standpoint, is a rather damning remark. She says:
"The document is a master of its kind and worthy of the
other four sects [the Christian Scientists, the Latter-day Saints, the
Seventh-day Adventists and members of the New Apostolic Church] all of
whom supported, in one way or another, the Nazi state."
In another paragraph, she remarks:
"Having attempted to assure the authorities by the
Declaration of Facts, of their good citizenship, having interpreted and
explained their teachings in a way, which given the preoccupations of
the
regime, was designed to allay fears and offer a hint of compromise, the
Witnesses seemed to have expected little further harassment. Had the
Declaration not condemned with the Nazis, the League of Nations, had it
not described National Socialism as standing out against the injustices
Germans had suffered since 1919 and had it not ended with a personal
appeal to the Fuhrer?"
So it is hardly possible that the present-day leadership of the Society
can be ignorant of the Declaration and its compromising, anti-Semitic
nature.
Despite such statements by Dr. King, however, the June 8, 1985 Awake!
(p. 10) damned both the Catholic and the Protestant clergy for
supporting Nazism and proclaimed: "However, there was one group in
Germany
that courageously championed Christian principles. That group was
Jehovah's
Witnesses. Unlike the clergy and their followers, the Witnesses refused
to
compromise with Hitler and the Nazis. They refused to violate God's
commandments. They would not break their Christian neutrality in
political
affairs. (See Isaiah 2:2-4; John 17:16; James 4:4.) They did not
attribute
Heil, or salvation, to Hitler, as did the overwhelming majority of their
flocks." And more recent issues of both Awake! and The Watchtower
have taken much the same tack.
Awake! published several articles on the Holocaust in its April 8,
1989 issue in which it argued rightly that many others besides Jews had
died as a result of Nazi extermination policies. Dealing with the
persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses from 1933 to the collapse of the
Third
Reich in 1945, one of these articles, "The Holocaust: Victims or
Martyrs?",
states on page 12:
"They [Jehovah's Witnesses] were of many nationalities but were
misconstrued as a pacifist threat to Germany's National Socialist regime
because of their Christian stand of neutrality and refusal to be
incorporated into the war effort of any nation. Hitler called them a
`brood to be exterminated.'"
Significantly, this article also quotes Christine King, but it makes no
mention of either the Declaration of Facts or the Society's 1933 letter
to Hitler.
Then, just after the publication of the April 8, 1989 Awake!, a
series of articles appeared in the April 1 and 15 and May 1 and 15, 1989
issues of The Watchtower on the subject of "Babylon the Great."
Referring to the great "whore" or "harlot" described at Revelation 17,
these
articles identified her as the world-wide empire of false religion which
has "committed fornication with the kings of the earth." Accordingly,
The
Watchtower censured both Catholicism and Protestantism - which they
regard as parts of Babylon the Great - in the harshest terms for having
supported various European secular governments in past centuries and,
especially, for having been in league with Nazism during the Second
World
War. But not once in these articles does the anonymous author admit
that,
from the standpoint of their own teachings, Watch Tower leaders were
also
were willing to commit "fornication" with the rulers of the Third Reich
had the Nazis been willing to let them get into bed with them.
What is even more serious is that when confronted with the facts
relating
to the Watch Tower German Declaration of 1933, the Society's spokesmen
have
denied them categorically. In 1985, when I published a brief synopsis
of
the nature of the Declaration in my book Apocalypse Delayed,
Watch Tower officials attacked me in the strongest terms, practically
calling
me a liar. The Society's public relations officer for Canada, Walter
Graham, claimed "the declaration was neither to placate Hitler nor
anti-Semitic," and he said respecting me:
"Penton does have an axe to grind. He has
been trying to discredit the Jehovah's Witnesses ever since he was
removed
from the society."
Yet curiously, he admitted that he had not read the evidence that I had
presented. He said: "We aren't interested in reading it. We're not
interested
in what James Penton does, writes or thinks, because he has chosen not
to be
one of us." In a similar vein, Eugene Rosam, a senior Watch Tower
official of Jewish ancestry,
refused to comment on Apocalypse Delayed."We have
no comment on the publication," said Rosam. "Anybody can
write a book and get it published. It's just surprising some people
refer
to it as if it were Gospel."
It is not surprising that Jehovah's Witness leaders are reluctant
to discuss the nature of the Declaration, the Watch Tower letter to
Hitler,
or the Berlin convention of June 1933 any more than is necessary. After
all,
no religious organization is anxious to broadcast its past sins. Yet the
cover-up surrounding the nature of those events is hypocritical,
especially
since the Watch Tower Society is so uncharitable towards other religions
over their collaboration with Nazism. None the less, the Watch Tower
Society
has no other real option than to attempt to continue that cover-up.
Jehovah's Witnesses claim that the collective body of persons who have
governed them since 1919 have been and are the "anointed footstep
followers Jesus Christ, described as `the remaining ones of her [God's
heavenly organization's] seed, who observe the commandments of God and
have the work of bearing witness to Jesus.'"
Thus to admit that they had compromised with a regime such as that of
Hitler would be contradictory to this claim. On the basis of their own
teachings, it would make them just another part ofBabylon the
Great! So in order to demonstrate clearly that the account
given in this article is historically accurate and that the basic facts
presented are irrefutable, we reprint full documentation in the pages
that
follow.
DOCUMENT A
KONRAD FRANKE'S TESTIMONY
Konrad Franke, later Watch Tower Society branch servant
(director or overseer)
for Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany, was present at the June 26, 1933
Witness
convention in Berlin. In 1976 Franke gave a series of two part lectures
(which
lasted about three hours in all) in many places throughout West Germany.
These
lectures were entitled "The History of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany."
Significantly, they contained information on the 1933 Berlin convention
which
has never been published by the Watch Tower Society. Those lectures were
tape
recorded and have been transcribed in full. The statement which appears
below
is an English translation of remarks taken from them:
... At the last moment, therefore, we were invited to a special
assembly in
Prussia, thus Berlin, [to be held] in the Tennis Hall, where a
"Declaration"
was to be presented. Many were now unable to come [to the convention],
but I
had the privilege of traveling with Brother Albert Wandres from
Wiesbaden to
Berlin on a motorcycle through torrential rain. That did not bother us
too
much, but we were shocked when we arrived at the Tennis Hall the next
morning
and did
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, this is where it ended. If someone has the rest of this letter, please post it.
Peter Stride
Toronto, Canada
