Jehovah's Witnesses Were Hitler's Victims, New York Times

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 https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/14/opinion/l-jehovah-s-witnesses-were-hitler-s-victims-237352.html

Jehovah's Witnesses Were Hitler's Victims

May 14, 1985

To the Editor:

My wife and I, both Germans, between us spent a total of 17 years in Nazi concentration camps. I was in Dachau and Mauthausen, and my wife, Gertrud, was in Ravensbruck. We were among the thousands of non-Jewish Germans who suffered because we did what the Nazi criminals failed to do - we were conscientious objectors to Hitler's obligatory idolatry and militarism. While thousands of us survived the camps, many did not.

Your recent letters telling of ordinary Germans who suffered under Hitler's Nazi regime (by Sabina Lietzmann, April 25, and Anna E. Reisgies, April 30) provoke me to mention one minority group, usually ignored, that was persecuted ferociously by the Gestapo. They were known as the Ernste Bibelforscher (Earnest Bible Students) or Jehovas Zeugen (Jehovah's Witnesses).

As soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, he commenced a systematic persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses because of their stand of neutrality in politics and war. As a result, thousands of German Witnesses, many of whom were friends of mine, became not only victims of the Holocaust but also martyrs. Why the subtle difference? Because we could have left the concentration camps at any time if we had been willing to sign a paper renouncing our religious beliefs.

Two brief examples will show the kind of spirit that burned in the breasts of some Germans who did resist Hitlerism. Wilhelm Kusserow, age 25, from Bad Lippspringe, was shot on April 27, 1940, because he refused to serve in Hitler's armies.

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Two years later, Wilhelm's brother, Wolfgang, was beheaded in the Brandenburg prison for the same reason. Shooting was by then too dignified for conscientious objectors in Hitler's estimation. Wolfgang was 20 years old.

I could tell of hundreds of German men and women who suffered similar fates because, in the name of God, they dared to stand out against tyranny. Why there were not millions of principled Germans to stand and be counted, instead of just thousands, is perhaps a question for others to answer.MARTIN POETZINGER Brooklyn, May 1, 1985

A version of this article appears in print on May 14, 1985, Section A, Page 26 of the National edition with the headline: Jehovah's Witnesses Were Hitler's Victims. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe