A Holocaust Museum and Jehovah’s Witnesses

THE Nazi rule of terror inflicted a heinous slaughter on millions of victims, especially Jews and Slavs. However, one religious group​—Jehovah’s Witnesses—​unitedly refused to bow the knee to the Nazi regime, not because of race or nationality, but because of their conscientious adherence to Bible principles.​—John 17:14, 16.

The Nazi State focused intense persecution on Jehovah’s Witnesses​—an onslaught out of all proportion to their numbers. Why? The Witnesses, for religious reasons, refused membership and service in the German Labor Front and rejected any oath to Hitler as Führer. The Nazis thus banned them as an organization in April 1933. Accused of both civil and religious disobedience, they were among the first groups to be thrown into concentration camps. “Ultimately, more than 30,000 Witnesses were persecuted by the Nazis,” states a museum newsletter.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to presenting the story of all groups persecuted by the Nazis, including Jehovah’s Witnesses. One source states that the museum “should be of particular interest to Americans and foreign visitors of the Jewish and Jehovah’s Witness religions that were targeted for genocide by the Hitler regime.” Through artifacts, documents, videotaped eyewitness testimony, historical photographs, and film footage, the wartime experiences of various victimized groups are included in the museum’s exhibition, library, and archives. The museum has videotaped interviews with 74 of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were victims of Nazi rule. The museum opened to the public in April 1993.

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Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum