Impressed by the Integrity of Jehovah’s Witnesses

IN 1978 Christine E. King visited the branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in London, England. In connection with a thesis she was preparing for her doctorate, she was seeking information about the experiences of the Witnesses in Germany during the second world war. While gathering her material, she became so impressed by the uncompromising stand of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Nazi Germany that she decided to prepare and enlarge her thesis so that it could be published as a book. After receiving her doctorate, she wrote in a letter to the branch office: “I have found my work on Jehovah’s Witnesses most challenging and I have ended up with considerable admiration for the response made by German Witnesses to the Nazis; I hope my book will reflect this.” The title of Dr. King’s book is The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity.

Most outstanding among Dr. King’s findings are the figures of deaths and imprisonment of Jehovah’s Witnesses. These indicate that the figures previously published by the Witnesses were greatly underestimated. Dr. King’s source for these statistics was a volumea published in Munich, Germany, by Michael Kater. “My own perusal of Court and Gestapo records,” she declared, “would certainly support these higher figures.”

What are these figures? “Some 10,000 were imprisoned, and together they received sentences totalling 20,000 years. One out of every two German Witnesses was imprisoned, one in four lost their lives.

“Against all odds,” she continued, “Witnesses in the camps met and prayed together, produced literature and made converts. Sustained by their fellowship, and, unlike many other prisoners, well aware of the reasons why such places existed and why they should suffer thus, Witnesses proved a small but memorable band of prisoners, marked by the violet triangle and noted for their courage and their convictions.”

Dr. King made this further appraisal: “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. [the organization that operated the concentration camps]. One S.S. officer commented that only a Jehovah’s Witness could be trusted to shave his master with a cut throat razor without wielding the razor to most violent ends.”

After commenting that the Nazi regime had cowered other sects into compromising with it, Dr. King stated: “Only against the Witnesses was the government unsuccessful, for although they had killed thousands, the work [of preaching Jehovah’s Kingdom] went on and in May 1945 the Jehovah’s Witness movement was still alive, whilst National Socialism was not. The Witnesses’ numbers had increased and no compromises had been made. The movement had gained martyrs and had successfully waged one more battle in Jehovah God’s war.”

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