Jehovah's Witnesses fight German state for Holocaust archive
The Jehovah's Witnesses have secured a partial victory in a dispute over a unique archive documenting the community's persecution by the Nazi regime. It comes
The Jehovah's Witnesses have secured a partial victory in a dispute over a unique archive documenting the community's persecution by the Nazi regime. It comes after a new memorial to the victims was unveiled in Berlin. Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled in favor of the Jehovah's Witnesses in a dispute over a unique archive that meticulously documents the persecution of its adherents in photographs, letters, reports from the Gestapo secret police, arrest warrants and death sentences. The religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses was one of the groups persecuted by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. From 1933 to 1945, around 15,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted across Nazi-occupied Europe. Around 4,500 were sent to concentration camps where they were forced to wear purple triangles. Over 1,800 were murdered. Annemarie Kusserow, herself a victim of Nazi persecution who died in 2005, bequeathed her private archive to a branch of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany. However, in 2009, one of her brothers sold the more than 1,000 documents to the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden and gave assurances that he was the rightful owner. The Jehovah's Witnesses have since been locked in a years-long legal battle with the German state for the return of the archive. Around 4,500 Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps where they were identified with a purple triangle Image: Caroline Seidel/dpa/picture alliance "To learn that here was a family that was persecuted by the Nazis and you have a clearly expressed will of Annemarie Kusserow who herself was persecuted, suffered, was imprisoned, and she clearly states what should happen with this archive that she collected meticulously, and morally it is so clear where this archive should be," said Sebastian Stock, a spokesperson for the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany. Targets of 'blood and soil' ideology The Jehovah's Witnesses are an outgrowth of the International Bible Student movement founded in the US in the 1870s. Many of their missionaries traveled to Europe. By 1933, over 25,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were living in the German Reich, and the eastern German state of Saxony was home to Europe's largest community. Both the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany opposed the group, known as the International Bible Students and the Earnest Bible Students, and from 1931, as the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Bible Students were targeted by the German ethno-nationalist "völkisch" movement that emerged in the late 19th century, and which viewed the German people as a "racially pure" community tied to the land as part of the so-called "blood and soil" ideology. Baseless propaganda was spread that "World Jewry" or an international Jewish conspiracy financed the Jehovah's Witnesses. Born in the western German town of Bochum in 1913, Annemarie Kusserow was the eldest of 11 children who, along with their parents, would all be imprisoned by the Nazi regime. In 1931, the family moved to the nearby town of Bad Lippspringe where Kusserow's father encouraged her to document their systematic persecution. Annemarie Kusserow, pictured in her youth, meticulously documented the persecution of her family Image: Jehovas Zeugen, Archiv Zentraleuropa The Nazis issued a nationwide ban on the Bible Students in 1935 after several German states, Prussia and Bavaria among them, had already imposed regional restrictions. Its members were dismissed from the civil service, lost their jobs and pensions, and were subjected to waves of mass arrests. To find work, Kusserow moved to Berlin where she was able to visit her younger brother Wolfgang who was in prison for his refusal to join the military. She was arrested in Berlin on October 25, 1944, and was sentenced to four years for discussing her faith and for being in possession of the group's literature. Her brother Karl-Heinz Kusserow was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp and died at the age of 28 in 1946 as a result of his treatment there. Conscientious objectors executed The Nazis targeted Jehovah's Witnesses because they were unwilling to swear allegiance to the Nazi state and Adolf Hitler. They believe that their primary allegiance is to God and not any government or human leader. Jehovah's Witnesses refused to give the Hitler salute, would not become members of any Nazi organizations or institutions, and refused to join the military based on their religious pacifism. They were the single largest unified group that refused military service in the Third Reich. Nearly 300 young men were executed by the Nazis for refusing to fight, including two of Annemarie's brothers.
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