Description
Book Synopsis More than 50 years after the end of the Third Reich, Jehovah's Witnesses, like Sinti and Roma, continue to be forgotten victims in the broader public’s consciousness. Only recently have historians and concentration camp memorials increasingly focused on this category of inmates who were marked and stigmatized in concentration camps with purple triangles. Through 22 articles, 19 authors employ the latest research in Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses during the Nazi Regime to summarize the multifaceted history of those prisoners in the Wewelsburg, Sachsenhausen and Moringen concentration camps. Comprehensively, this volume includes a lens on the persecution of the female members of Jehovah's Witnesses, who made up the largest group of inmates of the female concentration camps up until the beginning of the Second World War; contributions that for the first time deal with the hitherto largely unknown history of the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses specifically in the GDR; and, to round out this volume’s extensiveness, there also are around 120 documents and photos, previously mostly unseen.
Trade Review "We must be grateful for this book, deeply grateful. In essay after essay we read of the fate of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi concentration camps. Some of the essays tell large stories. The other essays tell small stories of a few individuals - stories that illuminate the whole. Part of this work addresses the situation of the Witnesses in Germany... Jews were victimized not because of what they did, nor because of what they were. They were targeted for destruction because of what their grandparents were... Alone of all the groups targeted by the Nazis, the Jehovah's Witnesses were victimized because of what they refused to do. They would not enlist in the army, undertake air raid drills, stop meeting or proselytizing. They would not utter the words 'Heil Hitler.' Their dissent was irksome, disciplined and systematic...Jews had no choice. Jehovah's Witnesses did. As such, they are martyrs in the traditional sense of the term - those prepared to suffer and even to die for the choice of their faith." (From the Preface by Michael Berenbaum, Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar of the Holocaust, Richard Stockton College)
Table of Contents Preface Michael Berenbaum
Foreword Hans Hesse
PART A:
Chapter 1. Categories of Concentration Camp Prisoners
Henry Friedlander
Chapter 2. Solidarity and the Will to Survive: Religious and Social Behavior of Jehova's Witnesses in Concentration Camps
Christoph Daxelmüller
Chapter 3. Female Jehova's Witnesses in Morningen Women's Concentration Camp: Women's Resistance in Nazi Germany
Jürgen Harder and Hans Hesse
Chapter 4. Jehova's Witnesses in Wewelsburg Concentration Camp
Kirsten John-Stucke
Chapter 5. Jehova's Witnesses in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Antje Zeiger
Chapter 6. "The Little One … He Had to Suffer a Lot": Jehova's Witnesses in the Morningen Concentration Camp for Juveniles
Martin Guse
Chapter 7. Jehova's Witnesses in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp
Thomas Rahe
Chapter 8. The Buchenwald Series: Watercolors by Jehova's Witness Johannes Steyer
Johannes Wrobel
Chapter 9. Jehova's Witnesses as Forgotten Victims
Sybil Milton
Chapter 10. Jehova's Witnesses: A Documentation; Rescued from Oblivion: The Case of Hans Gärtner
Sybil Milton
Chapter 11. Resistance and Persecution of Female Jehova's Witnesses
Angela Nerlich and Wolfram Slupina
Chapter 12. The Religious Association of Jehova's Witnesses in Baden and Württemberg, 1933-1945
Hubert Roser
Chapter 13. Jehova's Witnesses in the German Democratic Republic
Hans-Hermann Dirksen
Chapter 14. The Persecution of Jehova's Witnesses in Weimar, 1945-1990
Göran Westphal
Chapter 15. Social Disinterest, Governmental Disinformation, Renewed Persecution, and Now Manipulation of History?
Detlef Garbe
Chapter 16. Persecuted and Almost Forgotten
Wolfram Slupina
PART B:
Chapter 17. History, Past adn Present: Jehova's Witnesses in Germany
Walter Köbe
Chapter 18. The Video Documentary "Jehova's Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault": Propaganda or Historical Document?
Johannes Wrobel
Chapter 19. History, Past and Present: Jehova's Witnesses in Germany. An Analysis of the Documentary "Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault" from the Perspective of Religious Studies
Gabriele Yonan
Chapter 20. Critical Reflection on the Video Documentary "Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault": Propaganda or Historical Documentation?
Dietrich Hellmund
Chapter 21. Between Historical Documentation and Public Promotion of One's Image. Comments About the Watch Tower Society Film: "Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault"
Lutz Lemhöfer
Chapter 22. "Jehova's Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault" — Touring Exhibitions and Video Presentations, 1996-2000
Wolfram Slupina
Chapter 23. From Marginalization to Martyrdom
Jolene Chu
Chapter 24. Teaching Tolerance: A Case Study
James N. Pellechia
Chapter 25. Chronology: Development and Persecution of Jehova's Witnesses
Hans-Hermann Dirksen, Jürgen Harder, Hans Hesse and Johannes Wrobel
Bibliography
Contributors
