Nazi Archives Open
Published December 01, 2007
The vast archive of Nazi documents from World War II have been opened to the public.
Located in the German town of Bad Arolsen, these files have been stored in six buildings by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with 50 million pages in 16 miles of gray metal filing cabinets. They've been used to locate missing persons and document atrocities and suppot claims of compensations.
The first thing that occurs to me is, what took so long? Its been 60 years since the Holocaust. Surely making the documents available earlier would have assisted rather than hindered the project?
Perhaps it was out of consideration for the victims of the Nazis? Strange, because I am sure many of them would want to scour the files to find out what happened to their loved ones, separated during the war and never seen or heard from again.
Not that the Jewish Holocaust survivors in Israel are doing so well, if their demonstration before the Knesset to increase their allowances is any indication. Sad that at this age and after all they've suffered, they have to be reduced to begging to survive.
“Often I ask myself if it was not a mistake to remain alive,” said Miriam Yahav, who survived Auschwitz and Treblinka, “if it was not a mistake to come to Israel to live among Jews. Sixty years ago we have been oppressed and robbed by the Nazis and their assistants. Years later we are robbed again by our own government. It is shameful!” Eizer Eilon, who was in no less than five Nazi concentration camps, adds: “What the Nazis ultimately failed to achieve, the Israeli government may succeed to achieve, God forbid…”
Not surprisingly, many Jewish Holocaust survivors have moved to Germany, where they are treated better.
Also finally, perhaps opening the archives will bring into focus the other victims of the Nazis, who have pretty much been marginalised and forgotten.
* Jews: About 6 million were killed, mostly in death camps.
* Poles: About 3 million were killed. This represented about 10% of the population, and one third of the Catholic priests in the country.
* Roma: Also called Gypsies. At first, the Nazis thought that they could be "re-educated." About 1940, the Nazis decided to exterminate them. Approximately 400,000 Roma were killed. Roma survivors refer to this tragedy as "the devouring."
* Homosexuals: Estimates of the number executed or worked to death range from 50,000 to half a million.
* Jehovah's Witnesses: About 10,000 Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi period, mainly because they were conscientious objectors. An estimated 2,500 to 5,000 died.
* Disabled persons: About 150,000 Germans who were crippled or mentally ill were murdered. They were considered "life not worthy of life."
* Others: This included millions of Slavs, Russians, socialists, and various types of dissenters.
One little known fact of history is that when the death camps were liberated at the end of World War II, most of the inmates were freed. Homosexuals, however, were generally transferred to other prisons.
So many unknowns, so much tragedy and pain.
Perhaps some of the answers will have arrived too late.
- Nazi Archives Open
- Published: December 01, 2007
- Type: News
- Section: Politics
- Filed Under: Politics: War and Terrorism, Politics: International, Culture: History
- Writer: Sam Siddiqui
- Sam Siddiqui's BC Writer page
- Sam Siddiqui's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
I have read a lot on the Holocaust and I have never come across this. Could you provide me with a source?
Of course it is well documented that German Jehovah's witnesses could at any time be released from the concentration camps by renouncing their faith by signing a document supporting the Nazi regime. Most did not, they chose imprisonment and torture rather than denounce their God. Unlike other religions who actually supported the Nazi regime who collaborated with Hitler openly.
Check your WW2 history the Watchtower leader Joseph Rutherford was slamming all sides as fascist and bigot,while they let everybody else do the dirty work and fight for their freedoms.
For the record it is true that Jehovah's Witnesses will not fight for their country and they didn't fight 'against' Hitler either.They were interned in Nazi concentration camps that were then liberated by young allied men who died to set them free.
Note:JW's didn't support the Allies either and despise the same governments that protect their freedoms.
Comments #1 & #4 are so obviously biased.
Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany and in the Allied countries did not fight against the German and other Axis forces. Jehovah's Witnesses in USA and other Axis countries did not fight against the Allied forces.
That is what neutrality is all about. That is because those who are followers of Christ, are followers in the entire world which means that they will be persecuted for that. That means that followers of Christ in the USA will not fight against those in Germany and vice versa.
So don't be biased on the subject, tell all sides.
The Watchtower's Nazis Conflicts
A historical analysis of the Jehovah's Witnesses' during World War II concluded that they experienced extreme conflicts with Nazi Germany and probably withstood the attacks against them better than most groups. Their experience has been analyzed by a number of researchers including camp inmates and administrators who have concluded that their strong religious faith, community and social pressure to conform were all critical in helping Witnesses to withstand the Nazi assault against them. A major reason Witnesses endured was because to capitulate to the Nazis meant disfellowshipping and cutting off from what was often their only social support, their fellow Witnesses. Often the Witnesses as people showed exemplary behavior, but the Watchtower administration not uncommonly displayed immoral or deceitful behavior and even denigrated the Jews in an effort to save the German Watchtower branch. Although partly to blame for the tragedy, the Watchtower unscrupulously exploits it today to try to prove their claim of being God's only representatives on earth today.
May I say that I find all these comments to be in poor taste?
My sympathies lie with the survivors. Do any of the finger pointers here contribute to their welfare?
I don't know about poor taste, but they are fascinating. It's a piece of history that I was unfamiliar with.
I'd say they are uninformed comments.
Danny, are you aware of the many Jewish JWs, how come they don't feel sidelined??? Surely if they did, they would have left JW!!
Can you give any evidence of an organization which stood such a test of faith about nutrality as JW in WW2 through out the world??
I can tell you this for sure, all those millions who died at world war 2 were murdered by "Christian" soldiers. Who did JWs kill?
Can we trust The Watchtower's explanation about their relations to Hitler?
1934 Yearbook: Watchtower agrees with 'Principles advocated by German [Nazi] government'
GO here mega info on the Watchtower and the Nazis
Those of us who have researched the WatchTower Society's writings over the decades know that people should be highly suspicious of any "facts" or "statistics" that the WatchTower documents from nonJW sources, if those "facts" or "statistics" would be better documented from the JWs themselves.
Holocaust statistics are a perfect example. Over the decades, the WatchTower has frequently cited Holocaust statistics from nonJW sources because such sources generally always provide larger numbers than reality, which makes the JWs appear to have played a larger role in Holocaust history than what actually occurred.
In the early 1970s, the German Branch of the WatchTower Society performed its own historical research for a special "History of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany", which was published in the WatchTower's Society's 1974 Yearbook. Notice the overly-precise statistics published by the JWs themselves:
"A total of 6,019 had been arrested, several two, three or even more times, so that, all together, 8,917 arrests were registered. All together they had been sentenced to serve 13,924 years and two months in prison,... . A total of 2,000 brothers and sisters had been put into concentration camps, where they had spent 8,078 years and six months, an average of four years. A total of 635 had died in prison, 253 had been sentenced to death and 203 of these had actually been executed. -- 1974 YEARBOOK OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, Page 212.
Such exactness by the WatchTower Society must mean that that these are the ACTUAL STATISTICS.
Compare such with the numbers they typically use in current publications, which they then deceitfully attribute to less reliable nonJW sources, which in turn simply take some other less reliable source's figures.
In reality, when compared with the thousands of other non-Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis, and the MILLIONS of Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses were not much more than a pebble on the seashore of the Holocaust.
Yet, for decades, the WatchTower Society has used Holocaust organizations all around the world to gain inordinate amounts of positive PR for its own purposes -- which all go back to its' recruitment of new members.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/71532)
Per their own WatchTower Society literature, once in the concentration camps, the Jehovah's Witnesses collaborated with camp management to improve their own lot. As a JW child, I vividly remember multiple occasions when JW Elders boasted how JW prisoners acted as housekeepers, barbers, etc for the Nazi Concentration Camp Management, and in other positions of trust and responsibility in the Camps.
Also, the WatchTower Society teaches its own brand of "replacement theology", in which Jehovah's Witnesses believe and teach that YHWH rejected the Jews as His chosen people, and replaced them with Jehovah's Witnesses. As YHWH's current "chosen people", JWs HATE the Jews and all other peoples who they see as being followers of Satan.
Thus, the obvious question. Why does every Holocaust news report, which is generally generated from a Jewish source, NEVER fail to mention the JWs in a positive fashion?