“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and buried by High School and College Graduates. So I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students to become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.”
—- Chaim Ginott, 1972
Coloroso, Barbara. “Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide.” Penguin Group Ltd, 2007.
Oldest Nazi Concentration Camp Survivor Dies | Stuff.co.nz
stuff.co.nzIt’s interesting how most people don’t know the plight of the Witnesses in Concentration Camps in Germany. They only know of the plight of the Jews.
The Jews had no choice in being in those camps. Jehovah’s Witnesses did have a choice. All they had to do was renounce their faith in Jehovah and they would be free to go.
Most never renounced their faith and as a result they either died in the camp or survived in the camps until the end of the war.
In an odd turn of events there ended up being more Witnesses coming out of the concentration camps than going in as people saw their firm resolve and learned more and became Witnesses themselves.
As for those that renounced, they were either shot or became troubled by their consciences and ended up back in the camps or they never became Witnesses again. That number was insignificant compared to the rest of the Witnesses.
So before you get angry with the Witnesses, before you get angry about their neutrality, before you get angry with them knocking on their doors, before you get angry with them for not celebrating Christmas or Easter, before you accuse them of breaking up families, before you accuse them of false doctrines or being a cult understand that they endured more than any other religion in the wars. Understand that it is more because of the actions of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ constant battles with the courts that you have any form of religious freedoms, or any form of freedom of speech. Their actions have actually done more for the freedom of people than any of the soldiers who ever fought in any of the wars.
That’s not to lessen the actions of those ones but ultimately the actions of the soldiers did nothing to make this world a better place. Their actions didn’t stop wars, they didn’t stop crime, they didn’t stop abuse, they didn’t stop hunger, they didn’t stop disasters.
But think about this. Jehovah’s Witnesses ended up in Concentration Camps because they refused to go to war, they refused to vote, they refused to support the war, and they called out the hypocrisy of those who did, especially the clergy who fail to adhere to Jesus command to love their brothers and not get tied up in political actions.
Incidentally the first nation in the world to put Jehovah’s Witnesses in prison for not supporting the war was New Zealand. Jehovah’s Witnesses were beaten by mobs in Canada and America. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been imprisoned in Africa, America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, the Americas, Israel and other middle eastern nations, pretty much any nation you can think of… not because they are political activists, not because they are unlawful and refuse to pay taxes, not because they are anarchists, but simply because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Simply because they try to serve Jehovah according to the Bible which leads to an interesting thought:
(John 15:17-27) “These things I command YOU, that YOU love one another. 18 If the world hates YOU, YOU know that it has hated me before it hated YOU. 19 If YOU were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because YOU are no part of the world, but I have chosen YOU out of the world, on this account the world hates YOU. 20 Bear in mind the word I said to YOU, A slave is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute YOU also; if they have observed my word, they will observe YOURS also. 21 But they will do all these things against YOU on account of my name, because they do not know him that sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 He that hates me hates also my Father. 24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have both seen and hated me as well as my Father. 25 But it is that the word written in their Law may be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’ 26 When the helper arrives that I will send YOU from the Father, the spirit of the truth, which proceeds from the Father, that one will bear witness about me; 27 and YOU, in turn, are to bear witness, because YOU have been with me from when I began.
