Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe
Regarding the persecution of the Bible Students in Europe,1In the countries that were associated with Germany (such as Hungary, Slovakia, Rumania), as well as in the occupied states, the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses was also persecuted. We will only discuss the countries from which the women incarcerated in the concentration camp at St. Lambrecht came. That involves besides Germany and ‘annexed’ Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland.
In Austria the Bible Students had already been restricted in their activities during the Ständestaat2Federal State of Austria (1934-1938). of the Dollfuss government. The government banned the meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the early 1930s in Graz. An appeal against this ban was granted, but the foreign Bible Student missionaries had to leave the country because they lacked a residence permit. From 1933 on the authorities regularly issued summons to the members of the religious community. In 1935, during Schuschnigg was in office, the Watchtower publications and meetings of members of the religious community were banned.3See Malle 2001, p. 19 f. This forced the Bible Students in Austria to continue their activities underground during the time of Austrian fascism.
On 12 March 1938 Hitler’s army marched into Austria. At that moment there were 550 registered members of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Austria.4www.lettertothestars.at; Gerti Malle speaks of 549 official members of the religious community (see Malle 2001, p. 31). In the period between 1938 and 1945, 560 Austrian Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested, including members of the religious community who had not officially joined the Watchtower Society. From these, about 150 died of the consequences of imprisonment, 51 religious members were killed by guillotine or shot dead (see www.lettertothestars.at). A month later the population spoke out, under pressure and with very little opposition, in favour of joining Austria to Nazi-Germany. Simply not participating in the ‘referendum’ led to reprisals. One inhabitant of Knittelfeld, was driven out of her home for refusing to vote.5See Graffard/Tristan 1998, p. 98.
In Vienna, after the Anschluss,6Annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938. Jehovah’s Witnesses made their own copies of Biblical reading material. Due to the increasing inspections of the Gestapo, it became harder and harder to bring reading and study material into the country. Because many male Bible Students were already in prison, courageous women made themselves available for underground work.7See Aigner 2000, p. 13.
Therese Schreiber was arrested in 1939 because she copied and distributed the magazine The Watchtower in Vienna. In 1940 she was deported to Ravensbrück. She belonged to the group that was transferred in May 1943 to the work camp St. Lambrecht, which until then was a sub camp of Ravensbrück. Therese Schreiber survived five years and six months of captivity.8WTA Vienna; DÖW 20100/10676; see also Graffard/Tristan 1998, p. 107 and Malle 2001, p. 19 f. Like all other Bible Students in concentration camp St. Lambrecht, she was freed by the British Army there in May 1945, after the surrender of the German army.
When the Germans troop invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Polish Bible Students also fell victim to the Nazi regime. Five Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were in St. Lambrecht at the end of their captivity, came from Poland. One of them, Paula Wölfle, was arrested as early as October 1940 and was one of the first Polish Bible Students to be deported to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Three years later she was transferred to the sub camp of St. Lambrecht.9WTA Selters i.T., Wölfle, Paulina, biography.
On 10 May 1940 the army units of the ‘Third Reich’ invaded the Netherlands, four days later the entire Dutch territory was under the rule of the Nazi regime. By the end of May, the former Austrian interior minister and governor of Ostmark,10Eastern frontier. Original Nazi term for Austria. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, as Reich Commissioner of the occupied Netherlands issued a ban on the Bible Students association. Soon thereafter the Branch Office of Jehovah’s Witnesses was searched. The presses remained in use until July. Despite the ban and the confiscation of the society’s possessions, the believers organised themselves underground. In 1940 they made it publicly known there was an investigation into their persecution in Germany. They also distributed editions of Informant, the brochure Refugees, the book Enemies and the publication Fascism or Freedom.11See Graffard/Tristan 1998, p. 132 f.
In September 1941 Gerdina Huisman-Rabouw12Gerdina Huisman was only 19 years old at the time of her arrest. She was the youngest female inmate at St. Lambrecht concentration camp. who only a short time earlier had ‘come into the truth’, was arrested. She was deported, after a brief stay in the Gestapo prison, to the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück and was transferred with 22 other Bible Students in 1943 to the concentration camp at St. Lambrecht.13WTA Vienna. Arthur Winkler, who led the society’s activities in the Netherlands, was arrested together with several others in 1942.14See Graffard/Tristan 1998, p. 168.
Just as in other countries, members of the Bible Students were heavily persecuted in Belgium. In July 1941 Léon Floryn was arrested; his wife Maria fell into the hands of the Nazi’s in May 1942. She too was sent to the sub camp St. Lambrecht to be put to work there after the living conditions in Ravensbrück drastically worsened.15See Graffard/Tristan 1998, p. 150.
The examples mentioned here show the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in countries under Nazi regime. They show how fast the net closed in on the persecuted group during the growth of the totalitarian regime.