This is one of a new series of memoirs written by members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, following the pattern set by their Jewish partners in suffering. Liebster’s account of her youth in Alsace, and her persecution after the Nazi conquest is on familiar lines, but brings out again the courageous obstinacy with which members of the J.Ws accosted their persecutors.
Their witness has not been much written about in secular terms, partly because this religious fraternity is still discriminated against, and partly because such literary exercises does not belong in their culture. But this glimpse of their fate is an excellent example of how such experiences should be recorded for posterity.
John S. Conway Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter- December 2001- Vol. VII, no. 11
Facing the Lion review by John S. Conway
University of British Columbia
Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe
Simone Arnold Liebster
This is one of a new series of memoirs written by members of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, following the pattern set by their Jewish
partners in suffering. Liebster’s account of her youth in Alsace, and
her persecution after the Nazi conquest is on familiar lines, but
brings out again the courageous obstinacy with which members of
the J.Ws accosted their persecutors.
Their witness has not been much written about in secular terms,
partly because this religious fraternity is still discriminated against,
and partly because such literary exercises does not belong in their
culture. But this glimpse of their fate is an excellent example of
how such experiences should be recorded for posterity.
John S. Conway
Association of Contemporary Church Historians
Newsletter- December 2001- Vol. VII, no. 11
Forgotten Heroes: New Book Documents the Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Austria During the Nazi Era
95-year-old witnesses Stolperstein laying – family helped Jewish neighbors
First Stolperstein (stumbling stone) for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Schwerin