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