Oral History Interviews

In 1933, the year Hitler came to power, I was an 18-year-old Jewish lad living in Germany.  I witnessed the dreadful rise of Nazism and its growing anti-Semitism. The arrest of opponents and the opening of concentration camps for dissident Germans, including Jehovah’s Witnesses (also known as Bible Students), plunged

I have often had the privilege of talking to young people. Everywhere in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Germany, I sensed how young people are eager to understand what happened in civilized Germany as it became a Nazi State. I found the same interest in learning how to build

Jehovah’s Witnesses tried again and again to tell the world about the terrible things happening in Nazi Germany. In 1938 the Witnesses published the book Crusade Against Christianity, which gave names, places, and details about Nazi oppression and torture. My parents bought this book, which was published in German and French. I

A signature in exchange for freedom seems like a very simple choice. But to the Nazis and to the Witnesses, the declaration meant much more than a signed piece of paper. The Nazis intended the declaration as a psychological weapon to break the Witnesses’ determination to stand up for their beliefs. At