Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses in a dispute over a unique archive that meticulously documents the persecution of its followers in photographs, letters, Gestapo secret police reports, arrest warrants and death sentences.
The religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses was one of the groups persecuted by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. From 1933 to 1945, approximately 15,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were tortured in Nazi-occupied Europe. About 4,500 people were sent to concentration camps where they were forced to wear purple triangles. More than 1,800 people were murdered.
Annemarie Kusserow, herself a victim of Nazi persecution who died in 2005, bequeathed her personal collection to a branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany. However, in 2009, one of her brothers sold more than 1,000 documents to the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, assuring that he was its rightful owner. Jehovah’s Witnesses have since been engaged in a years-long legal battle with the German state for the return of the collection.
Sebastian Stock, spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany, said, “To know that here was a family that was persecuted by the Nazis and you have the clearly expressed will of Annemarie Kussero, who herself was persecuted, suffered, imprisoned, and she clearly explains what should happen with this collection that she has carefully put together, and morally it is so clear where this collection should go.”
Target of ‘blood and soil’ ideology
Jehovah’s Witnesses are the result of the international Bible Student movement founded in America in the 1870s. Many of their missionaries traveled to Europe. By 1933, more than 25,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were living in the German Reich, and the East German state of Saxony was home to Europe’s largest community. Both the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany opposed the group, which was known as the International Bible Students and the Ernest Bible Students, and from 1931, as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Bible Students were targeted by German ethno-nationalists.Folk song“Movement that emerged in the late 19th century, and which saw the German people as a “racially pure” community tied to the land, as part of the so-called “blood and soil” ideology. Spread baseless propaganda that “world Jewry” or an international Jewish conspiracy funded Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Born in the western German city of Bochum in 1913, Annemarie Kusserow was the eldest of 11 children who, along with her parents, would be imprisoned by the Nazi regime. In 1931, the family moved to the nearby town of Bad Lippspringe where Kusserow’s father encouraged him to document their systematic incarceration.
The Nazis banned Bible Students nationwide in 1935, as several German states, Prussia and Bavaria, had already enacted regional bans. Its members were dismissed from the civil service, lost their jobs and pensions, and mass arrests were made.
To find work, Kusserow moved to Berlin where she was able to visit her younger brother Wolfgang who was in prison for refusing to join the army. On 25 October 1944 he was arrested in Berlin and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for discussing his faith and possessing the group’s literature. His brother Karl-Heinz Kusserow was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp and died in 1946 at the age of 28 as a result of treatment there.
Conscientious objectors were executed
The Nazis targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses because they were unwilling to swear allegiance to the Nazi state and Adolf Hitler. They believe that their primary allegiance is to God, not to any government or human leader. Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to salute Hitler, would not become members of any Nazi organization or institution, and refused to join the army on the basis of their religious pacifism. They were the single largest integrated group that refused military service in the Third Reich.
About 300 young men were executed by the Nazis for refusing to fight, including Annemarie’s two brothers. Kusserow’s younger brother Wilhelm was executed by firing squad in 1940. “At 25 years old, imagine that young man who stood there and gave his life for his conviction not to kill others,” Stock said. In 1942, his 20-year-old brother Wolfgang was executed by guillotine.
The execution of conscientious objectors is one reason why the right to refuse military service is now enshrined in the Basic Law of Germany. “My brothers died because of their refusal to participate in military service. I don’t find it appropriate that this legacy of all places should be stored in a military museum,” said Paul-Gerhard Kusserow, the youngest brother. new York Times In 2022.
The Federal Court in Karlsruhe ruled on 26 June that Annemarie’s brother Hans-Werner had taken possession of the collection without authorization. It also ruled that in the case of a “single, historically important collection”, the State cannot rely solely on the assurances of the seller and has a duty to investigate. The Higher Regional Court in Cologne will now determine whether Annemarie was the sole owner of the documents, how she lost possession of them, and whether sufficient questions were asked about her brother’s right to sell the collection.
New memorial to persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses
The decision came just two days after the unveiling of a new memorial to Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in Berlin. The bronze stele, about five meters high, stands in the capital’s Tiergarten park where groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses would meet to organize resistance activities. The members were arrested by the Gestapo in 1936 in the park’s goldfish pond.
However, the new memorial in Berlin has inspired criticism. Prominent historian Tim B. Muller wrote Opinion piece for Frankfurter Allgemeine Newspaper. He argues that Jehovah’s Witnesses, persecuted by the Nazis, have no legitimate representation today. The Bible Student movement was marked by various controversies and, according to Müller, there is no direct continuity between those persecuted by the Nazis and the later Jehovah’s Witnesses. Muller writes that the memorial presents a “one-sided narrative” where “well-organized voices suppress historical plurality, and some victims are not represented.”
Writer Stephanie de Velasco has also criticized the monument. She has written extensively about her upbringing in Jehovah’s Witnesses, which she describes as a “totalitarian” sect. “Jehovah’s Witnesses were victims of the Nazis; I have no doubt about that. But I would prefer a memorial that focused on the personalities of the victims and their involuntary suffering – not on their heroic perseverance,” she wrote in mirror News bulletin.
Concentration camp survivors were tortured in the GDR
Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses did not end with World War II in 1945. It continued in Soviet-occupied Germany and intensified in the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). Jehovah’s Witnesses in Soviet-occupied Germany were initially able to hold church services. People who were imprisoned or held in Nazi concentration camps were also given official papers recognizing them as victims of fascism.
“This changed around 1947, and then in 1950 the religious community was banned in the GDR. The official status of victims of fascism was revoked,” historian Falk Bursch told DW. “I have also come across cases where time spent in Nazi concentration camps was counted by the GDR authorities as a prior criminal offense.”
A total of 6,740 Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR. Sixty-five people died in custody, about half of whom had spent time in Nazi camps. Bursch said, “We know of more than 600 men and women who were persecuted by both the Nazi and GDR regimes. About 400 were either in concentration camps or imprisoned under both regimes.”
Edited by Reena Goldenberg