Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany - Punishment

Punishment

From 1933 Witnesses working in post offices, railway stations or other civil service jobs began to be dismissed for refusing to give the compulsory Hitler salute. From August 1934 they could also lose their jobs for refusing to take an official oath swearing loyalty and obedience to Hitler. Teachers were required to sign a statement confirming they were not members of the International Bible Students Association and were fired if they refused. Jehovah's Witnesses were dismissed in the private sector as well, often at the insistence of the German Labor Front (DAF) or Nazi Party members. In 1936 the Nazi press urged that Bible Students be removed from all German companies, while self-employed members of the religion were denied professional or business licences to carry out their work on the basis that their refusal to join Nazi organizations marked them as "politically unreliable".

The state confiscated motor vehicles and bicycles used by Witnesses for their business, withdrew driver's licences, withdrew pensions and evicted Witnesses from their homes. Schoolchildren were required to sing the Horst Wessel song and Deutschlandlied at a flag salute roll call, give the Hitler salute and take part in ceremonies honoring Hitler; those who refused were beaten by teachers and sometimes by classmates, while many were also expelled. From March 1936 authorities began removing Witness children from their parents, forcing some of them to undergo "corrective training".

From early 1935, Gestapo officers began widening their use of "protective detention", usually when judges failed to convict Witnesses on charges of defying the Bible Student ban. Bible Students deemed to "present an imminent danger to the National Socialist state because of their activities" were from that point not handed to courts for punishment but sent directly to concentration camps for incarceration for several months, but even those who completed their prison terms were routinely arrested by the Gestapo upon release and taken into protective custody.

More brutal methods of punishment began to be applied from 1936, including horsewhipping, prolonged daily beatings, the torture of family members and the threat of shooting. Some Witnesses were placed in mental institutions and subjected to psychiatric treatment; sterilization was ordered for some deemed to be "stubborn" in their refusal to denounce their religion.

Following an assembly in Lucerne, Switzerland in early September 1936 up to 3000 copies of a resolution of protest were sent to government, public and clerical leaders, stepping up the Watch Tower Society's anti-Catholic polemic. Several German Witnesses who attended the convention were arrested by waiting police as they returned to their homes and between August and September the Gestapo arrested more than 1000 members. The society responded with a pamphlet campaign on December 12, dropping up to 200,000 copies of the Lucerne resolution in mailboxes and also leaving them at phone booths, park benches and parked cars. Those arrested in subsequent police raids were sentenced to up to two years in prison. The number of arrests increased; in Dresden alone as many as 1500 Witnesses had been arrested by mid-1937. Another letterbox campaign was carried out in June 1937, a year in which the Watch Tower Society announced German Witnesses had distributed more than 450,000 books and booklets in 12 months.

Compulsory military service for all men aged between 18 and 45 was introduced by Hitler in March 1935. No exemptions were provided for religious or conscientious reasons and Witnesses who refused to serve or take the oath of allegiance to Hitler were sent to prison or concentration camp, generally for terms of one or two years. At the outbreak of war in August 1939, more serious punishments were applied. A decree was enacted that greatly increased penal regulations during periods of war and states of emergency and included in the decree was an offense of "demoralization of the armed forces"; any refusal to perform military service or public inducement to this effect would be punishable by death. Between August 1939 and September 1940, 152 Bible Students appeared before the highest military court of the Wehrmacht charged with demoralization of the armed forces and 112 were executed, usually by beheading. Garbe estimates about 250 German and Austrian Jehovah's Witnesses were executed during World War II as a result of military court decisions. In November 1939 another regulation was issued providing for the jailing of anyone who supported or belonged to an "anti-military association" or displayed an "anti-military attitude", which allowed authorities to impose prison sentences on the charge of IBSA membership. Death penalties were applied frequently after 1943.