Recalling the genocide of the Holocaust

It has been more than 77 years since Allied forces liberated Nazi Germany's concentration and death camps in 1945, a genocide that cumulatively claimed the lives of untold so-called "enemies" of the Third Reich, including an estimated 6 million Jews.

Friday, Jan. 27, is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Jehovah's Witnesses, who number approximately 400 people in Southeast Missouri, are not forgetting to mark the occasion.

Jehovah's Witness prisoners in the camps were identified by purple triangle badges on their Nazi-mandated uniforms, and were said to be among the first groups to be rounded up and detained by the Nazi regime.

"The purple triangle stood only for Jehovah's Witnesses and not for all prisoners of the religious opposition. Unlike Catholic priests, who wore the red triangle of the political prisoners, the Witnesses were not classified as 'political' enemies," according to www.alst.org, a website maintained by heirs of Holocaust survivors and designed to educate future generations about past victims of dictatorships and persecution.

"Most [Witnesses were] committed between 1935 and 1939. During these years the number of Witnesses increased to at least 10 percent of the number of camp inmates. In some camps their number increased to an even higher percentage. They were not counted among the political prisoners and could not be counted among the criminals. They were an independent group and wore the purple triangle. They were persecuted, arrested, and committed to the camps, all because of their religious conviction," the website continued.

According to a denominational handout prepared for Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Nazis targeted Jehovah's Witnesses because of "their very public refusal to accept even the smallest elements of [Nazi doctrine], which didn't fit with their faith and beliefs."

The handout also says Witnesses refused to give the "Heil Hitler" salute, and, unlike other groups singled out for reasons of biology, nationality or political ideology, Witnesses were "the only group in the Third Reich persecuted on the basis of religious beliefs alone."

History

Jehovah's Witnesses' organization claims an estimated 8.5 million members worldwide and is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination founded in the 1870s in Pittsburgh by Charles Taze Russell.

Russell co-founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in 1881, which organized and printed the movement's publications.

Jehovah's Witnesses are perhaps best known today for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake!, and for refusing military service.

Locally

Jehovah's Witnesses maintain three worship centers, called Kingdom Halls, in Cape Girardeau County:

• Jackson: 1250 County Road 318.
• Cape Girardeau: 3075 County Road 620.
• Cape Girardeau: 1150 S. Silver Springs Road.