Oral history interview with Edward Kaplan

Oral history interview with Georges Amrouche

Oral History

Oral history interview with Johanna Bakker

Oral History

Oral history interview with Walda Beckman

Oral History

Walda Beckmann, born December 11, 1914 in Isensee, Germany, discusses how in 1932 she became a Jehovah's Witness (JW) and also converted members of her family; living in Hamburg, Germany in 1933 when the congregation of JW was prohibited; continuing to secretly meet with other JW members in the countryside; how between 1933 and 1945 she was imprisoned several times for varying lengths of time due to her activities as a JW; printing "Der Wachturm" (the watchtower) whenever possible and organizing secret meetings; always living under the close scrutiny of the Gestapo; how in 1937 she was sent to a camp in Fuhlsbüttel after the Gestapo had discovered her activities; how she was once deported to Harburg for two months and, at one point, sent to the Hütten concentration camp; how when she returned to Germany in 1947, she was forced to undergo an "Entnazifizierungsprozess"(denazification process) at a camp set up by the British and Americans in Stanemünde near Paderborn; continuing to serve as a pioneer after the war; and working as a bookkeeper in Hamburg until she moved to Stuttgart, Germany in 1960.

Oral history interview with Marta Belebczuk

Oral History

Oral history interview with Claude Blanvin

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aart Bouter and Johanna Bouter

Oral History

Aart Bouter discusses his father (Wilhelm Bouter), brother, and two sisters; working for a milk company and eventually going into sales; the banning of Jehovah's Witnesses in Holland in August 1940; first meeting Jehovah's Witnesses in July 1940; being interested in becoming a Witness along with his fiancée (Johanna); being secretly baptized in a house; his reasons for becoming a Witness; being arrested on February 15, 1942; being transported by tram to Den Haag (Hague , Netherlands) for interrogation and staying there for six months; being sent to a camp in Amersfoort and the conditions there; the cigarette trade in the camp; witnessing the deportation of Russian Mongolians; being sent back to Schagen, Netherlands; working with Andre Schouchfer and bringing him a list of names of the other Witnesses he saw at Arnersfoort; being taken to Bittenhuff with Schouchfer; refusing to betray the Witnesses and being beaten; transported from Schagen by train to Germany and the other people on the train with him; arriving at Sachsenhausen concentration camp; his work loading and unloading train cars; having large Witness meetings; literature being smuggled into the camp from sisters on the outside; being assigned to work in the castle of the widow Frau Heydrich in Czechoslovakia in 1944 with 15 other brothers; working in the horse stables; helping the local people; refusing as a group to barricade the road to Dresden; the group also deciding not to hide Frau Heydrich as the war came to an end; wearing Heydrich's clothing at the end of the war; and how the humor of the Witnesses contributed to their survival.

Oral history interview with Johanna Buchner

Oral History

Johanna Buchner (née Niedlemeier), born April 15, 1904 in Vienna, Austria, describes becoming a Jehovah's Witness in 1931; serving as a pioneer, going on trips throughout Austria and Germany to provide her brothers and sisters of the faith with spiritual sustenance; being arrested for being a J.W. by the Gestapo in 1939; being sent to a woman's prison in Bavaria (Oberbayern) where she was imprisoned for six years; avoiding her scheduled transfer to a concentration camp by the arrival of US troops in May 1945; and returning to Vienna immediately after liberation.

Oral history interview with Ruth Danner

Oral History

Ruth Danner, born December 9, 1933 in eastern France, describes her parents and sister; life before the Germans came; how her father converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) in 1925 and how her mother resisted until 1929; how her parents helped get JW publications, such as the Watchtower, to Germany; her congregation’s activities to help Germans; her experiences in school and trying to maintain her faith; the German invasion in 1940; how her family refused to work for the Germans; her father’s role as the leader of their congregation; having study sessions at home and watching out for the SS while she was outside playing; how their home was searched for JW literature and pictures and her parents were questioned; being picked up with her family in the early morning January 28, 1943; being taken to a deportation camp in what is now Poland; how the camp was filled with political prisoners; how her parents were asked to sign papers renouncing their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses and their refusal to do so; being nine years old and being forced to sew, garden, prepare food, and go shopping for the SS; not having to wear special clothing or a purple triangle; having a German bible; standing up to the SS and relying on her faith; having limited food; the living conditions; how some people were beaten because they were not neutral; being liberated by American soldiers April 20, 1945; going home to an empty house, since the Germans had sold all their furniture; slowly getting furniture from neighbors; going back to school and wanting to pioneer; and the pictures and documents from her parents after their imprisonment (she shows these on the video).

Oral history interview with Tina Davies and David Davies

Oral History

Tina Davies, born March 23, 1921 in Krakow, Poland, describes her family; moving away from Krakow; how her father boycotted German goods because he was against Hitler; being treated okay in school but the undercurrent of antisemitism; going back to Krakow because her parents thought it would be safer; how her father went with the Red Cross east, away from the Germans, and was eventually found and shot; going to the ghetto; her mother’s refusal to run away; being sent to an extermination camp; escaping with her brother and receiving help from a Polish policeman; never seeing her mother and sister again; her brother getting typhoid fever; working in a cable factory; not being able to find her brother after the liquidation of the ghetto; experiencing a nervous breakdown; liquidation of the camp; being sent to Auschwitz; seeing "Work makes you happy" written on the gate; being put in Birkenau; being counted every morning; how some committed suicide on electric wires; being tattooed; going to the fields to dig up cabbages; how fights would break out over bread portioning and she was trusted to distribute bread; being forced to march in January 1945; marching for three days and those who couldn't walk were shot; being placed on open trains and taken to Belsen; passing Buchenwald, where a lot of dead bodies were taken off the train, mostly men because they weren't given food; the violent Ukranians in Belsen; being liberated by the British in April 1945; getting typhoid fever; going to a hospital; being placed in a displaced persons camps in Belsen and Linerberg; meeting her husband and marrying him in December 1945; living in England, Hong Kong, and Germany; her beliefs that Christians were no good because the killing of the Jews; how she and her husband believed in God but were not religious; raising her son as a Christian under the Church of England; learning about Christianity; and pictures she has of her family before the war (she shows these on the video). David Davies, born July 4, 1922, describes meeting Tina at a dance in a displaced persons camp; his position in the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers; joining as boy soldier in 1937 and apprenticing until he was made active at the age of 18; starting in North Scotland during the war, then going to Egypt in 1942; the Battle at El Alamein; going to Salerno, Italy, Marseilles, France, Belgium, and Germany; liberation and the noisy Russian Ukrainians; visiting Belsen and Dachau a year after the liberation; receiving a post with the Defense Ministry in the British Government; and his thoughts on those who deny the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Jopie de Jong

Oral History

Jopie de Jong, born April 16, 1897, describes being arrested by a Dutch police officer; being taken to several prisons, including the police prison on the Alkemadelaan in the Hague; remaining there for seven weeks and being fed very little; being asked by a German officer to sign a paper renouncing his faith as a Jehovah's Witness so that he could be released and his refusal to do so; being beaten until he was rendered unconscious; coming to and being hit with a piece of metal by a Dutch officer; being taken to a Dutch concentration camp; how the Dutch NSB were even more cruel than the Germans; how in the Amersfoort camp the prisoners were left standing outside stark naked and without food; being completely shaved; his work assignment cutting trees; not being fed in the mornings; going into the forest to find nuts to feed the pigs and successfully sneaking in nuts for the inmates; being sent to Vught, where at one point he had to stand outside so long that his leg was completely frozen and he was sent to the hospital; being transferred to Buchenwald, where every day he saw ten to twenty people die; working, at some point after 1942, in a Henkel airplane factory; and remaining a Jehovah's Witness.

Oral history interview with Cornelus De Vreede

Oral History

Cornelus de Vreede, born April 24, 1916 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his family, including his two brothers and three sisters; his father sold his greengrocery store in the 1930s and went into the flower bulb business in Lisse, the Netherlands; being age ten when his family moved to Lisse; leaving school and working in the bulb business; how many people in Holland joined the NSB (Dutch Nazi party) and how his own boss was an NSB sympathizer; becoming a Jehovah's Witness (JW) and being baptized in 1937 in Heemstede, the Netherlands; becoming a full time pioneer and buying a boat which he used for his ministry; how during the 1940 German invasion of Holland, the boat was near an airport, near Alkmaar, the Netherlands, and the crew was accused by the Dutch of using the ship's lights for signaling to the Germans; being detained because he was subject to military service; being interrogated and imprisoned in a military prison; being transferred to a police station and set free; going to Zuurdyk in Groningen, the Netherlands; distributing The Watchtower and continuing Bible education; being arrested during a JW meeting in March 1941; being transported to a prison in Assen, the Netherlands, where he stayed for three months; being taken to a prison in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and then to Berlin, Germany; being sent to Sachsenhausen; how in the beginning there were 300 JWs in one block; building the camp’s water purification system; his uniform (he shows it in the video); refusing to renounce his faith; how many inmates had bibles; daily routines in the camp; mistreatment in the camp; being batman to the head commander of the camp, Adolf Gustav Schorke; being sent on a death march starting April 20, 1945 with 230 JWs; going through Berlin before a heavy bombardment; using their plates to dig for water; being liberated by American troops; returning to Holland and working in a sanatorium; getting married; working in a textile factory; and receiving restitution from the Dutch government.

Oral history interview with Klaas De Vries and Maria De Vries

Oral History

Klaas de Vries (born in 1919 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and Maria de Vries (born in Waddinxveen, the Netherlands in 1912) discuss how Klaas came in contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) in 1930 when he and his family moved to Rotterdam, the Netherlands; how he and Maria became JW and by 1933 they were involved in Bible education work; getting married in 1937; how a German named Winkler ran the Rotterdam branch; working as pioneers on a ship in northern Holland; working on the ship in Groningen, the Netherlands when the Germans invaded; going into hiding; changing the name of the boat from the Light Bearer to Corey; how Klaus was arrested while bringing literature to another JW in mid-1940; how Maria fled the boat and was not found by the Gestapo; Klaas’s interrogation and being beaten; how Klaas was sent to a jail in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands and then transferred to Sachsenhausen; his experience having a religious discussion with a Jew on his way to the camp and being put in a labor camp, where they made bricks and 50 people died a day; how he got back to the main camp by hiding under a load of dead bodies; being hospitalized and becoming the butler for a German officer, to whom he read the Bible every Sunday; how he was sent to work on a ship and preached to other inmates and the German guards; how he was almost hanged for helping a hurt man; going on the death march with the other JWs; being liberated; his return to Rotterdam and assignment in Dordrecht, the Netherlands; Maria’s arrest and four month isolated imprisonment in a jail; how she was interrogated and beaten; her deportation to Ravensbrück; being beaten on her first day there; the conditions she experienced; how she was outspoken and received many beatings; dancing and crying upon liberation; how she went to a hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden; and being reunited with Klaas.

Oral history interview with Lieselore Dietschi

Oral History

Lieselore Dietschi, born June 12, 1922 in Bochum, Germany, describes her parents, who converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) in the 1920s; how she and her sister, Ruth, grew up as JW; how their father was the elder of their religious community and his religious standing led to repressions against the family, beginning in 1933; her father going into the underground to continue his work In 1935 and the family losing contact with him; her family being closely observed by the Gestapo; witnessing her mother’s arrest by the Gestapo in 1936 and being left alone to care for her sister; how her mother was severely beaten and returned unable to care for her children properly; the arrest of her father 1937 and his imprisonment in Berlin until 1942; suffering in school under a Nazi principal, who threatened her and her sister on a daily basis, and cruel students, who despised them for refusing to give the Hitler salute; receiving compensation after the war; and being liberated by the arrival of U.S. troops in May 1945.

Oral history interview with Michel Drosdowsky

Oral History

Michel Drosdowsky, born in Paris, France, discusses his Russian parents; going to synagogue with his grandmother and a cathedral with his father, who was Orthodox; the German occupation of France; going with his Jewish mother to Brittany for a while before returning to the suburbs of Paris; his mother not registering as a Jew and not wearing the star; the arrest and deportation of his grandmother, aunt, and cousin; going into hiding in 1941; being 14 years old in 1944 and witnessing the murder of people in the streets; his father finding a job with the American Army; finishing college in 1949 and attending the Sorbonne to become a physician; earning a doctorate in the United States; being a professor at the Cannes Medical School; becoming an atheist after the war; and becoming a Jehovah's Witness.

Oral history interview with Veronika Fassler

Oral History

Oral history interview with Josef Filipp

Oral History

Josef Filipp, born March 27, 1926 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his Roman Catholic family; having an older brother, who served as a Marine in WWII; his older sister, Therese, who eventually became a Jehovah's Witness; working between 1943 and 1944 in the "Arbeitsdienst" (work service); cleaning up the streets after a bomb attack and later working in the flak division of the air force; being transferred in 1944 to the Waffen-SS and sent to fight in Italy and on the Western front; being severely injured and eventually captured by American troops and sent to Luxembourg for surgery; being sent to Elberfeld, Germany; being sent to Graz, Austria, where he was dismissed; his war experiences turning him away from religion and church; and becoming a Jehovah's Witness at a later point in his life.

Oral history interview with Gisela Tillmann and Gerd Gotthold

Oral History

Gisela Tillmann and Gerd Gotthold, born on November 24, 1923 in Herne, Germany and June 19, 1931 in Buchom, Germany, discuss their parents’ conversion to become Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1926; their religious upbringing; their parents’ Lutheran upbringings and how the Lutheran Church’s involvement in World War I changed their religious views; the mass unemployment in Germany after World War I; their parents becoming very involved in the church; their father’s job as a coal miner and then unemployment from 1927- 1938; their parents’ frequent and open political discussions with them after Hitler’s rise to power; their continued education as Jehovah’s Witnesses; the Gestapo’s arrest of many male Jehovah’s Witnesses, including their father, in spring 1936; their memories of visiting their father during his time in the Dortmund, Germany Steinwache prison; their father’s second arrest in February 1944 and his time in a local prison which was struck by Allied bombers; their mother’s first arrest in 1937 while pregnant and the Gestapo’s ransacking of their apartment in search of Bible literature; their mother’s imprisonment in Steinwache prison and being beaten so badly there that she had to get an abortion; their mother’s sentencing to one and a half years at the Anrath prison near Krefeld, Germany; their memories of their mother’s return from prison in 1939; their parents holding secret Bible study meetings; their mother’s second arrest and time in the same local prison as their father that was bombed; their parents’ time in a prison in Potsdam, Germany starting in August 1944; their father receiving a sentence to six years in a Ludwigsburg, Germany prison, where he remained until liberation, and their mother’s death sentence; their parents’ charges of undermining the Nazi Wehrmacht morale; their mother smuggling out notes to them detailing the accusations and charges; reflecting back on their Bible teachings; visiting their mother in prison before her execution; resurrection in the Bible; their experiences in school related to their religious beliefs; helping to publish and secretly deliver copies of the 1937 Jehovah’s Witnesses resolution against Hitler; how they survived on farms after their parents were imprisoned; how they relied on their religion during the Nazi rule; their father’s release from prison and return home in April 1945; their mother’s execution in December 1944 and the last letter they received from her; their reactions to receiving the letter; receiving an official notice from the Berlin penitentiary director of their mother’s execution; the complications of getting their mother’s personal items returned to the family; reuniting with their father after his liberation by French forces; moving back to Herne; Gisela’s marriage and raising her two children to be Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Gerd’s work as a coal miner and as a preacher around Germany. (Family photographs and descriptions follow the interview.)

Oral history interview with Johannes Hamann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Henning

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Hiseger

Oral History

Joseph Hiseger, born on March 1, 1914, in Algrange, France, in the Moselle, discusses his childhood as a Catholic; his pivotal meeting with a Jehovah's Witness who converted him; his disaffection with the Catholic Church; the strong influence on him of books depicting persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses; the 1937 Paris convention of Jehovah's Witnesses and a speech called "Armageddon" discussing the collaboration of Catholic Church and Nazis; his anger at Cardinal Innitzer who received a Nazi official in Austria with the Nazi salute; his anger about the ban on Jehovah Witness proselytizing in Alsace-Lorraine during the German occupation; the Jehovah Witness refusal to serve in the German Luftschutz; his devoted participation in distribution of anti-Catholic and anti-Nazi propaganda; his conscription into the French Army and his refusal to serve; his two years in prison in Thionville, France; his evacuation from this prison when the Germans took over; his imprisonment by the Germans; his release and return home; his re-arrest on March 19, 1942 when the Gestapo arrived at his home; his trial in Metz and sentence to three years hard labor; his transfer by train with 20 people to Zweibrucken, Germany; his work in a metals factory during his imprisonment; his barter of one month's food rations for a Protestant Bible; the difficult conditions in the camp; his memories of liberation and stay in an American hospital for 45 days; his return to Jehovah's Witnesses work; his trip to Nancy, France, in 1946 where he met his wife; his establishment of the Jehovah's first congregation in Metz; and the importance of his religion in all aspects of his life.

Oral history interview with Max Hollweg

Oral History

Max Hollweg, born in Ramscheid, Germany in 1910, discusses his parents; his 18 siblings; being a missionary in Czechoslovakia in 1933; living in Prague (Czech Republic) for two years; being arrested during a journey from Prague to Zlin; being taken to Glatz, Germany (Klodzko, Poland); returning home; the Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses; working as a gardener while also working in the underground; being arrested several times; being taken into protective custody in 1938 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp; being beaten upon his arrival at the camp; other inmates; being sick in the camp; being operated on without anesthesia; being taken to Niederhagen in May 1940; being taken to Wewelsburg to work in Himmler's castle near Paderborn, Germany and remaining there for five years; being freed by black American troops; working with the department of health of the city of Büren; and deciding not to write a book about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Irmgard Jahndorf

Oral History

Irmgard Jahndorf, born June 30, 1921, discusses her parents, who became interested in the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931; how in 1933 her father, not yet baptized as a J.W., refused to give the Hitler salute and lost his job; the arrest of her parents in 1935 for distributing prohibited material relating to the J.W. and their release two months later; her mother being arrested and sent to a concentration camp in 1939; managing to visit her mother in the camp once; continuing her mother's work by distributing prohibited literature and attending secret bible meetings; her father being arrested and sent to a concentration camp near Berlin (possibly Sachsenhausen) in 1942; looking after younger J.W. and holding discussion groups; her father’s return in June 1945; and her joy after the war.

Oral history interview with Arie Kaldenberg

Oral History

Arie Kaldenberg, born in 1917 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses his parents; his siblings; his education and recreational activities; joining the Dutch Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) when he was 21 years old; converting to Jehovah's Witnesses in the winter of 1942-1943; resigning his job in ship building and going underground in December 1943; being arrested early 1944 in Schiedam, Netherlands while engaged in a bible study; being interrogated at the Gestapo headquarters and refusing to give the names of other J.W. members; being imprisoned in Rotterdam on the Haagsche Veer, where he was held in solitary confinement for three weeks of his nine week imprisonment; being sent to Vught concentration camp; being marched hundreds of kilometers from a camp near Venlo, Netherlands to Germany; being sent to Sachsenhausen and life there; being assigned to the Waldkommando, which entailed walking through farmland; speaking about the Bible with other inmates; having meetings with other J.W. members; refusing to renounce his faith; being sent to Neuengamme; becoming ill and fainting on the Appellplatz (roll call); being sent near Meppen, Germany, where he worked in another Waldkommando; being transported via cattle car back and forth along the same route for 12 days; being released and sent to a French field camp; the typhus epidemic; being taken to British field hospital to be deloused, fed, and treated; returning home in May 1945; meeting his wife in 1948; his career in scrap metal; his children; and some photographs of his family.

Oral history interview with Adriaan Kamp

Oral History

Adriaan Kamp, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in April 22, 1922, discusses his parents and his siblings; his education; conditions in the Netherlands in the late 1930s; his father becoming a Jehovah's Witness around 1928-1929 and later left the J.W.; being arrested for giving out J.W. literature on March 4, 1942; being taken to the bureau at the Haagse Veer and interrogated three times; spending 36 days in solitary confinement; being transferred to the river police, where he stayed for one month; being transported to Amersfoort; arriving at the camp and being disinfected, shaved, put into old Dutch uniforms, and beaten; doing hard labor; being moved in 1942 to Essen, Germany, where he stayed for three weeks; being taken to Alexanderplatz in Berlin, where the prisoners were closely confined; arriving in Sachsenhausen on June 27, 1942 and remaining there until April 21, 1945when they were sent on a death march for twelve days; conditions in Sachsenhausen and living in barrack 59; working at a pumping station and working later on the road; breaking his toe and going to the infirmary; the mistreatment of prisoners; hiding J.W. literature; witnessing the hangings of prisoners; the death march; encountering US troops and receiving food; staying for two weeks in Ommen, which was a quarantine place for ex-prisoners due to the fear of typhus; returning home; experiencing some trauma from his experiences; and details about his wife.

Oral history interview with Truus Heindyk Kamp

Oral History

Truus Heindyk Kamp, born September 29, 1917, discusses growing up in Rotterdam, Netherlands; her parents, two sisters, and brother; her brother dying during the bombardment of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940; becoming a Jehovah's Witness in October 1940; growing up Roman Catholic and never accepting Catholicism; her Belgian first husband, with whom she was active in Bible study and working more or less underground; her husband’s arrest in 1943; her daughter; the J.W. meetings held at different addresses; her husband being sent to the Haagse Veer prison, Vught, the Henckel factory, Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, and Buchenwald, where he died in February 1945; and meeting her second husband in a group that went pioneering.

Oral history interview with Willem Kettelarij

Oral History

Oral history interview with Sieglinde Klose

Oral History

Oral history interview with Annemarie Kusserow and Waldtraut Kusserow

Oral History

Annemarie and Waldtraut Kusserow discuss their parents who became Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in 1921; being in a family of 11 children; the banning of the JW in Germany in the spring of 1933; the Kusserow family hiding JW literature in their house; the Gestapo searching the Kusserow home for forbidden literature 18 times; the arrest of their mother in 1935 the mother and her imprisonment in Krefeld, Germany; their mother’s refusal to renounce her faith, and her subsequent deportation to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1943; their father’s first arrest in 1936, after which he was in and out of prison several times until 1940 when he was sent to a penitentiary until 1945; Annemarie’s imprisonment in a penitentiary; Waldtraut’s imprisonment in 1941; their other siblings who were sent to Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück; two of their brothers who were executed; reuniting as a family in 1945; and people, including former Nazis, who began coming to the Kusserow family to obtain signed statements declaring their decency toward the JW during the war.

Oral history interview with Hans Werner Kusserow

Oral History

Hans Werner Kusserow, born in 1928 in Bochum, Germany, describes his parents, who were both Jehovah's Witnesses; his ten siblings; his family being subjected to frequent Gestapo house searches after 1933; experiencing trouble with teachers and students in school; being placed with his younger brother in a "reform school" in Dorsten, Germany in 1939; being taken to Nettelstedt (district in Lübbecke, Germany) and placed in a family under the constant observation of the Gestapo; being separated from his brother and finally placed in a foster family in Etten (possibly Etten, Netherlands); English troops occupying Etten in 1945; and being able to return home to his family, where he found out that two of his older brothers had been executed.

Oral history interview with Paul Gerhard Kusserow

Oral History

Paul Kusserow, born in 1931, discusses his parents Franz and Hida Kusserow, who were Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW); his memories from the period of 1933 to 1939; the persecution of his parents and siblings; experiencing persecution in school; the Gestapo searching their house for prohibited JW literature and his father’s arrest; being picked up by the police along with his brother, Hans Werner, and sister, Elizabeth, in 1939 and sent to a reform school in Dorsten; being transferred with his siblings several months later to a reform school in Nettelstadt and being separated from each other; the repeated attempts to make him renounce his faith and convictions, all of which he resisted; living and working on a farm from 1942-1945, under the observation of the local Nazi authorities; being secretly baptized in the summer of 1944; being liberated by the arrival of American troops in 1945; being taken to Wewelsburg by JW; and returning home to the surviving members of his family.

Oral history interview with Willem Coenraad Laros

Oral History

Willem Laros, born June 9, 1902 in Delft, Netherlands, describes his father, who was a stone mason; his education; working several jobs, including bicycle repair and porcelain manufacturing; getting married at age 24; Delft in 1933 and how the Dutch people were concerned about the rise of Hitler in Germany; the NSB Party; never being involved in a political party; being raised in the Reform Church; finding the Jehovah's Witnesses through one of his brothers in the mid-1930s; being baptized on April 15, 1934 in Brussels, Belgium; being active in preaching; the beginning of the war; being arrested by a Dutch policeman with one other person, Mr. Molerfeld, while his wife was out preaching; leaving his three year old daughter with a neighbor; being taken to the Hague, Netherlands and being interrogated; refusing to renounce his faith; being in jail for three months and transferred to Dusseldorf, Germany, where he stayed for one week; being sent to Hanover and Berlin, before arriving in Sachsenhausen concentration camp; other prisoners; being tested by doing physical exercises; writing letters home; the treatment of the J.W. prisoners; having Bible study in the camp; hangings and the punishment for prisoners who tried to escape; his various jobs in the camp; their clothing; roll calls; daily life in the camp; food rations; being sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp to pick fruit; the J.W. prisoners trying to comfort and strengthen each other; starting a Bible study with some Dutch and Belgian political prisoners; hiding his Bible; the death march and the baptism of 38 people in Mecklenberg when they heard about their coming liberation; conditions during the death march; spending a few nights in the forest until the Red Cross brought them some food; being discovered by the Canadian Army; the journey back to the Netherlands and spending a night in a castle near the city of Oman; arriving in Delft and seeing his daughter who was then eight years old; becoming a storekeeper in Delft; his wife, five children, and 18 grandchildren; and being an elder in their church.

Oral history interview with Henry Lichtenstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Liebster

Oral History

Max Liebster, born February 15, 1915 in Reichenbach (Gemeinde Lautertal (Odenwald)), Germany, describes his father, mother, and two sisters; being a businessperson for ten years, until the war broke out in 1939; being put into a camp in the Black Forest in 1939; being raised in a Jewish family; the thinking among the Jewish community in 1933; Kristallnacht and the destruction of the town’s synagogues and stores; being sent to Sachsenhausen, where he was in a barrack with Jehovah's Witnesses for two weeks; being attracted to the J.W. faith; being in concentration camps for six years; conditions during the winters; being with his father when he died; being transferred to Neuengamme, where he built a haven for boats; talking with the J.W. every evening; being taken to Auschwitz, where he was tattooed; being sent to Buna (Monowitz); working on steel construction of the buildings; being sent to Buchenwald; suffering from diarrhea; conversing with an SS guard, who felt that if he didn’t kill then he would be killed; speaking with J.W. prisoners; being forced to march during a snowstorm before being sent to Buchenwald; typhus in Buchenwald and being transferred from the little camp, with so much typhus, to the larger camp; being very sick when they were liberated; having reunions with the people he was in the camps with; becoming a J.W.; and going to France and getting married.

Oral history interview with Simone Liebster

Oral History

Oral history interview with Johannes Lublink

Oral History

Oral history interview with Barbara Wohlfahrt, Ida Luckinger, and Anna Stocker

Oral History

Barbara Wohlfahrt, born in 1897 in Pörtschach, Austria, discusses the Anschluss in March 1938; the impacts of the Anschluss on her family; and the few family members who returned after the end of World War II. Mrs. Wohlfahrt’s daughters Ida Luckinger, born in 1923, and Anna Stocker, born in 1927, discuss their family and life in Austria before the Anschluss; their upbringing as Jehovah’s Witnesses; two brothers who were deported; their experiences during World War II and the Holocaust; Anna’s experiences in Germany during the war years; an uncle who was a member of the Nazi Party; learning their younger brother had been imprisoned, tortured in attempts to get him to give up his faith, and executed in 1941; the family’s reunion after the war; and their reflections on the war years.

Oral history interview with Lari Manolovich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Walter Manolovich

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hubert Mattischek

Oral History

Hubert Mattischek, born October 29, 1919 in Hamburg, Germany, describes his parents, who became Jehovah's Witnesses the year he was born; his three brothers; living in Altnach-Buchheim, Upper Austria in 1933, learning to be a painter; being arrested in 1939 and imprisoned in Linz, Austria; being sent to Dachau, where he stayed for six months and worked on construction; being sent to Mauthausen and worked there at the stone quarries until he eventually received training as a stonemason; other J.W. prisoners keeping a hidden bible; having readings and discussions; sometimes obtaining a copy of the "Watch Tower"; being transferred to Gusen in 1942-1943 and working in the stone quarries; helping to build the tunnels which were to house the construction of war planes; being liberated by American troops under the command of Generals Clay and Levy in 1945; staying in the camp for two more months under the care of the Red Cross; receiving identification documents from the Americans; and all his family surviving the concentration camps except for one brother.

Oral history interview with Berthold Mewes

Oral History

Berthold Mewes, born in Paderborn, Germany, describes how in 1934 the Jehovah's Witnesses were banned and their headquarters were closed; his mother being sent to the concentration camp Ravensbrück in April 1939; his father being sent to a penitentiary called Gamazien; his parents hosting underground meetings; being nine years old when his father had to present him to a Children's Aid Society representative at the railroad station; being sent to live with a foster family; his father refusing to participate in the war and being sentenced to 12 years in prison; receiving letters from his mother until 1943; living on a farm and attending school; learning to be self-reliant; being mistreated by the children in school; being treated fairly by the foster family and attending church with them; his mother being officially baptized a J.W. in the camp and re-baptized after her liberation; his mother keeping faith by being with other Witnesses; being reunited with his parents; and his parents receiving monetary compensation from the German government.

Oral history interview with Sophie Mewes

Oral History

Sophie Mewes, born July 18, 1898, describes becoming a Jehovah's Witness in 1931; being arrested in 1939 and placed in a prison at Paderborn for six months before she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp; having a travel pass from the camp, which allowed her to travel to her work place; her work in the camp cleaning and gardening; refusing to become a Nazi; having Bible discussions with other J.W. in the camp and preaching in the camp; food in the camp; being liberated by the Russians; returning home; getting her son (Berthold Mewes); and losing their pre-war home in Paderborn.

Oral history interview with Charlotte Müller

Oral History

Charlotte Mueller, born September 25, 1912 in Siebenlehn (part of Großschirma), Germany, describes her parents; her older sister, three younger sisters, and younger brother; her education; her parents becoming Jehovah's Witnesses in 1925; life in 1933 in Chemnitz, Germany, including the various political movements; the J.W.'s communities in Leipzig, Germany; being employed at a factory which was taken over by the German Arbeitsfront and refusing to join the Arbeitsfront; the J.W. headquarters in Magdeburg, Germany being effective in helping J.W.s; spending some time in a pioneer house in Utrecht, Netherlands; being arrested in August 1936 by the Gestapo for copying and distributing the “Watchtower”; receiving a two year sentence; performing agricultural labor while she was imprisoned; being released August 23, 1938 and immediately being taken back to Chemnitz for another hearing; refusing to renounce her faith; being sent to Lichtenburg concentration camp; being moved to Ravensbrück in May 1939; seeing her sister; her work assignments; being placed in the “punishment” barrack for refusing to wash a Nazi flag; meeting Jews for the first time; obtaining copies of the “Watchtower”; becoming the housekeeper in the household of the SS officer in charge of food provisions for the whole camp; being forced to flee with the family she had been serving when the Allied bombing increased; escaping from the family and finding J.W.s in a small town nearby; traveling by train from Schwerin to Chemnitz; remaining an active J.W.; being moved to Maagenburg, where she was to remain until 1951; the banning of J.W. in East Germany in 1951; acting as a courier, carrying J.W. literature from Berlin to East Germany; being arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison; being imprisoned in Waldheim and Halle; obtaining copies of the “Watchtower”; serving a total of six years in East German and Russian prisons; and being released two years early due to serious illness (the last 7-10 minutes of this interview are devoted to the display of many relevant documents and newspaper clippings).

Oral history interview with Josef Niklasch and Margarette Niklasch

Oral History

Joseph Niklasch, born in 1918 in Šternberk, Czechoslovakia, discusses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the winter of 1932-1933. Margarette Niklasch, born in 1910 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), discusses having her first contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931 and being baptized in 1935; getting married in 1933 to Fritz Delouch who disappeared after the first concentration camps opened; attending secret bible study groups after 1933 and distributing copies of the JW brochure “Crisis”; being arrested in 1937 and imprisoned for three months; refusing to renounce her faith; being taken to Breslau and sent later via Lichtenberg to Torgau (near the Elbe), which was still being constructed by the inmates; being sent to work on the farm of Dr. Felix Kersten (Himmler’s doctor) in 1943; the arrival of the Russian army in April/May; working on the farm under Russian supervision for six months; and returning to Germany. Jospeh Niklasch discusses working in the JW office in Prague, Czech Republic in 1939 when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia; being arrested in June 1940 for refusing military service and being sentenced to eight years in prison to be served after the war; being held in a concentration camp during the war; being deported to camp Börgermoor and later to Brandenburg; and being liberated by the Russians.

Oral history interview with Louis Piechota

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Hisiger

Oral History

Joseph Hisiger, a Jehovah’s Witness born March 1, 1914 in Moselle, Germany (now France), discusses his Jehovah’s Witness faith; his incarceration and liberation; being drafted in 1939 by the French Army; his refusal to take up arms because of his religion; his release in July 1940, at which time Germany had conquered France; attending Bible study in secret; being arrested by the Gestapo after refusing to join the Nazi party or any other political entity; receiving his sentencing by the Sondergericht in Metz, France, which included three years of hard labor; his deportation to Zweibrücken, Germany to work in forced labor camps on German railways; the conditions in the camps and experiencing deprivation; his inability to converse with other prisoners because of his religion; writing down biblical passages on purloined scraps of paper; being liberated in April 1945; and the preservation of his beliefs and commitment to preaching the word of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Oral history interview with Ernst Reiter

Oral History

Ernst Reiter, born April 11, 1915 in Graz, Austria, discusses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) circa 1931; working as a salesclerk; the Anschluss in March 1938, after which the JW meetings went underground; being arrested on September 6, 1938 for refusing military service; spending six months in prison; refusing military service again at the end of his sentence and being returned to prison; being sent in November 1939 to the Flossenbürg concentration camp under Commander Schulze, and later Commander Schierda; being liberated April 20, 1945 by US troops; and returning to Graz in September 1945.

Oral history interview with George Reuter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Magdalena Reuter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Schoen and Mary Schoen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Arie Johannes Simonis

Oral History

Oral history interview with Johannes Baptist Dominious Steinfort and Maria Steinfort-Deviojer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerda Steinfurth

Oral History

Gerda Steinfurth, born in 1920 in Germany near Berlin, discusses her parents who were baptized as Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in 1923 and got married in 1928; being baptized as a JW in 1942; the arrest of her father in 1934 and his deportation in 1936 to Sachsenhausen; having to work as a secretary to support her mother; her mother, who was active as a JW distributing the “Watchtower”, for which she was arrested in June 1940 and deported to Ravensbrück and Auschwitz; her mother’s death in 1943; being given a tutor in 1936 who was supposed to teach her the Nazi doctrine; meeting Walter Steinfurth in November 1940 and getting married to him in June 1941; being arrested late in 1942 and separated from her young son; being sentence in 1944 to four years of prison; being sent towards the end of the war from Berlin to Cottbus, and being diverted to Leipzig, where she was liberated from prison in April 1945 by American troops; walking from Leipzig to Begin in May 1945; and returning to her husband and son.

Oral history interview with Walter Steinfurth

Oral History

Walter Steinfurth, born in 1919 in Stralsund in East Germany, discusses his family, which came from a Protestant background; his mother’s death when he was thee years old; being baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) in 1942; being called in for military service in the Air Force in 1936, and working in a uniform shop; getting married in 1941; requesting conscientious objector status in 1943 when his unit was about to be moved to the Eastern Front; subsequently being arrested and put into solitary confinement; spending six months in prisons in Spandau (Berlin) and Torgau; being moved later to Milowics concentration camp near Prague; the failed attempt by Czechs of the area to supply the inmates with weapons on July 20, 1944; being transported in 1945 to Frankfurt an der Oder; being liberated by Russian troops; returning to Berlin and his family; becoming a JW overseer in East Germany until the JW were banned in 1951; being arrested and imprisoned; being released in 1960 and moving to West Germany with his family; and working as a JW overseer in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Oral history interview with Michel J. Swierkos

Oral History

Oral history interview with Edda Treforest

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jan Stadskanaal Van den Berg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jan Sliedrecht Van den Berg

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gijsbertus N. Van der Bijl

Oral History

Oral history interview with Berrie Van der Eikoff

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerrit Van der Haar and Maria Van der Haar

Oral History

Oral history interview with D. Greey Van der Staare

Oral History

Oral history interview with Friedrich Waldmann, Heinrich Waldmann, and Johanna Waldmann

Oral History

Friedrich Waldmann (born in 1927), Heinrich (born in 1926), and Johanna (born in 1922), discuss their siblings and half-siblings; their first contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1923 and their mother being baptized in 1929, one year after their father died in an accident; their family’s move in 1934 to Paderborn, Germany, where their mother worked in bible education for the JW; experiencing harassment from other children because of their faith; the arrest and imprisonment of their mother in 1936, at which time the four children still living at home (Johanna, Heinrich, Friedrich, and their younger brother Berthold) were sent to a Catholic orphanage; the release of their mother after nine months and the younger children returning home; Johanna’s move to Bochum, Germany, where she worked in a bakery and began to go to secret JW meetings and to distribute the “Watchtower”; the Gestapo arresting Johanna in February 1944 and imprisoning her for three months in the Steinwache before she was transported to Ravensbrück in April 1944; Johanna’s liberation in May 1945 and release one month later, at which time she walked to Berlin and secretly crossed the border to the western part of Germany where she found her mother and sister; Friedrich, Heinrich and Berthold being taken to a National Socialist Children’s home in 1939, where attempts were made to make them renounce their faith; the separation of the boys; Friedrich, who was forced to work for a blacksmith and ran away to his mother in 1940; Friedrich being taken away again and put to work in an education home for small children and was later able to join Heinrich in Nettelstadt where they both worked on farms; their mother finding Friedrich on the farm in 1945 and taking him home where most of the family reunited; and their younger child Berthold who is still missing.

Oral history interview with Robert Wagemann

Oral History

Robert Wagemann discusses moving to the United States in 1963; his birth in Mannheim, Germany in 1937; his parents; Mannheim before Hitler’s rise to power; his parents’ conversion to become Jehovah’s Witnesses; his parents’ experiences with persecution for their religious beliefs; his father’s work for BASF in scientific laboratories around Germany; the liquor store owned by his parents; his mother’s arrest and incarceration shortly before his birth; not having access to doctors due to the his family’s religious beliefs and incurring a birth defect in his hip; being summoned to the university clinic in Heidelberg, Germany when he was four or five years old; his mother overhearing the doctors’ conversation and narrowly avoiding being sterilized due to this birth defect; a neighbor who regularly warned the family when searches were planned to take place; his father’s conscription into the army of Nazi Germany; doctors’ discovery of his father’s diabetes and his excusal from military service; his parents’ refusal to say “Heil Hitler” and teaching him to also refuse; the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses; an uncle’s work with Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, during World War I and this uncle’s marriage to a Jewish woman; the bombing of the family’s home during an air raid on Mannheim; how he and his mother moved in with his paternal grandparents in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany, a suburb of Mannheim; not knowing that Jews were being deported to concentration camps and killing centers, just knowing that they were disappearing; how his father’s traveling for work always kept him one step ahead of the police and Gestapo; studying the Bible even before entering school; experiencing discrimination at school; his and his mother’s move after an incident at school to his maternal grandparents’ home in Haardt an der Weinstraße, Germany, where they lived for the rest of the war years; living off what his grandparents’ farm produced; his grandfather becoming mayor of the town during Allied occupation; reuniting with his father after the war’s end; how Jehovah’s Witnesses publications were banned during the Third Reich; his mother’s participation in distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets and publications during the war; witnessing a deportation; living on his maternal grandparents’ farm in Haardt an der Weinstraße; attending Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings with his parents in secret during the war; his memories of the end of the war; working for BASF after the war; a doctor who attempted to correct his birth defect; meeting his wife at a Jehovah’s Witnesses convention in Germany; his children; and his thoughts on the importance of the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oral history interview with Edward Warter and Ruth Warter

Oral History

Edward Warter (born November 20, 1901) and Ruth Warter (born June 13, 1905), discuss growing up in Memelland, Lithuania (Klaipėda Region, which was annexed to Germany in March 1939); witnessing book burnings of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ (JW) literature in 1939; the Gestapo searching their farm in 1940; Ruth’s arrest in 1943 for smuggling a letter to an imprisoned JW; Edward’s arrest for refusing to serve in the military, after which he was tried in Berlin and sent to Stutthof near Danzig; Edward’s experiences in the concentration camp and other JW arranging for him to become a tailor; Edward’s return to Memelland in 1946; living under Soviet rule as a JW until Stalin banned the JW in 1951, Edward was arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in northern Russia; the banishment of Edward’s family to Siberia for life; Edward’s release in 1960, his retirement in 1969, and his return from Siberia with Ruth; and how they later were allowed to move to West Germany.

Oral history interview with Ernst Waver

Oral History

Ernst Waver, born in 1902, discusses his work as a businessman in Dresden, Germany circa 1933; being married to a non-Jehovah’s Witness (JW); participating in underground JW activities and being arrested in 1937; serving two years in prison, one of them in solitary confinement; being asked in the summer of 1939 to renounce his faith and when he refused, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; being moved to Neuengamme camp, also near Berlin, Germany; how the JW in the camp were well organized, and they had bibles and held bible study in groups; being transferred to a small “Schandelager” (shame camp) near Braunschweig, Germany, where he stayed a year and handled the financial management of the camp; how near the end of the war the prisoners were to be loaded on a boat and sunk in Lubeck harbor, but the transport only reached Ludwigsburg, where the prisoners were liberated by the British; and going to Magdeburg and remaining a JW.

Oral history interview with Berta Wenzel and Gustav Wenzel

Oral History

Berta Wenzel (née SIndermann, born in 1904) and Gustav Wenzel (born in 1902), both born in Hausdorf, Silesia in eastern Germany (now Jugów, Poland), discuss becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) circa 1923; their daughter who was born in 1923; getting married in 1925; Gustav’s work circa 1933 as a coal miner in Hausdorf; attending JW congregations and beginning to preach from house to house in 1934; Berta’s arrest in 1935 and imprisonment for three months in a prison in Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland); Berta’s second arrest in 1937 and imprisonment for six months in a prison in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland); Berta’s release and work for a family that protected and hid her; fleeing to Hildesheim, Germany when there was a threat of being found by the Gestapo, and returning to Hausdorf when she felt safe again; how she continues to read the “Watchtower” and preaches to others; Gustav’s arrest in 1935 for selling a bible and refusing military service; Gustav’s imprisonment for three months in a prison in Glatz, before he was moved to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin; how he was treated relatively well because he was the only miner and explosives expert in the camp; the liberation of the camp in 1945 and his reunion with his wife and daughter; and leaving East Germany after the war to live in West Germany, while their daughter stayed behind.

Oral history interview with Charles Schuster

Oral History

Charles Schuster, born on August 3, 1920 in Algrange, Moselle, France, describes Jehovah’s Witness resistance to Nazi occupation; being drafted in 1943 into “Service du travail obligatoire”; completing the training, reporting to the base, and refusing to serve; being arrested; being imprisoned in Marne, Rellinghausen, Münster, and finally in Essen, all in Westfalen, where he was sentenced to four years of hard labor; being sent to hard labor camp in Langenberg; being assigned to a factory making pre-fabricated housing; the attempts by the Gestapo to force him to say “Heil Hitler” and the biblical references that forbade him to do so; experiencing harassment from the Gestapo but eventually being left alone; being liberated on April 1, 1945; and returning to Lille, France by a prisoner convoy on April 15, 1945.

Oral history interview with Alois Moser

Oral History

Oral history interview with Nicolaas Zweere

Oral History

Oral history interview with Fanny Mintzer

Oral History

Oral history interview with Feliks Borys

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanna Vegeu

Oral History

Oral history interview with Tommy Smith

Oral History

Oral history interview with Karen Johanson

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Hollweg

Oral History

Max Hollweg, born in 1920 in Remscheid, Germany, discusses being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW); his 18 brothers and sisters; being in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) circa 1933 as a pioneer; being arrested by the SS and taken to Graz, Austria, and being told to return to Germany; returning to Germany and having his passport taken from him; being put under police surveillance; being forced out of the job he had found; going underground and sending an open letter about the bible and god to officials in the area of Koblenz; being arrested several times in the following years and his house being searched regularly; being taken in 1938 into protective custody in Frankfurt am Main and interrogated by a Gestapo man named Mueller; being in prison for three months before being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp under Commander Koch; not being treated for a lung infection because he was a JW; being transferred in May 1940 to Niederhagen, then to Wewelsburg, to work in Himmler’s castle near Paderborn; receiving help from a childhood acquaintance, who was working in the SS office, and helped he and other JW avoid further punishment; managing to produce “Der Wachturm” (The Watchtower); being liberated by U.S. troops who arrived before the camp was to be eliminated by the SS; and working after 1945 with the department of health in Büren, treating sick people when doctors were not available.

Oral history interview with Gerhard Schumann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Horst Schmidt

Oral History

Horst Schmidt, born in 1920, discusses his internment in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany; he and his parents converting to become Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1935; his family’s interactions with and efforts to evade the Gestapo; moving to eastern German cities such as Danzig (today Gdańsk, Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, Russia); being arrested with his parents in Danzig in June 1943; his imprisonment at the Gestapo headquarters at Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany and the conditions there; undergoing interrogations; his imprisonment in Tegel, Germany; being sentenced in summer 1944 to imprisonment at the Brandenburg-Görden Prison; sharing a cell with French and Polish political prisoners; his mother’s internment and execution at the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin; his father’s death at Auschwitz; conditions in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison; and being liberated by Soviet soldiers.

Oral history interview with Robert Wagemann

Oral History

Oral history interview with Genvieve de Gaulle

Oral History

Genevieve de Gaulle, whose father was eldest brother of General Charles DeGaulle, discusses her awareness of dangers resulting from the Nazi rise to power in Germany; her resistance activities beginning in 1940 with an underground journal; being in Brittany when German forces entered Paris; her arrest with identity card and ration card paraphernalia and a false ID card reading Genevieve Garnier; her deportation, first to a prison and then Compiegne internment camp in France; her transfer to Ravensbrück along with 1,000 female political prisoners; her memories of life in the camp; the red triangle identifying political prisoners and letter identifying nationalities; Jehovah’s Witness prisoners and their refusal to work on any tasks directly related to war, their courage, adherence to faith, and help to other prisoners; and her liberation thru an intermediary of the Red Cross.

Oral history interview with Willi Pohl

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hermine Schmidt

Oral History

Hermine Schmidt, born in 1925 in the free city of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), discusses her parents; her sisters; growing up in Danzig; her mother’s Bible studies; her parents’ first contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1919 and converting in 1920; Danzig after Hitler’s rise to power; her parents instructing her and her sisters to not say “Heil Hitler” or salute; her difficulties at school and the other children’s treatment; hearing about arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Danzig and in Germany; her parents emphasizing Bible study and keeping faith; fearing the Gestapo; she and her family experiencing persecution; her parents’ occasional work as couriers for distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses publications; meeting her future husband, also a Jehovah’s Witness; her and her parents’ arrest by the Gestapo in 1943; her imprisonment in a small cell at Gestapo headquarters for a week; being interrogated and pressed for names of other Jehovah’s Witnesses; the beatings her husband endured during interrogations; being transported to Stutthof; forming close relationships with some of the other Jehovah’s Witnesses prisoners; being assigned to heavy work details because of her young age; Soviet soldiers’ arrival at Stutthof after she had left via transport; the different types of prisoners and the conditions in Stutthof; gay prisoners in the men’s section of the camp; the writer Hermann Hesse; her parents’ wartime experiences; being transported by boat to Germany near the war’s end, but arriving in Klintholm Havn, Denmark in May 1945; being released into the care of the Red Cross; the teachings of the Bible; having to wear a purple triangle badge in Stutthof; being offered the chance to leave Stutthof if she signed a document renouncing her faith, but refusing to do so; the behavior of guards in Stutthof; poetry she wrote after the war; and her husband’s wartime experiences. (Family photographs and descriptions follow the interview.)

Oral history interview with Horst Schmidt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Abt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Anna Mielczarek

Oral History

Anna Ludwiga Mielczarek (née Kuźmin), born on April 3, 1912 in Schodnica, Poland (present-day Skhidnytsia, Ukraine), discusses being the thirteenth child of Dymitr Kuźmin (Ukrainian) and Paulina Chedryk (Polish); how she became a Jehovah’s Witness in her childhood; receiving a Bible from a Brother Kinicki that she kept throughout her whole life and managed to keep hidden in the camps; traveling seven hours daily throughout the countryside to distribute brochures; almost being thrown out of school for her religion; moving to Warsaw, Poland in 1937 with her husband for Jehovah’s Witness missionary work; living in a small community outside of Warsaw with other Witnesses until 1944; hiding Brother Kinicki, targeted by the Nazis, throughout the war; hearing of other Witnesses getting arrested or detained by the Nazis but continuing to do underground missionary work; becoming separated from her husband, young son, and grandmother when the Warsaw Uprising began in August 1944, and not being able to see them before she was sent to the camps; staying at a hotel in Warsaw with other refugees during the duration of the Uprising; being arrested by the Nazis when the Uprising failed, then being packed into a cattle car with 70 others and travelling to Pruszków, Poland, to wait for another transport, but never knowing where one would be sent next; finding other Witnesses and staying together throughout her time in the camps; being transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria to await relocation; being sent with other female Witnesses to Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany, at the end of August 1944 or the beginning of September 1944; feeling hostility for being a Witness from the SS in Ravensbrück, but not hostility among the other inmates; laboring with other Witnesses in the cold, seeing other Witnesses faint or being beaten during work; and being transported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

Oral history interview with Henryk Dornik

Oral History

Oral history interview with Andrzej Szalbot

Oral History

Oral history interview with Irena Otrebska

Oral History

Oral history interview with Jan Otrebski

Oral History

The first portion of this interview consists of a Polish language interview with Jan Otrebski, it includes his family and religious history, his Holocaust experience, as well as him showing photographs. The second part of the interview is in Polish with an English translator. In it, Jan Otrebski and the interviewers tour Auschwitz.

Oral history interview with Victor Schnell

Oral History

Oral history interview with Max Liebster

Oral History

Oral history interview with Aloyse Elbisser

Oral History

Aloyse Elbisser, born November 9, 1918 in Romanshorn, Switzerland, recalls the German decision at the end of 1942 to integrate Alsatian soldiers into the German Army and his decision to become a conscientious objector; his baptism as a Jehovah’s Witness in Mulhouse, France in November 1942; his two brothers, one of whom disappeared in 1940 while the other was detained on February 26, 1943 trying to escape to Switzerland; his decision to obey God and not man; reporting for duty, declaring himself an objector, and being transferred to the Mulhouse prison; being deported to Schirmeck forced labor and re-education camp in Alsace; the conditions and treatment of inmates in the camp; falling ill three weeks after his arrival; being transferred to the Gestapo in Strasburg, Germany, where he was asked “Who introduced you to the Truth?” (a question he says was designed to identify other Jehovah’s Witnesses); being sent on a death march towards Dachau in April 1945 as the French crossed the Rhine; being turned over to a Wehrmacht paramilitary organization which had own camps; liberation on April 20, 1945; and his return to France.

Oral history interview with Ruth Danner

Oral History

Ruth Danner, born in 1933, discusses growing up in a very religious Jehovah’s Witnesses family; learning her faith at an early age; saying a prayer with her mother every day before going to school; witnessing religious meetings in their home; her early desire to be baptized but parents’ refusal because of her young age; her eventual baptismal ceremony, held in 1947 after her family’s return from the concentration camps, in a picnic setting because religious meetings were still forbidden; the arrival of the Germans in 1940, and the beginning of harassment of Jehovah’s Witnesses; the constant house searches and frequent stops by SS in the street; the forbidden religious meetings that were held in secret; having daily confrontations with school authorities at her refusal to salute Hitler’s image; her mother often being stopped at work by the SS; her mother and sister being taken from home because they refused to clean SS military uniforms; the deportation of her entire family in January 1943 to Upper Silesia; being imprisoned in five camps in the region; the miserable living conditions and little food; how the secretary of the SS in the camp would send her in town to a bakery to purchase bread; the baker taking pity on her and giving her a bit of bread for herself; being liberated by the Allies in 1945; returning to France; the joy she felt that all her family, parents, sister, and herself returned safely; and her commitment to her religion.

Oral history interview with Mary Schnell

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rudolf Graichen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rudolf Gorobet and Ecaterin Gorobet

Oral History

Oral history interview with Lothar Hornig

Oral History

Oral history interview with Magdalena Reuter

Oral History

Magdalena Reuter, born in a city on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, discusses being persecuted for her religious beliefs; being a Jehovah's Witnesses; growing up with a happy family of six brothers and five sisters; being the eighth child; her father Frank fighting for Germany during WWI; how at the end of the war her family became Jehovah's Witnesses, abandoning Protestantism; her father, who was injured in the war, and therefore retired early from his clerkship at the post office; the family’s move to move to Bad Lippspringe, Germany in 1931 in order for her father to spread his new religion; how her family was very united and religion occupied an important part in their lives; every child in the family learning an instrument; her father’s arrest and imprisonment for a few months in 1936 for his religious beliefs; the arrest of the whole family in 1940; her brother Wilhelm, who was shot in 1940 in Munster for refusing to go to the front, and her brother Wolfang, who was decapitated two years later; being held in a prison in Paderborn, Germany; being sent to a prison in Bielefeld, Germany; being offered freedom if she chose to renounce her religion, which she refused, and spending two more months in prison; turning 17 years old and being sent to Ravensbrück; her parents and another sister, who were also given extended prison sentences; her thoughts upon seeing the crematorium; spending four years in Ravensbrück, where two of her brothers were killed and another brother died soon after liberation; how the Jehovah's Witnesses were a very cohesive, supporting group; reuniting with her mother and sisters in the camp; life and work in the camp; how the Witnesses were known for not trying to escape and therefore were given jobs outside the camp in the private homes of the German officers or in children’s nurseries to where they arrived unescorted; the massage therapist of Himmler, Felix Kersten, who had an estate nearby and convinced Himmler to give him some prisoners as shoemakers, carpenters, etc, whom he needed to work in his home; the 20-30 Witnesses who ended up working for Dr. Kersten; speaking to De Gaulle’s niece, who was also imprisoned in the camp, about their religion; being offered her freedom if she renounced her faith, which she refused (and therefore stayed in the camp); how the group managed to make converts to their faith among the camp inmates; the liberation of Ravensbrück by the Russians in the first days of May 1945; being hiding for six months after liberation; reuniting with the family; and continuing her missionary work for Jehovah's Witnesses around the world.

Oral history interview with George Reuter and Magdalena Reuter

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Kempler

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joseph Schoen

Oral History

Oral history interview with Johannes Neubacher

Oral History

Oral history interview with Gerard Los

Oral History

Oral history interview with Stella Los

Oral History

Oral history interview with Luise Ebstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alexander Ebstein

Oral History

Oral history interview with Clayton Ball

Oral History

Oral history interview with Andree Higy and Roland Higy

Oral History

Oral history interview with Rose Gasman

Oral History

Rose Gasman (née Klein), a Jehovah’s Witness born in 1913 in Mulhouse, Germany (now France), describes her early life in a Catholic family; life in Alsace when Hitler arrived in 1933; her lack of knowledge about concentration camps; the absence of support for Hitler at the time in Alsace; her conversion to Jehovah’s Witness through an aunt; having no early knowledge of persecution of Witnesses in Germany; beginning Bible studies in 1934-1935 and studying in earnest in early 1940 when she learned of the persecution of Witnesses and the arrest of several in Mulhouse; her work as a hairdresser in from 1940 to 1941, which was unaffected by the arrival of Nazis; continuing Bible study; the Witnesses' meetings in a Mulhouse barbershop and someone's home; the Nazi persecution beginning in April 1944 and being arrested by the Gestapo; her father calling the Gestapo headquarters but not knowing his daughter was a Witness; her three weeks in a jail cell in solitary confinement and subsequent placement in a holding room and transfer to a train for Schirmeck camp (a subcamp of Struthof); how because the war was almost over, prisoners wore their own clothes for lack of prisoners' uniforms; how there were no Jews in the camp but there were Romanies and homosexuals; being grouped in a barracks with about five female Witnesses; deprivation in the camp; visits by her husband who told her if she renounced her faith she could leave the camp and states that her refusal made her realize the power of Jehovah; the liberation of the camp; her return to Mulhouse; and the return of her two sons who had been taken to Switzerland by the Red Cross.

Oral history interview with Maria Koehl

Oral History

Maria Koehl, born January 16, 1903 in Mulhouse, France, discusses her family, her father Sebastian Simon, a barber, and her mother Lamy Simon; being an only child; her introduction to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1925 when her husband, Adolphe, went to a “photo-drama”, returned home and said he had found God; becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in 1936-37; the feeling of safety in Mulhouse, notwithstanding news about Hitler; continuing her Bible study and education after the war’s outbreak in 1939; holding meetings first in the back of their barbershop and, when it became too dangerous, in their apartment that had a door to the roof for escape; how the Gestapo found out they were Jehovah’s Witnesses because there was no photo of Hitler in the barbershop; her husband’s secret travel to the French-German border near Mulhouse to secure a copy of the Watchtower Journal from a French Jehovah’s Witness, his willingness to risk arrest or even death to get the Journal, because it was their duty to seek spiritual truth and spread the word; being regularly harassed by the Gestapo and the French police to contribute money for the German troops; their awareness of atrocities going on in the concentration camps but their disbelief because of the extreme barbarity of it; their lack of knowledge about the deportation of Jews from Mulhouse because they were working inside all day; translating the Watchtower journal each month from French into German at night; how she read the text to the translator who would transcribe by hand while his wife stood watch outside, waiting for a messenger to retrieve the translated document and take it for distribution in Strasbourg, Fribourg, and elsewhere in the region; and continuing their Bible study and education after the war.

Oral history interview with Louis Arzt

Oral History

Oral history interview with Alphonse Lauber

Oral History

Alphonse Lauber, born in 1900 near Mulhouse, France, discusses his parents Emile and Anna-Marie, becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in 1923; going to meetings; the banning of Bible classes by the French Government even before Hitler’s invasion of France; being fired from a job in a factory because he refused to sign pro-German documents; his subsequent difficulties finding a job because the factories were on a war footing and their production ran counter to Jehovah’s Witnesses beliefs; being detained in the summer of 1943; being imprisoned in Mulhouse for 10 days and then transported by train to Schirmeck concentration camp; being sent later towards the end of the war to Gaggenau; the mistreatment of Jehovah's Witnesses in the camps, the determined resistance to the Nazi ideology by the Jehovah's Witnesses and the presence of other political groups in the camps; getting married after the war; not having any children; and continuing his Bible education.