Memorial to Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted and murdered under National Socialism is erected

Today, June 22, 2023, two days before the 90th anniversary of Hitler’s regime’s ban on the religious community Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1933, the German Bundestag decided to erect a memorial to this group of victims of National Socialism. In doing so, Parliament is taking into account the self-commitment of the Federal Republic of Germany in the resolution for the Holocaust memorial in the summer of 1999 to “commemorate all victims in a dignified manner”. In addition to the memorials to the persecuted homosexuals, the murdered Sinti and Roma and the victims of the »euthanasia« murders, the Federal Foundation for the Murdered Jews of Europe will also be in charge of the memorial for the witnesses.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only religious community that has resolutely resisted the regime and helped other oppressed people from the first day of the National Socialist dictatorship – out of deep religious conviction, guided solely by humanity. They refused the Hitler salute, admission to state organizations and military service. They were persecuted, imprisoned in concentration camps, murdered – in the German Reich as well as in most of the conquered territories. At least 1,700 female and male witnesses lost their lives as a result of the Nazi tyranny.

“The planned simple work of art near the goldfish table in Berlin’s Tiergarten, which is intended to honor the murdered and the traumatized survivors whose suffering continued in the GDR, is long overdue,” says Uwe Neumärker, Director of the Federal Foundation: “It honors the courage of Jehovah’s Witnesses during National Socialism and at the same time sets an example for empathy, for religious tolerance and against the exclusion of minorities in the present.”