Beyond Revisionism - Historical Hubris and the WatchTower
Society
Fifty years ago a monster was slain. When the world finally drew aside the
curtain to look on the fallen Third Reich, the ghastly sight was too much of a
nightmare to comprehend. Soldiers and civilians alike could only stare in silent
horror at the gruesome remains of a monstrous killing machine.
Earlier this year thousands
celebrated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps by
quietly tramping through their desolate grounds. They struggled to fathom the
enormity of the crime. Why, some 1,500,000 people had been killed in the death
camp at Auschwitz alone! It was a time for silence, a time to reflect on man's
inhumanity to man. Haunting questions echoed in the cold ovens, in the empty
barracks, across the undisturbed mountains of plundered shoes.
Today there is horror; there is
outrage. The Holocaust, during which several million were systematically
murdered, reveals what a monstrous evil Nazism was. But what about then? Who
spoke out? Who did not?
For many, their first knowledge of
the mass slayings came only at the close of World War II. The book Fifty
Years Ago --Revolt Amid the Darkness explains: "The still photographs
and newsreel films of the killing centers and camps liberated by the Allies in
1944 and 1945 first brought the shocking reality to the broad public, especially
in the west." Yet, even before the death camps were set up, a voice was
proclaiming the dangers of Nazism, through Awake!, the magazine you hold in your
hands. It was first known as The Golden Age and was renamed Consolation in 1937.
Beginning in 1929, these magazines, published by Jehovah's Witnesses, boldly
warned of the perils of Nazism, living up to the proclamation on the cover,
"A Journal of Fact, Hope and Courage."
"How can one remain
silent," asked Consolation in 1939, "about the horrors of a
land where, as in Germany, 40,000 innocent persons are arrested at one time;
where 70 of them were executed in a single night in one prison; ... where all
homes, institutes and hospitals for the aged, the poor, and the helpless, and
all orphanages for the children, are destroyed?"
How, indeed, could one remain silent?
While the world in general was unaware or skeptical of the horrific reports
trickling out of Germany and occupied lands, Jehovah's Witnesses could not keep
quiet. They knew firsthand the cruelties of the Nazi regime,and they were not
afraid to speak out.
The Evils of Nazism Exposed
In spite of the evident hostility of the Hitler regime, Jehovah's Witnesses
organized a convention in Berlin, Germany, on June 25,1933. Some 7,000 persons
assembled. The Witnesses publicly made their intentions clear: "Our
organization is not political in any sense. We only insist on teaching the Word
of Jehovah God to the people, and that without hindrance."
Thus Jehovah's Witnesses made a
good-faith effort to state their case. What were the consequences?
The immovable neutral position of the Witnesses, along with their loyalty to God's Kingdom, was unacceptable to the Hitler government. The Nazis did not intend to tolerate any refusal to support their ideology.
(omitted from the above article is the following continuation of the above
statement: "The greatest and the most oppressive empire on earth is the
Anglo-American empire. By that is meant the British Empire, of which the United
States of America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of the
British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a
means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations."
"The present government of Germany has declared emphatically against Big
Business oppressors and in opposition to the wrongful religious influence in the
political affairs of the nation. Such is exactly our position; and we further
state in our literature the reason for the existence of oppressive Big Business
and the wrongful political religious influence, because the Holy Scriptures
plainly declare that these oppressive instruments proceed from the Devil, and
that the complete relief there from if God's Kingdom under Christ.")
"True, a few courageous individuals from the Catholic, Protestant, and various other religions stood up against the Nazi State. But even as some of them paid with their lives, their spiritual leaders, who claimed to serve God, were serving as puppets of the Third Reich."
(The above naturally makes no reference to the following, as told in these quotes from "Faith and the Fatherland" by Thomas McGovern:-
"From the beginning the Catholic Church was one of the main targets of Hitler's policy of annihilation; the totalitarian aims of National Socialism would not tolerate any opposition or allow any other organization to compete for the loyalty of the German people. ..."
"In Dachau along, no fewer than 2,771 priest were imprisoned, of whom at least 1,000 died from hunger, disease or ill-treatment. Acts of brutality, torture and murder were commonplace in these camps, yet they were the context of daily acts of heroism, as in the case of Maximillian Kolbe in Auschwitz, or the secret and daring ordination in Dachau of Karl Leisner, the young seminarian from Munich ..."
"No less than 4,000 priests were put to death during these years, either as "political saboteurs," or after incarceration in concentration camps, by hanging, starvation, mishandling, lack of medical aid, or as victims of medical experiments including euthanasia. It is a story of courageous and heroic resistance against the overwhelming power of a police state." )
The WatchTower Society, however, seems to have viewed the Nazi horrors mainly as a weapon to be used in its long campaign against the Catholic Church (see the graphic, accompanying this text, for examples). Fortunately, Rutherford's ability to predict the future had a 100% failure rate, as this example of his political punditry instances:-
"No one on earth can tell exactly what will come to pass; but those devoted to the Lord, and according to the divine rule of applying the well known facts to God's prophecy now in course of fulfillment, can well reach a reasonable conclusion as to what shall come to pass. The question is, Will Great Britain and America become Facist under the dominating control of the Roman Catholic Heirarchy? The Scriptures and the facts seem to support that conclusion."
Enemies, (1937), p291
"The blame for the mass murder of Jews, however, does not rest with Christianity. It rests with Christendom and her churches. The reason for the holocaust is plain: Christendom's clergy and their flocks abandoned the teachings of the Bible and of Christ Jesus in favor of supporting the political state. Centuries of history show that this is by no means the first time they have done so. By contrast, thousands of European Jews can testify that one religious group in Germany underwent persecution equal to that heaped upon the Jews: Jehovah's witnesses. Hundreds of these died in concentration camps. They suffered because of insisting on holding to and practicing true Christianity rather than worship of the State."
Watchtower, 1975 May 15th, p294
In this strange equation, 6 million plus Jews are equated with 200 or so Bible Students. Further, unlike other Christian individuals who were imprisoned for protecting Jews, the Watchtower followers were imprisoned for the same reason as Communist sympathizers: because they had loyalties to another (totalitarian) regime - Moscow or Brooklyn, their own paradises (workers or witnesses) and did not consider themselves citizens of the German state.
In this following quotation, the WatchTower Society goes further than equating JW suffering with the Jews, and claim that the Jews suffered less than JWs. The other motif here is the opportunistic use of Nazi tyranny to attack the Roman Catholic Church:-
"One tantalizing instance of this occurred when Pope Pius XI of Vatican City, who was a Concordat partner of dictators Mussolini and Hitler, proclaimed 1933 to be a holy year. When he inaugurated it on April 2, he held out hopes of peace and prosperity as a result of observing that year as holy. In quick succession came the startling broadcast on April 23, 1933, over 55 radio stations, with WBBR of Staten Island, New York, as the key station. This hour's address by President Rutherford of the Watch Tower Society was on the subject "Effect of Holy Year on Peace and Prosperity." This expose of Holy Year was transcribed on phonograph records, and a broadcasting of these was made on the following June 25 over 158 radio stations. Among other things, the president's speech said:
" . . . With all kindness and sincerity I remind you who listened to the 'Holy Hour Service' held in New York on the 2d of April that the name of man was there exalted by frequently using and applying to men such terms as 'Holy Father,' 'Your Eminence,' and 'Your Excellency'; whereas the name of Jehovah God, His King and His kingdom were not mentioned at all. No reference was made to God's expressed purpose of dealing with the human race by and through His kingdom. . . .
"The act of declaring this a 'holy year' for the bringing in of peace and prosperity is a presumptuous sin before Almighty God. No man or company of men are running Jehovah's business so as to enable them to 'change times and laws,' and it is so stated in Daniel 7:25...
"... Peace and prosperity cannot be brought to the earth by men, but will come by God's kingdom under Christ. ... "
-The Golden Age, as of May 10, 1933, pages 483-490.
By the events of history since then, let all readers judge whether the Watch Tower president spoke the truth or not. Let them verify by authentic recorded history whether the idolized "sun" of this old world ceased from its scorching heat after the "holy year" of 1933. Informed persons know that in that same year Hitler became dictator of Nazi Germany, a horrible Nazi persecution of Jehovah's witnesses, worse than that on the Jews, began, and in that decade the League of Nations was scuttled by the Nazi-Fascist Axis Powers and the gory World War II was launched by these. Finally came the exploding of atomic bombs on the "heathen" member of the Axis Powers. Then the hydrogen bomb was invented. We face nuclear war!
Jehovah's witnesses could not be killed of by Nazism, Fascism and Catholic Action or by World War II. The more they kept growing in numbers and spreading the Kingdom message and establishing new congregations, the more the "scorched" men kept blaspheming the "name of God." To this day it is true that "they did not repent so as to give glory to him." (Revelation 16:9) Unquestionably they feel the effects of the pouring out of the fourth plague."
Babylon the Great Has Fallen - God's Kingdom Rules, p549-550