As the world commemorates the 97th International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jehovah’s Witnesses have stated it should not be lost to the world that they were among the first to be sent to the death camp of death by the Nazi regime.
The group released a 32-page digital brochure, titled: “Purple Triangles: Forgotten Victims of the Nazi regime”.
Jehovah’s Witnesses National spokesman, Mr Olusegun Eroyemi, said the group referred to as Bible students suffered inhumane treatment at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the Nazi regime solely based on their religious convictions.
“During its nearly five years of operation, Auschwitz expanded to include a concentration camp, a forced-labour camp, and an extermination camp, as well as over 40 sub-camps. Here, the Nazi regime carried out some of the most agonising human rights abuses against millions of Jews, Poles, Slavs, Romans and Sinti, homosexuals, and people with disabilities, among others.”
Some 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses of various nationalities, including Polish and German, were also among those victimised at the infamous camp. Four gas chambers claimed as many as 6,000 prisoners lives daily.
“A purple-triangle patch stitched near the prisoner number on the left side of uniforms identified Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were imprisoned, not for their national or ethnic identity, but for their religious beliefs.
The Nazis offered them freedom if they would renounce their Christian faith and support the regime, but they had the courage to stick to Christian values, loyalty to God and love for others,” he explained.
