Germany unveiled a monument to Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, a group that experts say has been historically overlooked in commemorations of the Holocaust.
Around 700 people attended the unveiling of the memorial, a bronze column reminiscent of a tree trunk, in Berlin’s central Tiergarten park.
The German capital already has four major memorials dedicated to groups persecuted by the Nazis and victims of the Third Reich’s “euthanasia” programme targeting people with mental and physical disabilities.
“This is not a monument for an institution… it is not about judging a religious community. It is about bowing before the victims of National Socialism,” said Julia Kloeckner, the president of the German parliament.
Germany voted to build a monument to Jehovah’s Witnesses under the previous government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2023.
The religious minority, which traces its roots to early Christianity and promotes conservative moral values, has been present in Germany since the 19th century.
Today, there are around 180,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in the country, compared with around 25,000 in the 1930s.
They “unanimously and consistently resisted National Socialism on the basis of their faith”, Wolfgang Benz, an independent historian specialising in the Nazi period, told AFP.
Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to perform the Hitler salute, to swear an oath to the “Fuehrer” and to join the army or Nazi organisations.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, the community was banned in Germany.
Around 14,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, at least 10,700 Germans and 2,700 from European countries occupied by Germany, were persecuted by the Nazis, mostly in the form of imprisonment.
Around 4,200 were sent to concentration camps and 1,700 were murdered, according to the Arnold Liebster Foundation, a German NGO founded by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Several members of the crowd had purple flowers pinned to their clothing, a nod to the purple triangles Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to wear in the camps.
Jehovah’s Witnesses were accused of being communists and stigmatised as a “Jewish sect”, according to Benz.
The Catholic and Protestant churches turned a blind eye, urging their own adherents “not to get involved in political matters”, the historian said.
After the war, Jehovah’s Witnesses were also banned in communist East Germany from 1950 until reunification in 1990.
East Germany was hostile to them because they are “a very hermetic community and have their headquarters in America”, said Benz, adding that their experience during the war was “ignored” for decades.
Germany has seen several campaigns for more recognition for groups persecuted by the Nazis, including trade unionists, communists and people labelled “asocial”, a term used to describe those considered outside the ideal “national community”.
Remembrance of the Nazis’ atrocities and the theme “never again” have for decades been a central feature of German politics and society as the country seeks to atone for its dark past.
