Jehovah's Witnesses Release Digital Brochure to Mark World Holocaust Day

New Telegraph

January 28, 2024
 
As the world com- memorated the 97th International Holocaust Remembrance Day (also known as World Holocaust Day or IHRD) yesterday, one of the groups targeted by the Nazi regime, Jehovah’s Witnesses, has said it should not be lost on the world that they were among the first to be sent to the Death Camp.
Accordingly, as conferences and exhibitions related to the 79th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation take place around the world, Jehovah’s Witnesses have released a 32-page digital brochure titled: “Purple Triangles – “Forgotten Victims” of the Nazi Regime”. In a statement, the National Spokesman of the Witnesses in Nigeria, Mr. Olusegun Eroyemi said the group then referred to as Bible Students, suffered inhumane treatment at the Auschwitz- Birkenau Concentration Camp by the Nazi regime “solely on the basis of their religious convictions.
“During its nearly five years of operation, Auschwitz expanded to include a concentration camp, a forced-labor camp, and an extermination camp, as well as over 40 subcamps. Here, the Nazi regime carried out some of the most agonizing human rights abuses against millions of Jews, as well as Poles, Slavs, Roman 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 victimized 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. Yet, they had the courage to stick to Chris- tian values—loyalty to God and love for others.”

https://newtelegraphng.com/jehovahs-witnesses-release-digital-brochure-to-mark-world-holocaust-day/

Germany cracks down on neo-Nazi sect Artgemeinschaft for targeting children

Michael Ertl
BBC News
September 27, 2023

Germany has banned the far-right sect Artgemeinschaft for spreading Nazi ideology to children and young people.

The country's interior minister called the group "deeply racist and antisemitic" and said it was trying "to raise new enemies of the constitution".

Artgemeinschaft used Nazi-era literature and cultural events to spread its ideology.

Police have raided dozens of homes and offices linked to the group in 12 German states.

"This is another hard blow against right-wing extremism and against the intellectual arsonists who continue to spread Nazi ideologies to this day," German interior minister Nancy Faeser said.

Artgemeinschaft roughly translates to "racial community" and, according to the interior ministry, had about 150 members.

The ministry said the group was giving its members instructions about picking partners with a North or Central European background, in line with their ideology of "racial preservation".

The sect also ran an online bookstore and regularly held cultural events that attracted up to several hundred people. It described itself as "Germany's biggest pagan community".

The authorities say the group used this cover of "pseudo-religious Germanic beliefs to spread their worldview which violates human dignity".

The ban also includes the sect's website, its publications and Familienwerk, another association connected with it.

Germany last week outlawed Hammerskins, another neo-Nazi group, which was known for its role in organising far-right concerts and selling racist music.

Hammerskins, founded in the US in the late 1980s, was the last major right-wing skinhead organisation in Germany after another group, Blood and Honour, had been banned in 2000.

It was heavily involved in setting up neo-Nazi music labels, selling antisemitic records and organising clandestine music events.

"Right-wing extremism has many faces," Germany's interior minister said, adding that Artgemeinschaft had acted differently than Hamerskins but was "no less dangerous".

Artgemeinschaft is one of Germany's oldest neo-Nazi groups. It played a key role in connecting different far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Germany, Ms Faeser said.

Stephan Ernst, the man who murdered prominent regional politician Walter Lübcke in 2019 in a shooting motivated by "racism and xenophobia", was a member of the group, according to German intelligence.

German media also report members of the group had links with Ralf Wohlleben, a neo-Nazi who was convicted for supporting members of a notorious cell that carried out 10 racially motivated murders in Germany.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency estimates there are 38,800 people active in the country's right-wing extremist scene, with more than a third of them considered "potentially violent".



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66934411

German parliament approves a memorial to Jehovah's Witnesses persecuted by the Nazis

The Associated Press
Toronto Star
June 23, 2023

BERLIN (AP) — The German parliament has approved the construction of a memorial in Berlin to the Jehovah’s Witnesses persecuted under the Nazis, a plan the country’s culture minister hopes will help end their status as “forgotten victims.”

On Thursday evening, lawmakers backed a motion formally calling on the government to support construction of the memorial in the capital’s central Tiergarten park.

It will follow memorials already constructed in Berlin over the past two decades to Jewish, gay, Sinti and Roma, and disabled people murdered by the Nazis. Lawmakers also have mandated a project to build a memorial to the Polish victims of World War II.

The foundation that oversees the existing memorials, which also will be in charge of the one for Jehovah’s Witnesses, pointed to the Christian denomination’s resistance from the start to the Nazi regime, and to the help it gave other persecuted groups, noting that its members refused to give the Hitler salute or join state organizations such as the Hitler Youth. It was banned shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Members were persecuted, sent to concentration camps and killed. The foundation said that at least 1,700 Jehovah’s Witnesses died as a result of Nazi rule.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/europe/2023/06/23/german-parliament-approves-a-memorial-to-jehovahs-witnesses-persecuted-by-the-nazis.html

HAMBURG SHOOTER'S MANIFESTO REVEALS THE COMPLEXITY OF THE INFLUENCE OF FAR-RIGHT IDEOLOGIES

ANNIKA BROCKSCHMIDT 

Religion Dispatches

APRIL 21, 2023

When a mass shooting happens, and the perpetrator has left a manifesto or text that could give insight into his motive, worldview and state of mind, one of the first go-to rules for the media is: do not circulate the content. Don’t reproduce it uncritically or at all; don’t skim it and publish your take without waiting for the analysis of experts in the field.

And yet, so many German media outlets broke all of those rules last month when a 29-year-old former Jehovah’s Witness entered a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in Hamburg and shot and killed 8 people, including himself. Journalists quickly found a book he had written which was then readily available on Amazon, and which he had advertised on the day of the murders on his LinkedIn page.

In this age of clickbait, headlines like “crazy Devil manifesto” made the rounds quickly, with some non-specialists in the field of right-wing Christian violence weighing in quickly, seemingly having only skimmed the book, but offering hot-takes nonetheless.

Mass shootings do happen in Germany, though they’re rare compared to the US. Still, last year, a man opened fire in a lecture at Heidelberg University—and it wasn’t the only mass shooting in recent German history:

“In 2020, the nation saw two high-profile shootings, one that killed six people and another that took nine lives. In the most recent shooting involving a site of worship, a far-right extremist attempted to force his way into a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur in 2019. After failing to gain entry, he shot two people to death nearby.”

Media interest in the phenomenon usually spikes immediately following a mass shooting, before quickly moving on to the next shiny object. This has happened in the Hamburg case as well—but careful analysis of a mass shooter’s manifesto takes time and should be left to experts, as Kathleen Belew, professor and expert on White supremacist terror and violence at Northwestern University, warned after the Buffalo shooting in the US:

“For whoever needs this today: ‘manifesto’ is a genre of writing and does not connote credibility, quality, etc. A bad novel is still a novel. A manifesto is a document that seeks to make a political case via ideological explanation, often for an act of violence. (1) In events like the Buffalo shooting, the manifesto is critically important to experts in determining motive, connection with other acts of violence, and context. (2) However, the manifesto in this case (as in many acts of white power violence) is designed to radicalize others. SO PLEASE DON’T POST/SHARE IT. (3) The people who spend their lives thinking about this rhetoric have the manifesto and are dealing with decoding it.”

And yet, many German media outlets did just that in the wake of the Hamburg shooting, trying to satisfy the demands of a perpetual, 24/7 news cycle—even though analysis, particularly in cases of right-wing violence, can be slow and requires care. Psychologist and expert on conspiracy ideologies Pia Lamberty warns RD when asked about the difficulties of reporting on mass shootings:

“Analyzing the motivation for mass shootings or terrorist attacks is complex and takes time. A superficial analysis of the manifesto is not enough. However, social interest often wanes very quickly, which is why in-depth analyses no longer receive media attention. But many questions can only be answered after some time, some never: What role did ideology play in the act, what was the relationship between mental illness and ideology for the act itself.”

And what can be gained from analyzing the manifesto of a mass shooter? While there are different genres of shooters’ declarations, they give some insight into the perpetrator’s worldview and influences, enabling experts to identify patterns of thought and ideology, an important step in finding a sociological answer to the question of the motivation behind the outburst of deadly violence.

I took the time to read the several hundred pages-long book written by the Hamburg shooter, and will offer a meta-analysis instead of direct quotes or anything that would circulate even portions of the manuscript. The book reads like a mixture of free-association Bible exegesis and the scribblings of an excited freshman fired up after an introductory lecture on theology and eschatology.

The text seeks to explain God’s nature and the way the world works using diagrams, wildly convoluted interpretations of Bible verses, and a half-baked theory about the “hierarchy” of God, Jesus, angels and Satan. Apart from revealing the world’s gears and the hidden secrets of God and Jesus, the manifesto praises Trump, DeSantis and Putin as those doing God’s work, and sees God’s will in Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court.

While it’s important not to stigmatize mental illness even further, the book does give the impression of someone in crisis. Coherence is not to be expected, but the lack of coherence can give trained professionals an indication of the murderer’s state of mind. Ultimately the shooter’s sanity is something for trained psychologists to assess, though mental illness can’t be blamed for the adoption of a far-right worldview. It can, however, play a role in sending someone further down the right-wing rabbit hole.

Because of the shooter’s background as a Jehovah’s Witness, questions have arisen as to whether and how his worldview has been influenced by their theology and beliefs. One can indeed detect some echoes in the book, particularly in his patriarchal perspective and his fervent belief in idealized, traditional gender roles.

Dawn Ying, who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness in the US and has since left the denomination, explained to RD how, in her experience, strict patriarchal hierarchy was an elemental part of JW community life:

“It’s honestly very, very similar to any other fundamentalist/conservative Christian group. Pain in childbirth is our punishment for Eve’s sin. Women are the weaker vessel. Women in abusive marriages are taught that it’s likely their fault for not being submissive enough or meeting the man’s needs. While women are allowed to work outside the home, in cases where the husband earns enough money, women are often encouraged to give up their jobs so they can ‘pioneer,’ and spend most of their time out in ‘field service’ going door to door and ‘witnessing’ to others.

There are NEVER to be any women in leadership positions. Women cannot even carry the microphones in the Kingdom Hall, or help with the sound system (I wanted to be a microphone carrier when I was little and was crushed when told girls couldn’t do that)… Growing up, it was taught and understood that married women did not hold control over their own bodies… Women are ‘lesser’—and that belief and feeling permeates everything the JW’s teach and believe and do.”

Religion scholar Bradley Onishi agrees, noting, “There are theological echoes there with Jesus and God being distinct and sometimes in disagreement, that rings of JW beliefs.”

The motives for mass shootings aren’t always clear—often they’re complex and muddled. However, certain characteristics can be found in most mass shootings. The Hamburg shooter shares a common trait with others: his misogyny runs deep throughout the manifesto, including his firm belief in patriarchal hierarchy. These beliefs are not exclusively confined to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, of course—the misogynist narratives the Hamburg shooter uses are staples in far-right, violent spaces, like the frame that bemoans the alleged moral decay of modern womankind.

The Hamburg shooter, like many adherents of far-right beliefs, derives the legitimacy for his contempt for women from God. According to him, men are spiritually and hierarchically superior to women, while it’s the job of women to bear children and to obey men. This strict patriarchal orientation and traditionalist gender hierarchy can also be found among Jehovah’s Witnesses, just like among classic complementarians and other right-wing Christian and theologically conservative denominations.

Many of his claims are also in accordance with a number of broader right-wing Christian beliefs: he condemns abortion as murder, rails against sex work and is explicitly anti-LGBTQ. At times the shooter’s beliefs contain other distant echoes of the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses—in the rejection of the Trinity or End Times beliefs—but other times his theology diverges sharply from Jehovah’s Witnesses, such as his belief that Hitler got the idea of a “1000-year Reich” from Jesus, and that, therefore, the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany was in accordance with divine will. (Jehovah’s Witnesses were in fact persecuted and sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.)

While a lot of his manifesto reads like the unique ramblings of a distressed mind, there is another trait the Hamburg shooter shares with other far-right mass shooters: antisemitism. In his manifesto he spreads the classic Christian antisemitic myth that Jews were guilty of the murder of God—also known as deicide. He then moves on to claim that this was intentional on the part of Jesus as his brutal execution was necessary to save humanity. Another deeply antisemitic conspiracy myth he spreads (which I will not reproduce in detail here) portrays Russia as an instrument of God and Ukraine as the subject of God’s punishment.

The interpretation of wars as a sign of approaching End Times is common in Christian fundamentalist circles, which are often conspiracy-believing, and is also found in far-right online spaces. But the Hamburg shooter believed that humanity was already living in the “1000-year Reich,” at whose end he saw not an apocalypse, but the perfection of humankind. Ben Lorber, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates* explains how this ties together various right-wing themes, like antisemitism, glorification of violence, hyper-nationalism and apocalypticism:

“Other far-right themes shine through in his writing. Claims that war has a ‘purifying effect,’ adoration of God as ‘a power being through and through,’ and admiration of ancient Spartan warriors, finds echoes in far-right [social media] ideologues like Bronze Age Pervert. The writer’s belief that God works to restore strong national borders and sovereignty, and opposes processes of globalization for the chaos, lawlessness and assorted sin they supposedly bring, is another hallmark of a nationalist worldview, while his exaltation of male patriarchal dominance and vilification of LGBTQ people dovetails smoothly with far-right traditionalism on the rise the world over.

His attempts to label Hitler as the ‘human executive of Jesus Christ,’ with Nazified Berlin as the ‘center of the new 1,000-year Reich under Jesus Christ,’ offers yet another clue that his apocalyptic worldview cashes out in the direction of ultranationalism. His statement that the ‘persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era was an act of heaven’ points, of course, to a deeply antisemitic worldview, even if the rampant antisemitic conspiracism that motivated many mass shooters is not present in this manifesto.”

Lorber further deciphers how belief in End Times theology can go hand in hand with conspiracist thinking to justify violence, and why the the Hamburg shooter is yet another example of this:

“To the apocalyptic religious conspiracist, every political event is interpreted through the lens of paranoid conspiracy, and every detail of human history is retroactively summoned as proof that the divine hand is at work behind the scenes, and the End Times are right around the corner. This charges the violent acts of the conspiracist with an urgent fervor—the stakes could not be higher, so any moral consideration is tossed out the window in light of the messianic certainty.

The writer’s attempts to decipher the precise dates and contours of the End Times by applying Bible prophecy to political events of the modern era such as World Wars, the establishment of the United Nations and the State of Israel, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the COVID-19 pandemic is, of course, a hallmark of apocalyptic Christian conspiratorial thinking. Like other far-right actors, it’s easy to see how this narrative could justify the violence he committed.”

The Hamburg shooter’s god is a brutal and cruel one, and while he seems to grapple with this in the beginning, at the end of the book he has come to terms with it. He doesn’t include open Islamophobia in the manifesto, or the classic “White genocide” or “great replacement” conspiracy theories that we’ve come to expect from far-right shooters’ manifestos, yet his writing shows, once again, that the ways in which far-right ideologies influence mass shooters are manifold.

There doesn’t appear to be any direct connection between the manifesto and the people he targeted during his murderous rampage, but the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at the American University, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, reminds us that:

“So many mass shooters (many of whom leave no manifestos at all) are steeped in propaganda or conspiracy theories online or have signs they traffic in antisemitic and racist (Highland Park shooter) or deeply misogynistic (Uvalde shooter) content online, but those online engagements don’t appear linked to the actual targets they choose (parade-goers, elementary school).”

Lorber agrees that the absence of “great replacement” and “White genocide” rhetoric should not be seen as a sign that this manifesto is somehow less nefarious in its violent fantasies than others, but rather as a sign that violent far-right actors often subscribe to a mixture of ideologies and narratives that don’t necessarily require coherence:

“While some far-right mass shooters subscribe to explicitly White nationalist views on racial supremacy and conspiracy theories concerning the ‘great replacement’ of Whites through non-White immigration, this isn’t always the case. Some shooters subscribe, rather, to male supremacist and ‘incel’ ideologies; some to Christian apocalypticism and Manichean narratives of an immanent war between good and evil; some combine all of these; and still others profess a heterogeneous mixture of ideologies and narratives.

In our era of online radicalization, mass shooters may sample from these and other ideologies, all sourced from the far reaches of conspiracism. Antisemitism is typically in the mix for many mass shooters, as ‘the Jews’ offer a convenient foil, representing an immensely powerful, diabolical foe that stands behind the problems the shooter deems in need of correction in the world.”

And while the shooter’s relationship with his former denomination, which he had since left, has still to be examined when it comes to motive, the Hamburg shooter’s book already provides extraordinary insight both into his worldview and state of mind at the time of the massacres. Two assessments for the Hamburg police, one (inexplicably) by an expert on Islamist terrorism, and the other by a psychiatrist, have since stated, according to media reports, that:

“the Hamburg shooter could have acted out of religious motives when committing the crime. … In the book, [he] wrote several times that all known religious groups withheld the actual truth from the faithful.”

The psychiatrist mentions the possibility that the Hamburg shooter had a narcissistic personality disorder, but was likely of sound mind when he committed the murders. Both come, however, to the truly puzzling conclusion, that the Hamburg shooter was not far-right politically, because the manifesto was missing “racism.”

According to their view, while some of his statements could be read as “anti-democratic,” this does not, they believe, amount to a “right wing world view”—a rather disturbing conclusion given the evidence discussed. The Hamburg police might consider another assessment from an expert in Christian terrorism, since the misogyny, right-wing political positions, rampant anti-semitism, reverence for far-right political figures including Hitler, conspiracism, violent fantasies and patriarchal religious beliefs were clearly not enough for them to see the Hamburg shooter as a far-right actor.

This is another addition to the list of horrific failures of the Hamburg police who, despite anonymous warnings that the suspect was not only in possession of a licensed weapon, but also seemed mentally unstable and had written a book espousing a disturbing right-wing worldview, still failed to step in to strip him of his weapon. Police visited his home and questioned him, but failed to find the book online—even though he was advertising it boisterously on his website. It is an indictment of the OSINT capabilities of the Hamburg police—the lack of which very likely cost eight people their lives.

The Hamburg shooter’s manifesto, which belongs to a growing body of texts written by mass shooters, shows the complexity of how individual perpetrators can draw influence from varying corners of far-right ideologies. His writing, a reflection of his hate-filled worldview displays staples of a far-right mindset—conspiracist thinking, deep misogyny, antisemitism, and the belief in a violent, vengeful god who reigns with an iron fist and destroys his enemies.

The book’s theology might be convoluted and nonsensical; the work of a hateful, possibly disturbed mind, but his praise of far-right figures like Trump, Putin and DeSantis is no coincidence. The echoes of the Hamburg shooter’s worldview can be found in far-right online and media spaces around the world—building the groundwork, the imagined legitimacy for horrendous acts such as this, slowly poisoning the very fabric of the society they seek to destroy.


*Political Research Associates is the publisher of Religion Dispatches, though RD maintains editorial independence.





https://religiondispatches.org/hamburg-shooters-manifesto-reveals-the-complexity-of-the-influence-of-far-right-ideologies/

German police: 8 dead in Jehovah's Witnesses hall shooting

There was no word on a possible motive for Thursday night's attack, which stunned Germany’s second-biggest city.

Pietro De Cristofaro And Geir Moulson The Associated Press
Toronto Star
March 10, 2023

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — A former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses shot dead seven people, including an unborn child, at a hall belonging to the congregation in the German city of Hamburg before killing himself after police arrived, authorities said Friday.

Eight people were wounded, four of them seriously.

There was no immediate indication of a possible motive for Thursday night’s attack, which stunned Germany’s second-biggest city, but prosecutors said there was no evidence for a terrorist link. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a former Hamburg mayor, described it as “a brutal act of violence.”

Hamburg’s top security official said officers who arrived just minutes after receiving the first emergency call at 9:04 p.m. A special operations unit that was nearby reached the site at 9:09 and was able to separate the gunman from the congregation, Hamburg’s state Interior Minister Andy Grote said.

“We can assume that they saved many people’s lives this way,” he told reporters during a news conference. Grote called the shooting “the worst crime that our city has experience recently.”

Officials said the gunman was a 35-year-old German national identified only as Philipp F., in line with German privacy rules. He fired more than 100 rounds during the attack.

Hamburg police chief Ralf Martin Meyer said the man had a weapons license and legally owned a semi-automatic pistol. He said the suspected shooter was previously investigated after authorities received a tip that he might not be suitable to bear firearms, but was found not to have broken rules.

Police did not use their own firearms, a police spokesman said.

The head of Germany’s GdP police union in Hamburg, Horst Niens, said he was convinced that the swift arrival of a special operations unit “distracted the perpetrator and may have prevented further victims.”

Germany’s gun laws are more restrictive than those in the United States, but permissive compared with some European neighbors, and shootings are not unheard of.

Last year, an 18-year-old man opened fire in a packed lecture at Heidelberg University, killing one person and wounding three others before killing himself. In January 2020, a man shot dead six people including his parents and wounded two others in southwestern Germany, while a month later, a shooter who posted a racist rant online killed nine people near Frankfurt.

In the most recent shooting involving a site of worship, a far-right extremist attempted to force his way into a synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, in October 2019. After failing to gain entry, he shot two people to death nearby.

The German government announced plans last year to crack down on gun ownership by suspected extremists and to tighten background checks. Currently, anyone wanting to acquire a firearm must show that they are suited to do so, including by proving that they require a gun. Reasons can include being part of a sports shooting club or being a hunter.

Asked about a possible political response to the shooting, a spokesperson for Germany’s Interior Ministry, Maximilian Kall, said it was necessary to wait for the results of the investigations before drawing conclusions.

On Friday morning, forensic investigators in protective white suits could be seen outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall, a boxy, three-story building next to an auto repair shop, a few kilometers (miles) from downtown Hamburg. As a light snow fell, officers placed yellow cones on the ground and windowsills to mark evidence.

David Semonian, a U.S.-based spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said in an emailed statement early Friday that members “worldwide grieve for the victims of this traumatic event.”

“The congregation elders in the local area are providing pastoral care for those affected by the event,” he wrote.

Police spokesman Holger Vehren said police were alerted to the shooting Thursday night and were at the scene quickly.

He said that the officers found people with apparent gunshot wounds on the ground floor, and then heard a shot from an upper floor, where they found a fatally wounded person who may have been a shooter. They did not fire their weapons.

Student Laura Bauch, who lives nearby, said there were around four periods of shooting, German news agency dpa reported. “There were always several shots in these periods,” she said.

Bauch said she looked out her window and saw a person running from the ground floor to the second floor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses hall.

Gregor Miebach, who lives within sight of the building, heard shots and filmed a figure entering the building through a window. In his footage, shots can then be heard from inside. The figure later apparently emerges from the hall, is seen in the courtyard and then fires more shots through a first floor window before the lights in the room go out.

Miebach told German television news agency NonstopNews that he heard at least 25 shots. After police arrived, one last shot followed, he said.

His mother, Dorte Miebach, said she was shocked by the shooting. “It’s really 50 meters (yards) from our house and many people died,” she said. “This is still incomprehensible. We still haven’t quite come to terms with it.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church, founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York. It claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million, with about 170,000 in Germany.

Members are known for their evangelistic efforts that include knocking on doors and distributing literature in public squares. The denomination’s practices include a refusal to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute a national flag or participate in secular government.

___

This story has been updated to correct the last name of a witness. It is Miebach, not Miesbach.

___ Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalist David Rising in Bangkok and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/europe/2023/03/10/german-police-8-dead-in-jehovahs-witnesses-hall-shooting.html

Record number of cult organisations flock to Berlin to convert "godless" locals

Olivia Logan

I AM EXPAT

February 6, 2023

According to Berlin’s Sekteninfo, a state-run platform that offers to counsel cult escapees, fundamentalist organisations are doubling down on recruitment in the capital.

Increasing religious cult presence in Berlin

In 2022 Berlin’s Sekteninfo platform, which offers guidance to people who have left or been in contact with cults operating in the city, received the highest number of requests since its inception seven years ago. In 2022 the organisation responded to 643 contacts, 100 more than in the previous year.

According to Karol Küenzlen-Zielinski, who works at the organisation, the number of help requests related to the Church of Scientology has decreased in comparison to the previous year, when ties to the one organisation dominated appeals.

Instead, more and more service users are reporting involvement with evangelical Christian bodies, extortionately expensive life-coaching services and esoteric organisations.

Which cult organisations are growing in Berlin?

A far cry from pious Bavaria, for some religious groups, Berlin is viewed as a city teeming with atheists. In December 2022, the local newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that in the city of 3,645 million, only 18.018 Berliners were still a member of the Roman Catholic or Evangelical church. 

According to Küenzlen-Zielinski, the number of requests related to evangelical, Christian fundamentalist and pentecostal groups in Berlin has “risen fiercely”. Service users who have left such groups have reported an atmosphere of immense hostility towards sexual minorities as well as physical and psychological abuse. 

Jan Buschbom, a dropout counsellor working in Berlin, told broadcaster rbb that some extremist groups focus entirely on salvation after death. “The entirety of life on Earth is [...] considered “the devil’s work”. Children are punished with cold, systematic violence, but there are also incidents of physical violence that happen in a downright religious frenzy."

Global insecurities leading to successful recruitment by religious fundamentalists

Since 2008, Buschbom has seen the number of counselling service users at the association grow from two to 40. For Küenzlen-Zielinski, rising uncertainties and insecurities in people’s lives caused by coronavirus, worries about the climate crisis and the Ukraine war are the main causes for Berlin cult movements’ growth in recruitment.

People desire a “simplification of a reality that is experienced as opaque and overwhelming,” Küenzlen-Zielinski told rbb.

Author

Olivia Logan

 

https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/record-number-cult-organisations-flock-berlin-convert-godless-locals

The People With Purple Triangles

Jehovah’s Witnesses share the story of their unique experiences during the Holocaust—and the lessons that can be applied today as they face continued persecution in Russia and elsewhere

MAGGIE PHILLIPS
Tablet
JANUARY 25, 2023

Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the very first groups persecuted by the Nazis, from 1933 until 1945. By the end of WWII, thousands had been imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of ernste Bibelforscher (“earnest Bible students,” as they were called by many Germans at the time) died by guillotine, shooting, hanging, lethal injection, in gas chambers and medical experiments, and as a result of the harsh conditions they endured in detention.

Often Aryan and fluent German speakers, many Jehovah’s Witnesses had an atypical experience in concentration camps, compared to other groups (accounts describe some working in the homes of SS officers). A 2017 article in the journal Genocide Studies theorizes that their race and language, combined with “group cohesion, mutual support, and religious faith,” meant a higher-than-average survival rate for Jehovah’s Witnesses compared to other groups. Like the other descendants of groups persecuted during the Holocaust, followers of the faith today continue to honor both the profound suffering and the steadfastness of their forebears who faced deprivation, torture, and death. But their fellow believers today draw particular inspiration from the way that Jehovah’s Witnesses of the time were committed to communicating their faith to their fellow prisoners, and the horror they were living to the wider world.

This legacy continues, as Jehovah’s Witness publications and media speak out about the persecution of their co-religionists in the oppressive regimes of the 21st century, as Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world continue to experience state persecution for their beliefs.

Faith-sharing is at the core of who Jehovah’s Witnesses are; they are best known for their door-to-door evangelism. Even when the COVID-19 pandemic stymied their trademark in-person approach, they switched to handwritten letters, inviting recipients to learn more about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ perspective on suffering (they resumed door-to-door ministry just last year).

Originally calling themselves simply Bible Students, Jehovah’s Witnesses came out of the Adventist movement of the 1830s, which believed in the imminent return of Christ. When the movement broke up into factions in the 1840s, the Bible Students were led by a man named Charles Taze Russell. Russell departed from much of Christian orthodoxy, preaching that the doctrine of the Trinity was unscriptural, and that Christ’s second coming would be an invisible manifestation of his presence. Today, Witnesses continue to oppose Trinitarian beliefs, rejecting the idea that Jesus is one with God, while remaining distinct, manifesting through their relationship a third person, known as the Holy Spirit. Rather, they see Jesus as subordinate to God, his father. Jehovah’s Witnesses remain convinced of Christ’s invisible, spiritual second coming, which they hold began in 1914, based on a prophecy in the Book of Daniel, and which they believe is leading up to the final triumph of God over evil.

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Evangelizing by Mail

When the pandemic made unannounced home visits untenable, Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped knocking on doors and started writing letters instead



BY MAGGIE PHILLIPS

Publishing is in their DNA: Russell also established the Watch Tower Society, which was dedicated to the publication of tracts and other religious literature, still a feature of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ proselytizing today. In fact, the Bible Students’ leadership was imprisoned in Atlanta in 1918 for violating the Sedition Act, due in part to the publication of a book, The Finished Mystery, which criticized the U.S. government and the militarism that it asserted led to America’s involvement in WWI. According to a Jehovah’s Witness publication on the history of their denomination, when their leaders were released in 1919, the Bible Students approached their mission of sharing their beliefs with renewed vigor; 1927 saw believers formally encouraged to devote some of their time to “witnessing,” or sharing their faith with others. In 1931, inspired by a verse from Isaiah (“‘You are My witnesses,’ said the Lord, ‘And I am God.’”), they changed their name to Jehovah’s Witnesses. By 1933, when Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany, their numbers in Germany had grown to an estimated 30,000 since their arrival in the country at the end of the previous century.

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faith commits them to remain neutral toward secular things like politics, military service, and nationalism. In Nazi Germany, then, they resisted joining the military or the Nazi party. They abstained from participation in elections, from working in government factories that supplied the military, as well as from saluting the swastika, the Nazi flag, or Hitler.

“In the distribution of their literature and in door-to-door missionary work,” writes one 2001 reviewer of a book of essays on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Holocaust, “the Jehovah’s Witnesses […] offered a real and visible challenge.”

The Third Reich began putting Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps after they realized their 1933 ban on the group’s activities had failed. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were drawn primarily from the urban working classes, and whose earliest converts were within a generation of the existing contemporary communities, carried on their proselytizing and meetings in secret, even after members were temporarily jailed by authorities.

Once they were placed in camps, Jehovah’s Witnesses were made to wear purple triangles. Because they were some of the earliest detainees, according to the authors of the 2017 Genocide Studies article, Sabrina C.H. Chang and Peter Suedfeld, Jehovah’s Witnesses often served as mentors and advocates for those who arrived after them. In contrast to the Jews and the other ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities the Nazis put in concentration camps, Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to recant and leave if they so chose, by signing a statement repudiating their beliefs. While some certainly did, it is thought that, per the 2001 review, appearing in the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, “the majority of Witnesses simply refused to give to the state what they knew belonged only to God.”

Unlike other Christians who were persecuted during the Holocaust, usually interned and killed for speaking out against the regime, or for hiding Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses were a different case. Not an ethnic or sexual minority, “[w]hile other opponents of the regime were persecuted for what they did, the Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered because of what they refused to do,” wrote Jon S. Conway of the University of British Columbia, in a 2004 review of the same essay collection (Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses during the Nazi Regime 1933-1945, edited by Hans Hesse).

For this reason, Conway asks in his review whether Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were often treated more favorably by their captors due to their race, could properly be thought of as engaging in resistance. Similarly, Chang and Suedfeld observe that Jehovah’s Witnesses could perhaps afford to conduct themselves differently than other prisoners, since unlike the Jews, they were not “marked for annihilation,” and accordingly, “presumably felt less imperiled.”

Even so, Jehovah’s Witnesses did suffer torture, abuse, and death in the camps. Jehovah’s Witness women were often sent to Auschwitz’s female camp, the horrific conditions of which are documented in an educational module on the Auschwitz memorial website. Those who survived faced ongoing physical, mental, and emotional trauma after the war ended and camps were liberated. First-person testimonies from interned Jews include Charles de Gaulle’s niece, Genevieve, who attested to the inspiration other prisoners drew from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and their daily refusal to renounce their faith, even in the face of deteriorating conditions. Their faith and courage, she said in a recorded interview through a translator, made them stronger than all the SS officers together.

However, even if their religion prohibited them from political activity, the Jehovah’s Witnesses may be thought to have offered one crucial form of resistance: They continued to publish. By writing about the persecution their fellow believers were experiencing, they added to the chorus of voices working to inform the world about Nazi atrocities. And it seems every voice was needed. Despite a steady stream of news out of Germany since the 1930s about Hitler’s demonization of Jews and human rights conditions in the country, half of American respondents to a 1943 opinion poll believed the murder of 2 million Jews to be rumor, and while the next year as many as three-quarters were willing to acknowledge the existence of concentration camps, they still severely underestimated the death toll.

As early as 1936, according to a 2001 article in Jehovah’s Witness publication The Watchtower, “some 3,500 Witnesses distributed tens of thousands of copies of a printed resolution regarding the ill-treatment that they were suffering. Respecting this campaign, The Watchtower reported: ‘It was a great victory and a sharp stab at the enemy, to the indescribable joy of the faithful workers.’” By the war’s end, the article says, Jehovah’s Witness publications had named and reported on the conditions of 60 different camps and prisons.

Critics assert that the Holocaust narratives put out by the Jehovah’s Witness organization tend to ignore antisemitic statements made by different members and, indeed, leadership, at the time. These accounts, they say, also omit initial attempts by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany to reach a kind of detente with Hitler in the early years. There are examples of Jehovah’s Witness publications and public remarks trafficking in stereotypes about Jewish financial and political control of America, responsibility for Christ’s death, and supersessionist theology (a view that God’s covenant with the Jewish people has shifted to Christianity). This was the case even in a 1933 document, known as the Declaration of Facts, which was co-written by Jehovah’s Witness President Judge Rutherford. The declaration was a defense in the face of persecution by Hitler’s government, intended to clear up misunderstandings about their religious activities and literature, and to correct a Nazi claim that their work was supported by Jewish financing (the so-called “Anglo-American Empire” and Irish Catholics also come in for sharp criticism in the declaration).

The detention, torture, and execution of Jehovah’s Witnesses under Hitler were not widely talked about in the first few decades following the war.

But as noted by one reviewer of Hesse’s book, Richard Singelenberg, although German-language Jehovah’s Witness publications did not become critical of the Nazis until after Kristallnacht in 1938, English-language ones were condemnatory “from the moment that Hitler started to persecute the Jews.” Nevertheless, contemporary antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, and the Declaration of Facts, remain controversial parts of the Jehovah’s Witness legacy. Singelenberg, writing for a 2002-03 edition of Journal of Law and Religion, sounds a note of caution, however, stating a belief that “post-Holocaust social sensitivity concerning anti-Semitism” may cause present-day observers to engage in a backward projection of outright Nazi sympathies onto the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the 1930s and ’40s.

Estimates vary on just how many Jehovah’s Witnesses were held in captivity by Hitler’s government. Numbers published in the Jehovah’s Witness publication The Watchtower estimate around 1,500 members died in the Holocaust, and about 10,000 were either imprisoned or held in concentration camps, with about 2,000 estimated specifically to have been interned in the camps; Genocide Studies cites roughly similar numbers in its 2017 article. Moreover, the children of some Jehovah’s Witnesses were forcibly removed and placed with Nazi families or in reeducation camps.

Conway notes in his review that the detention, torture, and execution of Jehovah’s Witnesses under Hitler were not widely talked about in the first few decades following the war. Conway attributes the scarcity of information to a belated realization by Jehovah’s Witness leadership, around the turn of the 21st century, that there was value to sharing these stories. He writes that the denomination then began in earnest to confront this part of their past, holding meetings for survivors, and making an effort to document and record contemporary accounts.

As with all Holocaust survivors, opportunities to hear their firsthand recollections are increasingly scarce. While this is a problem from the standpoint of posterity and the historic record generally, more scholarly interest in this field could be of more immediate use, as well.

For example, the authors of the Genocide Studies article point out, “the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses are still being persecuted in other parts of the world, such as Russia, Singapore, and China, may give researchers the opportunity to compare Witnesses who are currently being persecuted to those who have lived through their persecution.” The result, they say, could be “a fuller understanding of the impact of these experiences on the survivors, and of the latter’s subsequent readjustment,” which may be a benefit not only to today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, but persecuted minorities around the world.

That reporting on the camps, by Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, failed to gain much moral traction in the United States may also be instructive for our time. In 2018, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum mounted an exhibit, Americans and the Holocaust, which sought in part to dispel a common perception that Americans simply weren’t aware of the ongoing atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against Europe’s Jews. “It’s not that the story was buried,” curator Daniel Greene said in a Time magazine interview about the exhibit. “Just like news is there today of Syria or of the danger to the Rohingya, it punctures through our consciousness at certain times.” But with the Depression dominating the news for most of the 1930s, he said, and the Roosevelt administration’s prioritization of defeating the Nazis militarily, rather than freeing their victims, it simply wasn’t the most salient topic for most people when they considered the U.S. war effort. To understand how this might be possible, add to Greene’s examples, which are still applicable in 2022 as they were in 2018, the relative lack of popular outcry over reports of the imprisonment and forced sterilization of Uyghur Muslims in China, the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in Ethiopia, or Russia’s forcible deportation of Ukrainians to Russia and Russian-controlled areas.

There is also the continued persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia today, where the religion was banned in 2017 as an extremist organization, in violation of the country’s anti-extremism laws. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ internal statistics as of late last year estimated that approximately 643 Jehovah’s Witnesses had been charged with “organizing the activities of an extremist organization” in the country, where, as in Germany in 1933, their literature and their refusal to serve in the military brought them under the government’s suspicion. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses is practiced throughout the former Soviet Union. Speaking on an October 2022 USCIRF podcast, Jehovah’s Witness spokespeople Jarrod Lopes and David Williams described abuse and poor living conditions for imprisoned members of their faith, increasingly facing “longer and harsher sentences,” and the trauma visited upon their families.

“Every day at the moment,” said Jehovah’s Witness international spokesman Paul Gillies, “I’m getting information fed through to me about various fellow believers who have been convicted. I think most days this month we’ve seen examples of that.” The day we spoke, Gillies said a regional court in Russia had upheld a Jehovah’s Witness’ six-year sentence to a penal colony for reading the Bible.

Gillies said he was at the Russian Supreme Court in Moscow in 2017 when they banned Jehovah’s Witnesses. “They were very adamant that all they were doing was banning the religious organization, but believers could believe what they like, and they could practice their faith. That’s not what’s happened in practice,” he said. “They removed our facilities, our branch office,” just outside St. Petersburg. “All our Kingdom Halls, places of worship, throughout Russia were closed. They felt that by doing that they would put a stop to our activities, but people continued to worship in the way that they do,” said Gillies. “And so then now the authorities have moved against them just for practicing their faith.”

Gillies sees parallels between what happened to Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and what is happening in Russia in 2023. Their members’ preaching activity, outreach to people interested in discussing religious questions, political neutrality, and conscientious objection to military service, are once again attracting government suspicion in Russia.


The Russian government has investigated and banned Jehovah’s Witness literature, including the Bible and a book of children’s Bible stories, he said, with one court deciding that Jehovah’s Witnesses were sowing religious discord by claiming they were the true religion (something, he notes, the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, also do).

Gillies believes that Jehovah’s Witnesses’ neutrality, coupled with their insistence that a divine kingdom is being established, make governments nervous. He also notes the irony of labeling conscientious objectors alongside violent terrorists as “extremists.”

“We say that Jesus at his time will intervene, but there’s nothing Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to do to bring that on,” Gillies said. “We don’t try and replace governments today. In fact, our relationship with governments is very clearly defined.” He cites Romans 13:1 as the basis for that practice: “Any government that’s in place, we’re subject to the laws of the land,” he said in summary. However, per Jesus’ command to his followers in chapter 22 of the Book of Matthew, Jehovah’s Witnesses hold that while they must render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar, they must also render to God those things properly belonging to God.

“We’re obedient to the laws of the land,” Gillies said. “But when the law asks for worship, then that’s a red line for us.”

This story is part of a series Tablet is publishing to promote religious literacy across different religious communities, supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Maggie Phillips is a freelance writer and former Tablet Journalism Fellow.



https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/purple-triangles-jehovahs-witnesses

Germans sceptical about TM movement around David Lynch

​"​David Lynch, american filmmaker and strong proponent of the Transcendental Meditation Movement, visits Berlin, Germany as a part of his European TM-Tour in order to present a new education system. The German Raja joins him on the stage and presents his plans to build a "University of invincibility“ on the "devils mountain“ in Berlin, with the ultimate goal to make Germany invincible."

https://youtu.be/G8ArHOdDhR4

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/25/2022 (Adnan Oktar, Turkey, Tinder Swindler, Waldorf Schools, Anthroposophist)

Adnan Oktar, Turkey, Tinder Swindler, Waldorf Schools, Anthroposophist

NY Post: Inside TV preacher's 'kitten' sex cult as survivor says she was made to have a nose job without anesthetic

"A survivor of a TV preacher's brutal sex cult says she was made to have a nose job operation without an anesthetic.

Turkish televangelist Adnan Oktar, 64, was jailed for 1,075 years for a series of horrific crimes.

He had built up a devoted band of brainwashed followers over decades while living a life of luxury surrounded by glamorous women he called his "kittens" while his young male followers were his "lions".

He was eventually found guilty of ten separate charges including leading a criminal gang, sexual abuse of minors, sexual abuse and engaging in political or military espionage."

The Jerusalem Post: Netflix is creating cult numbers from con artists - opinion

'The Tinder Swindler' is a new Netflix documentary telling the story of an Israeli con man.

"Social media has exploded this month with posts, jokes and memes about Simon Leviev, the Israeli scammer who conned his victims out of an estimated $10 million. Though Leviev's story initially broke a few years ago, he's making international headlines again after his crimes were the focus of a Netflix special. The Tinder Swindler documented his elaborate schemes and featured interviews with many of his victims. It was a big hit for the streaming service, amassing over 45,800,000 hours of watch time around the world in only a week.

Despite the shocking story of widespread theft and lies that devastated the lives of multiple girlfriends he conned, a quick search on Instagram will give you no shortage of fan accounts for Leviev - yes, fan accounts. The sudden fame has worked in his favor, in a way.

Leviev, whose real last name is Hayut and is originally from Bnei Brak, took on the last name of a billionaire and pretended to be his son in order to lure women on Tinder. After his victims were in an established relationship with him, he would spin tales of enemies who were after him, even staging fake photos of being attacked, in order to borrow money and open credit cards in their names – money he would use to finance the luxurious lifestyle he was simultaneously leading with multiple girlfriends.

The Netflix special is part of a recent trend of shocking true stories on con men (and women), including The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman and Inventing Anna. The public can't seem to get enough, but is it a good idea to give narcissistic sociopaths more attention and money?"

Exberliner: How Germany's favourite cult took over everything from schools to supermarkets

"Waldorf schools have a hippy image, but are they in fact Germany's equivalent to Scientology?

There are over 250 Waldorf schools in Germany. The private institutions give off a hippy image: students stage elaborate theatre productions and learn to dance their names in a practice called Eurythmy. In the press, they are described as  "progressive" or "left-leaning." 

But as you look closer, the vibe gets stranger and stranger. It's more than just that the buildings have rounded edges and all the toys are all made of wood. Students are educated according to their "seven-year life cycles" and judged according to their "four temperaments" (do you feel more "phlegmatic" or "sanguine"?).

As one former teacher reported to Süddeutsche Zeitung, when teachers were discussing why a particular student was jumpy, it was decided they must have experienced trauma between their previous life and this one. 

Waldorf Schools are run according to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. To understand Steiner, imagine a German version of L. Ron Hubbard. Both men spread esoteric ideas at times when science was all the rage, so they claimed they explored the spiritual realm according to scientific principles. Both considered themselves experts on every imaginable topic, from music to botany to how to wash your car.  Their constant lectures — 5,965, in Steiner's case — were preserved as the ultimate wisdom on everything.

Both Steiner and Hubbard have been frequently accused of racism. But while Hubbard embodied an American ideal of the 1950s, with rugged individuals pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and whatnot, Steiner was a product of imperial Germany with its ethno-nationalist pulse. So while Hubbard based his teachings on the Marcab Confederacy in distant galaxies, Steiner was more interested in Atlantis beneath the waves.

Steiner's Anthroposophy is every bit as complex and weird as Hubbard's Scientology — the former calls itself "the science of knowledge," while the latter is "the wisdom of the human being." To any outside observer, both seem like ravings of delusional narcissists. 

Scientology, while it gets lots of coverage in the tabloids, is limited to a few Hollywood actors and the downtown of Clearwater, Florida. Steiner's followers are less well-known, but far more powerful. Supermarkets sell fruit from Demeter, which is presented as organic, but in fact follows the principles of Steiner's "biodynamic agriculture." Besides avoiding pesticides, this calls for a cow horn to be buried in the field to harness astral and ethereal energy. The cosmetics manufacturer Weleda uses water prepared in Steinerian rituals. Retailers like dm-drogerie and Alnatura are run by anthroposophists. Otto Schilly, Germany's Interior Minister from 1998 to 2005, even belongs to the cult."

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