ShareThisAfter being brutalized as a Nazi prisoner, Leopold Engleitner was given many opportunities to leave the concentration camp where he was being held -- if he would just renounce his faith as a Jehovah's Witness.
Engleitner, then 33, was told to either sign a declaration saying he was no longer a Jehovah's Witness or expect to leave the camp "through the chimney," as one captor warned him.
Many Nazi concentration camp prisoners were killed, their bodies burned in ovens at the base of chimneys that towered over the camp where Engleitner stayed.
"I will not sign or leave through a chimney," Engleitner told the Nazis. His wish was to go home but only on his terms.
Sticking to what his admirers call his "unbroken will," Engleitner chose his faith over his freedom.
For that, and his refusal to serve in the German military, he was sent to two more concentration camps in six years. He left weighing a mere 62 pounds.
Seventy years later, Engleitner, who at age 103 is the oldest known male survivor of the Holocaust, was greeted with a standing ovation by hundreds of guests during a recent appearance at the Year of Democracy program at Moorpark College in Moorpark, Calif. His words were shown throughout the world via webcast.
As his striped concentration-camp uniform was displayed nearby, the soft-spoken Engleitner, dressed in a black coat and pink tie, sat in his wheelchair onstage.
On one side was his friend and biographer, Bernhard Rammerstorfer, who chronicled Engleitner's story in the book and prize-winning documentary film, "Unbroken Will." Rammerstorfer said he met Engleitner by chance 15 years ago when he approached the old man sitting alone on a park bench in Austria.
Engleitner recalled how he was living in the Austrian imperial city of Bad Ischl and was persecuted as a Jehovah's Witness by the Nazis. In 1939, he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was imprisoned in the Buchenwald, Niederhagen and Ravensbruck concentration camps.
Engleitner talked about how instead of leaving the camp, he shared the little food he had with Jews at the camps, suffered brutal beatings from guards, and how, after collapsing and being taken to a sick bay, he gathered the strength to flee after learning he was about to be given a lethal chemical injection.
"Every morning, you would not know whether you would be alive in the evening. It was so dreadful that the hair of young prisoners, age 15 and 16, turned gray in a matter of weeks," said Engleitner.
He eventually left the concentration camp in July 1943 by agreeing to be a lifelong slave laborer on a farm. He escaped the farm, and fled from the Nazis in caves and mountains until the war ended.
Engleitner's "unbroken will" impressed Dan Brown, a Holocaust historian, who along with filmmaker Ferenc Gutai, both professors at Moorpark College, arranged Engleitner's visit to the college.
Rammerstorfer said Engleitner, who will turn 104 in July, can still recall exact details about his experiences and has remained upbeat, never showing anger or hatred to those who tormented him. Rammerstorfer said it is ironic that Engleitner has outlived his Nazi captors who promised him death 70 years ago.
"I'm a happy boy. I enjoy everything and I have no time to die," Engleitner said with a grin.
While sitting backstage, Engleitner said he still has more work to do.
"I want to encourage young people to stand up for justice and peace and listen to their conscience. I want to serve as an example that even at a high age, you can have goals and reach them," he said.
(Michele Willer-Allred is a reporter for the Ventura County Star in California.)
Holocaust heroes
Some of the Jehovah's Witnesses leaders like Joseph Rutherford did compromise integrity.
Individual Jehovah's Witnesses like Engleitner are proud of their record resisting Hitler and his Nazi.
God bless them all!
6 Million Jews
3Million Poles
400,000 Gypies
50,000-100,000 Homosexuals
150,000 Disabled Germans
Millions of Slavs, Russians, Socialist, Catholics, Protestants.
The whole world suffered.
What Jehovah's Witnesses Really Believe
It is an insult to memorialize the handful of anti-societal trouble-seeking JWs alongside the SIX MILLION Jewish Holocaust victims given that Jehovah's Witnesses view the Jews much as did the Nazis.
The WatchTower Society teaches its own version of "replacement theology", which says that GOD rejected the Jews as His "chosen people", and replaced them with today's "Jehovah's Witnesses". In fact, the title "Jehovah's Witnesses" was originally applied to the Jews by the Prophet Isaiah, and is even quoted on the wall at the entrance to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
The WatchTower Society, in calling its own members "Jehovah's Witnesses" is attempting to steal that designation away from the Jews. The WatchTower Society even teaches that all of the Bible's promises of restoration for the Jewish people now belongs to the followers of the WatchTower Cult.
Compare the "millions" of Jewvictims with the "handful" of Jehovah's Witnesses. There were only approximately 6000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany during the 1930s-40s. While many of those 6000 German JWs were repeatedly arrested during the 1930s and 1940s, only a fraction were jailed or imprisoned for any significant length of time. Only about 200-300 German JWs lost their lives, and the majority of those died from any number of causes other than having been executed. Approximately 1000 JWs from other European countries lost their lives while incarcerated by the Nazis.
During that same time period, there were more Jehovah's Witnesses arrested and jailed in the United States than in Germany. In fact, from 1941 until 1945, approximately 4500 American Jehovah's Witnesses "elected" to go to prison rather than serve in the U.S. Military and go fight against those same Nazis who were committing those atrocities.
Approximately 3000 of those 4500 American JWs were even offered "conscientious objector" status, in which they were offered "non-combatant" work as a substitute, but 99% of those JWs refused to even that.
In Germany under the Nazi
In Germany under the Nazi regime, Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to heil Hitler, and they maintained neutrality on political and military issues. So the Nazis cruelly persecuted them, incarcerating some 12,000 Witnesses for varying lengths of time in prisons and concentration camps. About 2,000 of them died, hundreds being executed.
By April of 1935, Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned from all civil service jobs by Hitler and his Nazi party. The Witnesses were also arrested, imprisoned, and sent to concentration camps because they maintained Christian neutrality. (John 17:16) In late August of 1936, there were mass arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thousands of them were sent to concentration camps, where most of them remained until 1945 if they survived.
The book Crystal Night, authored by Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann, documents a history of Hitler’s concentration camps. While the book primarily relates the persecution of the Jews, it also gives some information on Jehovah’s Witnesses in the camps. It states:
“Set apart from the other barracks were special isolation barracks for disciplinary treatment. These were occupied mostly by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who wore brown [actually, purple] triangles and refused to give the Hitler salute or to undergo military service. Often their refusal to abandon their pacifist religious convictions resulted in death.
“Historians of the Third Reich may perhaps have exaggerated the extent of the German Churches’ ‘resistance’ to the National Socialist regime, but few have mentioned the martyrdom of the 5,911 Jehovah’s Witnesses arrested by the Nazis. More than two thousand perished in concentration camps.”
After describing life at the Buchenwald camp where 2,250 Jews were prisoners, the book states that there were “300-400 Jehovah’s Witnesses” there “who were particularly helpful to the Jews and even shared their bread rations with them.”
Anna Pawełczyńska, a Polish sociologist and survivor of the infamous Auschwitz death camp. Writing in her book Values and Violence in Auschwitz, she stated that Jehovah’s Witnesses were “a solid ideological force and they won their battle against Nazism.” She called them an “island of unflagging resistance existing in the bosom of a terrorized nation.” She added: “In that same undismayed spirit they functioned in the camp at Auschwitz. They managed to win the respect of their fellow-prisoners . . . , of prisoner-functionaries, and even of the SS officers. Everyone knew that no Jehovah’s Witness would perform a command contrary to his religious belief and convictions.” She concluded: “Jehovah’s Witnesses waged passive resistance for their belief, which opposed all war and violence.”
Likewise today, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not put their trust and hope in political ideologies of any kind. They reject these ideologies for something far better that God has promised: a government (kingdom) of his making that will usher in a righteous new system, one that will solve all mankind’s problems. Christians the world over pray ” Let YOUR Kingdom come, let YOUR will take place as in heaven also on earth” That one government for all the earth is God’s Kingdom, already established in the heavens under his Messiah, Christ Jesus.—Matthew 6:9, 10; 2 Peter 3:13.
On February 1, 1933, Hitler delivered his first radio address. Boasting about how he would change Germany, he concluded by appealing to his listeners to give him and his party time and then judge them by the results. Twelve years later, his “thousand-year reign” ended in disgrace. Judgment had been passed against his rule: It was a disaster, for by the end of the war it had left his people, his country, and the world deeply scarred, almost beyond recognition.
How different from the Thousand Year Reign of the Bible’s Messiah, Christ Jesus! At its end, humans and the earth—when compared to their degenerate condition today—will be hard to recognize. Read for yourself the description of it in the Bible at Revelation 21:4, 5. Then picture in your mind perfect people enjoying life to the full on a paradise earth, completely free from any terrorist attack, war, hurtful ideology, or anything else that could mar their happiness! Then realize that you, too, can be one of those in that wonderful scene!—Isaiah 35:1-7; 65:17-25; 1 John 2:17.
Yes only “the meek shall inherit the earth.” By their teaching work worldwide Jehovah’s Witnesses are inviting people of all nationalities, races and religions to come to an accurate knowledge of how Jehovah ( God’s personal name as pronounced in the English language ) will bring to reality the many promises He made in his word ( the Bible ) of worldwide peaceful conditions that will prevail soon when His government in the hands of his son Jesus Christ rules.
Why not question Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves and see from your own copy of the Bible the wonderful future that God has in store for all desiring to do his will.
What Jehovah's Witnesses Really Believe
I don't think that those comments are appropriate to the article and are unkind and uncalled for.
To the writer of the comment
To the writer of the comment "What Jehovah's Witnesses Really Believe".
I am quite surprised to see such hate speak against a small and often misunderstood religious group. The Germans knew the Jehovah's Witnesses as "Bibelforscher", which means Bible Students. History shows that as such these devout students of the Bible teach and live by what they know to be the truth of God's word. They do not join in any armed conflicts nor engage in any form of warfare in any country of the world; an objective the UN has been trying to achieve for decades. Whether or not you agree with their explanation of the Bible you must at least agree that whomever stands against such oppressive tyranny and human rights violations as perpetrated by the likes of Hitler and his Nazi’s and the many other despotic regimes that still exist today, are worthy of admiration. I saw nothing in the article about the experiences of the 104 year old Nazi prisoner. Leopold Engleitner that suggested that the Jehovah’s Witnesses “memorialize” him or any other fallen "Bibelforscher" prisoner above that of the millions Jews and the many hundreds thousands of other victims of the Nazi’s. The article simply reported on the experiences of Mr. Engleitner and his personal resolve in accord with his beliefs. While their numbers were admittedly few, the courage of the "Bibelforscher" and their resolve to stand against such atrocities in the face of their loss of freedom and certain death as a result is not to be minimized nor reduced to petty criticism. When a son is beheaded in front of his father for not giving the “heil” salute to the Fuhrer and not signing a letter renouncing his faith and not joining the German military; how is this somehow any less of an atrocity than the death of any other man or the death of a million men? This was the fate of thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses. How are these lives and their integrity as Christians willing to die for the belief in the simple principal of “love thy neighbor as thyself” something not to be at least remembered. Perhaps the writer himself has an agenda as did Hitler against anyone he does not agree with.
"It is an insult to
"It is an insult to memorialize the handful of anti-societal trouble-seeking JWs alongside the SIX MILLION Jewish Holocaust victims given that Jehovah's Witnesses view the Jews much as did the Nazis." That statement is as much of an obscenity as I have ever read. What would you have "Anonymous"? How many dead Witnesses would have satisfied you? How many beheadings of children in front of their parents how many tortured, how many beaten how many starved to death? I have read your obscene spam on other websites. Anyone who regards your venom as legitimate is insane.
JW's usurp the idea that they are the chosen people now, really? Are you at all aware what mainstream Christianity believes? They all believe that since the appearance of the one they regard as the Messiah the Law and the Jewish faith were replaced with Christianity. You can't be that ignorant - or can you?
As to their resistance to serve in the USA - what would have been better "Anonymous"? For them to go off being blessed by their ministers like many Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans and Catholics to go kill their brother Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans and Catholics who were being blessed by their ministers in Italy and Germany?
I admire their courage even to death unlike "Anonymous" who doesn't even have the courage to leave their name.
What Jehovah's Witnesses Really Believe
I agree. The comment is not appropriate to the article and should be removed. It promotes hate - exactly what Hitler and his Nazi Regime were so infamous for.
I commend Mr. Engleitner for his courage and faith in God. He's a wonderful example for all Christians today. May God continue blessing you and keeping you close to him Mr. Engleitner.
The Preceding Has Been A Paid Religious Advertisement
(Many loving people think if you're not a "Christian" you have no worth, God bless 'em.)
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