Research Papers & Articles

Jehovah’s Witnesses were the first religious denomination to be outlawed by the Nazis. Approximately 25,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were living in Germany at the beginning of the Nazi regime, and as early as July 24, 1933, their primary organization was banned. They were targeted by the Nazis, not for perceived racial reasons (as the Jews and Roma were), but because they were a threat to the totalitarian state.

Ernst Schwalm was one such Jehovah’s Witness targeted by the Nazis.

Schwalm was arrested in December 1936 for the possession of banned literature. And for the next eight-and-a-half years, he endured multiple prisons, seven concentration camps, and three death marches. In May 1945, he was liberated by American soldiers from Ebensee concentration camp.

In 2004 or 2005, Danny Marquer was going through his mother’s effects and discovered an object unlike anything else among her things. It was a thick piece of parchment with Hebrew writing on it. More than that – it had been defiled; written on in German and marked with a postage stamp with Hitler’s face on it. This fragment of Torah had been used as postage wrapping and sent to Danny Marquer’s mother during the Second World War. As part of their goal to eradicate all aspects of Jewish culture, the Nazi regime destroyed thousands of Jewish ceremonial objects, including Torah scrolls.

After its discovery, Danny Marquer eventually got connected with Danny Spungen, thus starting the Scroll’s journey towards being used for educational purposes to help teach about the Holocaust.

Isidor Josef Treidel was born in Mayen, Germany on January 24, 1887. Treidel became a lawyer prior to the First World War (in which he served) and following WWI, he continued his work as an attorney. Treidel’s profession was affected by the Nazis’ Civil Service Law of April 1933, which stated that those who were not racially “Aryan” could no longer serve in the civil sphere. Due to his service in WWI, Treidel was able to continue his practice for some time, but by October 1938, he could no longer serve as a Rechtsanwalt (lawyer), only as a Konsulent (consultant).

Helga Wertheimer was born April 5, 1930 in Austria. Helga was one of the children sent on a Kindertransport from Vienna to England. She arrived in London on June 28, 1939 and was fostered by the Joseph Powell Bland family. The Bland family were Christadelphians, a small Christian denomination, and Helga had a very positive experience staying with them during the war.

In the aftermath of the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933, Socialists and Communists were targeted throughout Germany. Less than a month later, on March 22, 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp was established at Dachau. During these early years of the camps, most inmates were either Socialists or Communists. There were some Jewish inmates, though they tended to be incarcerated for being either Socialists or Communists. The major influx of Jews into concentration camps for primarily racial grounds began in earnest in 1938. Friedrich Hoyer, a member of the Communist Party, was one of these early political prisoners. He was in Dachau from June 8, 1933 until his release on March 5, 1935.

Stanisław and Stefania Pyrcak did something that took remarkable courage: They hid seventeen Jews on their farm in Prusiek, Poland for 22 months during WWII, until their village was liberated by Soviet soldiers in August 1944.

The Pyrcaks did not tell their story officially until many years later, when Jacob Lieberman—one of the seventeen Jews who had hid on their Prycaks’ farm—took the initiative to have the Pyrcaks honored by Yad Vashem, and Stanisław Pyrcak subsequently gave an official account of what had happened some forty years in the past. In 1984, Stanisław, Stefania, and Michał Pyrcak and Maria Kuśmierczyk were officially honored by Yad Vashem in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.