Sermons by Christian community leaders in US against Nazi cruelty towards innocent civilians

During World War II, did any priests, bishops, parishes, and nuns issue fiery sermons at Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches and cathedrals in the United States denouncing the Holocaust and other acts of cruelty by Nazi Germany against Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other peoples whom Hitler deemed Lebensunwertes Leben? It's well-known that Russian white émigrés denounced the Soviet state for embracing Karl Marx's narrative of religion as "opium of the masses" unaware that the Bible gives Christians a duty to help the poor and sick, but it's possible that some Russian white émigré religious community leaders living in California flocked to the local Russian Orthodox Church in San Francisco in 1941-1945 to deliver fiery denunciations of the murder of Jews, Poles, and disabled people by the Nazis at Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka, and Sobibor. Then there's the high probability that Catholic and Protestant community leaders in the US in WW2 denounced Hitler for accusing Jews of spreading communism unaware that the Ten Commandments promoted rules for morality (one of the Ten Commandments says "Thou shall not kill"), but also sending elderly and disabled people to concentration camps.

a reply to: Potlatch

Hard to know since we didn't have the internet and videos.

There may be some microfiche from local news stories but not easy to find.

Thou shall not murder.

a reply to: Potlatch

Jehovah's Witnesses were among the first in the concentration camps and aside from the Jews the most persecuted in the camps. While the major religions of Christendom supported the Hitler regime, Jehovah's Witnesses took a stance of political neutrality as they do everywhere on earth. They refused to "Heil Hitler" stating that Jesus was their savior. They refused to worship Hitler stating that God is the only one that deserves worship, and it is His kingdom government that will bring lasting solutions and happiness to earth. Hitler tried to say that his "Third Reich" would be God's rule of 1,000 years on earth, and the Protestant and Catholic clergy went along with this. But Jehovah's Witnesses denounced that sham for the lie that it was. So Hitler and Nazi Germany went to war with Jehovah's Witnesses. Hitler stated that he wanted to exterminate the Jehovah's Witnesses from off the face of the earth. And the clergy was happy to hear such a statement.

The above was to lay the groundwork for the answer to your question. While the majority of the religions were silent, complicit, and even outright supportive of Hitler and the Nazis, Jehovah's Witnesses from the very beginning were not silent. They rejected Hitler and his Nazi movement for what it was, a work of Satan the Devil. And they broadcast it far and wide in Newspapers, in Radio broadcasts, and by printed page, and Assemblies around the world.

On October 7, 1934, all congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany assembled to hear a letter read that was being sent to the officials of the Hitler government. It said: “There is a direct conflict between your law and God’s law . . . Therefore this is to advise you that at any cost we will obey God’s commandments, will meet together for the study of His Word, and will worship and serve Him as He has commanded.” On the same day, Jehovah’s Witnesses in 49 other countries met in special assembly and sent the following telegram to Hitler: “Your ill-​treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses shocks all good people of earth and dishonors God’s name. Refrain from further persecuting Jehovah’s witnesses; otherwise God will destroy you and your national party.”

Very very early in Hitler's reign of terror he targeted the Jehovah's Witnesses, hounding them, arresting them, sending them to concentration camps, because they would not conform to his requirements that conflicted with God's laws. Jehovah's Witnesses around the world responded with denunciations against Hitler and his government. Judge Rutherford, the then President of the Watchtower Society declared, and it was aired nationwide on the radio: "Your ill-​treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses shocks all good people of earth and dishonors God’s name. Your ill-​treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses shocks all good people of earth and dishonors God’s name. Refrain from further persecuting Jehovah’s witnesses; otherwise God will destroy you and your national party."

You may not know this, in fact many do not know now this part of history. But from the very start Jehovah's Witnesses were publishing names of concentration camps, diagrams of them, names of Nazi officials, dates, and places for the world to see what they were doing. They were able to do this because they had firsthand knowledge of the camps, being the first sent to the camps, and among the most persecuted, aside from the Jews. They smuggled out much information about the camps and what Hitler was doing and were publishing the records for the world to see. Many Jehovah's Witnesses were put to death in the Nazi concentration camps. But unlike others who were victims of the Nazi movement, Jehovah's Witnesses could freely leave. All they had to do was sign a statement rejecting Jehovah God and they would be let free.

On June 20, 1937, the Witnesses who were still free distributed another message that was unsparing in its detail about the persecution. It named officials and cited dates and places. The Gestapo were appalled at this exposure and the ability of the Witnesses to carry it off. Love of neighbor is what compelled the Witnesses to warn the people of Germany not to be fooled by the grandiose vision of a glorious thousand-​year rule by the Third Reich. “We must tell the truth and give the warning,” said the booklet Face the Facts, published in 1938. “We recognize the totalitarian government . . . as the product of Satan brought forth as the substitute for God’s kingdom.” Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first targets of Nazi abuse, but they also loudly decried atrocities against Jews, Poles, the handicapped, and others.

They also exposed the Hitler governments abuse of Jews, Poles, the handicapped and others, while the majority of religions sat by quietly watching it, being complicit in their crimes, and even overtly helping the Nazis.

In 1938 in Seattle, Washington a resolution entitled "Warning!" was released in it it stated:

“The Fascists and Nazis, radical political organizations, have wrongfully seized control of many countries of Europe . . . All the people will be regimented, all their liberties taken away, and all will be compelled to yield to the rule of an arbitrary dictator and then the ancient Inquisition will be fully revived.”

As to answer your OP, while, no the clergy of Christendom did not do anything, Jehovah's Witnesses were on the airwaves on the radio sounding the warning against Hitler and the Nazis around the world!:

Rutherford regularly took to the airwaves, delivering powerful lectures on the satanic nature of Nazism. The lectures were rebroadcast globally and were printed for distribution by the millions. On October 2, 1938, he delivered the address “Fascism or Freedom,” in which he denounced Hitler in no uncertain terms.

“In Germany the common people are peace-​loving,” Rutherford proclaimed. “The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control, a man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious and ruthless . . . He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah’s covenant people and bore the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew.”

As the Nazi rage against Jehovah’s Witnesses reached new heights, the Witnesses’ denunciations became ever more scathing. The May 15, 1940, issue of Consolation stated: “Hitler is such a perfect child of the Devil that these speeches and decisions flow through him like water through a well-​built sewer.”

And even though the public was mostly unaware of the concentration camps until after WWII had ended in 1945, Jehovah's Witnesses did what they could do to expose them, from the very start. By 1940 Jehovah's Witness publications had listed 20 different camps and exposed their unthinkable conditions. German historian Detlef Garbe estimates that the Witnesses constituted at that time between 5 and 10 percent of the total camp population!

At a seminar on the Witnesses and the Holocaust, Garbe stated: “Of the 25,000 persons who admitted to being Jehovah’s Witnesses at the beginning of the Third Reich, about 10,000 were imprisoned for any length of time. Of these, over 2,000 were admitted to concentration camps. This means that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were, with the exception of the Jews, the worst persecuted by the SS of all the religious based groups.”

The magazine Consolation (now known as Awake!) in 1940 stated that Hitler was well underway to destroying wholesale Jews, Greeks, Poles and Serbs:

“There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland when Germany began its Blitzkrieg . . . , and if reports which reach the Western world are correct their destruction seems well under way.”

In 1943 it declared:

Whole nations like the Greeks, Poles and Serbs are being exterminated systematically.”

By 1946 The Golden Age and Consolation reported on over 60 different prisons and concentration camps.

Witnesses Exposed Existence of Camps

ALTHOUGH Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen were names unknown to most people until after World War II, they were well known to readers of The Golden Age and Consolation. The reports of Jehovah’s Witnesses, smuggled out of the camps at great risk and publicized in Watch Tower literature, exposed the murderous intent of the Third Reich. In 1933, The Golden Age carried the first of many reports of the existence of concentration camps in Germany. In 1938, Jehovah’s Witnesses published the book Crusade Against Christianity, in French, German, and Polish. It carefully documented the vicious Nazi attacks on the Witnesses and included diagrams of the Sachsenhausen and Esterwegen concentration camps. Nobel prize winner Dr. Thomas Mann wrote: “I have read your book and its terrible documentation with deepest emotion. I cannot describe the mixed feeling of abhorrence and loathing which has filled my heart while perusing these records of human degradation and abominable cruelty. . . . To keep quiet would serve only the moral indifference of the world . . . You have done your duty in publishing this book and bringing these facts to light.”​.

MADAME Geneviève de Gaulle, niece of former president of France Charles de Gaulle, was a member of the French Resistance. Upon her capture and her later imprisonment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944, she met Jehovah’s Witnesses. After World War II, Madame de Gaulle lectured throughout Switzerland and spoke often of the Witnesses’ integrity and courage. In an interview on May 20, 1994, she said of them:

“They were among the first deportees in the camp. Many had already died . . . We recognized them by their distinctive badge. . . . It was absolutely forbidden for them to talk about their beliefs or to have any religious books, and especially the Bible, which was considered the supreme book of sedition. . . . I know of [one of Jehovah’s Witnesses], and there were others I was told, who was executed for having a few pages of Bible texts. . . .

“What I admired a lot in them was that they could have left at any time just by signing a renunciation of their faith. Ultimately, these women, who appeared to be so weak and worn out, were stronger than the SS, who had power and all the means at their disposal. [Jehovah’s Witnesses] had their strength, and it was their willpower that no one could beat.”

All of the above quotes were taken from this article: The Evils of Nazism Exposed

originally posted by: infolurker
a reply to: Potlatch

Hard to know since we didn't have the internet and videos.

There may be some microfiche from local news stories but not easy to find.

I remember watching a video when I was a kid with Judge Rutherford going on the airwaves to expose Hitler. And I remember the name of the video: "Jehovah's Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault."

I looked it up on YouTube and found it. Also I found the radio broadcast that was aired around the world by Judge Rutherford go to the 29:40 minute mark.



There on October 2, 1938, 50 radio stations around the world at that time broadcast Judge Rutherford's talk "Fascism or Freedom":

"In Germany the common people are peace-loving. The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control. A man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious, and ruthless, and who acts in utter disregard of the liberties of the people. Together with his backers he rules with an iron hand. He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah's covenant people and bore* the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew."
(This was quoted in my reply above).

The entire video is worth a watch. Priceless gems of history that have been faithfully persevered for posterity about that horrible period of history.

a reply to: randomuser

Yeah the JW cult denounced the sham of Nazism because they have the sham of watchtower.org to worship and all the pedos that watchtower protect, probably even back then
Watchtower is no different from the papacy, no different from the Vatican.
Worship what men teach you to worship and the statements from watchtower are like papal bulls

Arrogance and virtue is all I read

a reply to: Raggedyman

a reply to: randomuser

Just ignore your church protecting pedophiles, how very catholic of you