Purple triangle
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The purple triangle was a concentration camp badge used by the Nazis to identify Bibelforscher (Bible Students), the German name for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Nazi Germany. A small number of Adventists, Baptists and pacifists (less than one percent) were also identified by the badge.[1] Nazism opposed unorthodox-Christian religious minorities (along with Jews), but made the Bible Students the object of particularly intense persecution, including such extensive incarceration that a distinct badge was assigned to them.[2][3]
[edit] See also
- Nazi concentration camp badges
- Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany
- Identification in Nazi camps
- Religion in Nazi Germany
[edit] References
- ^ Johannes S. Wrobel, Jehovah’s Witnesses in National Socialist Concentration Camps, 1933 – 45, Religion, State & Society, Vol. 34, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 89-125 "The concentration camp prisoner category ‘Bible Student’ at times apparently included a few members from small Bible Student splinter groups, as well as adherents of other religious groups which played only a secondary role during the time of the National Socialist regime, such as Adventists, Baptists and the New Apostolic community (Garbe 1999, pp. 82, 406; Zeiger, 2001, p. 72). Since their numbers in the camps were quite small compared with the total number of Jehovah’s Witness prisoners, I shall not consider them separately in this article. Historian Antje Zeiger (2001, p. 88) writes about Sachsenhausen camp: ‘In May 1938, every tenth prisoner was a Jehovah’s Witness. Less than one percent of the Witnesses included other religious nonconformists (Adventists, Baptists, pacifists), who were placed in the same prisoner classification.’".)
- ^ Bibelforscher
- ^ Holocaust Revealed
[edit] External links
- [1] US Holocaust Memorial Museum summary
- [2] "Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany" University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- [3] "Jehovah's Witnesses in National Socialist concentration camps, 1933-45," by Johannes S. Wrobel, Religion, State and Society vol. 34, no. 2 (June 2006), 89-125
- Purple Triangles: A Story of Spiritual Resistance by Jolene Chu, originally published in Judaism Today, No. 12, Spring 1999
- Purple Triangle: An Untold Story of the Holocaust
- Sustained Through Terrible Trials by Éva Josefsson, The Watchtower June 1, 1998
- Jehovah's Witnesses: Courageous in the Face of Nazi Peril, Awake! July 8, 1998
- They Triumphed Over Persecution, The Watchtower March 1, 2003
- Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in association with University of Wisconsin Press. Detlef Garbe 2008.
- Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Distributor) (1991). Purple Triangles (VHS). United States of America: Starlock Pictures.
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