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Memoir of Resistance: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Nazi Regime
H-Net
Book Review by Gillian McCann
For anyone thinking
seriously about the history of the Nazi occupation of Europe and the Holocaust,
a single haunting question will most certainly occur: Would I have resisted?
Facing the Lion (lion referring to the code word used by Jehovah's Witnesses
for the Nazi regime), is the memoir of a girl and her family, who could
definitively answer yes to that question. The story of her refusal to
submit offers valuable insight into the character of a person willing
to stand up against a seemingly all-powerful political state.
Liebster's book chronicles
the period from her childhood in the early 1930's through the German invasion
and defeat of France, the ensuing struggle of her family to survive the
Nazi reign of terror, the end of the war and their attempt to restart
their lives. The final chapter of the book describes her life up until
the present.
Simone Arnold (her
maiden name) was ten in 1940 at the time of the fall of Paris which was
swiftly followed by the occupation of the hotly disputed Alsace-Lorraine
region where she lived. The Arnold family had converted to the sect of
Jehovah's Witness in 1937, a group proscribed under German law. While
the Nazis were ideologically opposed to all forms of Christianity, they
maintained uneasy relationships with the Protestant and Catholic churches.
The Jehovah's Witnesses ("Bibelforscher"), however, were singled
out due to their refusal to recognize the sovereignty of the state, to
salute or swear oaths of allegiance to Hitler, to attend political rallies
or to serve in the military. As a result, 10,000 were imprisoned and 2000
interred in concentration camps, of which at least half were murdered.
The lives of the Arnold
family were made difficult even before the war in the conservative town
of Mulhouse due to their religious beliefs. They were ostracized by their
neighbors and even by some members of their family. With the German occupation,
however, their lives were soon in danger. Jehovah's Witnesses were formally
banned by the Nazis in 1938 and denied the right to free speech and assembly.
The Arnold family remained involved in their church after the Nazi occupation,
participating in underground meetings and smuggling literature across
the Swiss border. As pressure increased, Simone's father Adolphe lost
his job and the family bank account was closed by the Gestapo. Finally,
in the fall of 1941, Adolphe was arrested and sent to Dachau concentration
camp.
Meanwhile, Simone
felt the pressure to conform to the newly Nazified school system. Her
refusal to give the "Heil Hitler" salute or to join the Bund
Deutscher Madchen (BDM), the Nazi youth group for girls, resulted in her
being sent to the Wessenberg Reformatory for Girls in Germany. Shortly
after, in September 1943, Simone's mother was sent to Shirmeck concentration
camp. Simone's life at the reformatory consisted of soul destroying hard
labour, semi-starvation, and unpredictable punishment, all designed to
break her spirit and lead her to renounce her religious beliefs.
The last part of the
memoir describes the reunion of the Arnold family after the war. Miraculously,
all three survived, but Liebster makes clear that it took many years for
them to overcome the physical and mental effects of their wartime experiences.
Adolphe Arnold's health was severely compromised and he was unable to
return to work, while all three family members experienced difficulties
adapting to normal life. Liebster describes how the family would stand
at crosswalks waiting for orders to walk, or jump at the sound of boots
on the stairs.
Chapter 15, entitled
"Vengeance or Forgiveness," is a particularly poignant one.
Directly after the war, victims of the Nazi regime were given the opportunity
to sign for the arrest of those who had denounced them to the Gestapo.
In the Arnolds' case those responsible were the Catholic parish priest,
the Protestant pastor, and neighbors in their apartment complex. To Simone's
anger and disbelief, her mother refused to seek revenge stating that "vengeance
belongs only to God." In this chapter Simone's mixed emotions of
anger and admiration reflect those of the reader.
The final chapter of
the work describes Simone Arnold Liebster's life up to the present. Leibster
makes it clear that her struggle to overcome the legacy of her experiences
was not an easy one, and manifested as a lack of ambition and extreme
shyness. She continued to be a devout Jehovah's Witness and eventually
moved to the United States where she married Max Liebster, a Holocaust
survivor, in 1956.
Facing the Lion is
replete with excellent and relevant photographs and pencil drawings by
the author. The appendices contain maps, letters written by the Arnold
family while interred, examples of Nazi textbooks studied by Simone, and
a sample of the Nazi declaration of their renunciation of faith. This
form, if signed, allowed any Jehovah's Witness to be immediately released
from internment. Simone and her mother and father had all refused to sign
this form on many occasions.
Simone Liebster's
memoir is a valuable addition to firsthand accounts of resistance to the
Nazi regime. Facing the Lion is part of an effort by the Cercle European
des temoins de Jehovah Anciens Deportees to document the lives of Jehovah's
Witnesses who defied the Nazi regime. The book starts slowly, with too
much time spent in the depiction of the author's idyllic early childhood,
but this is a small flaw in relation to the overall quality of the work.
The work provides important information about the fate of Jehovah's Witnesses
under German occupation, of which historians have written very little,
and as a personal memoir describes how Nazi oppression affected ordinary
people. Facing the Lion is a form of social history that gives an added
dimension to political histories of the time period. It allows us to understand
the dynamics of a society under the most extreme pressure, and shows the
spectrum of reaction by ordinary people.
Facing the Lion is particularly important as a study in the character
of a person of conscience. Simone and the entire Arnold family were set
apart from their society even before the war. Their commitment to God
above state power, their pacifism and their willingness to question the
standards of the time separated them from other members of their social
group. Alsatian society is depicted as conformist and authoritarian, with
little tolerance for difference of opinion or belief. Simone was raised
in an open, intellectual environment where she was encouraged to question
and to think for herself. She was also raised in an atmosphere free of
racial prejudice. The authorities at Wessenberg sought to undo this training
and instill in her the values of passivity, obedience and silence.
The personal faith
of Simone Arnold Liebster infuses this book and she, as did other Jehovah's
Witnesses, understood her experiences as a modern version of Daniel in
the Lion's Den. Liebster includes a letter written by Marcel Sutter, a
24 year old Jehovah's Witness, hours before he was executed by the Nazis
in 1943. In this letter he writes, "I ask you to be strong and courageous;
do not cry, for I have conquered. I have finished the course and kept
the faith." Facing the Lion shows that ordinary people did face up
to and resist the evil of the Nazi regime. This reader is left to ponder
whether (given the same choice) I, or my friends and neighbors, would
have the courage to do the same.
Gillian McCann is
a Ph.D. Candidate, Religious Studies, at the University of Toronto.
Published by H-Holocaust@h-net.msu.edu
(September 2001), H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.
Copyright 2001 by
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