"Sometimes Truth makes Love hurt"
"You are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth" Jn 8:40
Tell us if you feel this material misrepresents facts

Nazi Collaboration Covered-Up

By JB

The Watch Tower Society chooses to cover up many things associated with the Nazi era - the appeasing letter to Hitler, the hymns written to the tune of Deutschland ueber Alles and the Anti-Semitic tract 'Declaration of Facts'. The following case is somewhat different, in that the cover-up is of an individual Watchtower employee, rather than the corporation as a whole. The man's name is Erich Frost, the chief Watchtower representative in Germany during the war years.

First of all the Watchtower's current version of his history:

WatchTower, 1988, March 15th, p21:

"Forward, You Witnesses!"

"Erich Frost finished his earthly course on October 30, 1987, at the age of 86. Born on December 22, 1900, he was baptized on March 4, 1923, and entered the full-time ministry in 1928. In 1936 he was put in charge of the
underground work of the persecuted witnesses of Jehovah in Germany, caring well for that assignment for eight months until he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. After the war, from 1945 to 1955, he served as the
overseer of the Watch Tower Society's branch office in Germany. (See The Watchtower, April 15, 1961, pages 244-9.) Thereafter, he continued to serve Jehovah faithfully. God does not forget the work of such anointed Christians or the love they show for his name.-Hebrews 6:10."

"'Firm and determined in this time of the end,/Prepared are God's servants the good news to defend./Tho' Satan against them has vaunted,/In God's strength they keep on undaunted.'"

These are the opening lines of song number 29 in the songbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, Sing Praises to Jehovah. Your appreciation for this song might be deepened by learning that the melody was composed in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Recently, some 500 workers of the German Bethel family in Selters listened to a taped conversation with the song's composer, Erich Frost."

Suspicions of revisionism may be alerted by the following statement of Frost himself; compare what he says here with the documented contents of the fawning (and Jew-bashing) Declaration, and with the testimony of another senior JW, Franke, regards the decor and choice of music of this convention:-

Watchtower, 1961 April 15th, p244

"Deliverance from Totalitarian Inquisition
Through Faith in God"

As told by Erich Frost

In June seven thousand Witnesses assembled in Berlin and passed a resolution strongly protesting the highhanded action of the Hitler government. Millions of copies were distributed. In three days the property at Magdeburg was
confiscated and the staff of 180 were forced to leave. Our religious foes rejoiced when Hitler declared: "I dissolve the 'Earnest Bible Students' in Germany; their property I dedicate to the people's welfare; I will have all
their literature confiscated."

From this account Frost emerged from the war as a suffering hero, albeit that the Watchtower Society had a strange choice of convention location:-

"Conventions Proof of Our Brotherhood"

"The following year, 1946, the brothers in Germany arranged for a convention in Nuremberg. They were granted the use of the Zeppelinwiese, Hitler's former parade grounds. On the second day of the convention, Erich Frost, who had personally experienced the brutality of the Gestapo and had spent years in a Nazi concentration camp, delivered the public talk "Christians in the Crucible." The 6,000 Witnesses in attendance were joined by 3,000 of the public from Nuremberg for the occasion."
jv, p268, pp17

Upon investigation, Frost had a little more to do with those 'Christians in the Crucibles' then simply telling eulogizing stories after their deaths. A different story first came to light in the German news weekly __ (19th July 1961, p 38-39) which revealed that:-

Of eight district servants (the highest level in the hierarchy outside the national branch), one - August Fehst - was arrested by the Gestapo, and betrayed Erich Frost.

How did Erich Frost react?

In anger at his betrayal by Fehst, he betrayed to the Gestapo, the remaining seven district servants:-

Artur Nawroth
Otto Dauth
Fred Meier
Walter Friese
Heinrich Ditschi
Albert Wandres
Karl Siebeneichler (perished in Sachsenhausen)


Full details are available of this affair are to be found in the book

"Die Falschspieler Gottes"; the primary source for it is:-

"Haftbuch Nr. 292, Gestapo Berlin, Dienststelle II B 2"

This Gestapo document reveals that no torture was used on Frost; his anger at Fehst was sufficent for him to tell the Gestapo all they needed. After this he spent a short time in Sacshenhausen, and then was moved to the German-occupied British Channel Island of Alderney, until the end of the war, when he resumed his duties as the Watchtower branch chief (with a new set of district servants, naturally).


The Watchtower Society's continued revision of its past is presented again in this excerpt from a short autobiography in the 1989 Watchtower:

Watchtower, 1989 May 1st, p10:

"Jehovah Has Sustained Me as a Friend"

As told by Maria Hombach

In Dresden, the Gestapo confronted me with a third traitor from among our ranks. I sensed that something was wrong, so I kept quiet, not even greeting him. Then I was brought face-to-face with a tall, burly man in soldier's
uniform: the traitor Mueller, whom I had met in front of the church. I left the room without saying a word. The Gestapo got nothing from me.

These traitors each came to a bad end. As the Nazis said, they loved the betrayal but not the betrayer. All three were sent to the eastern front and never came back. How different it turned out for those who never gave up friendship with God and his people! Many of the loyal ones, among them Erich Frost and Konrad Franke, who suffered much for the Lord's sake and later became branch overseers in Germany, returned alive from the fiery furnace of
persecution.

Go back to Main Jehovah's Witness Index

Go To Start: WWW.BIBLE.CA