Much has
been said about the horrors of the Holocaust, about what happened in the
concentration camps, about what Hitler did to the Jews, Romani, and all sorts
of ‘racially undesirably elements’ of German society. But still little is known
about another group of people who Hitler also loathed and who were identified
in the concentration camps with the purple triangle badge: Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I was
privileged to interview Magdalene Kusserow in the summer of 2003, as part of a
research project I carried out about the Bibelforscher (Bible students), as
Jehovah’s Witnesses were known in Nazi Germany. Magdalene was born the 23rd
of January of 1924 and was a survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
The
Kusserow was a family of 13 members: Franz and Hilda, and their children - Annemarie,
Wilhelm, Sigfried, Karl, Waltraud, Hildegard, Wolfgang, Magdalene, Elizabeth,
Hans-Werner and Paul-Gerhard. They lived in a big house in Bad Lippspringe
where there was a big banner with the words “The Golden Age”. This was so
because their house was the main distributor of “The Golden Age” magazine.
Because of this, the Gestapo searched their house 16 times. The house in Bad
Lippspringe was very big. The family had animals and an orchard with fruit
trees. The Kusserow´s were happy there and just as all Jehovah´s Witnesses,
they studied the Bible and talked to other people about Jehovah, the Bible and
God’s Kingdom. How?
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| The Kusserow family |
“How did
you study the Bible at home?”
“Every day,
our father would give us advice or would ask us questions or jokes. Sometimes
he would ask ‘Are you a soul, or do you have a soul?’ We already knew but he
would answer ‘There´s a difference between being a donkey and having a donkey’.”
“How did
you preach other people?”
“Bad
Lippspringe was a very beautiful and elegant town. ‘Bad’ means ‘bath’ and Bad
Lippspringe had a spa where ill people used to go and spend there some time. During
the banning, my mother would tell me to stay a few steps behind her with the
publications. She would go first looking for people who could be interested and
when she found one, I’d approach them. This one time, we were in the street and
someone called the police. Whoever phoned was someone who had come to Bad
Lippspringe specifically to go to the spa so we didn’t know them. The people we
personally knew from the town would’ve never called the police because they
were very nice. So the policemen arrived where we were, they searched my mother
and they told her to go to their office on Tuesday. My mother went and the
policeman told her ‘Mrs Kusserow! Go, go! I only told you to come so those men
in the street could hear me. Go home!’ I must say our neighbours were lovely
people who would have never reported us to the police, even though many of them
were Nazis. About 200m from our house there lived a Nazi family with a
4-year-old boy who was friends with my youngest brother, Paul-Gerhard. There
was a party one day and all the houses had their flags with the swastika. That
boy asked my brother: ‘Paul-Gerhard, why don’t you have a flag?’ and my brother
answered ‘you have two, that’s enough’.”
“How did
you hide the publications the Gestapo looked for in your house several times?”
“Sometimes
we would hide them in the garden under the bushes. I remember this one time
when the Gestapo came home. Our house had two floors and my brother saw them
coming from the window in the upper floor. They were easy to recognise because
they dressed up well. We weren’t afraid of them. My brother ran down the stairs
saying ‘the Gestapo! The Gestapo!’ and my younger brothers took the
publications and left. My mother invited the Gestapo in and led them to the
kitchen. There they talked while my mother saw my brothers in the garden
leaving with the publications. But the officers could see nothing because the
window was behind their back. Besides, in those days there was a travelling
Jehovah´s Witness who was visiting the congregations and that night he stayed
at ours, so he was upstairs. My mother kept talking to the Gestapo officers,
distracting them, while my brother went upstairs and told him ‘Go! Go now! The
Gestapo is here!’ Then he ran downstairs and my mother realised what was going
on because she heard ‘BOOM! BOOM!’ but the officers seemed to hear nothing. The
Jehovah’s Witness left the house running down the street and took the tram, and
kept looking at the house checking out if the Gestapo had left so that he could
come back. Every time the Gestapo came home they would search the whole house,
they even look for the photos we had. They were looking for photos of our meetings.
In 1939,
the police took Magdalene’s youngest brothers away to different reformatories.
Hans-Werner was 9 years old and Paul-Gerhard was only 7. But one of her oldest
brothers, Wilhelm, 25, refused to go to war and he was sentenced to death.
Magdalene and her mother visited him a few days before he was shot. He had been
offered to sign an abjuration letter three times but he refused. A few months
after his death, on the 27th of April 1940, they received a letter
in the house at Bad Lippspringe informing the family that Wilhelm had died as a
hero fighting for Hitler and the Reich.
“What did
you feel when you received that letter if you knew it was all lies?”
“We
received that letter months later. We also received a letter that said Wilhelm
was in a list of missing people. My mother would laugh at this. Some years ago,
my younger brother wrote a book and he looked for documents about this. He
wrote to all the offices which would have lists of soldiers who had died in the
war and Wilhelm’s name was only in the list of Münster. It said he had died in
the battle in Münster, but there was never a battle in Münster, there he was
executed by a firing squad. Now, where he was shot, there’s a hospital with a
beautiful garden and a plaque in his memory.”
Wilhelm was
not the only martyr in the family. Wolfgang, 20, was beheaded on the 28th
of March 1942. While all this happened, other members of the family were
arrested. On 1941, Magdalene was arrested, but her parents had been arrested
before her.
“They first
arrested my father and my mother, but they let her go because she had many
children to look after. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison. After that,
once again, they looked for my mother and sentenced her to 2 years in prison.
She was all alone. Then my father came out of prison without signing the resignation
document and thought the Gestapo would come for him but no one came, so he
started visiting the congregations. A few months later, my father, my mother,
my sister Hildegard and I were arrested. They said I was too young for prison
but too old for the reformatory. My youngest brothers were taken straight from
the school to the reformatory. So I was home, alone, crying with my little dog.
I had to pay the bills and I didn´t know how or where I had to do that. So I
took the tram and went to Bonn to visit my parents. The police said I couldn’t
see them but I told them I had to pay some bills so they let me talk to my
father. He gave me some signed checks and explained to me what I had to do. I
went back home with red eyes and the sisters from the congregation were there
to help me out. Two days after that, I was arrested, but I was happy because I wouldn’t
be alone anymore. They took me to the prison were my parents and sister were.
They took me to a basement and my father was taken there as well, and since I
was so happy to be with him again, I smiled. An officer saw me and turned me
around and shouted ‘Against the wall!’ The four of us were held in preventive
detention until the trial at the Bielefeld prison but in different cells. I
still have a letter my dad sent me from his cell to mine where he wrote:
‘Dear
Magdalene, even though you are young, you are standing firm and this is
encouraging us. Ask if you can visit me.’ This was because from Monday to
Thursday, from 10 to 12, visits were allowed. I asked for it through a letter,
and I was allowed to visit my father in the same prison I was held. I saw my
father through bars and with two guards by my side. I talked to him for 10
minutes and he encouraged me. He said ‘Be strong because you are young and you’ll
probably be sentenced to 6 moths, but I’m old and you must understand I’ll be
sentenced to death.’ When I was arrested, I was 17 and I was sentenced to 6
months in the prison for young people. After those 6 months, the prison
supervisor called me and told me ‘You can go tomorrow but I have a document
from the Gestapo. You need to sign it and renounce your faith.’ I didn’t sign
it and I told her why. She was very nice but she said then that she was sorry but
she had to hand me over to the Gestapo. The next day they handed me over to the
Gestapo, 500km away, and I was shown the document again. I stayed 4 more months
at the prison because I wasn’t 18 yet. I was a total of 10 months in different
prisons until I turned 18 and I was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration
camp.”
“How did
you go to the camp and what happened when you arrived?”
“First I
was alone but then, as a prisoner, I was taken to a train, to a special coach
that was attached to other coaches with more prisoners. We were taken to a
town, I can´t remember which one, but we spent the night there. The next day,
we got on to another train and after 3 days we arrived to Ravensbrück. In the
train, I was with other women. None of them were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Many of
them were prostitutes and they would make jokes with the SS officers. When we got
to the camp, the SS of the camp came with their dogs and all the women went
silent and started to cry. I was a little happy because at last there was a bit
of order. Then we were taken to the register. Taking the register would take
the whole day long: first, they would take off your clothes, made you take a
shower, and write your name down. I could only think of the time I’d find my
sisters in the faith because I didn’t know where or how they were, and I had
been the only one in the train. After that, we were searched for lice and the
woman who was searching my head asked me ‘Why are you here?’ and I answered ‘Bibelforscher’,
and she replied straightaway ‘Ah! Welcome, my sister!’ and soon came another
sister whom I knew because she was from my congregation and she was now working
at the camp’s infirmary. Later they took me to the barrack where Gertrud
Pötzinger (another Bibelforscher) was. She took my hand, and because she was
old and I was only 18, she told me ‘Come next to me, there’s an empty bed here.’
She showed me around and she wanted to protect me. All the Bibelforscher were
in the same barrack. It was divided in 2 big rooms, A and B. 150 on the right
and 150 on the left. We were around 300 there. And right after that I was given
the purple triangle and a number.”
“What sort
of jobs did you have to do in the camp?”
“First I
had to work at the gardens of a big house which belonged to the SS. We worked
there in the morning, we had to get up at 4:30am, and we were given a little
bit of coffee and a loaf of black bread. Then we would divide the bread in 10
parts and we would keep the ends of the loaf for a sister who was needier,
because the ends of the German black bread are usually a bit bigger. That bit
of bread had to last all day and I used to keep it until night time because my
mother had told me that if I had nothing to eat, I had to chew a lot whatever I
had because that produced sugar. I would eat the bread at night and it would
take me an hour to eat it. That kept me alive. After the breakfast, they would
count the prisoners. We were around 20000, but if the count was wrong, they
would start counting all over again. Sometimes the counting could take 5 hours,
it was outside, in the cold, standing up, and we weren’t allowed to put our hands
in the pockets. I got chilblains because of this. After the counting, we had to
go to our workplace, in my case it was the garden and it would take me 20
minutes to walk there. After that, I worked at a kindergarten with the children
of the single female guards. They were very naughty children. We had to get up
even earlier, skip the counting, and walk through a forest to the kindergarten
where the children were sleeping. There were also babies. 3 Bibelforscher and I
would cook and wash there. Here you see a very big contradiction: My younger
brothers were taken to a reformatory so they wouldn’t have any contact with
other Bibelforscher. However, we were assigned to look after the children of
the SS along with other women who weren’t Bibleforscher but who would leave us
alone with the children. On the weekends, the children’s mothers would come to
pick them up and used to complain: ‘What’s going on? My girl only talks about
these Bibelforscher! Don’t you do anything at all? Do they do everything?’ The
truth is they trusted us more than the SS.
Here I have the card that allowed me
to go to work and leave the camp without a guard. It says prisoner Magdalene
Kusserow is working with the family of the SS-Gruf Lörner, a high ranked
officer in Ravensbrück, and can be in zones E and F without supervision. I
worked as a housewife for this family during my last months in the camp, when
the war finished.”
“What
helped you endure in the camp?”
“I was 4
years and a half in prisons and the camp. To endure there you had to have a big
faith in God and when you have parents that lay on you a good foundation… Look,
my father used to say ‘Jehovah is happy if you are loyal as Proverbs 27:11 says
‘Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, So that I can make a reply to him
who taunts me.’ You must make Jehovah happy and then we’ll prove Satan a liar.’
And then when you go to the camp and you see the big difference between that
and what my home used to be like… How nice it was to be home with my parents!
Because we used to make music concerts at home at night since we all learned to
play an instrument. And then you see the difference between that and the SS
home and it can’t be compared. In the concentration camp you could easily tell
who was a Bibelforscher and who wasn’t. I haven’t seen the love among the
brotherhood of Witnesses anywhere else, and I’m happy to belong to it.”
In 1942,
Magdalene’s mother and sister Hildegard also arrived in Ravensbrück. In 1944,
only Annemarie was free and working in Berlin.
“Did you have
any news from Annemarie?”
“Annemarie
was the last one to be arrested and was the link to all the members of the
family because we were all in different places and could only write 6 lines a
month. All of us would write to Annemarie, who worked as a secretary in Berlin.
She would copy our letters and send them to the other members of the family.
She just turned 90, she’s the oldest. She phoned me a few days ago and told me
she’s putting the letters in chronological order. She has 150 letters,
but I
have 2 here she hasn’t counted in. I have a postcard with the stamp of the
Ravensbrück concentration camp for women and it says it’s not allowed to send
parcels or… anything. Nothing is allowed. It also says I’ve been there since
the 25th of February 1942, and it has my ‘address’: Magdalene
Kusserow, Ravensbrück, number 9591, block 17. This is Adolf Hitler’s stamp.
In
the back it says ‘The prisoner remains a stubborn Bible Student. For this
reason only, the privilege of otherwise permissible correspondence is taken
from him.’ The Bibelforscher were only allowed to write 6 lines, while the rest
of prisoners could write 4 pages. This is why our handwriting was tiny.”
If
religious literature was completely forbidden outside the camps, obviously it
was even more inside them. However, that literature made its way inside the
camps. Magdalene told me a case she knew:
“This
morning, Louis [Piechóta] told us that when he was in the camp, they read
Bible-based literature every night that they used to receive and one day he
asked where it came from. He was told he’d better not know. In 1974, in the
Yearbook of the Jehovah’s Witnesses it was explained where it came from: One of
Himmler’s masseuses would look for trustworthy prisoners for his big estate. He
took one of the Bibelforscher as a housewife to his house in Switzerland. He
was a good man and he told her all that happened in the camps. When Himler had
very bad pains and he had to massage him, he would ask Himmler for more
prisoners for his estate and so he managed to have 25 Bibelforscher working for
him, men and women who were almost free. A Bibelforscher who worked as a
seamstress at the estate would give the doctor publications for the other
Bibelforscher in the camps. He would take them in his briefcase, and since he
was an important man, he was never searched and so he managed to introduce many
publications in the camps.”
Magdalene,
her sister and their mother left Ravensbrück in April 1945.
While interviewing Magdalene, I also met the following survivors:
Arrested because he was Jewish, he was deported to several concentration camps: Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. While in the camps, he became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was liberated by the U.S. Army in 1945.
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| Max Liebster & Simone Arnold |
Simone and her family were arrested for being Jehovah’s Witnesses. She was taken away from her parents and sent to a reform school. Her father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp where he suffered ‘scientific’ experiments daily.
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| Louis Piechóta in the background |
He was a prisoner at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for being a Bibelforscher. He survived the evacuation of the camp, also called the Death March were most prisoners died of exhaustion or shot by the SS.
She was taken away from her parents when she was 9 and sent to several working camps were she suffered so much her organs aged too early and her health was forever affected.
