1 After 52 years, Anastasia Kazak (left) (Ukraine) and Hermine Schmidt (right) met in Moscow, on May 15, 1997, at the Russian premiere of the documentary video Jehovah’s Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault. Anastasia became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Stutthof concentration camp, and both had survived the dangerous journey of camp inmates across the Baltic Sea to Denmark. (Photograph far left is Hermine.)

2 When the Ravensbrück camp was evacuated, Alois Moser, from Braunau (Austria), and 25 fellow Witnesses were ordered to accompany an SS transport. During the night the guards disappeared. In Schwerin, Alois Moser met a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had joined the death march. Starting out from northern Germany, he made his long way home to Austria.

3 Gertrud Ott, from Danzig, was a prisoner in the camps in Auschwitz (from December 1942 to January 1945), Mauthausen, Groß-Rosen, and Bergen-Belsen (from January to May 1945). After her liberation, she attended the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead in New York and became a missionary serving in Indonesia, Iran, and Luxembourg.

4 A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses rejoicing over their liberation from the Mauthausen camp on May 7, 1945. Among them is Martin Poetzinger (first from left, standing).

 5 Before the Gestapo arrested and tortured him cruelly, Erich Frost, from Leipzig, had supervised the underground work (1936/1937). He was put under permanent arrest (1937-1945). In the Sachsenhausen camp, with his fellow Witnesses in mind, he composed a song that found its way out of the camps and strengthened his fellow believers.

6 In 1935, Arthur Winkler, from Bonn, experienced cruel treatment in the Esterwegen camp. Later, he directed the underground work in Germany from the Netherlands. The Gestapo sought to arrest him after Germany occupied Holland (May 1940), but he was not captured until October 1941. He survived the death march from Sachsenhausen with the help of fellow Witnesses because they transported him in a cart belonging to the SS.

7 Joseph Rehwald, from Königsberg, was first sent to Stuhm prison (East Prussia) and then to Sachsenhausen camp because he refused military service. From his family of eight, four brothers (two were executed), one sister, and his mother were imprisoned for adhering to their faith.

8 Gerrit Benink (Netherlands) with his tin container that served as a bowl for soup and other food. After his arrest in March 1941, he was sent to the camps in Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme; he was freed on May 5, 1945.

 9 Because they were active Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hildegard and Ernst Seliger endured a combined total of more than 40 years of confinement under the Nazi regime and Communist rule in East Germany.

10 In August 1940, Victor Bruch (Luxembourg) was arrested and passed through several concentration camps, such as Buchenwald, Lublin, Auschwitz, and Ravensbrück. After marching many days, he was freed on May 3, 1945, together with 49 other Witnesses.

11 Max Henning, arrested in the Netherlands in March 1943, was imprisoned in Rotterdam, Scheveningen, and Vught, as well as at Buchenwald camp. He was freed on April 11, 1945.

12 Gertrud Poetzinger, who worked underground for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Munich and Silesia, was sent to prison and to Ravensbrück camp. In 1943, she was assigned to look after the children of an SS family in Oranienburg. Her husband, Martin, endured years of detention at Dachau and at Mauthausen camp. They were reunited after the war, in 1945.

13 The Gestapo arrested Evert and Ansje Dost (Netherlands) in March 1942. Evert was sent to the camps in Amersfoort and Neuengamme, and Ansje to Ravensbrück camp. Both were freed in May 1945.