{"id":6150,"date":"2022-03-13T15:13:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T12:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6150"},"modified":"2022-03-13T15:14:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T12:14:26","slug":"israel-opens-holocaust-exhibit-honoring-jehovahs-witnesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/israel-opens-holocaust-exhibit-honoring-jehovahs-witnesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel opens Holocaust exhibit honoring Jehovah’s Witnesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0new exhibit<\/a>\u00a0called \u201cWedontdothat\u201d remembering the thousands of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses who were persecuted by the Nazis opened last week at Israel\u2019s Center for Humanistic Education of the Ghetto Fighters.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yaron Tzur, head of the educational department at the Center for Humanistic Education of the Ghetto Fighters’ House, unveils a new exhibit honoring Jehovah’s Witnesses<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are\u00a0Christians<\/a>\u00a0who were murdered during the Holocaust because they refused to cooperate with the Nazis and renounce their faith despite extreme pressure. They were known then as\u00a0Bibelforscher<\/em>\u00a0(German for Bible students). They were rounded up and taken to camps as early as 1933.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regime considered breaking the Witnesses\u2019 religious convictions a greater victory than killing them or placing them in camps,\u201d the local Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses spokesperson Trey Upshur explained in a release. \u201cThus, the Nazis tried to tempt the Witnesses with the opportunity to avoid execution and be released from the camp if they signed an\u00a0Erkl\u00e4rung<\/em>\u00a0pledging to renounce their faith, report other Witnesses to the police, fully submit to the Nazi government and defend the \u2018Fatherland\u2019 with weapons in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibit\u2019s name, \u201cWedontdothat\u201d is named for a young Witness, Joachim Alfermann, who resisted Nazi pressure and was imprisoned. Despite immense pressure that ranged from beatings and detention in a concentration camp, the story goes, Alfermann insisted, \u201cWe don\u2019t do that\u201d and stood up for his faith.<\/p>\n

Museum manager Yigal Cohen called the Witnesses \u201can important point of light in the darkness that enveloped the world on all sides back then\u201d during the exhibit\u2019s opening on March 7, according to a release.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlongside the Jews who were murdered for various reasons were millions of other people, just because they belonged to a group that was defined by the Nazis as not deserving to live,\u201d said the exhibition\u2019s curator Yaara Galor. \u201cEach such group has its own unique story, and its tragedy deserves to be remembered in a broad mosaic of memory that has an equal place for all victims of Nazism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are politically neutral, according to a representative of the Witnesses in Israel, David Simozrag. There are around 8.6 million worldwide, including 2,000 in Israel.<\/p>\n

The exhibit will remain open until March of next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0new exhibit\u00a0called \u201cWedontdothat\u201d remembering the thousands of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses who were persecuted by the Nazis opened last week at Israel\u2019s Center for Humanistic Education of the Ghetto Fighters. Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses are\u00a0Christians\u00a0who were murdered during the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6153,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions\/6153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}