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Jehovah’s Witnesses, a peaceful religious group, are taking legal action against the German government to demand a family archive documenting the Nazis’ persecution of the Christian sect.
The archive consists of 31 files related to the Kusserow family, who were arrested, imprisoned and killed by the Nazi regime for their beliefs.
It is held by the Military History Museum in Dresden, operated by the German army since 2009 when it was purchased from a member of the Kusserow family.
A German district court rejected Jehovah’s Witnesses’ claim last year, saying the museum had purchased the archive in good faith and should keep it. However, the religious group is contesting this decision, arguing that the family member who sold it is not the real owner of the archive bequeathed in the will of Annemarie Kusserow, the family member who collected and cared for Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2005. documents.
Wolfram Slupina, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany, said that keeping the archive in the museum “deprives us of an important and invaluable part of our cultural heritage.”
The archive documents the lives and sufferings of the devout Jehovah’s Witnesses Franz and Hilda Kusserow family, who raised their 11 children in a large house in Bad Lippspringe, northern Germany, when the Nazis came to power. Jehovah’s Witnesses were the first religious sect to be banned, and the Kusserows’ home was searched 18 times by the Gestapo for religious materials.
In 1939, the three youngest children were abducted from their school and sent to a Nazi training school, where they were denied contact with their families. Franz, Hilda and the other children were all sentenced to prison. Two of the brothers, Wilhelm and Wolfgang, were executed as conscientious objectors.
On April 26, 1940, the evening before his execution, Wilhelm sent a letter to his family.
“You all know how important you are to me and every time I look at our family photo I am reminded of that over and over,” she wrote. “Nevertheless, we must first of all love God, as commanded by our Leader, Jesus Christ. If we stand up for him, he will reward us.”
Wilhelm’s farewell letter – and his brother Wolfgang’s – are among the documents in the family archive.
About 1,600 Jehovah’s Witnesses died as a result of Nazi persecution. About 4,200 people were sent to concentration camps and were identified by a purple triangular badge attached to their camp uniforms.
They were the only persecuted people with the option to end incarceration: If they signed a statement announcing that they renounced their faith, they were liberated. Very few people agreed to sign, Slupina said.
Before she died, archivist Annemarie Kusserow lent documents to her sister Hans Werner Kusserow to make copies of a book she had written.
Although Annemarie’s will stipulated that the documents go to the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Selters, a small town northwest of Frankfurt, her brother, who was not a member of the faith, sold them to the Dresden museum for less than $5,000.
He has also since died; Only Paul-Gerhard, Hilda and Franz Kusserow’s youngest child, survives. 90 years old.
“My brothers died because they refused to join military service,” said Paul-Gerhard Kusserow. “I don’t think it’s right that this legacy should be kept in a military museum anywhere.”
A spokesperson for the Military History Museum declined to comment on the legal battle. The permanent exhibition of the museum includes two documents from the archive, in a section about the victims of the Nazis; Spokesperson Kai-Uwe Reinhold wrote in an email that four items, including Wilhelm’s farewell letter, are on display at an exhibition about resistance to the regime.
“The inclusion of various objects from the Küsserow archive in the permanent exhibition is of great value to the museum and the public,” wrote Reinhold. “These objects bear witness and are a powerful reminder of the fact that freedom of religion and fixed beliefs are not natural issues and must be defended and fought for over and over.”
Slupina said that during the pre-trial negotiations, the Dresden museum offered to give the religious organization copies of all the documents in the archive. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses rejected this offer.
Armin Pikl, lawyer for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said the museum’s proposal to lend the group original documents not on display in Dresden was rejected by the museum’s lawyers. Jehovah’s Witnesses filed suit in April 2021.
The district court that ruled last year found that Hans Werner Kusserow did not steal the archive and rightfully owned the archive at the time of sale, so it was legitimate regardless of who the legal owner was.
However, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the group owned and remained at that time, and that the archive was sold without the consent of their surviving siblings or Jehovah’s Witnesses. “It wasn’t his to sell,” said Jarrod Lopes, the group’s New York-based international spokesperson.
Pikl also contested the court’s view that Jehovah’s Witnesses made the purchase in good faith, arguing that the museum should have known from correspondence with Hans Werner Kusserow that it does not own the archive or have the right to sell it. . In 2008 Hans Werner wrote a letter to a museum employee stating that he and his two surviving siblings had agreed to “long-term loan” of the archive to the museum. A representative of Jehovah’s Witnesses was also in touch with the museum regarding the loan. The group argues that the museum must have deduced from this contact that Hans Werner was not authorized to sell the archive.
Slupina said the group is expanding its facilities, including its permanent exhibit at Selters. “The fate of this family is very closely linked to the fate of Jehovah’s Witnesses,” said Slupina. “We are very enthusiastic about having these documents taken care of by us.”
Special mention of the suffering of Jehovah’s Witnesses is often omitted in Holocaust records or memorials; These are often vague references to “other groups of victims,” Slupina said. While there are memorials to murdered Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and euthanasia victims in Berlin, there is no memorial yet dedicated to Jehovah’s Witnesses killed by the Nazis. Green Party deputy Erhard Grundl called for a special monument to be built for the religious group in his speech to the parliament on 13 January.
A hearing on the appeal of Jehovah’s Witnesses is not yet scheduled.
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