Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted because they adhered to the Bible’s teachings. When the Nazi state demanded that the Witnesses do what the Bible forbids, the Witnesses refused to comply. They chose to “obey God as ruler rather than men.” (Acts 5:​29) Consider two areas in which they made that choice.

Professor Robert Gerwarth concludes that Jehovah’s Witnesses were “the only group in the Third Reich to be persecuted on the basis of their religious beliefs alone.” Fellow concentration-camp prisoners came to admire Jehovah’s Witnesses for their firm stand. One Austrian prisoner observed: “They do not go to war. They would rather be killed than kill anyone else.”