The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum records that of the 25,000 to 30,000 Germans who were Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1933 about 20,000 remained active through the Nazi period, that about half of those were convicted and sentenced at some point, that at least 3,000 were sent to concentration camps, that an estimated 1,000 German Witnesses died or were murdered in camps and prisons together with 400 Witnesses from other countries, and that at least 273 were sentenced to death by military courts for refusing military service and were executed. The museum’s Experiencing History resource, citing Detlef Garbe, gives roughly 10,000 imprisoned, roughly 1,200 dead and around 250 executed.

Confidence note. The page’s HTML was downloaded and read directly on 19 September 2026, again for an independent audit, and a third time for a second adversarial audit on the same day; the sentences quoted here were taken from the raw text, not from a summary. The page carries no publication or revision date, so the date recorded is the date it was read. The first ellipsis stands for two sentences: one saying that the remainder fled Germany, renounced their faith or confined their worship to the family, and one giving the proportion of those remaining active who were convicted and sentenced. The second stands for the parenthesis listing the nationalities of the camp prisoners and for the paragraph break that follows it. The quotation stops at “from other countries”, where the museum’s sentence continues “, including about 90 Austrians and 120 Dutch persons.”

Notes. The article makes no mention of the June 1933 Berlin convention or of the Declaration of Facts.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-ushmm-persecution

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Confidence note. The page’s HTML was downloaded and read directly on 19 September 2026, including the footnotes, and again for an independent audit. The footnote quoted in the context note is the note attached to the sentence quoted here.

Notes. A footnote on the same page states: “More than 25,000 Witnesses lived in Germany when the Nazis rose to power, and roughly 10,000 were imprisoned during the years of Nazi rule. About 2,000 German Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps, and scholars estimate that roughly 1,200 died under Nazi rule. Around 250 Jehovah’s Witnesses were executed, mostly for refusing military service”, citing Garbe p. 484. The body of the page states that “in June 1933, the Nazi regime banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from meeting, preaching, or distributing their publications.”

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-ushmm-experiencing-history

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Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026; the entry falls between the pageNum markers for pp. 720 and 721.

Notes. The entry gives no figure for deaths.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-jv-chronology

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