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Foreword

For the first two decades of his life, Max Liebster knew the town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) only as his father’s birthplace. Liebster grew up in an observant Jewish home in a small German town, but as a teenager, he was transplanted to urban life, where his bustling routine left him oblivious to the gathering Nazi storm clouds. In late 1938, the pogrom dubbed “Crystal Night” abruptly changed things; Liebster was suddenly overtaken by the rushing tide of hatred. Young Max embarked on a nightmarish sojourn that would eventually lead him back to the place of his father’s birth. In the camp at Auschwitz, Max became an eyewitness to the Nazi program of annihilation of the European Jews. Liebster survived, largely through a series of fortunate coincidences and help from unexpected quarters. Max Liebster’s vivid story describes the experiences of most German Jews— from initial disbelief over the virulence of Nazi antisemitism to the final agonies of the camps. Liebster’s language is not designed to present a gruesome account, but his description of his experiences in five camps does nevertheless convey the terrible reality he witnessed and survived.

While he was en route to Sachsenhausen, Liebster’s story departs dramatically from the familiar. By chance, he encounters an intriguing phenomenon—a group of prisoners known as the purple triangles. The purple triangle was borne by the Bibelforscher, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were prisoners of conscience, stubbornly committed to their principled nonviolence, and indomitable and brash in their condemnation of Hitler’s regime. In Neuengamme, Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses are thrown together. Liebster gives us a close-up view of a victim group that seldom appears in the historiography of the Nazi era, a group that resisted Nazi indoctrination even in the concentration camps. Liebster becomes absorbed in the ideological battle he sees, for whereas the Nazis gave Jews no options for release, the Witnesses could gain their freedom, if they would just renounce their religious beliefs, something most Witnesses refused to do. Liebster, who later converted, was so profoundly affected by the purple triangles that he was moved to bear witness about their uncommon courage in the face of evil. This book is an expression of Liebster’s determination to bring their little-known history to light.

In recent years scholars have focused greater attention on the non-Jewish victims of the Nazi era. A few historians have begun to fill in the historical gaps regarding the Nazi persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Max Liebster’s memoir adds an important, humanizing chapter to a story that deserves to be known.

Henry Friedlander,

Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies

City University of New York