christians what do you think of this please read ? i no its long?

From SS Officer to Servant of the True God

As told by Gottlieb Bernhardt

I was an officer serving in the German SS, Hitler’s elite guard, at Wewelsburg Castle. In April 1945, I received an order to execute prisoners at a nearby concentration camp. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The SS demanded unquestioning obedience to authority. This put me in a moral dilemma. Let me explain why.

I WAS born in 1922 in a village near the Rhine River in Germany. Although the area was strongly Roman Catholic, our family belonged to a Pietist group, a religious movement that originated in the 17th century. In 1933, when I was 11 years old, Hitler came to power in Germany. A few years later, because I excelled academically as well as in sports, I was selected to attend an academy near Marienburg, now Malbork, in Poland. There, hundreds of miles from home, I was immersed in National Socialist, or Nazi, ideology. Students were taught such things as honor, diligence, loyalty, obedience, a sense of duty, and a hallowed respect for our German heritage.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Enter My Life

In late 1944, Himmler assigned me as personal adjutant to an SS general who was commander of the Wewelsburg Castle, a 400-year-old fortress near the city of Paderborn. Himmler planned to make Wewelsburg into a cult center for SS ideology. Near the fortress was a small concentration camp called Niederhagen, which housed a special category of inmates—Jehovah’s Witnesses, also called Bible Students.

An inmate named Ernst Specht came several times to treat my injuries. “Good morning, Sir,” he would say.

“Why do you not say ‘Heil Hitler!’?” I demanded.

He tactfully replied, “Were you raised as a Christian?”

“Yes,” I said. “I had a Pietist upbringing.”

“Then,” he continued, “you will know that the Bible promises salvation (heil) through only one person, Jesus Christ. That is why I cannot say ‘Heil Hitler!’”

Both astonished and impressed, I asked, “Why are you here?”

“I am a Bible Student,” he said.

Conversations with Ernst and another Witness, Erich Nikolaizig, who worked as a hairdresser, touched my heart. Such discussions were forbidden, however, and my commanding officer ordered me to stop. Nevertheless, I felt that if everyone in Germany—a so-called Christian land with millions of church members—had behaved as the Witnesses did, there would have been no war. ‘They ought to be admired, not persecuted,’ I thought.

During that time, a distraught widow phoned to ask for transport for her son, who urgently needed to have his appendix removed. I promptly ordered transport, only to have the order rescinded by my commanding officer. Why? Her husband had been executed as a member of a group that attempted to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. The boy died, and I could do nothing about it. That incident plays on my conscience to this day.

Although I was only in my early 20’s, I began to see life as it really is—not as Nazi propaganda presented it. At the same time, my admiration for Jehovah’s Witnesses and their teachings grew. This, in turn, led to the most dramatic decision of my life.

In April 1945, Allied armies were approaching, and my superior officer fled Wewelsburg. A unit then arrived with orders from Himmler to destroy the fortress and kill the prisoners. The commander of the nearby concentration camp handed me a list of inmates to be executed—all Witnesses. Why? They reportedly knew the location of art treasures plundered by the Third Reich, works of art that had apparently been hidden in some of the buildings. That secret could not get out! So, what should I do about the execution order?

I approached the camp commander and said: “American troops are coming. Don’t you think it would be wise for you and your men to leave?” He needed little persuasion! I then did the unthinkable for an SS officer—I disobeyed an order, and the Witnesses lived.