The purple triangle was a concentration camp badge used by the Nazis to identify Bibelforscher (or "Bible Student") in Nazi Germany. Over 99% of these were Jehovah's Witnesses, but a small number of Adventists, Baptists, Bible Student splinter groups, and pacifists were also included. Nazism opposed unorthodox-Christian religious minorities (along with Jews), but made the Bible Students the object of particularly intense persecution, including such extensive incarceration that a distinct badge was assigned to them.
Video Purple triangle
Background
Jehovah's Witnesses came into conflict with the Nazi regime because they refused to use the Hitler salute, believing that it conflicted with their worship of God. Because refusing to use the Hitler salute was considered a crime, they were arrested, and their children attending school were expelled, detained and separated from their families. When Germany made military enlistment mandatory, they were persecuted because they refused to bear arms. Being politically neutral, they also refused to vote in the elections.
Based on Nuremberg Laws, those who were also classified as ethnic Jews wore a badge comprising a purple triangle superimposed on a yellow triangle.
Maps Purple triangle
See also
- Identification in Nazi camps
- Nazi concentration camp badges
- Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany
- Religion in Nazi Germany
References
External links
- Jehovah's Witnesses Stand Firm Against Nazi Assault
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum summary
- "Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany" University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- "Jehovah's Witnesses in National Socialist concentration camps, 1933-45, by Johannes S. Wrobel, Religion, State and Society vol. 34, no. 2 (June 2006), 89-125
- Purple Triangles: A Story of Spiritual Resistance by Jolene Chu, originally published in Judaism Today, No. 12, Spring 1999
- Purple Triangle: An Untold Story of the Holocaust
- They Triumphed Over Persecution, The Watchtower March 1, 2003
- Garbe, Detlef (2008). Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in association with University of Wisconsin Press.
- Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Distributor) (1991). Purple Triangles (VHS). United States of America: Starlock Pictures.
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