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PAPA FROST

Translated by Brian Gale

The following translation from German needs to be read in conjunction with

a) Issue 60 of the Reachout Quarterly (Watch the Tower, p.6), especially with reference to Erich Frost, overseer of the Watchtower Branch Office in Germany. (Summer 2000).

b) Article from the Watchtower, 15 March 1988, entitled FORWARD YOU WITNESSES, painting a rosy picture of Erich Frost's life under the Nazis.

From DER SPIEGEL (MIRROR) 19.7.61

Thousands of carpenters, fitters and labourers, masses of voluntary, unpaid assistants, are in the process of transforming the large festival ground of the Hamburg municipal park into an open air kingdom hall.

Full of missionary zeal these sectarian people, who have their origins in America, preach that God must justify himself before the world, because he has allowed Lucifer to corrupt people, countries and churches, including the Pope in Rome.

In this Hansa city hall without a roof the Witnesses will be convening an international congress from 18th to 23rd July with delegates from 50 countries. 75,000 chairs will be put up for these days of enlightenment, also marquees for supplies, with 12000 flowers being planted. In the midst of this floral stage, the Jehovah congregation will be represented by a kind of trinity, consisting of the president of the world-wide organisation, Mr Nathan Homer Knorr from Brooklyn, New York. The president of the German branch of Jehovah's Witnesses, branch servant , Konrad Franke from Wiesbaden, Franke's predecessor, Erich Frost.

The 60 year old Frost is looked upon in this triumvirate as the ideological authority. He leads the Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society in Wiesbaden, which is the 'spiritual' centre of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany, and besides is editor of the Watchtower.

Papa Frost, as he is called in trusted circles because of the geniality, will be using this worthy framework to commemorate the 2000 victims of the Hitler regime, through which his sect suffered.

The role however, which Frost himself played on this path of suffering, is indeed, represented somewhat differently in captured Gestapo files. Prior to the Hamburg congress the former cafe musician Frost, had published in the Watchtower, freedom 'freedom from total inquisition through belief in God'

Since the Jehovah's Witnesses could only operate covertly in the underground in the N.S. era, Frost was given the job (office) of the so called 'Servant of the Reich'. The Reich Servant was the supreme official or functionary for Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany; under him were the district servants, then those below them the area and branch officials. Now because the servants of Jehovah had rebelled boldly against the Third Reich, maintaining that Hitler Germany was also the work of the devil (Lucifer), the Fuhrer's decree after 1933 soon came upon them, i.e., complete dissolution, offices and printing presses were closed, the Society's finances were transferred to the party's own communal charity, whilst all publications were confiscated.

The Witnesses were not going to be put off by such harassment's. In 1936 a Jehovah's Witness Convention in Lucerne decided to instigate a massive leaflet drop in Germany against the banning of the cult; very soon Frost was able to announce the prompt completion of the task. On the 12th September between 5 and 7 p.m leaflets with the Lucerne resolution were posted through doors unnoticed in all large cities - 300,000 in all. In addition to this foreign Jehovah's Witnesses sent 20,000 telegrams of protest to His Excellency Hitler, Germany.

Although it was less dangerous in other countries Jehovah's Witnesses in Hitler Germany refused to engage in military service, even in times of peace, or as medical orderlies, ambulance men etc.

The 'bible students', who were in touch with the USA and Czechoslovakia were encouraged to refrain from giving the Hitler salute. The consequence was that many Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich ended up in prisons and concentration camps.

Even after the great wave of arrests in 1936 the organisation was still intact, since the supreme body remained anonymous. This all changed in 1937, when the Gestapo succeeded in detaining Frost, 'servant of the Reich. As Frost himself recalls:

"On Monday 21st March at 2 am there came a violent pounding and kicking at the front door. In a matter of seconds I thrust a thin roll of paper with important records and sketches into the mattress, then straight away 10 men from the secret police have entered: 'all right get dressed Frost, The game is up!'"

After this story, which would be more suitable for a film script, Frost did succeed at that time to hide the list of his faithful colleagues from the Gestapo. When Frost was later questioned by them, he realised from their "angry torrent of words" that the brothers had not fallen into the trap the police had laid."

During that period Frost had been pleading with Jehovah for days, as he now portrays in the 'Watchtower', "so that I would be able to remain silent for the sake of the brothers". In his tale of woe Frost has been giving the impression that he was withstanding his inquisitors indeed like "Daniel in the lions den".

In the custodial report book No. 292 of the secret police in Berlin, section II B 2, things were reported quite differently. According to the statements to hand, which were signed by Frost, this servant of Jehovah had reported in some detail concerning his charges, and specifically on the 2nd, 15th, 20th, 21st, 24th, 26th and 29th April 1937.

According to the investigation statement Frost portrayed in considerable detail the activities of Alderney off the French foreshore - as an SS construction unit."

Frost now writing in his 'Watchtower' article,

"On this channel island on a starlit night I observed the invasion of the allies".

This special 'Watchtower' edition is then pressed into the hand of each delegate of the Hamburg Congress for a better understanding of Frosts 'recollections', at the end of his report the former Reich servant unexpectedly quotes the Swedish journalist Bjorn Hallstrom, who commented on the sufferings of the Jehovah's Witnesses under Hitler,

"because of their belief in God they succeeded more than all others in surviving these things."