Consolation, December 19, 1945

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Contents

The Twentieth-Century Inquisition .

Buchenwald

Dachau

Lublin

\ Other Places of Infamy

I Belsen

* Oswieeim

. 15th- and 20th-Century Inquisitions Compared 10

Crematories, Past and Present

“What! I Didn’t Know St. Paul

Was a Catholic”

“A Colorful Ceremony”

“Thy Word Is Truth”

Celebrating the Wrong Date

Milam and Townes Are Out by Now

“So Many Nice Things About It”

Progress of the Hierarchy in the Empire 19

Protestants Know of the Bible

Bible Publishing “Scandal”

“Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge”

Accord Between Japan and the Hierarchy 22

Hierarchy and Mikado Are Pals

Atop the Beast in the Philippines

“Every Other Soldier Attended Mass”

An Ode to McGuffey’s Sixth Reader

James the First and the English Bible

No Bishop, No King

20,000 Errors?■

Published every other Wednesday by WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, INC. 117 Adams St.. Brooklyn 1, N. Y., U. S. A. OFFICERS President N. H. Knorr

Secretary W. E. Van Amburgh

Editor Clayton J. Woodworth

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In Brief ,

British Agriculture and Husbandry

♦ P. C. Loftus, member of Parliament, warned Britain not to destroy soil as it has been so terribly destroyed in recent years in the United States, Australia, Canada, Africa, and Asia, but to plan to get out of the soil the best crops and the best people that the soil will produce. On the island of Jersey, now returned to Britain, potatoes may be dug in June, and tomatoes planted in their places are ripe in September. Land sells at as much as $1,500 an acre, and 20 acres is a big farm.

Ninety varieties of plants, lost to sight of mankind, were brought to light as a result of the bombing of London. The nitrates in the bombs fed the seeds that were in the sides .of the craters so that they germinated. Then the botanists got on the job and identified the plants.

In January, 1945, in Yorkshire, hundreds of sheep were buried when (and conditions were the same in America) the roads were blocked by snowdrifts fifteen feet deep.

“Labor” Sees One Side of It

♦ The periodical Labor is devoted to the interests of workingmen. It is silent as to the part played by Big Church in enslaving humanity, and it tries to be neutral as to Big Politics. But it is not silent and it is not neutral regarding the Big Business wing of Satan’s world. Here is its view as to how Mussolini and Hitler came to power:

They were put in power by the big industrialists and financiers of Germany and Italy, with big business men and financiers of other countries applauding and even helping the game along. They wanted the two as dictators to smash labor unions and destroy democracy. They furnished the huge sums which put over Fascism and Nazism . , , they wanted the profits from arming Germany and from arming other countries to meet the German threat.

CONSOLATION

CONSOLATION

“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A.S. V.

Volume XXVII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, December 19. 1945 Number 685

The Twentieth-Century Inquisition

SHOCKING indeed have been the reported atrocities committed in concentration camps of Nazified Europe, so shocking that sane men rebel against believing that fellow creatures could sink to the level of committing such outrages. At first these reports are discounted as too horrible to be true. '

This natural tendency on the part of upright men has made it an easy matter for the instigators of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages to cover over those bloody events with doubt and suspicion as to their truthfulness. However, the atrocious things that happened in that period of man’s history are overshadowed by events of recent date that are even more terrible. So if one finds it hard to believe the history of the reign and rage of the “Holy” Roman Empire because time has somewhat dimmed the account, then let him turn his attention to recent happenings and consider with all sobriety the unmeasurable depths into which men have fallen in an effort to bend and break the will of individuals by an iron rule of Church and State.

Representatives from the legislative bodies of Great Britain and America, and noted newspaper editors and publishers, made a special investigation into the concentration camp conditions. Their combined testimony corroborated the earlier reports and gave added assurance that these things actually did occur.

No one wants to believe these things, but it is important that people know they’re true. —Representative Clare Boothe Luce.

What I saw was so horrible that I would not have believed it if 1 had not seen it myself. —Harold Denny.

There has been no exaggeration. It beggars description.—Sir Henry Morris-Jones.

This is the most horrible thing that anyone could conceive.—Representative Manasco.

Was every bit as bad as we had heard. —Earl Stanhope.

A most sadistic, cruel, hellish thing.—Mr. Edwards, M.P.

If you tried to tell the actual facts you’d get into a story of obscenity and filth that would be unprintable.—Representative Kunkel.

I’ve seen all the horrors of war, but never anything to touch that.—Brigadier Hughes.

This is barbarism at its worst.—Representative Canfield.

These personages together with other noted correspondents of the public press have given gripping eyewitness accounts of such grisly places as Buchenwald, Dachau, Belsen, Lublin, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Nordhausen, and Oswiecim, as well as less known places: Hadamar, Heiligenstadt, Karlsruhe, Kaufbeuren, Mauthausen, Mieste, Thek-la, Westerwegen, etc.

When reading about these prison camps and their dirty deeds one is forcibly struck with the great similarity between them and the torture chambers of the infamous Inquisition of former years. Students of history will do well, therefore, to briefly consider these sickening accounts.

Buchenwald

This camp located in the woods three miles northwest of Weimar was made up of males only except for a brothel of regimented Polish women for the use of the SS (Elite Guards). There were French, Hungarian, Polish, Yugoslav, Russian, Netherland, Belgian, Austrian, Italian, Czechoslovak, and German nationalists here as well as anti-Franco Spaniards. These were brought to work and to die in an underground factory called “Dora” where the V-l robot bombs were assembled. Also the intelligentsia and those of leadership were in this horror camp. The official report made to SHAEF showed there were doctors, scientists, professors (including some from the Pasteur Institute and the Universities of Paris and Caen), statesmen, diplomats and high-ranking army personnel (General Vermeau, one-time chief of staff of the French Army). There were also engineers, lawyers, merchants, editors and other professional men in Buchenwald.

Normal capacity of the camp was 80,000, although at times 110,000 were packed in. A month before it was overrun there were 82,000 held. Then, when the pressure of the Allied drive began to be felt, in the early part of April 11,000 were set out on a forced march under heavy guard. Along the road they took there was a stream of blood, for the weak ones that lagged were shot. When this column was finally overreached by the fast-advancing Allies, the SS guards in a last and frenzied madness shot hundreds with their automatics and stacked them up to make a human roadblock. Only a small percentage of the 11,000 that left Buchenwald are numbered among the living today.

On April 12, when Buchenwald was finally taken, there were found 'only twenty or thirty thousand prisoners, half-dead from starvation. A sickening sight, even for hardened soldiers, upon entering this camp, were the dead bodies that were piled up like cordwood outside the barracks. Inside of these shacks were shelves, not beds, upon which the emaciated forms of those who were still able to breathe lay rotting away. Their faces and bodies were shriveled and dried up, and many were too weak to do more than roll their eyes. These had suffered some of the most brutal tortures. Harold Denny, correspondent for the New York Times, says he was “told of punishments inflicted by the SS guards so depraved and so obscene that I could never tell them except to other men in whispers”.

Over a gate leading to a newer section of the camp was a sign reading: “Hygiene Institute of Waffen SS.” Here were extensive laboratories where the prisoners were used as human “guinea pigs” for experimental purposes. The German army needed typhus serum, but they would not spare horses for producing it. Why, that would be an extravagant waste! Did they not have thousands of unfortunate men they could use? What of it if the death rate did run up to 98 percent? So the “scientists” of Naziland injected the poisons of typhus and other infectious diseases into the lifestream of their victims in “medical tests”.

Wholesale Killings

The main purpose this camp served was that of an extermination factory. Death by starvation, torture and beatings, death because of crowded sleeping .conditions and sickness, and death as . “guinea pigs” were all too slow for the heel-clicking inquisitors. So a modern brick slaughterhouse was erected. It had multiple gibbets where many could be hung at one time. Also an arrangement where a whole truckload of prisoners could be quickly disposed of by pushing them one at a time in quick succession down a concrete chute. At the bottom were “super men” who either strangled or brained them. The lifeless forms were then elevated to the next floor, where the gold and silver fillings were removed from their teeth before cremation.

The official report submitted to SHAEF says regarding this disposal plant with its ovens, it was “a striking

example of German industrial efficiency”. In a ten-hour day it was possible to cremate about 400 bodies. The time required to reduce to bone ash was 15 or 20 minutes. On one occasion, when there was a shortage of coal for a ten-day period and 1,800 bodies piled up, the internees were organized to dig a huge pit and bury the dead. After the job was finished the SS guards with customary ruthlessness shot the crew that had dug the pit and tossed them in for good measure. Statistics of monthly deaths show from five to six thousand. They had their quotas that had to be met and they met them!

Antique and trophy collectors should be righteously indignant about this gruesome item: There was found in Buchenwald a large collection of human “parchments” with elaborate tattooed markings on them.

These belonged to a ,

''"doctor” who was preparing a treatise on tattooing. Also the wife of the camp commandant, a 28-year-old "sportswoman”, had a hobby of collecting tattoo designs. So when a prisoner arrived with unusual markings he was set aside for this despicable "daughter of Nimrod”. In time he was skinned; the skin being taken and carefully tanned to preserve it. Testifying to this diabolical practice were found “two large table lamps, with parchment shades also made of human flesh”.—-New York Times. '

This has been only a meager sketch of Buchenwald; for the stench, filth, misery * and suffering defies description. It was a terrible spectacle to behold. When some 1,200 inhabitants of the near-by city of Weimar were taken on a forced “tour” of this slaughter pen scores of them fainted, including German nurses, while to the eyes of the strong tears came. Another who saw this horror camp said: "To me, the living are more heartrending than the dead, as* they seem half alive, are only skin and bones and have an awful glassy look.” (From a letter to New York Times, June 5,1945)

Map showing a few of the Nazi concentration camps

Dachau

One of the oldest concentration camps in Germany was Dachau. It was near Munich, in Catholic1 Bavaria, where Hitler came to power, and it was organized at the beginning of his reign of terror in 1933, under the nose of Cardinal Faulhaber. With the exception of being closed for a few months in 1935 it ran continuously until finally closed on April 29, 1945. Over 200,000 victims of this modern Inquisition were thrown in, but only 30,000 were alive when rescued' by the Allied armies. Says the New York Times (May 9, 1945):

One of the worst deathtraps seen by the party [of United States editors] was a gas chamber at Dachau disguised as a bathhouse. Mr. Seymour [executive editor of the Minne-

apolis Star Journal] described it as a room about 30 by 20 feet square, with twenty-five rows of perforated pipes overhead. There were no water connections to the showers, but instead the pipes were supplied from the same gas pipes that led to the cremation chambers.

The prisoners who were doomed to die would be brought in, provided with towels and soap, in the belief that they were to have baths, while the real purpose was to kill them in the gas chamber.

Lublin

The annihilation camp at Lublin, Poland, was of the latest design. It was built in 1941 and was calculated to hold 40,000 persons. Papers were found showing that 18 nationalities “went up the chimney” in the short time this plant was in operation. Covering a huge area, 25 square kilometers, it contained every device of torture and instrument of extermination that the modern age of science and invention could produce for inquisitors—gas chambers, crematory ovens and all—built right in.

Hospitals and Asylums

Many of the so-called “insane asylums” and “hospitals” were nothing more than destruction plants of the Nazi hierarchy. At the “hospital” of Wiesloch detailed evidence of the “race culture” program was found. This consisted of sterilizing all Germans who did not reach the standard of the “master race”.

Alfons Klein, supervisor of the Hadamar “murder mill”, alias insane asylum, said that the 400 Russians and Polish slave laborers, men, women and children, were done away with as “mercy killings”. They were administered fatal drugs that took all the way from fifteen minutes to two hours to kill them. It has been said that during rush hours some of them may have been buried alive. And what about the death certificate? Oh, that was taken care of with the same efficiency as all the other details of this Inquisition. A monster by the name of Adolf Merkle falsified the records to read that they died of lung diseases.

At Kaufbeuren there was an asylum for German imbecile children and deranged adults. These were supposedly to have been killed by injections so there would be no pain, but when this institution was investigated they discovered the bodies of nine adults that had died of starvation and whose carcasses weighed only 54 to 66 pounds.

Men Burned Alive

At Thekla 300 charred bodies were found which added positive proof to the eyewitness account. These men had been slave laborers in a factory next door only a few days before. In a delirium of madness their guards forced them into a shed and then threw in incendiary hand grenades. In a minute the place was afire and burned for four hours.

Similar demonic methods were employed at Mieste. Here the gangster in charge of the camp, in trying to evacuate it before the Allied advance, herded 1,100 prisoners into a brick warehouse and commanded Hitler youths to turn the place into an inferno by igniting the gasoline-soaked straw on the floor. Only six were so fortunate as to escape. The charred bodies of the rest remained to be viewed by thousands of American soldiers. Those silent embers spoke volumes.

Other Places of Infamy

Mauthausen. This was a large camp located in Austria having 2,000 SS (Elite Guards). In connection therewith was a quarry where men wore away their lives as slaves carrying heavy rocks up 168 steps out of its torturous pit. Under the lashes of dried oxtail whips, and the threat of being shot if they dropped their loads, they labored and groaned. Among the many thousands of cremated victims of this camp were the bones of 48 Allied parachutists.

Thf.resienstadt. Located at Terezin, Czechoslovakia, this was one of the supply ghettoes for the great crematory furnaces located across the border at

Oswieeim, Poland. When the Russians made a surprise march on this camp they liberated some 30,000 before the Gestapo had time to dispose of therti.

WnsTERWEGEN. In this eamp were found one thousand soldiers of the German army. Some were accused of desertion, theft, and sexual offenses, while the majority were guilty only of the “crime” of speaking of defeatism against the government. The torturous punishment meted out to all of these alike was “death by slow starvation”. The diet, therefore, consisted of black bread, watered soup, and an occasional potato. Thus they ,were made to hang between life and death for a long time.

Heilioenstadt. Three hundred women ranging in age from sixteen to sixty were released from this vile cistern. They were French, Polish, Netherland and German women who had been caught in the Inquisitional dragnet, and here they had lived in filth and squalor for many months. None of them were criminals, yet beatings with rubber clubs were a regular thing for them.

Ravensbruck. This particular camp was for women and children only, of all nationalities. If the fiendish crimes perpetrated against these helpless creatures were related it would make the most hardened criminal cry. The Associated Press dispatch tells of the capture of two SS women who had been guards in Ravensbruck. These testified to the fact that feeble inmates were made to stand in water up to their necks for 24 hours, and as a result many dead bodies had to be daily fished out of this pool of death. Over 200,000 innocent women and children were slain there during the war.

Maidekek. It has been estimated that one million three hundred and eighty thousand were put to death in this one camp alone. This is so large a figure that it taxes the belief of a normal person, yet it is an undeniable figure. Ruthlessly put to .death at Maidenek—-1,380,000! Paul Hoffman, the “Mad Man of Maidenek”, who was the former chief of the camp, has been seized, but none of those poor unfortunates have returned to life,

Nordhausen-. This camp supplied slave workers for a great underground war plant that had a mile-long assembly line for the V-l and V-2 bombs. Representative Clare Boothe Luce, in describing this camp, said: .

And slow starvation made it certain that they should all in the end die on the job; die, however, at a rate which would allow their replacement as other political prisoners were taken. '

It remained for the Nazis to hit upon this terrible device of using the blood and fat of men to stoke secret furnaces and fire secret weapons, as sheer fuel oil, and when it was used up, to scrap the human containers.

Yes, they literally scrapped the human bodies that had once contained life and health. When this camp was broken into by the American army, civilians of the near-by town were regimented to help bury the 2,500 putrid bodies that had been piled up around the place and discarded to rot and stink.

Uelsen

When the British took over this hideous concentration camp, also called Bergen-Belsen, they found the most appalling conditions imaginable. Here, living in the midst of 13,000 unburied and rotting bodies, were 1.2,000 men and 28,000 women and children, many of whom were naked. Little wonder that in the six weeks .that followed 13,000 more died and 11,000 had to be hospitalized. Harold Lepard, who served as an ambulance driver, said concerning the cleaning. up of Belsen: “We buried 25,000 during those first three weeks, in pits containing from 800 to 5,000 bodies. It was the only way to handle so many.” (Ann Arbor News)

Two hundred SS guards and twenty SS women were captured with' the camp. AH of these, including the fat, well-fed hussies, were put to work hauling out corpses by the wagonloads. The British found that women prisoners still alive

had been thrown in with thousands of dead bodies. “Deep under a pile of dead bodies on a truck, a woman’s hand waved feebly.” Someone said, “Pull her out, but she’ll probably die and be back in- the pile tomorrow.” (Ann Arbor News) < Josef Kramer, the commandant of this bloody slaughter pen, had seen duty at five different concentration camps. He earned for himself the title “The Beast of Belsen”, for he had proved himself very efficient in blotting out large numbers of innocent people. He personally supervised the herding of prisoners into the ghastly death chambers. The shouts of men and screams of women and cries of children lasted only a few minutes, then all was silent. After five minutes the doors were opened, and after another twenty minutes specially chosen prisoners were set to work removing the still

warm bodies. This job in itself was most repulsive, since it was a tangled mass of arms and legs and naked bodies covered with blood and excrement.

Before the bodies were cremated they were taken to the “barber” and “dentist”, where the hair was cut off arid the teeth were pulled out. Certain bodies of'women were ordered sent to the Strasbourg University instead of the crematory.

There were, however, worse things to be suffered in this slaughter factory than gassing. It was a camp ■where whole families were brought so that they could be torn from each other in the most cruel manner. “One man had seen his two chil-. dren killed right before his eyes; one was bayoneted and the other -was dashed against a wall. His wife was taken away and he never saw her again.” (Ann Arbor News) A Nazi savage named Men-gle, who styled himself a doctor, carried on experiments with injections in an effort to discover a drug that would cause instantaneous death. And during this carnival of blood the SS women guards, whom many regarded as more beastly than the men, entertained themselves by watching a large hound tear

feeble prisoners apart, and all- of that “jtfst for the sport o’f it".

Cannibalism >

As stated, Belsen was a destruction camp; destruction in every way, by torture, by gassing, and also by starvation. Starvation was not because Germany didn’t have enough food; for two days after the British took over they found 600 tons of potatoes and 120 tons of tinned meat with other foodstuff in a near-by town.

In a copyrighted article in the New York Herald Tribune appeared the testimony of Dr. Fritz Leo which was given before a war crimes court. Dr. Leo, who had been a prisoner for ten years, said:

I personally have seen cases of cannibalism involving at least two or three hundred corpses. I have seen ears cut off, cheeks cut off, parts of the back cut off, muscles of the arm cut off, and even parts of the -sexual organs cut off. I want to make it clear that the prisoners were driven to this only because of’the frenzy to which hunger whipped them. I myself have seen people with pieces of human flesh in their pockets or in their cooking utensils where they hoped to cook it later on. I have seen them cooking this flesh.

It was the wild hunger gnawing in their stricken bodies that drove those prisoners to such desperation.

The stench of Belsen will long be remembered as the symbol of totalitarian “culture”, for it was there that corpses were piled mountain high, green and swollen and stinking, to spread disease and death. Toward the end before liberation the death rate reached a thousand a day.

Oswiecim

It is impossible to picture a more hideous and despicable place than Belsen. And from the viewpoint of bare suffering, terror, and mutilation of all that is dear in life, that camp was, np doubt, equal to the worst. However, if we consider mere statistics, the number of

consolation

those that were put to death on an annual basis, we find that Belsen and all the other death camps were far behind the one located at Oswiecim, in Poland. This camp with its many compounds and divisions was also called Auschwitz.

“The atrocities at the Buchenwald, Dachau, Maidenek and Baby Yar Nazi camps pale into insignificance when compared to the incredible findings at Oswie-eim." (Chicago Sun) Operated on a round-the-clock basis, there were 10,000 to 12,000 murders daily. The Soviet Atrocity Commission has shown that about 1,000,000 persons were “processed” each year, and over 4,000,000 were killed in the short time it was in operation, in this, the largest inquisitional murder plant ever built I _ _

Says the report of the commission of Oswiecim: “The Hitlerites used all their methods of mass murder—poisoning, gas chambers, burning alive, artificial contamination with infectious diseases, shooting, beating, exhausting labor, hunger, all kinds of medical experiments on living people . . . Himmler personally inspected the camp to acquaint himself with the methods of mass _ murder and instruct his hangmen. On his orders the camp was enlarged and provided with fresh equipment for the extermination of mankind.” Continuing then, the Chicago Sun says:

Himmler selected Germany’s leading biologists, bio-chemists and physicians to conduct experiments. They carried out sterilization, inoculated victims with cancer, typhus and other diseases, tried out new poisons and tried to sterilize women by X ray.

Experiments first were conducted by physicians, but later by t ordinary nurses. Some individuals were responsible for the deaths of as many as 12,000 persons.

Before the end came to the camp itself the hospital was closed by the simple method of transferring the staff members to other places and sending all patients, 328 of them, to the gas chambers. This procedure was also followed in at least three other concentration camps,

Oswiecim was as modern as any slaughterhouse. Eyewitnesses say that Jewish men, women and children were killed in lots of 2,000 at a time. Some 1,750,000 Jews from all over Europe were destroyed in this one mill, according to the report of the United States War Refugee Board. They were driven into the gas chambers like 'cattle, and when there was no standing room and the doors could barely be shut the children were tossed in through the windows. Then poison gas with, the fancy name “Zyklon” was turned in to do its work.

After killing them en masse the hair of their heads and body was cut off and their teeth were pulled out. Warehouses containing thousands of pounds of human hair taken from an estimated 140,000 women was found in proof of this. The next step in the process was the crematory. Here in the great retorts the bodies of the misfortunates were reduced to a few pounds of smoldering ashes. In such a state there was no resemblance found of the once laughing and happy boys and girls, no more the swarthy youths and fair maidens, no more the fathers and mothers who dared to think and speak the truth. These had preferred torture and death rather than bow down and worship a monstrous and beastly government ruled by depraved men and devils, -

Big Business

But Oswiecim was no ordinary annihilation camp. This one was the pride of Nazi ingenuity. It took coal to run the crematory, and how could a country- already under the heavy burden of total war afford the fuel to run the furnaces? Their base minds reasoned that the energy necessary to dig graves could be used to build planes and robot bombs, and when the carcass became worn out and unproductive it could be roasted in the. crematory. But they must go farther. The ashes of the victims contained valuable phosphates that could be reclaimed

and used to cut down the overhead expense. There was to be no waste. The Chicago Sun reports that “the death camp was the site for a thriving superphosphate fertilizer factory . . . Great German firms, including I. G. Farben, amassed fortunes from the bodies of victims, including several hundred thousand women and children”. Oswiecim was a super-destruction institution with huge conveyor belts operating day and night for the handling of lifeless bodies from gas chamber to crematory, to fertilizer plant. And the trains that brought in the victims returned with clothes, shoes, hair, and fertilizer.

Josef Kramer, the “Beast of Belsen”, was once a commander in this camp and while he witnessed the cruel killings he had his orchestra entertain him with Strauss waltzes. It is reported that Anita Lasker, niece of Emmanuel Lasker, former world’s chess champion, was forced to play in this orchestra during such orgies while the victims were burned to death. After being in several concentration camps it is understandable why she declared with deep feeling and passion, "Oswiecim was the most horrible of all.’

Purpose of Camps

These camps of horror above mentioned, while having some individual markings, were all alike in purpose and design. The same fate was in store for all who entered their gates: daily torture and suffering, heavy work, lack of sleep, permanent hunger, and eventual deitfh. Lord Wright, chairman of United Nations War Crimes Commission, writing for the New York Times, says:

Torture was standardized: it was all according to plan. Beating with a rubber hose or iron bars or dog whips or wire-core bludgeons furnished with nails, crushing fingers in presses or by hammer blows, hanging up by wires around the fingers, wrenching out finger and toe nails, electric currents, and a long catalogue which I do not develop further.

It is almost incredible if it were not so fully vouched for by solid evidence.

The Congressional Report spoke of it as “a calculated and diabolic program of planned torture and extermination”. After viewing these frightful camps of destruction the eighteen American editors and publishers issued a statement. Among other things they said:

The conclusion is inescapable that the Nazis had a master plan for their political prison camps. That plan was based upon a policy of calculated and organized brutality. The evidence we have seen is not a mere assembling of local or unassociated incidents. It is convincing proof that brutality was the basic Nazi system and method.

This brutality took different forms in different places and with different groups. The basic pattern varied little.

This basic purpose and master plan varied little from that of the “Holy” Roman Empire. Likewise this Inquisition of the twentieth century varied little from that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

15th- and 20th-Century

Inquisitions Compared

For the benefit of honest skeptics who have doubted the historical record of the Inquisition that was perpetrated during the Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy it is well to show the great similarity between that reign of terror and the recent one in Europe.

The “Holy” Roman Empire was an illicit union of Catholicism and State where both occupied thrones and endeavored to bring everyone into line with their authoritarian rule. The Inquisition was instituted as an instrument to condemn and crush, root up and destroy, any and all who murmured or protested against the outrages of such arbitrary and brutal rule. The greatest fear anyone had was that of falling into the net of the inquisitors; for few escaped alive.

At first the bishops and Jesuits of the Roman Hierarchy were the ones who ac-

tually carried on the torturing, and they devised terrible instruments for this purpose. Whether the victim was guilty or not the practice was to extract under pain of suffering a “confession” of the supposed crime. As time went on and they perfected this fiendish machine the clergy withdrew from the limelight and directed the persecution from behind, turning the larger part of the beastly business of execution over to the secular powers.

There is a true parallelism of all of this found in modern times. In 1933 Hit-der, being a born and baptized Catholic, signed a concordat or secret agreement with the Vatican. This was as much an illicit marriage of Religion and State as in former times. The first offspring brought forth by this intercourse in 1933 was the concentration camp, where those guilty of “heresy” against the state would be tortured to death. Profiting by past 'experience the secular powers were put in charge of these camps.

On this last point it will be of interest to quote from pa^es 36 and 37 of the book The Inquisition in Spain (published by the Religious Tract Society in the nineteenth century): .

The following was-the decree of the fifth council: “We promulge this doctrine pleasing to God, that whosoever hereafter shall succeed to the kingdom, shall not ascend the throne till he has sworn, among other oaths, to permit no man to live in his kingdom who is not a Catholic; and if, after he has taken the reins of government, he shall violate this promise, let him be anathema maranatha in the sight of the eternal God, and become fuel of the eternal fire.” The council of Later an, under pope Innocent III, decreed that “all heresy and heretics should be anathematized, and these being condemned, must be left to the secular power to be punished”. At the same time secular officers are required to swear that “they will endeavour, bona fide and with all their might, to exterminate from every part of their dominion all heretical subjects, universally, that are marked out by the church" [that reads like the 193$ concordat}.

The last council of Lateran decreed, “that all false Christians, and those who think ill concerning faith [in other words, everyone who docs not agree and line up with the Catholic and State religions], of whatever people or nation they may be [remember there were counted eighteen different nationalities in the one camp of Lublin who were put to death ], as well as heretics or persons polluted with any stain of heresy [true Christians like Jehovah’s witnesses], or Judaizers [or the Jews], be entirely excluded from the company of believers in Christ . . . We ordain that proceedings be taken against them. . . . And they who are guilty of this crime, and legitimately convicted, shall be punished with due penalties. But it is our pleasure that the relapsed be dealt' with without any hope of pardon or of remission.”

When we consider how faithfully this twentieth-century Inquisition under secular power has carried out the wishes of the Hierarchy expressed in the above edicts centuries ago we cannot fail to see the close relationship between the Third Reich and the Catholic Hierarchy.

Similarity of Atrocities

The victims of this modern “civilized” Inquisition were flogged, kicked, beaten, starved, overworked, drowned; they were infected with disease, they were tempted into trying to escape and were shot, they suffered solitary confinement without water or food, they endured being lashed to a stake and covered with irate bees; many were tied down in tanks of mud or water so deep they had to stand on tiptoes for hours. They were subjected to the most elaborate and fancy tortures, and in the end, if they survived all of these things, their life was snuffed out in a gas chamber.

A Polish university student who visited Washington late in the war said to George Creel, in his copyrighted book War Criminals and Punishment:

When Heinrich Himmler came to Poland, one of his first acts was to set up a school in Poznan where men were trained in the art of torture just as you would train a' mechanic.

Distending the bowels with air and forcing lighted splinters under fingernails were little more than kindergarten lessons, for they went far beyond youV Indians in fiendish ingenuity.

True, they went far beyond the primitive Indians for their education in the art of torture. They went to the ingenious and fertile priests of the Inquisition for their training; for they were past masters in the craft of cruelty. The three main devices employed in the Middle Ages were reconstructed and improved upon.

The Pulley: A simple apparatus whereby the hands were tied behind the person’s back with a rope that passed through a pulley overhead by means of which the victim was hoisted up in the air six or seven feet. Heavy weights were fastened to the feet and then the person was suddenly dropped to within a few inches of the floor. A sudden drop like that, yet not reaching the ground, dislocated the arms with excruciating pain. The person while still dangling in the air naked was flogged with a frayed whip until the blood oozed out. This description is taken from the history of the fifteenth century, but this apparatus has also been used in this twentieth century.

The Rack : There were two types employed by the sadistic clergy during olden times. One was a frame upon which the victim was placed, and then by means of a windlass the arms and legs were stretched until they were actually pulled out of their sockets.

On the other type the victim was placed and strong thongs like wire were tied around the fleshy parts of the body and limbs and extended beneath the rack in such a manner as to enable them to be tightened with a bar like a tourniquet so that the cords would cut through the skin and flesh to the very bone. And while one was thus securely fastened so that one could do nothing more than cry out from the violence of pain, then more and even worse crimes of torture were brought fo bear.

The barbarians of the concentration camps, like their wicked predecessors, employed a similar rack, as described by the Polish student in George Creel’s above-mentioned book:

Let me tell you of a girl who was supposed to have some information about an underground newspaper, a girl still in her teens. They stripped her naked, spread her out on the floor with hands and feet fastened to hooks, and then flicked her abdomen into shreds with whiplashes. And they kept her alive for weeks, putting her to the question, as they call it, time and again (exactly like the tactics of the religious Inquisitors of the past: “Confession” under pain of suffering]. The Gestapo torturers, you see, want no victim to die until information has been secured. Doctors have given them lessons in anatomy, teaching just how much the human body can stand, and a skilled operator can tell to a split second when to put down his steel rod or rubber truncheon. They know just what bones to wrench, what nerves to press. Men and women are often nursed back from the grave’s edge for further questioning.

The Fike: The feet of the prisoner, being first saturated with tallow or oil, were placed in a kind of stocks, and exposed to the heat of glowing charcoal fire. Thus the feet were roasted to a crisp while the person was fully alive, much in the same manner as one would barbecue a pig.

This is a cigarette age; so it is no longer necessary to use red-hot charcoal. The modern version of torturing by fire » is to take a cigarette and burn holes in the bare chest and abdomen of a victim to make them look like uniform buttons.

Crematories, Past and Present

The modern ovens of the Nazi slaughter grounds are not a novelty to Inquisitors. Like all the other devices it too dates back to the Middle Ages.

The Dry Pan: “The dry pan is for heretics, and those who oppose the holy father’s will and pleasure: they are put alive into the pan, being first stripped naked, and the cover being locked down, the executioner begins to put a small fire into the oven, and by degrees he augments it, till the body is reduced to ashes.” (The Martyrs, or a History of Persecution, by Martin Ruter) The only difference between then and now is that the present-day sons of Satan entered the wholesale business, from a small pan to a bake oven.

This book, The Martyrs, also gives an account of the slaughter of the Huguenots in the year 1572. The day following, it is reported: “On seeing a multitude of dead bodies lie about, a popish apothecary suggested that money might be made of,the fat contained in them; the plumpest bodies were accordingly selected, and the fat being extracted from them was sold for three shillings per pound: a shocking instance of the most depraved cruelty!” Who will question that this actually happened, after reading about Oswiecim and its super-phosphate plant for salvaging a few shillings of fertilizer!

From all of this one sees how exactly the methods used by the Nazis were copied from those invented and used by the Jesuits and Dominicans in medieval times. The likeness of description, in fact, is so close that one can distinguish . between them only by noting the date of publication in each instance.

Similarity in Victims

Worship of the state has been a primary religious doctrine all the way down from Nimrod’s day to Hitler’s folly. Under totalitarian rule anyone that opposes such idolatry either on political or religious grounds is immediately “anathematized”. The victims of this recent ruthless plague were of the same type and class as suffered during the earlier scourge, and may be divided into three groups: political, Jewish, and Christian. * The political group was made up of those that believed in other human ideologies and philosophies such as democracy, communism or socialism. These were imprisoned and tortured and finally killed unless they renounced (“confessed”) such beliefs. The intelligentsia of Europe, who were accustomed to thinking for themselves, fell into this class. Patriots who loved Poland, France, Belgium, or Holland were also in this group.

The second group of victims were the Jews of all Europe. During the Middle Ages there were thousands of such slain, but in this latest religious affliction that figure has been multiplied many times. There were 12,000,(XX) Jews in Europe ten years ago. Now there are only 1,500,000. From 1939 to 1942 the great majority of the ten and a half million met their death. The “master plan” called for the death of every Jew in occupied Europe by the summer of 1946.

But why have the Inquisitions past and present isolated the Jewish race for extermination? It is because Satan the * Devil and his demons are opposed to and fight against Jehovah God and those that represent Him. At one time the Jews, as a nation, stood for and worshiped Jehovah. So ‘away with them’. It is this hatred on the part of the Devil and all those who have the Devil’s spirit that explains why the Nazis wanted to destroy not only the natural Jews but also spiritual Jews, even Jehovah’s witnesses.

These, then, were the Christians that made up the third group of victims of Nazi terrorism. They were true Christians because they boldly stood for and declared that God’s kingdom under the rule of Christ the King was the only hope of the world. They had not entered into a deal with the Nazi tyrants as the imitation Christians of Vatican City had done by signing a concordat. As true Christians they refused to even heil Hitler, and chose to suffer at the hands of wicked Inquisitors as the faithful martyrs of the past had suffered. They trusted in Jehovah their God to deliver them.

Conclusion

Thus we see that the Inquisition of the twentieth century was an exact replica of the one of medieval times: the same inquisitors (Church and State combine), the same aims and purposes, the same devices and methods employed, the same victims, and the same failure to crush out all truth and righteousness. Even as the Inquisition of the dark past failed in its purpose to saddle an authoritarian rule on the world, so likewise has this second attempt of Church and State to rule the world come to nought.

The concentration camps are desolate and their furnaces are cold. Yet the scorched earth beneath is crimson with blood that cries out for retribution. He who never sleeps hears this cry, and shortly, at Armageddon, this Almighty One whose name alone is JEHOVAH will arise and take vengeance on those responsible for this wanton slaughter. None will escape!

(This article has dealt with the reports of correspondents and others as they viewed the horrors of the concentration camps. In the next issue of “Consolation” consideration will be given to the actual experiences of some who lived In those places, and have now come out alive to tell their story of deliverance.)

“What! I Didn’t Know St. Paul Was a Catholic”

THE exclamation, “What! I didn’t know St. Paul was a Catholic,” greets one from advertisements of the Religious Information Bureau of the Knights of Columbus. The advertisement goes on to say how Catholic everybody was in those days, including St. Paul, commonly known as Paul in the Scriptures. The implication, of course, is that Paul was a Roman Catholic. This brings up some interesting mental pictures. We can imagine him arriving at Jerusalem to visit the apostles. ’When he gets to his hotel room he unpacks a private altar with candles and fixings, or has his assistant do it for him. Pulling out a prayer book he starts repeating the prayers, at a good pace, being a real Catholic, as the Knights of Columbus advertisement says. Curtain.

Next we envisage him, a la advertisement, visiting Ephesus. He gets into some trouble here, it seems. Ephesians were worshipers of Diana, and they were afraid that Paul’s preaching would turn away the devotees of their goddess. So they raised quite an uproar, shouting for two hours or more, “Great is Diana, of the Ephesians.” The record does not say that Paul and the other disciples pulled out an image of ‘the virgin Mary5 and started shouting for their goddess, but, being Catholics, as the advertisement says, that is what they must have done. Paul departed for a while, and afterward returned to Ephesus, on his way to Jerusalem, remaining with the disciples for a few days. When he finally took leave of them, they accompanied him to the ship, kneeling on the shore before he went aboard. Out came the rosaries as they all went to work counting their beads. The record doesn’t mention this, but you can imagine it anyway, now that you ‘know Paul was a Roman Catholic’.

Toward the end Paul dwelt in his own hired house. There is no mention of it, but with the information contained in the foregoing advertisement you may conclude that Paul, being a “good Roman Catholic”, had “holy pictures” all over the place, and had it sprinkled with holy water before he moved in.

All the foregoing additions to the Word nf God would have to be made to bring it into line with the advertisement. There is nothing in that Word about the most common Catholic practices of the present day. Nothing is said of “holy water”, “images,” “crucifixes,” “crosses,” “rosaries,” “altars,” “prayer books,” and the blessing of liquor stores, etc., all of which are so essential to Catholicism.

Catholics, of course, have the constitutional right to do all these things, if

they wish to do them. They have the right, too, to say that Paul was a Roman Catholic, even though Roman Catholicism did not get its start until hundreds of years after Paul’s death. It is, on the other hand, the privilege of anyone who reads such advertisements to comment on them, as is done here; dnd to express a

contrary conclusion if the available facts warrant it. If Paul was a Catholic, he certainly was an entirely different sort of Catholic from those of today. But there is nothing in Scripture to remotely suggest that even the term Catholic was aspired to by Paul. He preached the Word of God as it continues to this day.

“A Colorful Ceremony”

A liquor store is blessed! Father Blase Jerkovic (right), pastor of the St. Augustine Catholic church, sprinkles holy water on the premises of the City Liquor Distributors, Ine., at the opening of the wholesale firm’s new offices at 1229 S. 41st st. He was assisted in the ceremony Tuesday by Father Cornelius Ravlic (left) of the Sacred Heart Catholic church, while the store owner, Frank Koshe (in light suit) looked on from the background.—Milwaukee Journal, October 31, 1945.

'TnyWORD

isTkuth”

-John 17:17

Celebrating the Wrong Date

ABOUT fifteen months, or a year and a quarter, before Jesus was born at Bethlehem, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was serving as incenseburning priest in the temple at Jerusalem. He was of the priestly order of Abiah or Abijah. Long before that, because the priestly families had grown so .numerous King David had divided them all up into 24 classes, that they might all take turns in serving at the temple. Each class served a week at a time by turns in the temple, and it was on the weekly sabbath day that the one class of priests went out and the next class came in for their turn of service at the temple. (Luke 1:5; 2 Kings 11:7; 2 Chronicles 23:8) During the three periods of the year, namely, in the first month, the third month, and the seventh month, when all males were required to come to Jerusalem for the feasts of passover, Pentecost, and tabernacles, then all 24 classes of priests served together at the temple during these three festal weeks. Hence each class of the 24 classes of priests served one week separately in the first half of the Jewish year and another week in the second half of the year, or two weeks a year exclusively.

According to the record at 1 Chronicles 24:1-10, the course of Abiah or Abijah was the eighth in line. And so, allowing for the week of Passover and its feast of unleavened bread in the first month of the year, Zacharias of the course of Abiah may have served during the ninth week of the first half of the year. Or, if it was during the other week in the last half of the year that he was serving when the angel Gabriel announced to him the coming birth of his son John, then it was about the thirtyfifth week of the year that this occurred, allowing for all three feast-weeks as having passed by in the meantime. Seeing that the Jewish year began near the spring equinox, say about April 1, the ninth week during which Zacharias served fell about May 27 to June 2, of our present-day calendar; or if it was the thirty-fifth week, Zacharias was serving during the week of November 25 to December 1.

As soon as Zacharias’ week of service was over he returned home and the conception of John the Baptist took place. (Luke 1:23-25) Six months thereafter Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Jewish maiden If ary. H^nce the conception of John the Baptist took place approximately on either June 3 or December 2 of the year. John’s birth nine months later would fall either about March 3 or about September 2 of the year, Jesus’ Iprth six months later could fail therefore about September 3 or March 2 of the year. Seeing that neither John the Baptist nor Jesus could be born on two dates, on -which one of the approximate dates above was John, and Jesus, respectively, born? The Bible does not leave in doubt that it was the former of the two dates in each one’s case, Jesus was thirty-three and a half years old at the time He was killed on the Jewish passover day of A.D. 33, shortly after the spring equinox. He could not have then been a half year past 33 years if He had been born in March; hence it is evident that He was born in September, doubtless toward the beginning of October. Note now the following Scriptural facts on this. .

Referring to the sixth month after the conception of John the Baptist, the Bible record, at Luke 1: 26-36, says: "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.” Among other things that Gabriel said to the Jewish maid were these: “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shall conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren,” According to the later facts, this announcement to Mary occurred sometime in December, six months after Zacharias’ first week of service at the temple in the spring of the year was finished.

Since Jesus’ birth was a perfect one, then according to God’s fixed time Jesus was born nine months later. It was while Jesus’ foster father was in Bethlehem of Judah “to be 'taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, qnd wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn”. (Luke 2: 5-7) Hence the birth of Jesus actually occurred, not on the Roman Catholic Hierarchy’s date of December 25, but toward October 1 of the year.

It might be added, by way of reasonable explanation, that according to our modern way of calculating the days and months of the year, the exact anniversary of Jesus’ birth would vary from year to year, at most about two weeks for six lunar months after the spring equinox. We must remember that the first Jewish month, Nisan, began at the first new moon nearest the spring equinox. Calculated according to the lunar cycle, the Jewish month is somewhat shorter than our own modern solar month. Hence every several years an extra month, or intercalary month We-Adar, was added to the Jewish lunar year. Hence, according to the Bible calendar, the yearly anniversary of Jesus’ birth would never be exactly 3651 days after His actual birth in Bethlehem, and would not be a fixed date such as the Catholic December 25 date is.

Another line of proof supports the above finding and is also based upon the Scriptures, Jesus became the Messiah of Jehovah at the time of His anointing; and this took place when He was thirty years of age. It was at the Jordan river that He was begotten as the Son of God and anointed by the spirit of Jehovah; and then the call to the heavenly 'kingdom was extended to Him, which call He accepted. There, then, He was in line for the Kingdom as the great Anointed Prince, the Son of Jehovah the “King of Eternity”. (Luke 3:21,22; Jeremiah 10:10) This baptism and anointing of Jesus out in the open at Jordan river, when “Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age”, would hardly have been in the wintertime, at December 25. —Luke 3: 23. ‘

Now, according to Daniel 9:24, “seventy weeks” were determined upon the Jewish nation to “make reconciliation for-iniquity”. As in the ease of Genesis 29: 27, those were “weeks” of seven years each. It will be noted that Christ as the Messiah or Anointed of Jehovah came at the end of the sixty-ninth week and the beginning of the seventieth week appointed for reconciliation. Daniel 9:25' reads: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem [in 455 B.C.] unto the Messiah [Christ the Anointed] the Prince shall be seven ■weeks, and threescore and two weeks”; a total of 69 weeks. Verse 26 reads: “And after threescore and two weeks [which followed the seven initial weeks] shall Messiah be cut off”; that is, cut off in death. Now? in the verse 27 it reads: “And he [Christ, the Messiah or Anointed Prince] shall confirm the covenant with many for one week [the seventieth week]: and in the midst of the week [or, after three and a half years] he shall cause, the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.”

According to the above the Messiah was literally “cut off” at a certain prefixed time, “in the midst of the week,” when His sacrifice ended. This would be at the end of three and one-half years after His coming as the Messiah or Anointed One. Hence it follows that Jesus was just thirty-three and a half years old when nailed to the tree on Calvary. His ministry extended over four passover seasons, and at the last one thereof Jesus was actually killed and became the great Passover Lamb for the sins of all who believe on Him. (1 Corinthians 5:7) Since the passover occurs in the spring of the year, in the middle of the lunar month Abib, or Nisan, or about the first of the present month of April, it was at that time that Jesus was thirty-three and one-half years of age, when He was killed and thus “cut off”. Counting back one-half year, or six months, previous to that time would bring us to about October 1, the birth season of Jesus.

Circumstantial evidence also corroborates the times pointed out above, showing it was not in the beginning of our winter when Jesus was born, but at a milder time of the year. The shepherds were out in the fields at nighttime, tending flocks, when Jesus was born. (Luke 2: 8-20) In the latter part of December such a thing would he unreasonable, for the rainy season and cold weather is over Palestine during that time, and there is no grass to feed the sheep in the open. (Ezra 10:9,13) The sheep during that time are kept in folds until milder weather invites them out.

Since the Bible statements show Jesus was born about October 1 of the year, should we celebrate that season in honor of His birth? No! Jesus never instructed His followers to hold any such celebration. Neither does Jehovah God at any place in the Scriptures warrant the observance of such a season. Christ Jesus did-institute a Memorial celebration at the time of His death, but ignored His human birthday. What warrant, therefore, is there for celebrating His birthday at all, and especially on the wrong date, a date borrowed from heathen holiday-making?

Milam and Townes

ON August 27,1943, a 17-year-old boy, Willie Hopkins, of West Monroe, La., was whipped to death at the Ouachita (La.) parish prison camp. The prison guard, J. D. Milam, originally selected for the job because he does not know anything, whipped the boy five times during the day. The last two times, the boy was still blind frort) the previous whippings, one of which was administered to the lad at noon by the prison camp warden, A. D. Townes, whose qualifications for the job were the same as Milam’s. The warden also distinguished himself by choking food down the dying boy’s throat. The club with which the Hopkins boy was beaten to death had a brass ferrule on the end of it. Milam burned that stick, after the boy died, and substituted another one

Are Out by Now

for it; lie got 30 months and Townes got 12 for the murder, but by now they are at liberty and ready to do the same thing all over again if only they can find a chance. Meantime, Hopkins, the 17-year-old boy that was whipped and choked to death, is still dead. Wonder what “church” Milam and Townes profess.

“So Many Nice Things About It”

♦ I am enclosing 25c for a copy of your book “The Truth Shall Make You Free". I’ve heard so many nice things about this book, but I never knew where to buy it Yesterday, when I came home from church I found a copy of the Kingdom News under my door. I am sure that the one who left it doesn’t know how much I appreciated it. May God bless your good work.—Appreciative reader.

Progress of the Hierarchy in the Empire

WHEN Winston Churchill said that he did not contemplate destruction of the British Empire, he meant what he said, and, knowing that there are many millions of British subjects who are also subjects of the pope, there is always in the back of his head the idea that he must get along, in some fashion, with the gentleman with the triple crown who presides over the Italian racket centering at Vatican City. And so, for various reasons, it gets out, not only that Churchill had been to see the pope, but also that Churchill’s son had seen him. In fact, the son saw him in private audience June 13, 1944, and Winston not till some weeks afterwards. The son is a major in Tito’s Yugoslav army. Also, the papal envoy, Signor Giovanni Fum-mi, financial adviser to Pius XII, though technically an enemy citizen, was allowed free movement in London only a short time after Italian planes had helped German planes to blitz the city on the Thames,

…