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“Czech Reds Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses”

UNDER the heading, “Czech Reds Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses as Well as Catholics,” the United States Catholic weekly, Our Sunday Visitor, May 17, 1953, published the following London dispatch:

“In Czechoslovakia the heavy hand of Communist repression has fallen with impartial ruthlessness on the Catholic Church and a group which has ranked as one of the Church’s most vehement opponents—the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Reports here disclosed that 2,260 Jehovah’s Witnesses—460 of them women—are under arrest in Czechoslovakia. Among them is their leader, Bohmil Miller, who was sentenced recently to 15 years at hard labor. Another is Jan Sebin, former leader, who has been condemned to 18 years’ imprisonment. Sebin spent six years in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps in Germany under the nazis. The illness and physical disabilities he suffered as a result forced him to relinquish his post of command in 1950. The Jehovah’s Witnesses—known in Europe as the International Bible Students’ Association—has also been severely persecuted in other Iron Curtain countries, especially Eastern Germany. Leaders of the movement here said they believed the measures taken by the Prague authorities have all but eliminated the sect in Czechoslovakia.”

It is of interest to note that the foregoing report, while stating that the Reds are persecuting Catholics and Jehovah’s witnesses with an impartial hand, fails to give the figures for the number of Catholics in prison. Based on the latest published figures, 1951 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this report would indicate that 90 per cent of the witnesses in Czechoslovakia are now in prison.