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Forward, You Witnesses!

“Firm and determined in this time of the end,/​Prepared are God’s servants the good news to defend./​Tho’ Satan against them has vaunted,/​In God’s strength they keep on undaunted.”

These are the opening lines of song number 29 in the songbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sing Praises to Jehovah. Your appreciation for this song might be deepened by learning that the melody was composed in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Recently, some 500 workers of the German Bethel family in Selters listened to a taped conversation with the song’s composer, Erich Frost, who reported the following:

“‘Forward, You Witnesses!’​—this was our heart’s desire even then, though we were performing hard labor in a concentration camp. A composer’s mind is always humming with various melodies, so the song’s music had been in my head a long time. The labor group I belonged to, consisting of 40 Witnesses, had a half-hour march every day to a sewage plant outside the camp. En route one morning, the thought occurred to me: ‘It’s time to put some lyrics to the melody, so that it can be sung,’ and soon the first verse began taking form in my mind.

“My job was to transport a mound of soil by wheelbarrow for a distance of some 30 meters. Speaking during work was strictly forbidden. However, choosing the right moment, I secretly asked a brother working nearby whether he had a good memory. He said yes, so I entrusted the first verse to him. After an hour, I asked another brother, later a third, and then a fourth. Each was asked to learn one verse by heart.

“Back in camp that evening, the four repeated the verses to me, one after the other. Thus, I could add the words to the notes. The SS would not have got far had only the notes fallen into their hands. But now the situation had become extremely dangerous. Should they have caught me with the lyrics, they would have hanged me. How could I hide the song?

“An elderly brother had to care for a stable outside the camp where some of the SS kept their rabbits. In this stable, he found a place to hide real spiritual jewels​—complete issues of The Watchtower and one or two of the Society’s books. This brother took his life into his hands by smuggling such items into camp, thus furnishing us with study material. Here he hid my song. One day he said: ‘Erich, your song is on its way. I found somebody who sent it to Switzerland.’ I breathed a sigh of relief.

“The Swiss brothers sent it to Brooklyn, where it came into the hands of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. My clumsy lyrics were transformed into three wonderful verses. I was overjoyed when I later found this song in the new songbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses.a Today, now as song number 29, it still prompts all Witnesses to stand firm for Jehovah and the truth!”

[Footnotes]

[Box on page 21]

Erich Frost finished his earthly course on October 30, 1987, at the age of 86. Born on December 22, 1900, he was baptized on March 4, 1923, and entered the full-time ministry in 1928. In 1936 he was put in charge of the underground work of the persecuted witnesses of Jehovah in Germany, caring well for that assignment for eight months until he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. After the war, from 1945 to 1955, he served as the overseer of the Watch Tower Society’s branch office in Germany. (See The Watchtower, April 15, 1961, pages 244-9.) Thereafter, he continued to serve Jehovah faithfully. God does not forget the work of such anointed Christians or the love they show for his name.​—Hebrews 6:10.