Jump to content

August Dickmann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

August Dickmann
August Dickmann in 1936
BornJanuary 7, 1910
DiedSeptember 15, 1939 (aged 29)
Cause of deathExecution by firing squad

August Dickmann (January 7, 1910 - September 15, 1939) was one of Jehovah's Witnesses[1] and a Conscientious objector from Germany, and the first person to be killed for rejecting military service during World War II.[2] He was one of many German Jehovah's Witnesses executed because of his religious beliefs during the Nazi regime.[3] Commanding the firing squad that murdered Dickmann was SS officer Rudolf Höss, who was later to become the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

Memorial plaque dedicated to Jehovah’s Witnesses killed during the Holocaust in Sachsenhausen
Memorial to August Dickmann in Sachsenhausen

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "He Died for a Principle". wol.jw.org. Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
  2. ^ Germans execute objector to war: first conscientious resister was member of Jehovah´s Witnesses sect. New York Times; Sep 17, 1939; p. 26
  3. ^ "Sachsenhausen Memorial to Honor One of Jehovah's Witnesses Executed by Nazis". JW.ORG. JW Newsroom (Germany). Retrieved September 4, 2022.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Detlef Garbe (2008). Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich, The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 415–416. ISBN 9780299207946