Despertai! de 1998 registra que os críticos dizem que bandeiras com a suástica foram exibidas no congresso de Berlim e que ele foi aberto com o hino nacional alemão, e responde a ambas as afirmações. Declara que as fotografias não mostram suásticas no salão, que mesmo assim pode ter havido bandeiras na parte externa do edifício depois que uma tropa de combate nazista usou o salão em 21 de junho e uma celebração do solstício foi realizada nas proximidades em 24 de junho, e que a canção de abertura foi “Zion’s Glorious Hope”, com uma melodia de Haydn que o governo alemão adotou para o hino nacional em 1922.

Awake!, “Jehovah's Witnesses—Courageous in the Face of Nazi Peril”

8 de julho de 1998 · p.14 · Awake! correspondent in Germany · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“According to the account in the 1974 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, some German Witnesses were disappointed that the language of the “Declaration” was not more explicit in tone. Had the branch office manager, Paul Balzereit, weakened the text of the document? No, for a comparison of the German and the English texts shows that this is not the case.”

Part of a section answering specific criticisms. The article also states that photographs of the convention “clearly show that they displayed no swastikas in the hall” while conceding that “it is possible, however, that there were flags on the building’s exterior”; that the convention began not with the national anthem but with “Zion’s Glorious Hope”, whose Haydn melody the German government adopted for the national anthem in 1922; and that “a ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany had been issued on Saturday, June 24, 1933, just the day before the Berlin convention”. The article does not say that the ban of 24 June was a Prussian decree; that comes from the United States diplomatic record.

Fonte oficial ↗ (abre em nova aba)