Świadkowie Jehowy na ziemiach polskich – w XX wieku

Abstract

Jehovah’s Witnesses have been present in Poland for over a hundred years. This period was full of various events affecting both their entire community and its individual members. Beginnings in the interwar period - partly as a legal association, but also as a group facing misunderstanding and attempts to make it illegal. The period of the Nazi occupation - tragic for the entire community and for individual believers who in concentration camps, wearing a purple triangle armband, were victims of this system. Poland of 1945-1989 is a stage that can be divided into several fragments - the legal beginning in 1945-1950, the years of banalization and Stalinist persecution - 1950-1956; illegal activity in the years 1956-1979 and the beginning of the road to legal existence in the 1980s. The last stage is the activity in free Poland - it is the period of legal activity from 1989 to the present day. All these stages in the history of Jehovah’s witnesses influence their perception in today’s reality of the Third Republic.

Keywords

• Minirity denomination
• Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Secend Repoblic
• Polish Peopeles republic
• concentration camps
• outlawing