Germany: Deadly Mass Attack At Jehovah’s Witnesses Center Renews Focus On Long History Of Persecution Faced By Proselytising Group In Europe

At least eight people were killed, and an unspecified number of others were wounded in a mass shooting incident at a Jehovah's Witnesses hall in Hamburg on Friday (Mar 10).

The shooting occurred late Thursday evening in the Gross Borstel district, a few miles north of the downtown area of Germany's second-biggest city.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "brutal act of violence" and said his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said investigators were "working flat-out to determine the background" to the attack.

The attacker has been identified as a former member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. and had voluntarily left it about 18 months previously "on bad terms". He killed himself after police stormed the building,

Germany has about 175,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, including 3,800 in Hamburg. It claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million.

Originally founded in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh in 1872 by Charles Taze Russell as the International Bible Study Society, the evangelical group began missionary work in Europe in the 1890s.

The denomination's distinctive practices include a refusal to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute a national flag or participate in secular government, which has often resulted in violent opposition by local governments, communities, and religious groups.

Even before the Nazi regime, the group was deemed as heretics by mainstream Lutheran and Catholic churches in Germany. Many citizens often found the Witnesses' missionary work—knocking on doors and preaching—to be invasive.

The Christian group, known for its door-to-door evangelical propaganda and for distributing biblical literature in public squares, has a long history of facing persecution in Germany, especially under the Nazi regime.

Nazi leaders targeted the group for its unwillingness to accept the state's authority and strident opposition to both wars on behalf of temporal authority and organised government in matters of conscience.

According to Holocaust Encyclopedia, an estimated 1,000 German Jehovah's Witnesses died or were murdered in concentration camps and prisons during the Nazi era.

Violence on the rise in Germany

Germany has been hit by several attacks in recent years, both by jihadists and far-right extremists.

In December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video of the perpetrator, Anis Amri, pledging allegiance to the terror group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In February 2020, eleven people, mostly from immigrant communities, were killed and five others wounded in a terrorist shooting spree by a far-right extremist targeting a shisha bar.

In 2019, two people were killed after a neo-Nazi tried to storm a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Anti-Semitic crimes have increased in Germany in recent years. In 2019, more than 2,032 anti-Semitic offences were recorded. German government's anti-Semitism commissioner even urged Jews to avoid wearing skullcaps in public. Chancellor Angela Merkel also spoke of rising anti-Semitism.

According to the government's own estimates, Neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists committed 21,964 crimes in Germany last year, the government in 2021.

In December 2022, the police conducted what it termed the largest counterterrorism operation in postwar Germany to foil a right-wing coup attempt and prevent a violent storming of parliament in Berlin. Among those arrested were several (mostly former) members of the German military, including Special Forces, as well as a descendant of a German aristocratic family who they wanted to install as the new head of state.

Europe's most populous nation remains a target for jihadist groups in particular because it participates in the anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq and Syria.

Between 2013 and 2021, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in the country had multiplied by five to 615, according to interior ministry data.