Executed Witnesses of Jehovah Remembered

ON March 7, 2002, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the town of Körmend in western Hungary. It commemorated the death of three of Jehovah’s Witnesses murdered by the Nazis in 1945.

The plaque is fastened to the wall of the present-day headquarters of the fire department on Hunyadi Road, where the public executions took place. The plaque was dedicated to the memory of ‘Christians who were executed as conscientious objectors in March 1945. Antal Hőnisch (1911-1945), Bertalan Szabó (1921-1945), János Zsondor (1923-1945), 2002, Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

The executions were carried out only two months before the end of World War II. Why were these Christians put to death? The Hungarian newspaper Vas Népe explains: “After Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany, not just the Jews but also the faithful of Jehovah’s Witnesses were lined up for persecution and torture, concentration camp and death if they did not deny their religious conviction. . . . In March 1945, total terror reigned in the western part of Hungary. . . . Part of this terror was to deport and kill members of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

The program involving the plaque was divided into two parts. The first took place at the theater of Batthyány Castle, where the speakers included Professor Szabolcs Szita, head of the Holocaust Documentation Center in Budapest; László Donáth, member of the Parliament’s Committee for Human Rights, Minority and Religious Affairs; and Kálmán Komjáthy, an eyewitness of the executions who is now the town historian. The more than 500 people present walked across town for the second part of the program​—the unveiling of the plaque by Mayor József Honfi of Körmend.

In his farewell letter, Ján Žondor (János Zsondor) urged his Christian brothers and sisters not to grieve. He wrote: “I still have in my mind the words of John found at Revelation 2:10: ‘Prove yourself faithful even to death.’ . . . Tell the ones at home not to grieve, for I die for the truth and not as a criminal.”

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Bertalan Szabó

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Antal Hőnisch

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Ján Žondor