Otto Leischnig – “... is still an intractable Jehovah’s Witness”

Otto Leischnig and his wife, who had one daughter, were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Like all members of this religious community, they refused to comply with state-imposed requirements, particularly military service. Both of them were arrested as a result and put in custody in concentration camps without prospects of release. They were not even permitted to correspond. When he was committed to Buchenwald in 1938, Leischnig was already classified as a “recidivist”. Because he was a master tailor by profession, he managed to escape quarry labour and find work in the SS tailor shop. He rejected the SS’s offer to release him if he renounced his religious community. The family was not reunited until 1945.