Jehovah’s Witnesses in Poland – in the 20th century

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