Gunman opens fire in German city of Hamburg - Brothers and Sisters Wounded

[Skye]

3 minutes ago, Skye said:

We will also find ways [for the broader public to participate.]

JW Stream/Studio perhaps? Let’s wait for more details this coming.

[Amygdala]

A nice news article about how the brothers and sisters are supporting the affected ones in Hamburg. Then at the end, it mentions an invitation to this year's memorial. 💝 Worth translating.

 

https://epaper.swp.de/sudwest-presse-metzinger-uracher-volksblatt/metzinger-volksblatt/18.03.2023/6C5B2A8ECA2D425C1E54F711DEB4781C

 

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Don't Let Hate Affect You

 

Metzingen

 

 To offer comfort to Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg, congregation members send cards with words of sympathy and condolence to Hamburg-Winterhude.

 

 

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The shock over the cruel act is also deep in the hearts of Jehovah's Witnesses in Metzingen. "The news of the armed attack on the Kingdom Hall Hamburg-Winterhude and the terrible consequences for our sisters, brothers and friends have affected us very much and we suffer with them," says Bruno Schaich, one of the pastors of the Metzingen congregation. A big thank you is due to the police and the rescue workers who were on the spot so quickly.

 

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Jehovah's Witnesses have 105 congregation members with 24 children in Metzingen. To express their sympathy, they have made small gifts and cards with comforting words and Bible texts. These are to be sent to the congregation in Hamburg-Winterhude in a cardboard box with large hearts on them. "In this way, we want to show them that we are with them in our thoughts, and that we hope they will find the necessary strength, comfort and hope from God's Word in their unspeakable pain," says Bruno Schaich. Ten-year-old Mia from Schlaitdorf painted a card and wrote on it a text she had chosen herself from the Book of Revelation: "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more," it says. Coming back to her "Kingdom Hall," as Jehovah's Witnesses call their church building, for the first time after the rampage was upsetting, she said. "I was a little nervous at first," Marlies Wekenmann says. "But when I saw the others, it was all good. It was nice to be with everyone." Still, she says, security was ramped up.

 

[coony77]

4 hours ago, Woanders said:

A nice news article about how the brothers and sisters are supporting the affected ones in Hamburg. Then at the end, it mentions an invitation to this year's memorial. 💝 Worth translating.

 

https://epaper.swp.de/sudwest-presse-metzinger-uracher-volksblatt/metzinger-volksblatt/18.03.2023/6C5B2A8ECA2D425C1E54F711DEB4781C

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got this on WhatsApp too, since Metzingen is just around the corner from where I live. I have a good friend from school who is always fascinated by our brotherhood´s unity and love. She lives in Metzigen, so I shared this with her

 

BTW, our congregation also wrote a heart-warming card we all signed to the brothers in Hamburg.

Edited March 19, 2023 by coony77

[student]

https://www.berliner-forum-religionen.de/amoklauf/

 

Here is the translation with deepl.com (better than Google):

 

Dear members of the AK Religion & Psychiatry and interested parties,

the Hamburg attack on the prayer house of Jehovah's Witnesses a week ago has affected us all. A 35-year-old former member of the congregation forced his way into the religious community's building at the end of a meeting last Thursday evening and indiscriminately killed seven worshippers before shooting himself. Thanks to the quick intervention of the police, several dozen people present survived the rampage only slightly injured. According to the findings so far on the background of the crime, it is very likely that the perpetrator had been suffering from a worsening serious mental illness for several years. In 2021, he had written a book on Christian religious topics with obvious missionary zeal and at the same time had renounced Jehovah's Witnesses. The remarks in his publication suggest delusional ideas that explicitly address aggressive courses of action. According to available reports, he was urgently advised from several sides, from relatives as well as members of his ex-community, to undergo medical-therapeutic treatment, which, however, he did not realize. The police received an anonymous letter citing concerns about his mental instability and his newly developed enthusiasm for weapons; however, this resulted only in a routine check without consequences.

- From a psychiatric point of view, the act of the psychologically disturbed perpetrator, a mentally ill person who would have been in urgent need of treatment, must be assumed. Every psychiatrist knows that such a terrible rampage could have taken place in a Christian church, a mosque, a synagogue or any other religious community.
- From the psychiatric point of view, the long known dilemma of concerned relatives of mentally ill persons is also found here, who consider therapeutic contacts of the affected person to be urgent, but do not find professional contact points that know how to deal sensitively with the situation, especially in case of unwillingness to treat. *Here* there is a need for action.  
    Dealing with mentally ill people who do not see themselves as ill and therefore do not seek medical help is an ethical challenge, especially for relatives and also for society. Here, the freedom of the individual must be weighed against the need for protection of the community. The creation of low-threshold psychiatric help offers and the reduction of the stigmatization of mental illnesses can increase the willingness and possibility of seeking psychiatric help.

- In the view of the signatories from the "Psychiatry and Religion" working group, the clichéd and stigmatizing reporting on the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses is also worthy of criticism. The frequently used term "sect" alone falls short of the recommendations of the Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag of 1998, according to which the term "sect" should no longer be used for all religious and ideological communities because of its "negative connotation. The final report of the Enquete Commission came to a sober conclusion: so-called sects pose no danger to the state or society.  The fact that Jehovah's Witnesses, like people of other religious communities, were among those persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime because they resisted Nazi terror (as well as Stalinist terror) still guides far too little action
- Religious communities are often able to support and empower people in crisis situations. In a performance- and success-oriented society, it is helpful to provide spaces of encounter and togetherness where people can stabilize themselves in situations of stress and crisis.  
    In this context, it is of great importance that pastors and other responsible persons in the churches, faith communities, etc. know who they can turn to when they receive indications of the existence of serious psychological problems among those seeking help. Better and low-threshold networking of denominational help facilities with professional psychiatric help services is necessary.  
    Promoting this is also one of the objectives of our "AK Religion & Psychiatry".

[student]

 

https://ifn-bonnregion.jimdofree.com/#cc-m-12487288257

(deepl.com translator)

 

Interreligious Peace Network Bonn and Region (IFN)

Statement on the attack on the meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg

 

On Thursday, March 9, 2023, a man murdered seven participants* in a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg, including an unborn fetus, and injured nine others, one of them critically, before taking his own life.

We, the Bonn and Region Interfaith Peace Network, mourn with the victims' families and extend our deepest sympathies to them. May your faith help them to bear and overcome this unspeakable pain and may the murdered find in the afterlife what they hoped for in their faith!

 

We are shocked by some journalistic contributions that do not ask about the victims and also little about the perpetrator, but about the extent to which Jehovah's Witnesses are a religious community with grievances. The old sect debate is evoked again. The Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg have the feeling of a perpetrator-victim reversal. Certainly one may or even must look critically at religious communities like all other communities and ask which values they represent and whether they agree with one's own values or not. Jehovah's Witnesses are no exception. But after such an assassination attempt, to ascribe the blame for the murder, so to speak, to this religious community because it does this or that wrong, because it treats its members this way or that, or because it thinks this way or that about people of other faiths, is not the right time.

 

The Interreligious Peace Network Bonn and Region stands up for peace between people and their religions and this peace includes solidarity with victims of violence. Therefore we call to feel with the victims and to postpone criticism of their religious community until time has healed the worst wounds. And if one then criticizes, one should do so in a differentiated and objective manner and not lapse into sectarian hysteria.

 

Bonn, Siegburg 16.05.2023 (meant: 16.03.2023)

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I don't know if this was mentioned previously - as there are many pages of chats since my last visit...

3 Elders were shot and killed in the rampage.

Surrounding congs willl join in to help in the recovery.

 

[Amygdala]

A father too.😢

[New World Explorer]

8 hours ago, ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone said:

3 Elders were shot and killed in the rampage.

Looks like they were targeted...can't be coincidence. 

At least appears that way. 

[Bluebell]

in the WT No 1  2023  ....the couple pictured in the first article died during the attack

[New World Explorer]

3 minutes ago, Bluebell said:

in the WT No 1  2023  ....the couple pictured in the first article died during the attack

Could you provide a link please ? 

[jayrtom]

This is the only couple shown in the first article

[Bluebell]

8 hours ago, jayrtom said:

This is the only couple shown in the first article

 

yes...this is the couple....they were friends of my brother and his wife

[JennyM]

2 hours ago, New World Explorer said:

Could you provide a link please ? 

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/watchtower-no1-2023/worldwide-mental-health-crisis/

[Jwanon]

Bitterwinter has recently published an article defending JWs from all those who are blaming the victims for the attack

 

https://bitterwinter.org/the-hamburg-shooting-and-the-jehovahs-witnesses/

[hatcheckgirl]

4 hours ago, Jwanon said:

Bitterwinter has recently published an article defending JWs from all those who are blaming the victims for the attack

 

https://bitterwinter.org/the-hamburg-shooting-and-the-jehovahs-witnesses/

Very good points made regarding blaming victims of domestic violence and blaming victims of the massacre. 
 

“The Hamburg shooting came one day after March 8, International Women’s Day. Every year, on that day of observance, we are asked to reflect inter alia on how many women are killed by ex-partners they had left or were threatening to leave. They are more than 40,000 per year throughout the world. The “crime” for which these women died is that they excluded their former partners from their lives (something we can translate in religious terms as “disfellowshipping”) and refused to further associate with them (“shunning” or “ostracism”).

 

Those who would argue that these women were responsible of their fate, because they had “destabilized” their ex-partners by expelling and excluding them from their lives, would rightly be regarded as guilty of an obnoxious form of hate speech. Those who blame the victims, i.e., the Jehovah’s Witnesses, after the Hamburg massacre do not deserve to be treated more kindly.”

[Percy]

8 hours ago, Jwanon said:

Bitterwinter has recently published an article defending JWs from all those who are blaming the victims for the attack

 

https://bitterwinter.org/the-hamburg-shooting-and-the-jehovahs-witnesses/

BitterWinter is a defender against any lawless accusation of slander, not just against us but of other religious groups in countries around the world. He blows away the smoke and mirror attacks against Jehovah's people and reveals where it is coming from. The biggest offender is a group called FECRIS which is headed by a Russian named Alexander Dvorkin. Yes he is R. Orthodox and working secretly under the auspices of that church in Russia. His tentacles are in every country, influencing leaders against us. He was behind the situations in Russia, Norway, France, Spain, Belgium but works behind the scenes, much like Satan. He is an opponent of the writer for BitterWinter.

https://bitterwinter.org/uscirf-exposes-who-support-ccp-campaigns/

Be forewarned about viewing the video presented:

https://abcnews.go.com/International/russias-mysterious-campaign-jehovahs-witnesses/story?id=78629389

 

Percy

[Marius68]

On 3/18/2023 at 6:15 PM, Sheep said:

 

Congratulations on your first post to JWTalk! Welcome Brother Marius!

 

As for the article you posted, here is the GoogleTranslate version. Very positive article! Thank you for posting it.

 

Thank you, Brother Erik for your kind welcome.

[Bluebell]

about the memorial talk for the brothers in Hamburg:  On Saturday the special program will take place in an event hall without Zoom and only for congregations in Hamburg. Everybody get's an ID card.

[Tortuga]

An update on JW.org.

 

https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&docid=702023112&srcid=share

[Skye]

9 hours ago, Bluebell said:

about the memorial talk for the brothers in Hamburg:  On Saturday the special program will take place in an event hall

https://www-ndr-de.translate.goog/nachrichten/hamburg/Amoktat-Hunderte-zu-Trauerfeier-der-Zeugen-Jehovas-erwartet,amoklauf176.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Skye]

The official JWs in Germany website has been updated today (in German only) https://jehovaszeugen.de/de/gedenkfeier-fur-opfer-des-attentats-in-hamburg/. The English page still has the 17 March update.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Skye

[Jwanon]

7 hours ago, Skye said:

The official JWs in Germany website has been updated today (in German only) https://jehovaszeugen.de/de/gedenkfeier-fur-opfer-des-attentats-in-hamburg/. The English page still has the 17 March update.

 

There's a separate website in German ?

[daydream]

7 hours ago, Skye said:

The English page still has the 17 March update.

https://jehovaszeugen.de/en/memorial-service-for-victims-of-the-attack-in-hamburg/

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Memorial Service for Victims of the Attack in Hamburg

Hamburg, March 16, 2023 – Jehovah’s Witnesses will hold a memorial service for the victims and their families in Hamburg on the last weekend in March 2023.

 

 

[Michał]

7 hours ago, Jwanon said:

 

There's a separate website in German ?

Yes, for legal reasons. 

[Dages]

We have a separate website for France too. Not much used.