The Eigen-Sinn of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Argentina (1950-1984) and under the Nazis (1933-1945)

Kurzfassung/Abstract

How can we understand the social behavior of Jehovah’s Witnesses under the persecution they suffered during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983)? Were they part of the resistance to the regime? What is the substantial historiographical contribution of a comparison between National Socialism and the last military dictatorship in Argentina? These are the questions which shape this dissertation. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only Christian religious group which was banned and persecuted by the militaries in the 1970s. This research reconstructs their experiences and, most important, how they perceived them. In other words, it is the aim of this research to describe the Eigen-Sinn of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Coined by Alf Lüdtke to analyze the ambiguous behavior of the German working class during the first half of the XX century, Eigen-Sinn is a concept for understanding individual behaviors and actions in relation with power and domination. The NS Regime was a central element in the Eigen-Sinn of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Argentina in 1970s. For them, the hostile measures of the military regime was a revival of the persecution suffered by their coreligionists in Europe under the NS Regime. Based on this interpretation, the European experiences shaped the social behavior of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Argentina by providing them an interpretative framework which was central at the moment of facing the military regime.
This parallel between the European and Argentinean experiences is specially relevant for the Argentinean historiography, where the discussion about the nature of the military regime is still open. Due to the atrocities committed by the Argentinean militaries, this dictatorship is categorized, by some scholars, among the genocides of the XX century. This research shares light in this open discussion by comparing the military regime in Argentina with the NS dictatorship not from a theoretical approach but from an empirical research about the historical experiences of Jehovah’s Witnesses under both regimes.