An extensive archive documenting the persecution of a Jehovah's Witness family during the Nazi era is the focus of a legal dispute at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). The eldest daughter, Annemarie Kusserow, had collected pictures, letters, arrest warrants and death sentences of the family from the time the National Socialists came to power until her own arrest in October 1944 and continued to maintain the archive after the war.
In Karlsruhe, an association of Jehovah's Witnesses is suing the Federal Republic of Germany for the release of more than 1,000 documents. After Kusserow's death in 2005, her brother sold the family's archive from Bad Lippspringe in North Rhine-Westphalia to the German state. Parts of it are currently on display at the Military History Museum of the German Armed Forces in Dresden. However, Kusserow had actually bequeathed the archive to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
