One of the major reasons why the old Prussian state was such a clean one was that the Jews were granted only a very limited access to the civil service.

      ­ Adolf Hitler, Letter to Hindenburg, 1933

“The Bavarian State government is planning to no longer accept Scientologists in the public service.... Applicants for public service... shall declare, in writing, that they are not connected to Scientology, starting in November.”

      ­ Der Spiegel magazine, August 12, 1996

he persecution of the Jewish people in Germany began with their gradual elimination from the social life of the country. This was accomplished through false anti-Jewish propaganda portraying members of the Jewish community as undeserving of common rights and by legislation which excluded them from public service, the professions and deprived them of their citizenship. This process eventually brought about the “Final Solution.”

     Followers of the Jewish faith had other than Christian beliefs and a strong culture. Because their beliefs were different, they were a convenient scapegoat, leading in the end to their senseless destruction.

     Today, German government leaders have called for exclusion of Scientologists from selected professions. They are denied access to Germany’s major political parties. As of today, for the first time since the Third Reich, members of a religion are formally denied employment in the civil service in Bavaria. Political propaganda has depicted Scientologists and members of other minorities as animals or insects. Scientologists have been dismissed from their jobs solely because of their religious affiliation.

     Since 1993, the United States State Department, the United Nations, the Helsinki Commission, U.S. Congressmen and senators, religious Scholars and historians have cited Germany for human rights abuses against Scientologists.

      Why are German officials discriminating against Scientologists? There is no legitimate reason, just as there was none for the persecution of the Jewish people. And, let us not forget, Germany has no tradition of religious freedom as in the United States.

      To prevent a repetition of the events of the 1930s and 1940s, Germany’s post-war Constitution guarantees the right to practice one’s religion. Because the Constitution makes discrimination against the Church of Scientology illegal, German officials have bluntly asserted that Scientology is not a religion in order to make their assaults on Scientologists appear legitimate.

      German officials simply ignore the dozens of court rulings, scholarly expertises and governmental acceptances that independently concluded that Scientology is beyond doubt a religion in the oldest sense of the word. Like all true religions, Scientology seeks to help man realize his inner divinity.

      Sounds impossible that a democratic government would deny the bona fides of a genuine religion in order to persecute it? It’s precisely what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in the 1930s.

     German officials have refused every request to engage in dialogue to resolve the discrimination occurring in their country.

     “Never again” must not be an idle slogan, it must be a promise we keep. True, no one has been killed or hauled off to death camps. But history has taught us that we would be at fault if we stood by and did not point out the alarming similarities between the 1930s and today. German officials protesting these comparisons should stop recreating the past and they will remind no one of it.

Germany Then and Now