Song
Forward, You Witnesses!
Musician Erich Frost was a devout Jehovah's Witness active in the religious resistance to Hitler's authority. Frost was caught smuggling pamphlets from Switzerland to Germany and was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. There, he composed this song in 1942. Frost survived the war and died in 1987. This translation is taken from the Jehovah's Witness Songbook.
Simone Arnold Liebster, who sings the English version of the song, was born in 1930 in Mulhouse, French Alsace. After the incorporation of Alsace into the German Reich during World War II, Liebster's family suffered increasing harrassment from the Nazis for following the Jehovah's Witness faith. Eventually both her father (Adolphe Arnold) and mother were arrested and sent to concentration and detention camps while she was placed in a correctional institution for "nonconformist" youth. Liebster has published an autobiography, Facing the Lion: Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe.
Firm and determined in this time of the end,
Prepared are God's servants the good news to defend.
Though Satan against them has vaunted,
In God's strength they keep on undaunted.
Then, forward, you Witnesses, ever strong of heart!
Rejoice that in God's work you too may have a part!
Go tell far and wide God's new order is near.
That e'er long its rich blessings will be here!
Justice and truth have been pushed aside by man.
The name of Jehovah the wicked seek to ban.
These must be restored to their places
By Christians with bold, beaming faces.
Then, forward, you Witnesses, ever strong of heart!
Rejoice that in God's work you too may have a part!
Go tell far and wide God's new order is near.
That e'er long its rich blessings will be here!
Soldiers of Jah do not seek a life of ease.
The world and its rulers they do not try to please,
Unspotted at all times remaining,
Integrity always maintaining.
Then, forward, you Witnesses, ever strong of heart!
Rejoice that in God's work you too may have a part!
Go tell far and wide God's new order is near.
That e'er long its rich blessings will be here!