Activities by the Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned in the Third Reich in 1933 because of the Witnesses’ religious principles and pacifistic views, as well as their organization’s international connections. As a result, many of them were imprisoned in concentration camps. Almost 400 Witnesses were in total incarcerated in Auschwitz. Some of them were marked in the camp with a purple triangle sewn on their prisoner clothing, some were placed in other categories, above all that of political prisoners. Germans were the most numerous in this group, followed by Poles and smaller numbers of Dutch, Yugoslavian, Russian, and Czech prisoners.

(Mini dictionary of terms from the history of Auschwitz)