The autobiography of Simone Liebster, née Arnold, is a compel-ling story about her personal search for faith and identity that entailed difficult social, political, and religious choices in her child-hood.

Born in 1930 in Mulhouse in Alsace, then part of France, Simone Arnold Liebster grew up in an extended close-knit Catho-lic family during the 1930s—a decade of political and social un-rest and uncertainty. Religious conformity was the norm in this overwhelmingly Catholic region. In 1938, Emma Arnold, Simone’s mother, converted to the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, despite family opposition. Subsequently, Simone’s father, Adolphe Arnold, was also baptized as a Witness, and Simone converted while still a child, in 1941.

The areas of Alsace and Lorraine had been German between 1871 and 1918, reverting to French jurisdiction until mid-June 1940, when the region was again incorporated into the German Reich. Almost immediately, the Germans imposed their social and political values, rapidly excluding large numbers of so-called “un-desirables,” including Jehovah’s Witnesses, who had no place in the German “new order.” German again became the language of the region; soon nonconformists had to fear denunciations by
neighbors as the bonds of civil society were undermined.

Simone’s father, Adolphe, was arrested on September 4, 1941, less than one month after Simone had been baptized as a Witness.With his arrest, Simone and her mother faced mounting economic hardships since her father’s wages had been confiscated at his ar-rest, his bank account impounded, and her mother denied a work permit. During the following two years, Simone and her mother secured food in exchange for small jobs.