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Eight people are dead, including an unborn child. A hitman shot at a meeting of the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses on Thursday evening and then shot himself. The police speak of an amok attack.

“I was immediately electrified,” reports Nina (name changed by the editors) about the moment she heard about the recordings. “The first feeling was great fear.”

Nina is a former Jevoha witness. She was born in the religious community, her parents are still witnesses, even her grandparents were.

Nina is 41 years old, she moved with her daughter to the suburbs of Hamburg. But until recently she lived in the Hanseatic city. And she knows well the Kingdom Hall where the gunman killed seven people and eventually killed himself. She helped set up this Jehovah’s Witnesses prayer house after the building was purchased. As a teenager, she enthusiastically laid bricks in the parking lot, baked bread in the kitchen to feed the helpers, and swept debris.

“I was afraid my parents would be among the dead,” she says on t-online the day after the massacre. “Since Tuesday I hadn’t heard from my mother, which is actually quite normal. But this oppressive fear spread in me, against which no rational thought rises. »

Nina googled. The fact that the Kingdom Hall on Deelböge Street in Hamburg’s Gross Brush district was the scene of the disaster was a relief to her. Because their parents usually go to a different place of worship. When the mother then reported by text message, another stone fell from her heart.

But the thoughts kept circling all night. There are two considerations that Nina cannot let go of even the day after.

The first: “Did anyone I know die?” That is quite possible, because as a young woman Nina was always at meetings of the communities that come together in the Deelböge.

The second tormenting thought: «How could this terrible act have happened? Who did this?”

It is now known: it was a former member, so someone like herself.

Philipp F. was 35 years old and voluntarily left the community a year and a half ago, but clearly not for the better, as the police, the public prosecutor’s office and the domestic authority announced at a press conference in Hamburg on Friday.

There are two ways, says Nina, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both are rocky.

A “serious sinner”, ie someone who cheats on his partner or has had sexual contact before marriage, can be deprived of intercourse against his will. There is a judicial commission about it. Social exclusion followed.

But going the other way is also difficult. Nina knows what she’s talking about: like the shooter Philipp F., she went voluntarily. In her case, increasing critical thoughts played the decisive role, she says. Add to that the growing curiosity about how other people perceive the world.

“Formally, it’s easy to leave,” she says, describing the replacement process. ‘One letter is enough. But inside, it rages for a long time before you can finally send this letter. There is the fear of losing everything. All friends and parents can turn their backs on you forever.”

Films circulated among Jehovah’s Witnesses, reports Nina. She speaks of “propaganda videos”. These films would show how parents should behave when a child wants to leave the witnesses: cold and dismissive.

“The idea behind this is that only Jehovah’s Witnesses will be saved at Armageddon, the great, eschatological, decisive battle,” Nina explains. “All others are irretrievably lost forever.”

Therefore, when a loved one leaves the witnesses, the predominant feeling is sadness: “They feel like you died.”

Punishment is the only way the Witnesses can win someone back, but the Witnesses see it as God’s loving provision. In the films, isolation alone leads to a happy ending: “In the propaganda videos, the apostates then leave the path of evil and rejoin the witnesses. In many cases, parents don’t even answer the phone when their children call.”

Other community members often reacted even harsher: “If you’re lucky, someone will smile at you or give you a quick nod if you pass them on the street.” For the Bible, which the Jehovah’s Witnesses largely interpret literally, says: “If anyone comes to you and does not take this teaching, do not take him into your house, but refuse him greeting.”

Nina also lost a lot. She tells how a close friend, who hadn’t heard about her departure, greeted her happily – then suddenly fell silent and turned around when Nina told her about it. “Many former Witnesses feel that their lives have been taken away. You invested time, energy and money in a lie and now you hold a grudge.”

That is not the case with Nina. After all, she still has a good relationship with her parents. It’s largely a fear of jeopardizing that relationship, which is why she’s now reluctant to tell her story under her real name.