In the cemetery at Rockport Colony, South Dakota, are the small, rectangular grave markers for Joseph and Michael Hofer, each bearing one of the brothers’ names, his birth and death dates and, in capital letters beside each brother’s name, the word “MARTYR.”

The Hofers were so designated by their fellow Hutterites—a communal branch of Anabaptists—following their imprisonment at Alcatraz and what the church regarded as torture and death at the hands of the U.S. Army in 1918, at the close of World War I.

Dr. Duane Stoltzfus, a professor and chair of communication at Goshen College, told the conscientious objectors’ story in the C. Henry Smith Peace Lecture Feb. 28 at Bluffton University.

Off to Camp Lewis

Farmers whose church had taken a pacifist stance for 400 years, Joseph and Michael Hofer, along with a third brother, David, and Joseph’s brother-in-law, Jacob Wipf, were summoned for service nonetheless in the spring of 191