As if it were possible; but, current research shows it:
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.
In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
Read the entire thing, even if it is horrific.“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere...”
This is too hideous to even think about.
ReplyDeleteTo me the only salient point is that no one can claim 'we didn't know'. Of course you knew, of course you approved and applauded.
ReplyDelete"Of course you knew, of course you approved and applauded."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Many many many unclean hands.
"Hitler's Willing Executioners" Daniel Goldhagen
ReplyDeleteAn important book
Even unclean hands does not translate to approved and applauded. If it was only that simple, but we know it is not. It shows the evil of totalitariansm combined with antisemitism, however. Many Germans were swept along unwilling and helpless by the Nazis, whose closest descendants today are the Arabs leaders that indoctrinate the masses, starting at birth, to openly hate Jews, under a different form of totalitariansm, while most of the world looks elsewhere for causes and stigmatizes the few who dare draw the comparisons, a matter of historical fact.
ReplyDeleteAs if Germans were the only ones. The Final Solution would have to come to nothing were it not for the eager willing cooperation of the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Dutch, the Estonians, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Serbs, the Croats, the Hungarians and others. If you want an insight into this, read "Escape from Sobibor" or "From the Ashes of Sobibor". Just one story of Jews who escaped a death camp and who were happily and routinely, murdered, robbed, tortured or turned over to the SS by their own neighbors, most of whom eagerly turned them in to the Nazis in the first place. As an aside, Art Spiegelman's 'Maus' series has been condemned across Poland for they way it portrays Poles, as swinish collaborators. This a the first hand story of a survivor who's being shouted down. In fact the Polish Pogroms AFTER the end of WW2 killed nearly 50,000 Jews in Poland, by Poles. And on and on. The death camp guards were Ukrainians or Lithuanians. Over in Finland Mannerheim is STILL considered a national hero and he fought in the SS in an SS uniform. And on and on.
DeleteWhen the Nazis took over Croatia they installed some Christian extremist fascists who's brutality made even the SS worry about the level of violence and insanity.
No it's not a simple matter of thinking that the Germans descended on Europe like space aliens and it did it on their own. Not only did they have help, they had volunteers.
I understand that they had volunteers, but maintain that it would probably not have evolved into genocide, not only of Jews, without the Nazis.
DeleteFurther, that not all gladly went along or approved, even if they knew. It was a time that we can only theorize about, and it was horrific on so many levels.