Memory of the camps

Devilsadvocate: You bring up some great points, however, something I would like to add. Many victims of the Nazi Party were legally Germans themselves, even some Jews had gone as far as adopting German customs over their own pre Nazi era. I think this was referred to as "Reform Judaism" but I'm not 100% sure. (I let my Religious Studies professor down )

In regards to how much people knew, it is pretty debatable but I think the "popular" idea is that the Concentration camps were public knowledge but the death camps were largely kept secret from both military and civilian populations. During the Night of Broken Glass a historian known as Martin Gilbert published the following eye witness accounts,

1. Watching in horror.
2. Helping those being attacked defend their property.
3. Helping those attacking destroy Jewish property.

Kristallnacht - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's ridiculous to claim the Holocaust never happened or that what the Allies did when it came to internment was on par with the Holocaust, or the concentration camps at least. There were cases where the Allies would let "suspicious" individuals join the army to fight the Axis, there were also cases where "suspicious" individuals would escape to Germany to join the S.S. or Wehrmacht. A third group did nothing for a variety of reasons.

I am all for freedom of speech, however, I cannot stand by and allow "freedom of speech" to trample over the legacy of millions of people affected by the war, I hope others share this view as well, only the facts.

Edit: For those who caught it, I assume "the two" were the same?

 

I still don't understand why people deny the holocaust happened after millions of people where killed. When people like Rudolf Hoss freely admitted on the stand at the Nuremberg trails that the Jews where being murdered at Auschwitz. I think he was proud of what he did at the camp, which of course makes me disgusted.

 

Well you cannot understand the mind of an irrational being

 

As I mentioned in one of my posts, the German Concentration camps were established originally to incarcerate political opponents of the Nazi regime, and other groups and individuals whom the Nazis considered "undesirable" or destructive of German "culture", regardless of their nationality or citizenship. This, of course, included many native German citizens who just happened to be considered undesirable by the Nazis; not only Jews, but communists, pacifists, homosexuals, and anyone who strenuously voiced a dissenting opinion. When Hitler decreed the Civil Service Law in 1933, it contained a clause requiring the dismissal of College and University professors and teachers (who, in Germany, were all civil servants). The German President, von Hindenburg, insisted on an exception for German Jews who had served at the Front in WW I. It turned out that there were quite a few who qualified for this exception, so, after von Hindenburg died, the exception was ignored by the Nazi Party, and many of those German Jews who had served in the German Army with honor and distinction during WW I ended up in the Concentration camps.

There is no question that average German citizens were aware of the Concentration camps; they had, after all, been around since 1934 and were never a secret; the Nazis themselves used the threat of the Concentration camps to keep non-Nazi Germans in line. The extermination facilities which operated within many of the camps were a different issue, but it was impossible to keep the existence of slave labor, the brutalization of Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners of war, and other groups, a secret from the general population. The German public was aware of such things even if they didn't know the details. Germans traveling by train saw the emaciated bodies of Russian slave laborers who had died and been left by the side of the railroads. They saw box cars crammed full of Jewish children on their way to be gassed, and the German public knew of the factories where Concentration camp inmates toiled under inhuman conditions until they dropped dead of exhaustion, starvation, and disease. It wasn't as if these things could be kept secret or explained away as some harmless anomaly.

 

Shortly after the Night of Broken Glass, the Nazi Party had set up fake camps which they used for propaganda purposes. These fake camps essentially made it look like the Jews that were rounded up that day were receiving "resort" like conditions. Postcards, video footage, etc were created from these camps to "ease" tensions within Germany in regards to those events as well as outside of Germany. (the Red Cross visited some of these camps and told the west that things were good)

I'm not very familiar with the trains thing you bring up, I'm not saying everyone in Germany was completely unaware of the death camps. I think the estimates they had at one time were that 15-25% of Germany by the end of war had some knowledge of varying accuracy in regards to these camps. I don't think the slave labor part was very hidden especially from soldiers on the Eastern Front who at times were staying in bases where Russian men were working, it was however forbidden to talk to or even go near them.

Some of those who lived near the camps may have come across what you described, their were also cases of depressed guards from these death camps sending letters homes detailing what was going on. In regards to the death camps, I think the civilian population may have known a bit more than the military population about the camps, but even then, that may not have been enough information to fully realize what was happening. If indeed true, it seems a bit odd that the S.S. would leave such things out in open view, the US was flying spy planes over Auschwitz at one point and couldn't figure out what the camp was used for since the S.S. had gone to such lengths to hide it. I think from the intel they had, they thought it may have been a prisoner of war camp.

During Nuremberg, I remember reading about this one Wehrmacht general who when asked if he or his men knew about the death camps claimed they did not. He was also asked about the civilian population claiming they [the military] of all people would know more than the civilians. He said something like "soldiers were constantly involved in a battle for their own lives and constant retreat with little time to be able to notice such things", he was from the Eastern Front I believe. The civilians argued they were too busy being bombed and rebuilding by the Allies to notice! I don't remember his name so I can't find a direct quote, but he had killed himself by jumping out of a window before his final sentencing if that helps.

As an aside, was this "blame" game played even after Nuremberg among civillian and veteran populations? I assume the "collective guilt" policy started by the Allies in the 60s had to have come from somewhere?

 

In my knowledge Theresienstadt was only concentration camp used for propaganda purposes. Please, read attached article from Wikipedia which seems to be quite accurate.

Theresienstadt concentration camp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Yes that's the one, didn't they also have one in the mid 30s that was also used for propaganda?

 

Nazi Germany only allowed one International Red Cross visit to one KZ on July 23rd, 1944 (the model camp at Theresienstadt), and that was nine months after the IRC had requested it. Which gave them plenty of time to stage the show.


The Red Cross was allowed to visit Terezin once. The village of Terezin was spruced up for the occasion. Certain inmates were dressed up and told to stand at strategic places along the specially designated route through Terezin. Shop windows along that carefully guarded path were filled with goods for the day. One young mother remembers seeing the bakery window and shelves suddenly filled with baked goods the inmates had never seen during their time at Terezin. Even the candy shop window overflowed with bon bons creating a fantastic illusion she would never forget.


When the Red Cross representative appeared before this young mother, she remembers being asked how it was to live in Terezin during those days. Her reply implored the questioner to look around. Be sure and look around, as she herself rolled her own widely opened eyes around in an exaggerated manner. The Red Cross reported dryly that while war time conditions made all life difficult, life at Terezin was acceptable given all of the pressures. The Red Cross concluded that the Jews were being treated all right.


See:

Terezin (Teresienstadt) Concentration Camp

 

Yes, before the war most of the people knew about these camps and most of the people also knew to what purposes they were. Basically, it was easier to build this kind of camps than putting all the prisoners in tight and old prisons - and there were a lot of prisoners from all social levels, each from whatever reason as you said. These camps were basically prisons and nobody even wanted to try to hide them.

Death camps. We have to remember that until 1940 Hitler didn't know what to do with the Jews. There was this plan to transport them to the Madagaskar island, but eventually that plan collapsed due to impossible logistics. Madagascar Plan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After the final solution the nazis finally decided to kill all the Jews. Obviously the killing had been going all the time by hard work and starvation in the ghettos, but it wasn't organized. They had the concentration camp system already working, so implementing that into killings would be the easiest way. The problem was obviously that people knew about these camps already. Even if they transported Jews to be killed to camps already existing, they needed new killing grounds for larger masses. This, for example is the base for building Auschwitch-Birkenau (especially Birkenau) complex. These camps had to be build in secret and to remote locations (Treblinka, Sobibor and Majdanek in eastern Poland for example).

I have been in Auschwitz-Birkenau and I can tell you all that in Birkenau you can easily see why it was build and to what. The area is huge - and I mean huge. The unloading area is so long that it is hard to see to the end of it from the main gate. Then there's those gas chamber areas at the end of the rail on the side of the camp. While being there I could never think that did something really happen here.

Einsatzgruppen had been doing Jew mass killings for a year to that point by shooting (killings were disguised as partisan executions) and obviously the killings of German disabled people had been going on for years too. So the idea of mass killings of Jews wasn't that difficult to do after all.

Did ordinary people know about this? Some did and some didn't, but most of them didn't really believe it. Did Wehrmach soldiers know about this? Most of them propably had heard rumours about it because many SS personell was sent to war and they talked about it.

It is certain that some people guessed that something is badly wrong when hundreds of trains were transporting people in one direction in very bad conditions and all of them returned empty. People living near these camps have certainly wondered that where was that bad smell coming from that was in the air all the time. There were too much evidence to be noticed, so we can't really say that they didn't know.

Well, maybe my key thought was that even if some or most of the people knew about this in any scale, most of them couln't believe it - it was just too horrible and unhuman thing to believe.

 

I think they had, but I have no glue what or where it was.

 

Yes, can you believe it. Only one visit and nine months requesting. IRC had heard rumours, but they really couldn't believe them. I think that at that point they had even some physical evidence of the killings, pictures and eyewitness stories etc.

 

Very powerful images. The things man is capable off...




We must never forget.

 

Interesting, thanks for the link, this must be the one I was thinking of as well.

 

Slave labor, and the appalling conditions under which it was performed, was an obvious fact to most Germans. Adam Tooze, in "The Wages of Destruction" says (on page 532):

"By the end of 1944, it is estimated, Himmler's camps provided the German war effort with at least 500,000 workers, or roughly 5% of the industrial work force....230,000 were hired out to private industry.

In all of the concentration camps, productive labor was coupled with a regime of ill0-treatment, overwork and starvation that resulted in mass death. This took place under the eyes of German managers and workers, not to mention the civilian population at large, who often lived as neighbors of the branch camps such as BMW's Allach."

Tooze goes on to describe how starving slave laborers were often brutally beaten by German civilian coal miners for failing fullfil their quotas and how this generated a controversy. Later, he also described how one war plant manager left the bodies of slave laborers who had been hung for minor infractions of the rules, dangling from the rafters of the plant. Military inspectors at that plant also complained of the stench from the bodies of dead slaves left where they had died.

In another passage Tooze describes how German civilians complained about the sight of the corpses of Russian POW's who had died while working as slave laborers employed by the railroad authorities. The corpses were often left along the side of the rail beds for days; the German civilians were offended, not by the fact that people were literally being worked to death, but by the stench of the dead bodies.

I find it impossible to believe that word of these events did not make it's way into the consciousness of the general German population. Even if they were not aware of the details of the extermination camps, the deaths of thousands of slave laborers due to abuse, starvation, disease and over-work was know to Germans at large

I don't understand how anyone can label ducking the responsibility for knowing about these atrocities and taking no action to resist them, "a game". "Collective guilt" was not a "policy" started by anyone; it was a hard, cold fact. I had an uncle who served as an infantryman in the ETO. His unit was one of those who saw first hand a German death camp, and forced local Germans to view, and help bury some of the victims. He refused to talk much about the experience, but once stated that the local Germans resented being forced to clean up the ghastly mess, even though none of them seemed the least bit surprised at it's existence.

 

I think there has been a misunderstanding, I was not referring to the slave labor aspect of things, the slaves were taken from the concentration camp, those were common knowledge to many people. Many soldiers on the Eastern Front had even written about seeing such things at places they were stationed or when traveling across Russia. I was referring to the death camps when talking about less awareness. Slaves were used to build defenses in France, some of the Generals like Rommel for instance gave them proper wages and living conditions, others, no so much.

The "game" I was referring to was the civillian and military populations fighting back and forth over who knew more. Many had treated it as a game to further their own means. Gunther Koschorrek for instance described a setting where some wifes would use it has a chance to divorce husbands returning from the front in exchange for an American, British, French, etc one.

Amazon.com: Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front (9780760321980): Gunther K Koschorrek: Books

Gunther also references the attitudes by society towards soldiers. (All this can be read on the preview pages btw)

The "blame game" wasn't in reference to them giving each other blame over who knew of the Concentration camp but of the death camps. Collective Guilt in reference to post Nazi Germany was a campaign started by the Allies to "share the blame" in a sense, not a "hard, cold fact" that was suddenly realized by the population of Germany. The Wikipedia article on it is very well sourced,

Denazification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The campaign itself is pretty controversial, even politicians like Marget Thatcher have gone on record at one point stating they don't believe collective guilt is right in reference to World War 2. Some reports claim even US General Patton was against it because he felt they policies were being motivated by anti German sentiment.

I think to a certain extent, everyone had the power to do something, by themselves? Probably not, in a group? Yes, infact, many did try, the various assassination attempts on Hitler's life (Valkyrie being the most well known) were because people felt Hitler and or the Nazi's were corrupt, taking the nation in the wrong direction, oppressive, etc. Not to mention the various partisan groups that formed within Germany to fight Nazism, Hitler, etc. The Allies also had the power to do something, to a certain extent they too had done things. One proposed method was to drop fliers over German and on the frontlines detailing the harsh conditions within Concentration camps, the Allies never got around to doing it because they thought the effect it would have on the world would be like that at the end of World War 1. (basically, hatred grew towards Germans that didn't go away with time, "they're taking our jobs", "they're criminals who bayonet babies", etc. The Allies didn't want a repeat of this so propaganda was toned down.), sanctions against Germany could have been applied as well if people wanted to go down that route.

Also, when looking at "sample populations", drawing a conclusion isn't going to work well, if people in one area of the country were more aware of something it doesn't mean others in a different area were either or that they had a means to tell the masses. (the media for one was mostly controlled by the government) antisemitism for instance was higher in places like Berlin but mostly non existent or significantly toned down in areas like Leipzig, is that enough to paint an accurate picture of the nation as a whole in a single sentence? Possibly not.

 

I don't know anything about the "blame game" you reference, or "collective guilt". I do know there was sufficient evidence of the brutal, inhuman German government policies of slave labor and anti-semitism to justify widespread and violent resistance to the Nazi Party; it didn't happen. Every German who was mature enough to think for themselves during the period 1933-45 bears some of the responsibility for the slave labor and extermination camps that operated during that period. The "we didn't know" excuse doesn't hold water as far as I'm concerned.

I do not believe in inherited quilt; children born to German parents during that period, and later bear, no responsibility for what their parents and grand parents did or failed to do. The efforts of Germans born after that period to make amends is admirable but does not change history or the failure of Germans in the early 1930's to prevent the assumption of power by a fundamentally evil regime.

 

There were 20,000 concentration camps in Germany proper. Municipal governments recieved numerous batches of half-starved and dying POWs supposed to be used as slave labor. Major armament factories in late war was using slave labor on a massive scale. The Germans also knew about Chrystal Night, and that their Jewish neighbors were evicted, expelled for resettlement and never heard of again. Camp guards regularly took the loot from the victims and dispensed the wealth to their relevatives.

Allied intellence's examination of German soldier's wallets often yielded photgraphs of atrocities (as frequently as photos of loved ones and family member). Soldiers' diaries and letters home also contained very candid descriptions of murdering civilians or mass slaughter. There were some German plotters against Hitler who were genuinely shocked by the regime's brutality, but politically, it seemed sufficient to say that those who were willing to fight the Nazis for consciencious reasons were for the most part already dead or already imprisoned. Except Canaris, I really don't see the July Plot as a standing up to Nazism, but a military coup to avert imminent defeat by disposing an incompetent war leader, in the hopes of negotiating a better deal with the Allies (which would not happen even if the July Plotters succeeded).

I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that they knew.

 

Hitler and the Nazi's didn't come to power by coming clean with Germany, Goebbels upon taking over the role of propaganda minister realized the open policies of the party toward racism were turning people off. He decided to downplay those aspects significantly, focusing on what people wanted to hear, a stronger Germany. When the party came to power these policies slowly made a comeback, at one point, Hitler had policies that would help Jews such as the ones about violence. With the Bismarck's persuasion, some Jews, especially those who were World War 1 veterans were exempt from a lot of the conditions others were experiencing. Mixed messages were coming from the party for quite some time, confusion isn't completely far fetched. After Night of Broken Glass some Jews were allowed to return to to places like Berlin under party controlled conditions, basically for propaganda purpose.

I don't believe we should judge all Germans from that time period as the same, I believe their are a group of people who should be held responsible for atrocities committed by Germans during the war, be they civilians, party members, Wehrmacht/S.S. troops, etc. These are not a small handful but people that range in the millions yet not everyone. In regards to future generations, I don't blame them, I'm not a fan of the extremist Germans "bowing Johannes" as Carl calls them who criminalize all or those other extremist Germans who attempt to use the stories of the generations before them to do things such as deny elements of the holocaust for instance.

In regards to collective guilt, can France or even the NATO nations who came later share collective guilt for what happened? What about Britain in some commonwealth nations where violence followed after their departure? Or even those of us who have/had armies in peacekeeping situations where large scale killings took place, can we as civilians be held somewhat accountable for not doing more? I'm not using this to compare anything, just something I'm interested in.

I realize you and I have different views on the subject, I learned a lot from what you had to say and I hope you too have gained something from what I had to say. I respect your opinion and do not plan on forcing anyone to change it, but this was a fun and interesting debate if you look past the Holocaust denier above.

I've answered most of this in my previous posts, can you link to the wallets things? I know such photographs were common on the Eastern front. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not referring to the death camps are you? It sounds like you are talking about the cases on the Eastern Front where "Partisan" trials would be publicized, even to a point where soldiers could tour the area, take pictures alongside those hung moments ago, etc.

Also, the government was the Nazi's, very few government posts could be kept without a card in your wallet. Himmler even gave orders to propaganda minister Goebbels to not reveal what the final solution was. Although Goebbels for what ever reason did release a cryptic message of sorts to the "press" which some in hindsight believe hinted at what was to come.

 

It was von Hindenburg who forced Hitler to make exceptions for Jews who had served in WW I; Bismarck was long dead, and Hindenburg was soon to be, and those exceptions were ignored again. Even with certain temporary exceptions being made, Nazi anti-semitism should have been abhorred by the German masses, yet it wasn't, it was applauded or politely ignored. Nazi thugs participated in hundreds of violent street battles, and intimidated even those who had no political agendas at all; Did the German public really think the Nazis were really just sweet teddy bears who had just been provoked beyond the point where they lost their patience? The fact is many Germans secretly wanted Hitler to prevail and looked the other way when he used violence and intimidation.

I don't either. There were obviously Germans who courageously risked their lives to oppose Hitler and his Nazis. The problem I have is, that those who did so were far too small a proportion of the German population to have any real affect on the outcome.

I honestly don't know, but I see those questions as completely different issues. The countries you refer to didn't have official government policies of deliberate starvation, overwork, torture, and mass murder. Nazi Germany and militarist Japan did.

Agreed. I realize that my opinions aren't shared by everyone, and others might think I'm being to harsh on the Germans and Japanese who were unquestioning in their support of their governments during WW II. Regardless, I believe that German, and especially Japanese, civilians who were adults in WW II have a great deal to answer for.

 

Edit: The point of wide spread knowledge of atrocities on the Eastern Front within the regular Army is relevant because, contrary to popular perception, the decision to exterminate Jews in Eastern Europe predated the Wannsee Conference. The decision to neutralize all Jews in Soviet Russia was reached at August 1941 and Himmler's radio dispatches to the SS units to carry those missions out proved it. The Holocaust began in the East and the killing groups were shooting tens of thousands of people a day in big operations with the intention to annihilate Jews in Russia. Those killings were moved to Death Camps because the executioners invariably became anti-social psychopaths or became insane. The regular troops assisted in cordoning the killing sites and herding the victims to the killing ground; some operations were carried out by regular troops. So what the troops saw in the East from 41-42 was not just the killing of small groups of partisans and civilians, but massed-executions of entire communities, man, woman and child.

I do not find your previous post as offering an adequate defense of your position. The Allied intent of de-Nazification in itself is irrelevant to the question at hand: whether German civlians knew. I think part of the problem is your emphasis on the secrecy of the Death Camps, but as you yourself well understood, security was not as tight as the Nazis desired. Furthermore, a major problem with differentiating the two types of camps is that, by 1944, the difference between Death Camps and Slave Labor Camps were slim; the former were mass execution centers, but the latter were designed to work the prisoners to death with deliberately inadequate food rations. Hitler made no secret that he felt the Jews were traitors and that the Third Reich would take vengence on those "vermins". That kind of propaganda had been adrift since the Nazis took power and I don't see how the implication could be missed by ordinary Germans. I feel that the Death Camps was secret not because hiding the murder of the victims was important, but because the manner of their death was so repulsive that it was censored for the fear of damaging morale--like how many US war documentaries of the doughs killing Japanese soldiers in combat in the Pacific was suppressed, even though the public had no qualms making war on Japan. Is it really so hard to put two and two together, that a regime which promised to rid Germany of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals was carrying out what they said they would do?

It did not take a big leap to arrive to the conclusion that something was rotten in the state of Germany.