New research: Nazis ran many more concentration camps, ghettos than thought
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington…
The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel…
The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions…
The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.
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Yeah. They said they didn’t know what was going on. Right.
42,000 freaking camps, and nobody knew what was happening.
Meryl Yourish on March 2, 2013 at 8:10 PM
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “No, this number is off by 42,500.”
MikeknaJ on March 2, 2013 at 8:13 PM
Does this put the National Socialists ahead of the Communists? It’s so hard to tell sometimes.
reddevil on March 2, 2013 at 8:14 PM
so when 13 million people “vanish” its noticeable?
rob verdi on March 2, 2013 at 8:14 PM
(Editor’s Note: Relatives of mine died in Poland for being Jews.
To be fair it’s NOT “13 Million” it’s probably more than that…but the majority died the little death of disease or malnutrition, or just the random brutality of the Wehrmacht…not “in the camps.”
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Yep, and at many of them the nazis just locked the prisoners inside their barracks and set them on fire before liberation.
The KGB set all their prisons on fire before the nazis advanced.
While I have a tendency to romanticize WW2, I’m quite thankful that I did not live through it.
Blake on March 2, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Not “camps”…”installations”…”Places”…many were brothels…but your larger point is well taken, “Nobody knew”?
This also undercuts the Wehrmacht-Apologists…sure they didn’t know, just because you’re busy having sex with/raping some Slav/Jewess/Frenchwoman/Greek how COULD you be expected to know of human rights violations?
No, no Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are still COMFORTABLY in the lead….
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 8:23 PM
What gets my blood boiling is that so many of these criminals either got away with it or merely got their hands slapped. Most only got a few years in prison. You’ll see that many got death or life sentences but they were commuted to a couple of years prison and released. The european justice system is a joke.
Blake on March 2, 2013 at 8:27 PM
I read a phd thesis on Wehrmacht brothels. Few women survived it.
Blake on March 2, 2013 at 8:29 PM
your likely right.
rob verdi on March 2, 2013 at 8:35 PM
Blake on March 2, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Google ‘Gardelegen’.
annoyinglittletwerp on March 2, 2013 at 8:36 PM
‘Hole up that thar Euro-train….Blake the BIG Trials were INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS….who do you think ran Nurnberg, the Germans?
Post-Nurnberg each nation tried it’s own war criminals or German Nationals and others who committed crimes on their territory, the State of Israel arrogating the rights of war crimes against Jews to itself, IIRC.
And a good number of European nations did hang war criminals, as long as they had Capital Punishment.
Any Occupied Country, save the USSR, had a bit of a problem with trying “collaborators.” France more than most…Quisling and Seys-Inquart (sp.) and others did have some followers in their own nations, and hence some shred of legitimacy.
France worst of all, because Vichy France WAS the legitimate government of France, so the French had a bit of a problem in that many folks could argue, fairly, that they were following the orders of the legitimate government of France….
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 8:39 PM
The euro justice system is all the same to me – utter crap. Too many members of the Einsatzgruppen got a hand slap. Same for many of those who ran the death camps. No excuse.
Blake on March 2, 2013 at 8:51 PM
I’d take some numbers on that, please…you can “think” it all you want, but demonstrating it would be nice…
I will say Speer does make me a little angry…h’mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm who did he think were building those tanks, for free? Very patriotic Germans?
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 8:58 PM
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 8:58 PM
His underling-Fritz Sauckel-got the death penalty @ Nuremberg. Saul was ugly and uneducated while Speer was handsome and erudite.
annoyinglittletwerp on March 2, 2013 at 9:01 PM
So if this was an armed citizenry, can we speculate how the outcome might have been different?
vityas on March 2, 2013 at 9:02 PM
If the nazis are good at running ghettos maybe the state of Michigan should appoint them to take over Detroit.
TX-eye on March 2, 2013 at 9:11 PM
See there are advantages to be witty and erudite….and handsome.
Yeah, BUT…please note that in the Warsaw Ghetto, during the uprising, fewer than 1,000 Jews fought…it wasn’t just being unarmed…it was being MENTALLY UNARMED. IIRC, Eli Wiesel recounts being beaten, by his fellow Jews, in the camp, because his village climbed aboard the train to the camp! The feeling was “How STUPID could you be?”-of course, his fellow beaters were just as stupid, too, hence their presence in H3ll.
Very few wanted to believe that the Germans were really going to kill them…and much of European Jewry had been:
1) “Assimilated” and didn’t think of itself as “Jewish” and hence couldn’t really imagine that they, good Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, and the like were going to be rounded up, by their neighbors and shipped off to die.
2) Slavic Jews weren’t necessarily “assimilated” but Zionism was too closely identified with “Communism” for many and for others Jewish Orthodoxy and tradition made Zionism an anathema, and the idea of passivity and keeping one’s head down prevailed, after all it had worked for centuries with the Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, and Russians, why not again. Hindsight is 20/20.
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 9:14 PM
That’s a knee-slapper…HAH-hah…go polish your jack boots.
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 9:15 PM
Yeah, that’s what gets me…how much of the populace just acquiesced. They simply got on the trains and allowed themselves to be herded into the ghettos. Before that, they allowed themselves to be marked, allowed their possessions and businesses and homes to be taken…
Very few stood up. The smart ones left early. Why more of the population didn’t see the writing on the wall when it was so clearly there…baffles me.
catmman on March 2, 2013 at 9:24 PM
To make a modern analogy:
Regarding Islam, there are no innocent muslims, just as there were no innocent Germans in 1945. Tens of thousands of muslims flocked to the Nazi war machine, using it as training for their future war against the Jews in the Middle East. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem helped raise an entire muslim division for the SS. They fought in the Balkans, and their descendants helped perpetrate the acts of terror that occurred post-war, and led to massacres in Serbia, Bosnia, etc. The Grand Mufti himself met with Hitler and remained in Berlin to the end, escaping just ahead of the Soviets.
More here if you are interested:
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo/arabnazi.html
FWIW: The Grand Mufti’s nephew, who learned his calling at his uncle’s knee, was Yassir Arafat.
TKindred on March 2, 2013 at 9:27 PM
Because they just couldn’t/didn’t want to believe that their neighbors and a bunch of doods from Germany wanted them dead, dead, DEAD…
I mean would YOU believe that a bunch of Canadians wanted YOU dead, Ok, they’re Canadians so it’s easy to believe the worst of them, but go with me here.
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 9:28 PM
You leftist punks can slice it any way you want, but you totally own the 20th century–and I can see far worse things coming from you in the near future as you aquire more power.
Thomas More on March 2, 2013 at 9:38 PM
Knowing what I know of history now, I WOULD know it was coming. It’s really hard not to feel that way now with a lot of stuff, the way certain things are going nowadays…
But they certainly knew by by 1940,41 they were already being interred at that point. Yet they went right along with it. One of the scenes in Schindlers List illustrates what had to be clinical disbelief: the females were in the barracks talking about how they heard what was happening at Auschwitz, the showers, the burning, the death…yet even though they were suffering, even though they knew it was only a matter of time they STILL didn’t believe it. one of the woman rationalized how it couldn’t be true “we’re their workforce! Why would they kill their workforce? It can’t be true…”
I can see how a group simply hearing about what was happening might disbelieve it. But even as they were living it, actually being sent to the camps, many STILL couldn’t (or wouldn’t) believe it.
Btw, there’s a seven part documentary by the bbc (it’s on Netflix) about Auschwitz. It’s an incredible show. If anyone has the ability to watch it, do so.
catmman on March 2, 2013 at 9:44 PM
catmman, the history of pogroms made Jews accustomed to the government of any country they lived in sending in their soldiers to rough them up, destroy some things, maybe beat and kill a few of them, and then leave them alone again. Nobody believed the people who came back to their villages and told them Jews were being massacred. It was unprecedented. And when they finally believed, it was too late.
Meryl Yourish on March 2, 2013 at 9:54 PM
I disagree it was unprecedented, perhaps the ultimate magnitude…
I would think the history of the Jews would have been an education, it obviously was to the many who left early on. The warning signs were there, for those who would see them I guess.
As I said before, I’m just dumbfounded by how the population allowed themselves to be herded later on when they KNEW what was coming.
catmman on March 2, 2013 at 10:08 PM
The ones who resisted were the first to be killed or sent to the camps. Their fate would serve as an example for the others. From the Nazis’ point of view, this would help to thin the herd of leadership and eliminate the fighters.
Captain Kirock on March 2, 2013 at 10:12 PM
But they DIDN’T know…it’s not like the Nazi’s had the Internet and the History Channel and CNN blaring out stories about the camps…..
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 10:13 PM
I think living on starvation diet for months or years prior to deportation has something to do with it.
Captain Kirock on March 2, 2013 at 10:16 PM
Actually, the first trials were run by the Allies, then others by the US (within our occupation zone), along with trials run by the Poles, Soviets, and British, along with camp trials, and later, trials in West Germany and Israel.
Ward Cleaver on March 2, 2013 at 10:17 PM
And sadly, even the US is not blameless – think of the case of the 937 German Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis, who were turned away by Cuba, The US, and Canada. They ended up returning to Europe, where a quarter of them later died in the camps:
Jewish Virtual Library: The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis
Ward Cleaver on March 2, 2013 at 10:24 PM
In memory of a few who did stand up - and paid for it with their lives.
If you haven’t seen – “Sophie Scholl – the Final Days”, everybody should. It’s available on Netflix. There are two other films, the one by Michael Verhoeven from 1982 being the more complete story of the entire group, but it’s currently very hard to find in the US.
Hans & Sophie Scholl are so well-known in Germany that to mention them is almost cliche, which is sad. However, another member of the group – Alexander Schmorell – has been glorified as a saint by the Orthodox Church, and two others – Willi Graf and Christoph Probst are in the first stages (from what I can gather) of being considered for canonization by the Roman Catholic Church.
Katja on March 2, 2013 at 11:03 PM
But yes, people did know. The men of the White Rose had been on campaigns to France, Poland, & Russia, and had seen firsthand many of these things, and so many, many people knew, but they didn’t do anything to resist. The White Rose didn’t stay silent, and while they were the only resistance group that made mention of the Jews being exterminated, they also mentioned the slaughter of other groups as well, such as the Polish intelligentsia. When one of their friends – who had been working as as architect in Poland – saw what they had written, he was kind of upset that they weren’t more specific or graphic in describing what they had seen. However, even if they had, and even if they had sent out a million leaflets, would there have been enough people ready and willing to stand up and die for what is right to have made a political difference?
Katja on March 2, 2013 at 11:15 PM
My mother knew one woman who survived them. The woman was one of my mother’s friends after the war in the States. My mother would never tell us which friend it was and my mother passed away not revealing the secret.
On the overall matter of how could people not know, we have family accounts of how relatives did not believe the rumors. Remember, people sent to extermination camps didn’t come back. There was a war on and the Jews of Europe suffered from famine and many cases of brutality in the previous world war. Plus there was that great Nazi ploy of an extermination camp, Theresienstadt.
My great grandfather sent a letter from the Warsaw Ghetto to relatives in another Nazi occupied country. Knowing that mail was monitored (if it had to be heavily censored, you were risking immediate apprehension), he quoted verses from the Torah which hinted to what was happening.
When the letter was received, all of those reading it assumed the old man (in his 80s or 90s by then) had gone completely senile. These relatives of mine who read my great grandfather’s letter where already all wearing their yellow star of David patches whenever they went outside in public. None of them survived.
My mother had many relatives in the Warsaw Ghetto. Only one survived, a young girl who managed to escape through the sewers. She still lives today in the US. The rest died in the ghetto or in Treblinka.
Shy Guy on March 2, 2013 at 11:22 PM
Katja, meany of the Germans who had more than an inkling really weren’t too upset with what happened to the Jews….and the German Resistance, such as it was, was more interested in seeking an end to Hitler and the War in the West, so that Germany could continue the War in the East.
The White Rose, via Wiki, seems a goofy group, sorry…really NON-VIOLENT Resistance, to the NAZI’S?!?! Well let’s try non-violent resistance to hungry tigers, next.
Lastly, any resistance has a number of problems…those “in the know” realized that the Russians were implacable in their desire to defeat Germany…so any resistance to the war or the Nazi’s ran the risk of making the Russian advance more likely. Plus, Germany is being reduced to rubble by Allied Bombers….I don’t have to be a Nazi to realize that getting rid of the Nazis may not end the night time fire raids or the day time mass bombings…so what do I get for risking my life against the Nazi’s…a quicker Russian occupation of Germany, continued fire bombings?
JFKY on March 2, 2013 at 11:23 PM
The NAZIs viewed the ideas put forth by the White Rose as worthy of death.
Even armed resistance meant the same thing. Think Warsaw Ghetto.
unclesmrgol on March 2, 2013 at 11:35 PM
How many see the writing on the wall today?
ITguy on March 2, 2013 at 11:35 PM
Yeah, well they didn’t have the interwebs or satellite photography to tell them what was going on.
I’m not saying all the Germans were innocent or anything like that, but think about this: the government of the United States is releasing illegal alien criminals, arming drug lords, allowing Americans to be murdered despite their diplomatic status (and doing nothing about it) and we re-elect the politician responsible for it.
We are more German every day.
john1schn on March 2, 2013 at 11:42 PM
Some of the prisons (used for political prisoners by the National Socialsits) are still in use today. Stadelheim is one such prison just outside Munich. Hitler was imprisoned there in 1922 and it was used to hold political prisoners during WWII. Ernst Rohm of the Brown Shirts was shot to death there during the Night of the Long Knives. Today it holds your harder core crooks, it seems, including some rapper guy.
This was too much a part of everyday life NOT to be noticed.
65droptop on March 2, 2013 at 11:43 PM
Hell on Earth.
Will the Nazi references among politicos stop? Nope.
Some of you reading this thread are guilty of minimizing the true horrors of Nazism. Equating any contemporary American-pol to such macabre-bloodthirst fails immediately.
I don’t care if you’re talking about Todd Akin or Gov Cuomo. Just stop with the Nazi references.
Capitalist Hog on March 2, 2013 at 11:49 PM
They saw it. They were cowards, afraid to speak up for what is right.
Some were brave. August Landmesser is a role-model.
Capitalist Hog on March 2, 2013 at 11:52 PM
???
Capitalist Hog on March 2, 2013 at 11:53 PM
Just “shut up” he said.
tom daschle concerned on March 2, 2013 at 11:54 PM
including some rapper guy.
???
Capitalist Hog on March 2, 2013 at 11:53 PM
From the WIKI list of notable prisoners:
MOK, Berliner Rapper, imprisoned 2003-04.
The acronym is for “Music or Jail.” I kid you not. My grandpa did time there too (1942-45) but not for rapping. Very different crimes.
65droptop on March 3, 2013 at 12:15 AM
Haven’t seen anyone minimizing that horrific period of history on this board.
Remember, though, even Hitler didn’t start off gassing millions, he started by promising to end the corruption and despair of Weimar. To end the shame Germany felt after WWI.
Then he began to put his pieces in place. He began with deportations, then ghettos, then mass killings. It took almost a decade to get it up and running.
john1schn on March 3, 2013 at 12:16 AM
So? War criminals were tried and hung. But, when Germany, Austria, France, etc., took over, war criminals got their hands slapped.
Blake on March 3, 2013 at 12:20 AM
Klaus Barbie is one example: was in Bolivia and Peru until the late 1980s, then back to France for trial as the Butcher of Lyon. The documentary The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie takes a sometimes ironically voiced look at that “lapse” of justice.
Dr. Mengele died in Brazil, in part because he refused to get the SS tatoo on his arm, which would have identified him to the Allies in the aftermath.
These are the infamous ones. There were others who “fell through the cracks” and we know nothing of now.
65droptop on March 3, 2013 at 12:41 AM
Really?
You can’t see what’s in front of you then. This and other not-so-oblique allusions are posted daily. Drawing parity, as you have, between contemporary America and Nazi Germany fits that pattern. No wonder you can’t see it; you are it.
Capitalist Hog on March 3, 2013 at 1:53 AM
Hitler and the Nazis’ obsession with multiple attempts at genocide (the Jews, the Slavs, and other untermenschen) caused them to divert technology (trains, soldiers, etc.) away from the eastern and western fronts, that might have won the war for them, and into this hellish lunacy.
The death camps were the death of Nazism, as well.
profitsbeard on March 3, 2013 at 3:21 AM
Have millions been put to death in America?
Yes, if you count abortion, though that is not government mandated, even if it is government endorsed.
Take heed, however, that our current pResident spent many years of his life being mentored and groomed by someone who deliberately plotted the killing of 25 Million people. Has it happened yet? No. But when I speak of writing on the wall, I’m speaking of seeing the parallels between the Democratic Socialists in power today in America and the National Socialists who were rising to power in Germany in the 1930′s.
ITguy on March 3, 2013 at 3:14 PM