The Holocaust — the systematic, state-sponsored murder, persecution and abuse of millions — was far more shocking and horrific than even experts thought a few months ago.
New research shows that about 42,500 Nazi camps and ghettos stretched from Nazi-controlled France to Russia between 1933 and 1945, Hitler’s vicious reign of terror and darkness.
The prevalence of camps in Germany, in particular, astonished researcher Martin Dean. Berlin, for instance, had about 3,000 camps and Hamburg had 1,300 sites.
“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” said Dean. “They were everywhere.”
Dean and fellow scholar Geoffrey Megargee presented their findings at the German Historical Institute in Washington in late January, reported The New York Times.
Megargee expected to find about 7,000 camps and ghettos when research began. The final number of 42,500 locations sent shudders throughout the room.
“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” institute director Hartmut Berghoff told the newspaper. “We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was … but the numbers are unbelievable.”
The research team uncovered 30,000 slave camps, 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps, 980 concentration camps, 500 sex-slave brothels and thousands of other camps serving a myriad of wicked ends: forced abortions, mandatory euthanasia of the elderly and ill, “Germanisation” and transportation hubs to murder sites, according to the Times.
The team started its research in 2000 for a seven-volume encyclopedia published by the Holocaust Museum, who have already released the first two volumes and expect to release all seven by 2025.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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4 Responses
So much for the canard that “a few Nazis did it all” that the Europeans have been spewing for the past seventy years. Reality: it was a concerted team effort of millions of Europeans – military and civilian – which created this mass murder. Very few Europeans have no ancestors with no Holicaust blood on their hands.
#2, I think you overstate your case.
we know also now the number of murdered was 7 million; some scholars give considerably higher figures
In other words the Nazis were clearly more concerned with killing Jews than in winning the war (in all fairness the German Army thought that and it was a factor in their attempts to overthrow Hitler), and that virtually everyone in Europe had to know.