Researchers, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania.
Geoffrey Megargee, the director of the project, called the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, said: “The results of our research are shocking. We are putting together numbers that no one ever compiled before, even for camp systems that have been fairly well researched - and many of them have not been. There is a tendency for people to see the Holocaust as consisting of Auschwitz and perhaps a few other places. It’s important to understand that the system was much larger and more complex than that; that many more people knew about it and took part in it; that it was central to the entire Nazi system; and, moreover, that many other countries had their own camp systems.” ”
Researchers conducting the work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz previously put the figure at 20,000 sites that were used but have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. They have catalogued 30,000 slave labour camps alone.
The full extent of Nazi persecution did not become clear until the war was well under way and the information was not available to the general public at the time. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the mass murder of the Jews of Europe had been intended all along or whether it was in a great part brought on by wartime circumstances and was a by-product of war rather than a settled war aim. The question is not as clear cut as is often believed. What is clear then is that World War Two was not fought to save Jews from the massacre as this did not get fully under way until some time in 1942. Even when it was clear that something unprecedented was happening to Jews, the Allies failed to mount any significant rescue operations when these became possible. Their political and military calculation was that not to help the Jews was to help defeat Hitler; killing the Jews meant Germany diverting troops and resources from the front line, thus contributing to an Allied victory. According to Paul Johnson in his 1988 A History of the Jews, “...the Holocaust was one of the factors which were losing Hitler the war. The British and American led governments knew this."
When the Partition vote on Palestine was carried in the United Nations in 1947, some governments voted in favour because they didn’t want Jews in internment and refugee camps coming to their countries. This included Canada whose prime minister was the notorious anti-Semite Mackenzie King. All of which goes to prove that, where the interests of capitalism are concerned, people’s lives count for nothing.
Geoffrey Megargee, the director of the project, called the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, said: “The results of our research are shocking. We are putting together numbers that no one ever compiled before, even for camp systems that have been fairly well researched - and many of them have not been. There is a tendency for people to see the Holocaust as consisting of Auschwitz and perhaps a few other places. It’s important to understand that the system was much larger and more complex than that; that many more people knew about it and took part in it; that it was central to the entire Nazi system; and, moreover, that many other countries had their own camp systems.” ”
Researchers conducting the work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz previously put the figure at 20,000 sites that were used but have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. They have catalogued 30,000 slave labour camps alone.
The full extent of Nazi persecution did not become clear until the war was well under way and the information was not available to the general public at the time. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the mass murder of the Jews of Europe had been intended all along or whether it was in a great part brought on by wartime circumstances and was a by-product of war rather than a settled war aim. The question is not as clear cut as is often believed. What is clear then is that World War Two was not fought to save Jews from the massacre as this did not get fully under way until some time in 1942. Even when it was clear that something unprecedented was happening to Jews, the Allies failed to mount any significant rescue operations when these became possible. Their political and military calculation was that not to help the Jews was to help defeat Hitler; killing the Jews meant Germany diverting troops and resources from the front line, thus contributing to an Allied victory. According to Paul Johnson in his 1988 A History of the Jews, “...the Holocaust was one of the factors which were losing Hitler the war. The British and American led governments knew this."
When the Partition vote on Palestine was carried in the United Nations in 1947, some governments voted in favour because they didn’t want Jews in internment and refugee camps coming to their countries. This included Canada whose prime minister was the notorious anti-Semite Mackenzie King. All of which goes to prove that, where the interests of capitalism are concerned, people’s lives count for nothing.
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