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July 25, 1944:

"Three tankers carrying more than 1,600 Jews from the Italian-held island of Rhodes stop at the island of Kos, where 94 additional Jews are forced aboard; See July 30, 1944.
"Thirty-one faked postcards from deportees arrive at the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.
The writers claim to have been happily resettled, when in reality they have been gassed at Chelmno.
"Hitler names Joseph Goebbels Reich minister for total war.
"Lord Walter Moyne, chief British official in the Middle East, finally approves British military training for Jewish Palestinians who are being sent on suicide missions into Occupied Europe.
He writes: 'The scheme would remove from Palestine a number of active and resourceful Jews.... The chances of many of them returning in the future to give trouble in Palestine seem slight.' "

"Although many people in Germany and Occupied Europe knew what was happening to the Jews, the Nazis made an effort to conceal their crimes.
Outsiders, for example, were discouraged from going near the camps, and it was almost impossible to visit one.
This sign at Majdanek, written in both German and Polish, reads: 'Attention! Camp grounds. Stop! No photography! You will be shot without warning!' "

I’ve just started a book by Chaim Potok, “Old Men at Midnight.” One of the first characters introduced is a teenaged boy who is the sole survivor of the Jewish community of over 4,000 people, from a village near Crakow.

It’s very probably the author actually met a person who fit the description.

I still firmly believe that the German people knew what was happening in the camps. The Holocaust was murder on an industrial scale, and there were so many support industries. Most notable was the railways that shipped everything, and everyone, to the camps. I’m sure the Reichsbahn workers all knew what the Auschwitz run was all about.

As for why the Germans did nothing about it, read “Biedermann und die Branstifter” by Max Frisch. That and “Besuch der Alte Dame” were the best pieces of German literature I read while in college. Very chilling insight into mass psychology. And yes, I believe that “we were just following orders” is either a defense, or you have to execute an entire population as being culpable. And that in itself is also genocide under the rationalization of “they did it too.”

The most difficult thing for most Americans to accept is that it CAN happen here. In 1928 the average German would have scoffed at the notion of the Holocaust. Because we’re pre-programmed to follow the herd and “just follow orders” it can happen anywhere. Just look at how the left jumps on anyone who poses a religious or philosophical opposition to the cult of sodomy worship. And how quickly they get anyone who speaks out to publicly cave. Not only can it happen here, it already is.