One of the most frightening things about research into this arena is just how good the records the Nazis kept were. True, these deteriorated toward the end of the war, but during the height of the killing they were horrifyingly complete.
After the war, my grandmother researched and received a formal paper through a Jewish organization with her parents’ Vernichtungsdaten on it. Extermination dates. Each was killed in a concentration camp and each parent had an “extermination date.”
When I first found this document in a book of hers, my legs gave way and I slumped into the floor.
G-d bless you. I think I would have experienced your same reaction. Just reading your comment numbed my arms and hands. I had to wait over a minute to type this to you.
“One of the most frightening things about research into this arena is just how good the records the Nazis kept were. True, these deteriorated toward the end of the war, but during the height of the killing they were horrifyingly complete.”
I’ve heard that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did the very same record keeping thing during the killing fields.