Just how many more Nazi ghettos and camps there were then we ever knew and how depraved their "care" centers were.
The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking
Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. 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 numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data. “We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”
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.
Just how creatively inventive the English were in being deceptive.
Starfish decoy towns in Britain helped to dupe Nazi aircraft during Blitz. They were built to lure enemy bombers away from more populated areas.
Tanks containing diesel and paraffin were placed on top of 20ft towers. Diesel was released onto coke or coal before water was released on top which caused a virtual explosion of fire and steam, looking like a burning town.
Two other famous deceptions by the British that come to mind: Operation Mincemeat later made into a film The Man Who Never Was and Operation Fortitude created entire fake armies to make Nazis believe that a much larger invasion force would be embarking from Kent and that the landings at Normandy were but a diversionary tactic