Nazis cleverly hid death camp atrocities from world

Martin Zagnoev

Regarding the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis kept it secret so as not to horrify the world and even segments of the German population and also so as not to panic the Jewish people into resisting.

The impression was rather created that the Jews were being resettled in the east and put to work there. Code words were employed to hide these atrocities.

The extermination camps were placed in remote areas where they could be partially hidden. Above the entrances to these places the slogan: “Work Makes You Free” was placed. These horrors were so unexpected that many found them hard to believe when they began to surface towards the end of the war.

In spite of the massive and overwhelming anti-Semitic propaganda and hysteria of the time, many gentiles risked their lives and the lives of their families, to hide Jews. Since these saviours had to avoid the Gestapo and its spies, they acted in secret and many will never be known.

The Italians who were allied to the Germans during the first part of the war, saw the Jews as equal citizens. They could not relate to Nazi anti-Semitism. The Finns who were also German allies refused to hand over their Jews.

When the occupying Nazis insisted that the Dutch Jews wear yellow stars, the Dutch Queen also put one on and the Swedish King totally condemned the deportations. Swedes, Danes and Dutch also stood out by saving people.

The Russians opened their frontier, enabling many Jewish people to escape. The Bulgarians strongly opposed the deportations, while the Greeks refused to help with the slaughter.

It has also come to light that the ambassadors of Turkey, Japan and Portugal sheltered Jews, as did the Vatican. Winston Churchill was also appalled by the situation.  

Finally, when the Allies liberated the concentration camps, most of the soldiers were shocked by what they found – so was much of the world, leading to a new type of international law, namely war crimes.

It is often asked why the Allies never bombed the death camps when they eventually came to light. This is indeed difficult to understand, even though they argued that it was more productive to divert limited resources towards ending the war sooner and saving lives that way.

It has also been argued, that since the camps held many slave labourers and that because the Allied bombers lacked the technology for precision bombing, they feared that they might destroy prisoners rather than the gas chambers. In spite of all this there were many who participated in the Holocaust.

Sunningdale Ridge, Johannesburg