The Holocaust just got more shocking
NY Times -
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.
