If you liked this video, you might enjoy a few of our other channels such as our new one, Higher Learning in which we discuss in depth aviation related history while flying around in a little plane: youtube.com/@HigherLearningFlight Or how about Highlight History where we cover a lot of topics exactly like this one: youtube.com/@HighlightHistory And finally if you didn't enjoy the length of this one, we have another new one Fact Quickie, where we redo these topics to be about 2-5 minutes long, as well as cover some others too short for TodayIFoundOut: youtube.com/@FactQuickie

I am Polish, when I was 14 years old I visited Auschwitz during a school trip. One thing in particular stuck with me. I saw a room with a literal mountain of eye glasses. It was the math that shook me. I realized: How many % of people wear glasses? Well, not the majority, right? Well then, if this mountain was just a small percentage of those killed... then the numbers must be so large that the human mind refuses to accept them.

My grandfather once said, when I asked him: I was a teenager during the war, and no camp close by, and you better believe me that whoever had eyes to see and ears to hear, knew exactly that something horrible was being done to the Jewish neighbours who disappeared. Everybody kept their mouths shut because they were scared the same would happen to them. And this is how it was possible. Please, never make that mistake. Never shut up. This is how bad things happen.

As a taxi driver, one of my favorite regular clients was an old German woman who was finishing HS during the holocaust. The ONE time we spoke about it she cried, and told me that she knew, and everyone knew. They were either scared or in agreement. She married an American soldier and gtfo there lol. When I started driving her, it was to see him in the nursing home. Her secret to healthy marriage? “Buy two televisions. I’m being serious.”

Patton was so pissed he matched his men to the nearest town, rounded up the civilians, marched their asses to the camp and made them walk the camp and help with the clean up. He told them he knew they had to have known, and wanted them to see what their complicity had done.

People keeping saying "never again", but then turn around and support the same policies even today or quietly disagree and are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs or being publicly attacked. It doesn't start with camps. It happens one small step at a time. Any time you see a wide group of people being singled out as the enemy, you're seeing the first step.

My grandfather was at Birkenau and he said there was no way the villagers didn't know what was happening because you could smell the camps before you saw them. The effluvia of people living together in extreme conditions with poor sanitation and the rotting of bodies was overwhelming.

I am German and I like to watch these videos so I can educate myself on history to the fullest extent, for if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. I visited Auschwitz on a school field trip when I was 16, and it was one of the most somber places I have ever visited. I found it so hard to believe the atrocities that happened there. This video made me cry, mostly for the Captain and his message of all life being precious. He sounds like he would have been incredible to meet.

That statement you made about some of the German citizens feeling like they were Liberated by allied forces is correct. We were stationed in Germany for 6 years. A little German couple down the street who were kids during the war were so sweet. They had great apple & fruit trees in their yard and would let my son pick some on the way to school. They confused the heck out of him one day by saying they loved the American soldiers because we saved them. The gentleman went on to tell him later it was because if they spoke out back then they would be rationed or mysteriously disappear.

A German immigrant live a couple doors down from my grandfather. As a child I was obsessed with the European/African part of WW2. How the Nazis were able to turn normal well educated people into mass murderers is fascinating. After a while of getting to know this man I asked what living in Germany during WW2 was like. Among other things he talked about how everyone knew the camps were murder factories, but that if you openly talked about it, the best possible outcome was becoming a soldier and being sent to the Russian front.

To corroborate: In college in the late 70's and early 80's, I had a German language teacher who was a child in NAZI Germany during the war. When asked in class as to what she knew of the Holocaust during the war she said, "As a child, us kids all heard rumors. But our parents and guardians said nothing except to silence any loud talking about it. And, we kids really did not believe our nation could be so evil." She further went on to say, "But as a Christian I know now ALL people harbor some evil in their hearts. And none of us should ever give evil space or time to growth within us."

My grandfather was at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He said they knew, the locals absolutely knew what had happened there. They chose to ignore it.

My mother is 87 from Munich. She left at the age of 10 but her impression was that the Americans were the enemy. Consider that fact that information given to the citizens were extreme propaganda and you can understand her thinking. To this day, it’s still difficult to talk to her about the holocaust because it’s too painful for her to think ‘her people’ were capable of those atrocities.

I knew someone when I was a kid who survived a concentration camp, I called him uncle, he was the loveliest man but would never speak of his past. The most heartbreaking thing was, he unfortunately got dementia and guess where his mind went back to. I was horrible watching him go back there. Rip uncle

i remember riding in the car with my mom a few days after i learned of what happened in the camps and was talking about how I'd stand up against the Nazis if i was alive in Germany then. she told me "you probably wouldn't have, you have blonde hair and blue eyes you'd probably be just as caught up as everyone else." that stuck with me because of course everyone has a bais to a system that benefits them, and that's what's scary.

I was stationed in Germany during the 70s. Most of the Germans i met denied aving any knowledge of what was going on. I can believe that for towns that had no camps nearby. I found it hard to believe for towns that had a camp nearby. The smell of burning bodies didn't stop at the fence.

"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me" -Martin Niemöller

Sometime in the late 60s, early 70s, my mom ol asked her parents if they had known. "Of course we knew, most of it if not the details," was the answer. "Everyone knew, but there was nothing we could do." Several of my family members of that generation actually got into trouble for not shutting up. "We didn't know" is a lie.

Fair play to Germany today for teaching people this, my son who didn’t have a clue, he was was studying German and went on a school trip to Germany at high school, as part of the trip they visited a concentration camp. After seeing the room of the victims clothing, shoes etc he and his friends were all crying! He went there as a cocky 16 y/o tough guy and came back to England with an understanding “dad, how can anyone do that to anyone”?

Powerful talk. Nice to be reminded of Captain Poletcki. I appreciate that you offered explanations for why many Germans would not believe what was happening. I believe you are being fair and even handed in the presentation.

My wife’s German Grandfather was a tank driver in the invasion of the USSR. He somehow lived to tell the tale. He came to America in 1948 and lived until 2003. A really nice guy. Great video by the way.

My great grandfather was the only one to survive in his family. He lived with his family in Germany and when the war started, he was the only one with a passport. His father told him to go to England and they’ll all follow. They never did. He left for England at age 18 and never saw any of his family again. He later found out they were all killed in concentration camps. He joined the army in Britain and fought. When he had children, he had 5 daughters and although he loved them dearly, he was upset that he didn’t have a son to carry on his family name. His family name died with him.

I'm German and my sister told me that she cried when she went to Auschwitz because there was a picture of a little girl that reminded her of me that had been killed there. I think that it's really important to learn about this and really see it to fully understand the severity. It makes it real and not just something you learn about almost like a tale.

thank you for covering this topic

Simon, that was an epic TIFO, thank you. I apportion no blame to the German people of today for what happened under the Nazis back then, even though I lost 26 relatives when Coventry was bombed in November 1940. I also lost my Grandad from wounds received during Operation Market Garden, he survived injuring during Dunkirk and was still recovering in a military recuperation centre in Hampshire the night he lost his parents, aunties, uncles and two sisters in the Coventry Blitz. The German people who I know today, are rather humble and are afraid to talk about the subject. I have a German friend who lives in Coventry, he attends the anniversary commemorations of the blitz in Coventry himself every year. I tell him he doesn't need to as I apportion no blame to him as a German. Rather humbly, he tells me he must say sorry for the action of his people in failing to stop them from coming to power and killing so many in a City that has given him a life he never had in Germany.

I'm a Nurse in a german nursing home. I take care of the WW2 Generation. You would be suprised how many still carry a racist mindset. THEY KNEW. Most of them did. Nobody said anything because they were afraid that the gestapo sends them to a camp too, there were instances where neighbors would rat each other out because of jealousy.

While not a potential victim of the Holocaust, the Nazis tried to murder my great grandfather in their "mercy killing" scheme. My great grandmother was tipped off by a nurse and was able to get him out of the mental ward in time. He recovered fully and I just know him as a wonderful person. 😌

Poletski's line of thought to not normalise abuse, torture, political brainwash, etc., denotes such strength. When amidst such conditions, there comes a time when people feel powerless as such madness insinuates in the mind and behaviours of the population. He outlines it as it is. He takes action. Respect.

Looking at how things are today.... I can see how this could happen again. So sad.

My parents, born in 1931 and 1938 respectively, grew up during the war in Germany as kids and young teenagers. They only met after the war. But during the war both of my parents heard, from their parents, that so and so down the street had gone, along with their whole family in the middle of the night. My grandparents never dared to explain what they meant that 'gone' meant "vanished by the Gestapo or SS" because they feared that if the children talked at school about their parents' opinions, they might have to suffer repercussions. The Gestapo was KNOWN to be brutal and ruthless in apprehending and brutally beating anyone not toeing the party line. So both my grandparents and parents all KNEW, with varying degrees of certainty, that the acts committed against anyone deemed a 'subhuman', an 'Untermensch', must be far, far worse. No, my grandparents were none of the heroes mentioned in this video. They were part of the silent masses that cowered in fear, silently accepting that fate or cruelty had decided to leave them alone, and others to suffer. Again, no, my grandparents never knew the exact details but suspected what happened in the extermination camps, still hoping against better knowledge, that all claims of such attrocities committed by Germans 'must be propaganda' heavily exaggerated by 'the others'. They didn't dare to believe that these attrocities were real; that Germany was the perpetrator. Because that meant that by their silence they were complicit in these actions. Not directly, not by pulling the trigger, not by opening the valve on the gas chambers toxin containers. But by not actively opposing these attrocities. Until given certainty they clung to the faint hope, that this had to be lies concocted by others to make them rise up. Or at least the extent of the attrocities committed must be lies. Once you start rationalizing a small bit, you tend to extend that rationalization bit by bit, day by day, in the hope of somehow surviving without tarnishing your soul further. It takes a far braver mind to face your own inadequacies, and put your own life on the line to stand up against such crimes. On top of all that came the very real threat of either being forcibly drafted into the army as a male; or being forced to work in the factories as a woman, all the while worrying about being bombed out of your house or apartment, or where to get your next meal from. When woe strikes everyone to some degree or other, it becomes far easier to rationalize the horrors facing others to become somehow 'lesser evils' in the eyes of the common civilian. Note: all of this does NOT excuse any behavior of Germany during the war. Not in the slightest. It is just an explanation of how things turned from bad to worse, slowly, bit by bit, normalizing each step of the attrocities along the way. Until unspeakable acts previously even unmentionable in the public became accepted as a 'solution' among the powerful. As a modern German I feel nothing but shame about this. Guilt, no; undelible shame, yes. I can't feel guilty for acts committed long before my birth by people who simply shared my nationality. But I can and will empathize with all the victims of these war crimes against humanity, as well as feel shame and sadness. This has caused such untold destruction on all involved, simply out of an extremist worldview that believes one human is better than the other due to the chance of birth. In the same way that many allied civilians couldn't directly influence the way of the war, I am currently relatively helpless when I see attrocities again committed in the Ukraine by a ruthless aggressor invading simply to further their leader's megalomania and self-aggrandizement. Yet at least I have never quit saying, that "never forget, never again" should be a mantra of all modern humans.

My Nan and my grandfather were both American WW 2 veterans. My grandfather was in the US ground infantry stationed in Italy, France and later in Germany. As far as I can figure out, my grandfather was in the infantry units that liberated the camps that the Nazis abandoned. He would never talk about his experiences. Later on, in the 1970's, we had neighbors, an older married couple, from Poland, and they both had serial number tattoos. Serial number tattoos...... A loving couple who found a life after the war, but never had children of their own. They were my baby sitters growing up and I can still see in my mind their serial number tattoos, the tattooes they were issued upon their arrival to the concentration camp.

My 16 year old mother at the time living in a small town in Australia heard of these atrocities.

Many years ago, I worked with someone had visited Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. He told me that the whole place was enshrouded in silence; no birds sang or flew overhead and you could hear a pin drop. But, unlike some vast natural plain, this silence was ominous, deathly, unnatural...

I had a relative, now passed, who arrived at a concentration camp a day after it was liberated by Patton's 3rd Army. He had passed through a nearby town to get there. He said the smell of death was in the air and got more pronounced the closer he got to the camp. "Everybody knew" he said. "No way they could have ignored the smell".

As a Brit I respect modern day Germans for teaching their children the true horrors of the Holocaust. In British history class I was only taught the "good parts" of my country's history (the school system even fully skipped over the British Empire). We need to take a lesson from Germany's school system and teach history honestly

Great video Simon. Love your work. Love your videos

I think of the average German citizen in the 1930s as the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. Even German Jews did not see the writing on the wall until it was too late. I blame those in power, and the citizens who enthusiastically supported them even after the horrors were well under way. The average person may have a hero inside him but few can actually overcome their fear enough to become a hero. That's why we applaud them and tell their stories.

🇩🇪MY TESTIMONY AS A GERMAN🇩🇪 My grandfather was the only one who knew PART of what really happened. He was in Russia as a communication officer and came back to Germany for a short trip. In a tavern he told everybody LOUDLY what happened. The Barkeeper came to him quietly and told him he has to disappear NOW before they kill him. He ran, but got caught very soon after. The soldiers had orders to shoot my grandfather. The man who was alone on guard with my grandfather told him. "I will take a piss now... and when my pants are down, I can't run. You understand?" So he ran. Until the War was over he hid. Never went public about anything. Now we have internet and all means to find the correct information unlike 1940. But 95% of the population STILL believe the propaganda. 🙄

My family is from Berlin. My grandfather said just the same as HobRe Ra's further down in the comments. Paraphrasing: "What do you think we all thought when the jewish neighbors were taken away? The nazis always kept talking about exterminating them, that was no secret. We had no reason to believe anything other was done to them." He also said "dictatorship is terrible, but you have to fight it before it is established. Once in place, it is impossible to do anything about it."

I have been listening quite a bit to a KZfaq channel called WW2 Stories (highly recommended btw). It’s readings from diaries or transcripts of interviews of German soldiers. In many of their stories almost if not all front line soldiers, far away from the camps, were at the very least hearing troubling rumors about them. What they thought varied by the person, of course. Some believed it, some dismissed it as wartime propaganda, some tried turning in those telling about it, and so on.

Great job. I learned a lot😊

My grandfather was part of a unit that liberated concentration camps. He said you could smell one for miles before you saw one. It got to the point where the soldiers would begin crying when they would smell the concentration camps because they had learned what they were about to find. It's also why my family never barbequed pork because the smell triggered my grandpa's PTSD.

My Mother (Born 1930's) remembered the "KRISTALLNACHT" day & evening. When going to bed the kids where not allowed to look out the windows facing the distant town, she remembers her mother crying watching the Synagoge being burned to the ground,hearing sporadic gun shots, people screaming and people (Jews?) running through the pasture at night TRYING to get away!

We went on a 3 week long central Europe tour some years back. I came to refer to it as "The Hitler Tour" because we visited a lot of the most famous concentration and death camps. Although many were remotely located in small forests, some were in close proximity to towns and villages, especially Auschwitz I (there's an Auschwitz I and an Auschwitz II). Auschwitz I is practically in the middle of town. Auschwitz II is a mile away on the other side of the tracks. The Warsaw Ghetto was right smack in the middle of Warsaw (it's now apartments and condominiums). Dachau was also in the middle of town. Sobibor was I think the worst case, at about 3.4 miles from the closest town. There's no way that everyday Germans (and people in countries around Germany, where a lot of camps were also located) didn't know what was going on, because many lived right next to the camps, and had neighbors who were running them. They would obviously see trains full of people going in, with no one coming out. And for sure they could hear and smell it all. Everyone knew. Even little kids knew.

A very informative presentation. I do not doubt a single word!!!!!

One of my grandfathers survived a german labour camp, and one of my uncles was tortured to death for information. Over the years I've talked to many old Germans and seen loads of interviews with Germans of that generation, and I have NEVER seen one own up to their collective atrocity. It's always platitutes like "es war krieg". The young generation feels more shame for it than did the old one. In fact people who helped the Jews, like Oskar Schindler were hated post-war, unable to get jobs and treated like traitors until well into the 1970's.

Much respect to the current day German people for teaching the horrors to their students. The United States could do with a nice, long look in the mirror too.

Very good video. Well researched also on the contemporary front.

Very good. This video should be added to some historical archive.

I very good friend of mine is an older German woman who is now an American living in the US. She was a child orphaned during WW2, who was adopted by a German physician and his wife who had lost their own daughter. The psychological scars she and her family sustained from the War and from living under such a repressive regime were severe and long-lasting.

My grandparents in Bavaria had a little farm in a village (Erpfting ,now incorproated into Landsberg) located several kilometers from Landsberg am Lech. In addition to farming, my grandfather was a carpenter who worked at a small, family business in Landsberg to supplement the family income to make ends meet. My mother's village school teacher, who had a lot of children to support and was a friend of my grandfather, took a job at Dachau to better support his family. I believe he confided in my grandfather (some of) what was going on in Dachau. He soon quit the job because it weighed heavily on him. Soon after the war, he committed suicide. An curious side-story to the village school is that my mother remembers one school project where every student was to research their family genealogy wherein it was revealed that only two village families still existed in the village which had survived the Black Plague and were original Bavarians. My grandmother's ancestors had migrated from Bohemia and my grandfather's ancestors had included a migrant from Genova, Italy. My grandfather was anti-Hitler and wouldn't let his children join the Nazis youth even though that was the only path for my mother to become a nurse as she wanted. My mother's story was interesting, too. Because she wasn't in the Hitler youth, her career options were limited despite having been an excellent student. She took a job at a pension/boarding house on Lake Starnberg as a maid. The woman, Frau Teem, who owned the boarding home was a stingy, mean woman who didn't feed her maids well and was a harsh taskmaster. She had a Jewsih boarder named Mrs. Rosenthal who was also heir of the Rosenthal china company that had had to sell out because of Nazi laws against Jews owning businesses. My mother used to like talking with Ms. Rosenthal. But when Ms. Rosenthal suddenly disappeared, Mom intuitively knew that Frau Teem had turned her in. In disgust, she left her job without permission so was in danger of being jailed for breaking the law which didn't permit employees to leave a job without the permission of the employer. After she took a job as a waitress in the officer's mess at the Luftwaffa base near Landsberg close to home,. the officers learned that Ms. Teem had filed a complaint against my mother in court. So, because they liked my mom, they had her drafted into the Luftwaffe so that she couldn't be tried. My grandmother, before marrying my grandfather, had worked as a cook at an hotel in Starnberg so that may explain connections that might have paved the way for my mother to be employed in Starnberg when she left school. My grandmother was a devote Catholic all her life but accepted when, as members of the small parish began showing up to mass in their Nazi uniforms, my grandfather quit the church because of the political collusion between the Nazis and the Catholic church that had helped Hitler to power by threatening excommunication for any Catholics who wouldn't abandon the only political party with the strength and power to thwart Hitler's efforts to become dictator. Although the village mayor was not officially in the Nazi party, he was a big Nazi and had my uncle prematureily drafted for not greeting him with "Heil Hitler" but instead with the Bavarian greeting of "Chris Gott." He was killed somewhere in the Caucus mountains when he agreed to take the night watch for a sick fellow soldier. My grandfather risked death by listening to foreign news broadcasts during the war with a radio that he himself had built. A small number of trusted young village men would come to the home to listen as well as to do so was a life or death activity. When the owner of the carpentry business died, his widow begged him to manage the business so that it could continue to operate and employ people. In order to hold that managerial position, he was forced to join the Nazi party as it wasn't possible by law otherwise. Ironically, at the end of the war, he served a few weeks/months in an Allied prison while the mayor, who had been a Nazi but not in the party, continued in his powerful role. How much exactly my grandfather knew about the atrocities of Dachau and the other camp outside the village near to Landsberg I can not know. I only know that my mother stated that she feared for her life every time she threw rolls of bread to the inmates of the camp nearby the village on her way to and from home and Landsberg. She didn't know what my grandfather may have done as well but she said that unknown reasons my grandfather's' home in the village was spared by former inmates when the Americans liberated the concentration camp and permitted them some time to freely loot German homes in the village. After I read "Hitler's Pope" some of the politics that influences my grandfather choices became clearer to me. He had had some cousins who worked for the German railroad in Munich and who had fled to America when persecutions of the union members began, so I'm sure Opa was politically awake. He died of leukemia in 1958. Oh how I wish I could converse with my grandfather today about his experiences and feelings.-His name was Franz Bihler- Anita Malchiodi Albedi.

All these horrific quotes match what 🇮🇱 says about 🇵🇸

kinda applicable today, a scary proposition; history does not repeat, it rhymes

I asked my grandfather, who was 28 in 1945, what was known in Amsterdam about the fate of the Jews that were deported. Amsterdam had a sizable Jewish population. His answer was that while people in Amsterdam did not know exactly what happened, they knew it had to be absolutely terrible because nobody ever came back and nobody ever wrote a letter back. He also said that some people in Amsterdam speculated that they were all dead.

A former inmate said that you could see a nearby town from the camp. They sometimes took inmates out of the camp to do slave labor in the towns. Some people slipped prisoners food. Girls refused to dance with SS guards. Somebody had to know something.

Hey Simon, I don't know if it's you or your microphone's sensitivity settings/audio mixing, but sometimes I find myself having to rewind a couple times because I didn't catch some words. It's good work otherwise, but that can be frustrating and it's not the only channel I've encountered this odd problem with.

Excellent reporting! Lest we forget…

The sight of that little girl looking seven or eight years old holding her hands up in surrender is heart breaking. I was a child in London in world war 11 and I never forgot what happened to people in occupied Europe.

I will say this, a paraphrased except from Patton's book. When the 3rd Army units liberated one particular camp, Patton ordered every prominent citizen brought out to the camp and forced to witness the condition of the inmates. The prevailing winds blew from the camp to the town. Burning human remains make a distinct smell. The mayor and his wife went home and hung themselves. You're damn right they knew.

wow.. there are on KZfaq, some documents that are more important than others. Thank you for what I just could learn , thank you..

"Yes, 10s of millions of average Germans knew all the way. No, no military intelligence of all the allies knew anything." ... because the principle of "Trust-me-bro" must be applied here. OMG!

I can say that my great grandfather seems to have known enough about it. He was ordered to fulfill his duty in a concentration camp but refused. As a consequence he was immediately sent to the front as a punishment and died near Stalingrad two days later, aged 24, leaving behind his wife and two children. I can understand why many people might have just not said anything. I also don't know how I would have reacted in such a situation, as it's so far removed from any experience I have ever had. Never was there a literal do or die moment for me and I guess for most other westerners it's the same.

Love the longer videos that go into greater depth!

This channel is so perfect when I'm bored this channel is so informative I love it

Hey, amazing video. Little critic point, might you slow down your talking a bit. The information is dense and very interesting and, thus, it makes it hard to follow when you are talking very fast

I was born long after the Nazi era, but my grandfather always said that everybody knew. Soldiers who came back from the front told their families and friends about it and it spread like wildfire.

Apologies if I'm repeating myself. When I was a teenager my mother showed me a newspaper her father had kept from WW2. She had kept it between two x-Ray sheets so it was still in very good shape. It was dated during the time of WW2 and one of the main Newspapers in Britain. The article denied the "rumours" of death camps in Germany. Britain was in serious danger of being invaded, so I think the denial was to keep the population calm.

Just "defending themselves". That sounds familiar in this modern era

“They would not label this as a war or invasion, rather as repelling Polish attacks.” Hmm sounds a lot like a certain “special military operation” that totally isn’t a war or invasion.

My first recollection of the suffering of the Holocaust, was a close friend of my mother's. Anna Moskowitz was a survivor of Dachau. Her family emigrated to the States, and tried recreate their lives here. I noticed her tatoo, and didn't understand it's meaning. She was always so cheerful and lovely. Unfortunately, the past couldn't be unseen, and she was found in her kitchen with her head in the oven. She just couldn't endure the pain and depression. Many survivors committed suicide, in the ensuring years. I'll never forget her.

I am from a Yiddish family. One of my forebears, who was alive at the time, once said to me, about the German nation: "They were all Nazis as long as they were winning".

I was going presently had the most beautiful chance of meeting Mr Simon Wacsburg from meeting him from a jewelry store that I worked at. He was 83 and the time and after conversation with him was so amazing. He was very well known in Memphis. And so sad the stories he told me. At 18 years old he lost his parents to the gas chambers. Him and wife was on the death March from Aushowitz. His wife name was Mina who has passed on after they came to the United States. It was such a remarkable moment for me listening to his stories and was unbelievable. Even after the war with Schindler stayed with him and from hiding because the people were looking for him. Most interesting person I have EVER met in my life!! Memphis TN I could say so much more about him! But look up Simon Wacksberg from Memphis Tn!!

My mother's family, totaling 14, experienced WWII firsthand and immigrated to the US in '57. They knew, and is was a great source of shame for them. They NEVER talked about it and if asked about the camps or what they knew, their answers (if any) were short with no details.

My grandparents and great grandparents always mentioned that neighbors where vanishing or openly took away from the police. Until my great grandmother gave birth to my grandfather and suffered an aneurysm in the brain from that. Which lead to her getting taken and never been seen again, leading my grandfather as an orphan while his father was in war. So they knew something.

Short answer. Yes they did. Over 700,000 Germans were killed by the 3rd Reich. My grandmother was threatened with the camps for questioning the Reich and the war. She was saved by the mayor of her village. They knew what was going on. They stayed quiet to avoid the others fate

Out of all the horror in this video... The last lines got me. It gives me hope.

This is so good

One of the most interesting assignments I ever had in college was to research when and what we knew about the Nazis here in the US. We used microfilm (remember that, old people like me???) to create a timeline of what the news was reporting. Turns out, we knew exactly what was happening by 1935. And we had a very good idea as early as 1933. We just didn’t care. There’s no other explanation for the way we flat out ignored what was happening. And it didn’t help that antisemitism was RAMPANT in the US. When I ended up teaching Freshman English at UF I assigned a similar, simplified research project for my students about propaganda in the newspapers of the 30s and 40s. Most people have no idea how incredibly transparent Hitler was. There is no excuse. None. And we should bear that guilt and do better. 😢

My dad was there a Navy medic attached with the Marines that marched into the concentration camps he told me before he died that there is no way in hell they didn't know those places were there because the stink from the dead bodies traveled for miles and miles. My dad went into World War II a Mormon returned missionary, and when he returned home he was a full-blown alcoholic for the next 60 years. He died in 2008 of cirrhosis of the liver.

My dad was at Dachau at the end of the war. He met a lot of the civilians and he says that they knew but were powerless to do anything about it. If you said something they would have been thrown in there too.

A brilliant video. Thank you so much for your erudition, fluency and evident profound interest in those (there are no further words to describe the unbelievable horror perpetrated by the Nazis and their silent accomplices - “Hitler’s willing executioners”) vicious times. Do give us more, and in reality, permit the world to never forget.

I‘m German and can say one thing about this before I’m going to watch the video. The German public knew a lot. They may have not known exactly what happened to the people that were deported but they did know and notice that their neighbours were disappearing or even being deported on public. There are still a lot of people in Germany denying that they or their parents or grandparents had known anything and many even claim that they helped. That’s factually not true. Under one percent of the German population at the time has engaged in activities opposing nazi rule or just helping people that were particularly affected (like Jews, poles, other minority groups or just groups deemed lower or unworthy by the nazis). The people that lived at the time knew that those people that were deported, harassed and in speeches declared enemies or lower “races“ were killed or enslaved. And after all there were still a lot of people living nearby concentration camps and those are - considering their size - hard to hide. So over all it is very certain that the German public knew a lot about what was going on and were at least able to speculate that those who were deported or just disappeared over night, were probably send to camps to be executed or enslaved.

My grandmother in law was born in Austria in 1928. She said that they knew about “work camps” but didn’t know the details. One neighbor refused to fight in the war and was sent to a camp. When the war was over he was returned but was completely broken and committed _______ a few years later. Her brother on the other hand knew he couldn’t refuse and died on the front lines shortly after being drafted.

I just can tell what i know from my grandmother who was raised around the now polish city of Ratibor , as i asked her before her death she told me that they knew that they werent very welcome anymore but never ever in her and she said also in the minds of the people she knew before the war , during the war and after the war , nobody would have ever came to the idea that sometimes such gruesome would take place and thats still over 70 years after it it was beyond imagination that this would have taken place , not in a manner of denying that it happend but more like still shocked of it .

First thing I thought when I saw the video was that it was going to be a full hour ad free lol.

"the Nazis tried to convince everyone that the german brass was all about peace and had a responsibility to protect the germans and take up arms to protect the peace." "They further pushed hard for the fact that they needed to defend against supposedly agressive poland" "They stated that Poland was extremely agressive against germany iself by flagrantly attacking " "Once germany invaded poland the press was instructed to not reference this as a War nor Invasion but simply Germany repelling polish attacks" This SEEMS VERY VERY familiar ...

I am from germany: The people knew something horrible was going on and most didnt care. There are letters of ordinary people to the SS asking: "My neighbor is a Jew and has a bigger apartment then me, when is he getting deported?" There is also the fact that the "de-nazification" only went so far. You need judges, architects ect to run a country and germany was devastated from the war... Lastly there is the point that the younger generation was indoctrinated and many people held onto those believes for life (my grandfather held people with disabilities in contempt for his whole life...) I think the greatest gift the post war generation got was that they were NOT raised on those believes, newer generations were raised with knowledge of the nazi atrocities and germans later confronted the nazi heritage...

Crazy, if you weren't constantly saying Germany, I would have thought this was a current video on Isreal...

Why was the thumbnail for this video you looking at imprisoned victims of the regime with a childish, goofy expression on your face. It's not a tiktok video, please do better

You did a very special thing by creating this remarkably thoughtful and detailed video. The Nazis killed almost everyone in my family and today we see a new acceptance of present day Nazis which I did not imagine happening in my lifetime. Thank you for pushing back against that development with your powerful look backward.

I am born 1962 and my father was 8 years old when WWII ended. He lived in a small village under very poor circumstances. Nobody had the money go pay for newspaper or had Acces to international radio and so on. But he told me, that people did know. They did not talk about it, but evrybody knew. So he told me, they had a soap, and the soap used to swim in the water. And the people said, it is swimming on the water, because it is made out of Jews. As a child he could not understand it. But later he remembered. Actually I think this rumor was proven false, but it shows, that people had been well aware, that terrible things happend in the KZ, even in the remotest areas.

I appreciate you mentioning that many classes and racial groups were targeted along with the Jews, including Romani, homosexual, and disabled peoples. I visited Sachsenhausen and still now, the birds do not sing there. I commend Germany for not turning away from its past and holding nothing back when teaching about this period of its history. There are many, many nations that would do well to do the same with their own pasts. I think the greatest lesson learned by Germany after WW2 is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It didn't go from peace to death camps in a single day; these things rarely do. These atrocities were the result of years of ideologies taking root, and smaller acts of violence and brutal behaviour becoming "acceptable," thus making way for even greater violence to become the norm. Learning about the society and influences that led to and were part of the war is far more important than dates and the names of battles. It keeps us alert, and urges us to remain vigilant when that same rhetoric seeps into the current cultural lexicon today. Because not only is it doing so, many in the West are STILL swallowing the lies whose seeds were planted in WW2 and its aftermath, with increasingly horrific results.

I’ve always wondered what the German people were aware of regarding the Nazi’s atrocities. Ty! What an admirable man Mr. Poletski was.

I attended a largely Jewish and Christian public high school in the US. I specifically remember in my sophomore year, some exchange students from Germany coming and staying with us for a few weeks. One of the first things most of them said an apology for WW2 and the holocaust. My gf, who is a descendant of holocaust survivors has also known many Germans who apologize for their country’s past. The people of Germany now are not to blame for the actions of the past.

You are the first person I've ever heard acknowledge the Romani genocide during WWII. THANK YOU! I remember the scars on backs and legs, numbers on arms, and sorrowful eyes of my oldest family members. We were still marginalized after WWII, but those that immigrated to America worked hard to achieve an American Dream.

Our generation should focus on what is happening now. Not because the horrors of the Holocaust should ever be forgotten. Not because the Germans were in any way innocent. Simply because these horrors happened and can not be undone. Most of us watching this video are not subject to oppression or even suffer economical hardship. Do we know of children having to endure amputations without narcotics? Do we know about civilians being deliberately killed at scale? If we today expect Germans to have stood up against a Nazi regime, what is our excuse not to stand up against our governments? All we had to do is to make their support for murder a reason not to vote for them again. There is no thread for us to land in a concentration camp if we speak up against murder. Our resistance and decency would be cheap. And yet, it's too expensive.

The section on eugenics was truly horrifying

There's a story about the great filmmaker Billy Wilder, who was Austrian, but had gone to America and then was director of a US Army film crew that made a film about the liberation of the camps. The film was shown in towns and villages across the country, but no one stayed, everyone kept walking out early. So they took their food vouchers on going into the cinema and only gave them back when the film was finished. It was the only way they could make German citizens sit through the entire film.

I once asked my grandparents for stories of the time. My oldest grandpa was born in 1924 and the youngest one, my grandma in 1936. So while my grandpa on my mothers side remembers the war very well and even fought in it as a young adult, my grandma on my dads side was too young to remember anything but a few bombs and the post-war state of her city. I couldnt ask all of them since some died but here is what I found out: My mothers side: Grandpa: He was a socialist and hated the NSDAP and Nazis. He was an athlete (running, sprint) and about to apply to go to the olympics but then got drafted to fight in the army. He kept his political views hidden to protect his family (wife and 7 kids) and as a pacifist somehow managed to get a job as a driver in italy for some higher official so he didnt have to fight. Except he did have to go to russia in the end. With a few of his comrades he was taken prisoner after some russians killed his guard dog. He stayed prisoner for a while and got released after the war was over. Until his death, he didnt talk about the war. All I know is pieced together from stories told by other family members. But I remember him as very carefree and openminded to other religions and even members of the LGBTQ community. Grandma: She fas a firm believer in the Nazi ideology. Being part of the "Bund deutscher Mädels" and head of the house with her own farm, she said that of couse she knew people vanished. But BDM girls had all the necessities for clothes and cooking, her kids were safe as long as nobody acted out and with her husband being out in the army, she rather chose to submit to the regime and its ideals than bring danger to her family. Until she died she hated jews. Also, while she loved having grandchildren, she always saw boys as being worth more than girls. Always saw her catholic raised grandkids as more valuable than the protestant ones. It was very obvious when looking at who got what for chrismas from her. Living in the part controlled by the french after the war also gave her an intense hatred for them, as they didnt particularily care about treating even regular civiliant with dignity a lot of times. My dads side: Grandpa: Having 5 older brothers and being barely 15 he managed to evade getting drafted. And living in a city that was relatively unaffected by the war, he was impacted more by the post war time than the actual ww2- Most of his stories surround the occupational forces. His home city was part of the american occupied territory but right on the border to the french one. He also didnt lose any immediate family members to the war or in the aftermath. To his death, he never really talked about the time either but it was obvious that he never adopted any of the ideologies the nazi regime taught. While conservative, he was never hateful or bigoted on the outside. He said the concept of the concentration camps was known, but being a teenage he only realized the severity of what happened after the war when he was older. But he never felt guilty about it or like he had a part in it. Grandma: Being barely a teen by the end of the war, she only remembers bomb sounds and alarm sirens but not much else. The aftermath of the war was obviously hard on her as she came from a heavily bombed city and suffered through a time of too little food, water and necessities. Her coping mechanism seems to be denial. It became clearer, the more I talked to her, that she doesnt just not want to remember the time but is actively denying, supressing and changing her own memories and versions of events. It's to a point that she denies the concentration camps existed for as long as they did and to the scale they did. She scknowledges their existence but puts the blame to anyone but germany or people related to her or the family. I'm pretty sure at this point she doesnt even realize it anymore. Being in the early stages of Alzheimers its hard enough for her to remember and tell a coherent version of certain events already. If any subject related to the war, Nazis, camps, etc comes up, she actively changes the subject and ignores any inquiries or comments about the time, even if they have nothing to do with her.

Finally. Someone admits that all the world sucks, not just this group or that group.