There were far more Nazi “camps” than anyone had realized, according to recent research, some 42,500 of them, including not just “concentration camps,” but centers for euthanasia, forced abortions, forced prostitution, and other components of Hitler’s eugenics machine.
From The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking – NYTimes.com:
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.
For the worldview–and the theology–that led to these horrors (and how they are coming back into vogue), see my book Modern Fascism
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