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Entry: Willing Executioners?--The Holocaust, Germans, and Collective Guilt Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/willing_executioners_the_holocaust_germans_and_collective_guilt#29196 Post contents: From Ron Lewenberg (via email): Mr. de Zavas, The truth is that the German people knew that untermenschen were being killed. the rate of death of handicaps was not hidden. And Germans who cared to look, knew the fate of Jews. Spouses of half-Jews about to be rounded up successfully protected their families in at least once instance. http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter97/features/hitler.html Some Germans successfully hid Jews, while other lost their lives doing so. http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/press/museum-created-germans-hid.4161.htm The Einzstagruppen were none too cautious in the east, and many German soldiers were repulsed by the killings. My father and his family survived because a Wermacht officer warned them of the coming liquidation of the Drohobycz ghetto, and a German-Ukranian policeman helped them escape. According to testimony at Nuremberg civilians taunted prisoners. "The German civilians often threatened the inmates that they would be gassed and made into soap. We were told that quite a few times by the inmates and I personally heard the German civilians make those threats many times. Also I heard the Germans joking among themselves about the same thing. I didn't take it seriously at first but later I wondered whether it might not be true after all. Though I have no personal knowledge, I got the impression that the manufacture of soap from inmates was being done at Auschwitz by rendering the fat from the gassed bodies. [5]" # NMT, vol. 8, p. 624. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/soap01.html There is much more on line. While many Germans did not know about the Holocaust, most simply looked away. Ignoring this fact for current political purposes is crass revisionism. This does not mean that current Germans, those born after the war, bear any guilt. And I don't mean this on a theoretical level. As a young child, my best friend was the grandson of a NDSAP member. Of course, I held (and hold) no grudge and my parents had no problem with the friendship, given the profuse densunciation of Nazism by my friend's parents. Sent at: 2008 12 02