The camps were really remote. sorry, Thats all I can really think of right now. I'm really tired.. Its almost midnight and I NEED to get to bed. g'night. haha (Sorry about my answer!)

It wasn't that they didn't know. They ignored it or were a part of it. It was sort of a herd mentality kind of thing. Hitler used a dislike for the Jews that was already festering under the surface of German and Austrian society to advance in power. Over time, he was able to escalate and use that dislike to justify unspeakable atrocity.

A lot of them did know. There wasn't much they could do about it. Germany was a terrorist state, and the German people were also frightened of the consequences of opposing the Nazis. Some of them, especially in the occupied territories, did help escaped prisoners etc. Others profited from them. Many chose not to know because they couldn't do anything positive.

Not many people lived out beside the old camps and unless you have forgotten there was a war going on!

The average German could not see that. To keep these things far away from the own population the determination camps were located in a lonely landscape in Poland. In Germany people could see how the camps worked. But nobody dared to say anything because you could get faster into such a camp as you could imagine.

Denial & fear are very powerful things.

This is poignant enough to be words in a great book.

This was my first question on Answerbag and it has been revived, hence, I am not bumping it to the top by answering it. I am answering it so I can add it to my links collection. This is one of the hugest crimes in recorded history that managed to fly under the radar. It is also one of the best documented... by the criminals themselves. One of the things that people forget about when thinking of Nazi Germany is the climate of oppression IN Nazi Germany. If you went against the Nazi regime, you faced being reported and hauled in by the Gestapo or sent to the camps. Your neighbors could report you, your children could report you, etc. If you safe housed one of Hitler's targets (almost always the Jews) you, your family, and possibly your neighbors went off to the camps. If I had to pick one thing to ascribe the "success" of this crime to it would be Joseph Goebbels (Hitler's propaganda minister). I say "success" because, had Germany not lost the war, this would have been fully successful. In my study of the Holocaust I have watched more original propaganda films than I can count. In the late 80's I used to have access to a library that was not meant for the layman and had videos of things that usually only Holocaust scholars saw. Included in this were the propaganda films. The German populace were programmed to hate mainly the Jews, then the Gypsies (Rromani and Sinti), and to both hate and think that the handicapped would be better off to be killed. Amongst the very first of these were films saying that it would be kinder to kill the handicapped, especially mentally handicapped... for their own good. These films included children's films... cartoons. They had such early subliminals as changing the lighting to progressively demonize the target as the film progressed, they had things like snippets of film of scuttling rats interspersed with footage of the targeted people, etc. We now know that such things are very effective and, indeed, they were. There also was no way for a German citizen to NOT be inundated with this stuff and with patriotic messages, messages to conform, etc. The Jews were already generally disliked and resented by the majority of the German populace but not enough for the populace to agree with exterminating them. The films did their best to change that and the German populace were never actually told what happened to them. The Hitler Youth was a rather blatant measure to continue this entire process. Germany was also in the aftermath of WWI which decimated both its economy and mindset. They were desperate for anything to help with both and Hitler, a very charismatic individual, took advantage of it. Then there was the flat out lie. The Jews were being sent to various places. I do not remember what they said happened to the rest of us. The German populace were conditioned, by this time, to blindly follow the Nazi regime, adore Hitler, and dislike the targeted peoples. Most of the concentration camps were in remote areas but there were instances where they were not remote enough and odd ash fell from the sky in inhabited areas near the "work camps." Nobody cared about the Gypsies, asocial, homosexuals, handicapped people, etc. vanishing. They wanted us gone to begin with. However, we were not the only ones to be removed. The Jews were also along with any scientist, teacher, or the like, who went against the Nazi regime's plans. The mass wool pulled over the German populace's eyes was mind boggling but, in truth, most did not know. I cannot blame the German populace considering what lengths were gone to to pull this wool over their eyes. I can understand how Nazi Germany succeeded. Note that I am not saying "Hitler succeeded" because he was, frankly, not intelligent enough to pull this one off. I think that the real brains behind the Holocaust was Goebbels.

Arisztid, thank you for that answer. I stopped when I had something to add. I do not agree with your portrayal of this being the worst crime in recorded history. I know you want to rage against the machine, but actually there are even worse. Not that this is way worse than the word atrocity defines. There were much worse...EVEN. Sorry. See the movie Apolcalypto and see how man, intelligent, resourceful, even spirutual man evolved for another tasty chapter in hisotric atrocity. Namely Pizarro and that group of Spanish Inquisitionists.

i believe there are two factors to this. one was that they were sent to desolate poland, so questions would NOT come up. for the people in poland, they knew what was going on and dared not say anything for fear of losing their own life. even the children of the generals were kept in the dark of knowing what was going on (one because who could tell a child that, and second, children can be very opinionated. and questions like 'why did you do that daddy?' are ones that everyone avoided.) i think it is very sad that people kept their mouth shut, but honestly i dont know what i would have done in that situation. i would have been safe, looking arian, but the terror that must have been in everyones hearts. it was a terrible terrible crime that makes me sick to my stomach. fear truly controlled the people in, out, and around those camps.

Why do you believe there was billowing oily smoke and dropping ash? A well run incinerator would not produce either:m if you see film of a Hindu cremation, there is relatively small amounts of smoke from an open-air cremation. There would be much less from a well designed crematorium - and the Germans were and are renowned for their engineering skills. The camps were huge, and placed in the woods a mile or two from the nearest towns. The crematoria were probably not sited close to the front gate or any other prominent part. The locals would find it difficult to ignore the camps, but the crematoria themselves would be hard to detect.