It’s obvious — people knew
Re: ‘ You can’t say people didn’t know’: Allies knew of death camps in 1942
It’s 2017 and we are still dealing with the question of the Holocaust: who knew and when? Not to appear to be taking this question lightly, this is a “joke.”
In 1933, people from the Jewish Agency, right after Hitler became chancellor, went into Germany to plead with the Jewish community to leave Germany. They had been watching Hitler and the people of Germany since the ‘ 20s. They were aware of his anti-Jewish proclivities. They also understood the breadth and depth of German anti-Semitism. Some did leave. But in 1935 the infamous “Nuremberg Laws” were passed. These denied Jews completely of their rights as human beings. This was followed by the horrors of “Kristallnacht” in November 1938. Over 100 Jews were killed and thousands sent to concentration camps. Jews were banned from universities. They were banned from practising their professions and from belonging to professional associations. Germans were ordered to boycott all Jewish establishments under the pain of law.
In 1942, the German leadership held the “Wannsee Conference” to deal with what was known ( and it was known) as “the final solution” — the total destruction of European Jewry. The allies knew this. It was never a secret. There many ways, the allies could have helped reduce the number of Jews murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators throughout Europe. They chose not to. So I’ll leave their reasons why, to your own imagination.
To say that “people didn’t know” makes a mockery of human intelligence. From the time that Hitler and his followers began their drive to power in Germany, there were those, Jews included, who knew that if he did get into power, the lives of Jews in Germany would be changed forever.