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by DavidPiper 33 days ago
Not sure I agree with some of your points, but also not sure they're downvote-worthy.

As a non-American, the only thing I could probably argue against in good faith with enough context is Point 2.

I took from the 10 stories that everybody knew what was happening, and still nobody did anything (with one exception after-the-fact). The media today is certainly broadcasting what is happening, but I'm not sure it's actually solving the "let's do something about it" problem.

2 comments

I also need to clarify something: I was trying to say that for a long time regular Germans did not know about abuses on Jews; until it was too late that is.

After all the book starts with the synagogue burning in 1938.

This is very different from what is going on in the US where people are very much aware of ICE abuses from the very start.

One thing I took from the book is that only 1 million of Germans out of 80 million in 1939 was part of the system that killed the Jews (worked in the ministries, railways, police, Gestapo, SS). The rest 79 million were not exposed-and the Nazis did not trumpet how many Jews were killed or how many synagogues were burned in the prior month.

The 10 people in the book did see Jews leaving their cities, but they did not think much of it. One of the 10 people said something to the effect of : “yeah, probably it was not easy for them to leave. But it was not easy for me either when I was unemployed”. I got the impression those 10 people did not really like the Jews (they certainly had their prejudices against them) but they did not hate them either (in some cases they visited each other houses and sometimes they traded with each other)