132
votes
When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
Information regarding mass murders of Jews began to reach the Allied leadership soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. The volume of those reports increased with time. This was ...
- 77.4k
87
votes
Accepted
Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
Short Answer
There is no straightforward answer here. Some factors aided the survival of women, others the survival of men, but it is plausible that those factors favouring women outweighed those ...
- 108k
85
votes
When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
I want to offer a personal perspective: I am German. I learned about the Holocaust in school. I visited concentration camps. I have friends who lost family in concentration camps. I watched ...
- 905
70
votes
Accepted
Was Anne Frank's story common?
No, Anne Frank's story is completely exceptional - both in circumstances and the fact that she hid for so long (and her father survived).
This is a typical case of Survivorship bias. Most Holocaust ...
- 26.9k
63
votes
Is it true that Germans in World War 2 did not suffer punishment for refusing genocidal orders?
This matter is entangled with one of the disputes within Holocaust studies, although it isn't the point of the dispute. That began with Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men (1992), which is a ...
- 31.4k
56
votes
Accepted
How were concentration and extermination camp guards recruited?
Short answer – it was less "hiring" and more "drafting". No pre-screening happened that I could find evidence of (well, except for the general "has to be a good Nazi" principle, which might count ...
- 8,875
52
votes
Were defendants at the Nuremberg trial allowed to deny the holocaust?
Theoretically, yes they were. The first law against Holocaust denial in Germany was passed in 1960, some time after the Nuremberg trials had taken place. As tall an order as it may have been for ...
- 3,256
41
votes
How to rebut Holocaust denial argument?
The right response is to laugh at it.
I don't think this can or should be directly rebutted. Arguing details of a theory that is that far from the mainstream implicitly puts it on equal logical ...
- 118k
39
votes
When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
Like this Swedish front page from December 18, 1942 it was known. The headline says "Planer på att utrota judarna förverkligas" (Plans to exterminate the Jews put into action). It speaks of hundreds ...
- 2,066
39
votes
What was the state of the German rail system in 1944?
Could an SS officer get from Auschwitz to Berlin by train in July/August/September 1944?
Yes. Per the many comments to your question they'd repair the rails as they'd get destroyed. Trains might get ...
- 23.2k
34
votes
Accepted
Nuremberg Laws - Did they affect existing marriages between Jews and Non-Jews?
It is very rare for new laws to apply retroactively, even Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. In this case, the prohibition of mixed marriages did not apply to couples who were already married. However, as the ...
- 77.4k
30
votes
Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
The numbers cited are not an adequate basis on which to estimate the relative numbers of men and women who were killed.
The "2 million" figure referred to in the referenced Wikipedia article is ...
- 473
26
votes
Accepted
Why didn't Soviet Jews flee east ahead of the advancing Nazis?
Short answer - they tried and many (although not the majority) did.
Moishe Cohen is partly right in his answer - population movement in USSR was more restricted than in contemporary Europe, and even ...
- 8,875
25
votes
Accepted
How to rebut Holocaust denial argument?
What are you trying to rebut, that the plaque changed, or that the number of deaths is uncertain? Maybe the plaque originally stated the estimated number killed total, but now it just refers to the ...
- 37.8k
24
votes
Was Anne Frank's story common?
For survivors who went undercover the whole time, her story is not all that untypical. The German term for such people was "illegals" or "U-Boote". They needed helpers, they needed hiding places, they ...
- 16.8k
24
votes
Were defendants at the Nuremberg trial allowed to deny the holocaust?
Edit: Yes, they could have denied it if they'd wanted to - there was no law against it at the time - but none of them did in their defences to the charges. Using a defence that can readily be ...
- 31.4k
24
votes
What publication claimed that Michael Jackson died in a nuclear holocaust?
The headline (or more specifically, a variation thereof) was used on the debut edition of the Post New York Post, a satirical take on the New York Post by Robert Vare and the same crew of satirists ...
- 23.2k
24
votes
Accepted
What publication claimed that Michael Jackson died in a nuclear holocaust?
As Denis de Bernardy found the 'newspaper' alluded to by Finkelstein was the November issue of the 'Post New York Post'.
The headline didn't talk about 'a holocaust', nuclear or otherwise. The paper ...
- 80.8k
23
votes
Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
This is not an answer but is too long for a comment. Here is what the Yad Vashem, a Holocaust Museum in Israel, says about the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust:
There is no precise figure ...
- 6,261
21
votes
Why was an SS commander dismissed and charged for the mistreatment of Jewish prisoners?
He was stealing the Jews' property, which belonged to the state, which in practice meant the SS. That meant he was showing obvious corruption, in an organisation that tried very hard to present an ...
- 31.4k
20
votes
Was Anne Frank's story common?
There is of course no such thing as a typical holocaust story. There are six million stories and each one is different. The Anne Frank story is special because it was warm and personal enough to have ...
- 301
20
votes
Why didn't Soviet Jews flee east ahead of the advancing Nazis?
I do not have time to write a full-scale answer, the following is an outline:
If you are a Jew who lives, say, in Riga, in Summer of 1941 and tries to get as far East as possible away from the ...
- 6,261
19
votes
How to rebut Holocaust denial argument?
Easy. At the Nuremberg trials the holocaust was one of the indictments. None of the defendants pretended that the holocaust had not happened, because this was not credible, and they didn't want to ...
- 14.3k
17
votes
Why didn't Soviet Jews flee east ahead of the advancing Nazis?
Moishe explained why the Jews could not escape.
I will try to explain why some of them would not even try.
The first hand experience most people in the Western part of the USSR had with Germans was ...
- 26.9k
16
votes
How to rebut Holocaust denial argument?
They are using "The Auschwitz Gambit: The Four Million Variant"
The argument, "Hey, if the number of deaths on the plaque at A decreases, then the estimates of the total number of Jews killed needs ...
- 161
16
votes
Accepted
How did Nazi concentration camp staff deal with survivors of gassings?
The general question is unanswerable for all cases. It is also too unspecific regarding the timeframe. The policies and purposes for all such camps changed over time. A concentration camp was operated ...
- 80.8k
16
votes
How much were Jews allowed to take with them from Nazi Germany?
Is this indeed a discrepancy, or am I misunderstanding the article?
You are misunderstanding the situation, since the article is mixing multiple laws that changed over time.
Currency restrictions (...
- 9,504
15
votes
Were defendants at the Nuremberg trial allowed to deny the holocaust?
Yes, they were able to deny the Holocaust.
First every party was asked before the trial if they consider themselves guilty or innocent and everyone declared himself innocent.
Julius Streicher, who ...
- 5,166
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible