Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
They were aware of their existance, Polish resistance had let them know what was going on to some degree, but there was an inability to understand the scale or enourmity of it. When it came time to decide whether to bomb the camps it was decided not to as prisoners would be killed and this was thought unacceptable.
Until we liberated the camps they were seen as 'just' concentration camps, not death factories.
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I've heard varying accounts of that though. It would certainly seem as though the Allies knew as early as 1942 but really didn't want to face it and acknowledge it. There is almost no question when you step back and look at things that they knew what was going on before they liberated the camps. This is one of the reasons that situations like North Korea today are even more disgusting and deplorable: we all know (or very easily could) what's going on there. Its not entirely different, sadly. At least a large part of the point of that liberation was to never let that kind of suffering happen again.