It was on this day in 1942 that Auschwitz first commenced the industrial scale murder of its inmates, principally, although completely exclusively, consisting of Jews from all over Europe.
Everything about this is mind-boggling, and repeated efforts to explain how this occurred continue to be inadequate. I had originally intended to post a lengthy post on this, but the day got away from me and I didn't have the chance.
While the intended post would have been much lengthier, I will note that up into the initial decade and a half of the 20th Century, nobody would have imagined a horror on this scale, which is not to say that antisemitism did not exist in Europe. Indeed, it very much did, although not equally in every country by any means. Perhaps ironically, Germany compared favorably in this regard compared to, for example, France, where antisemitism had been much more open. Indeed, German Jews were highly assimilated and acculturated in many instances in Germany prior to the First World War.
Nonetheless, antisemitism remained and had deep roots. Even before the loss of the Great War, warning signs existed of an underlying virulent strain of antisemitism developing. This took root in odd places, including in the popular eugenics movement that existed in the early 20th Century, which melded with the PanGermanism movement which should to unite "Germans" in a single nation. These combined in no small part as frankly defining what a German was, was not easy, and in fact the Nazis were never able to come up with a cogent definition in spite of dedicating significant efforts to do so. To some degree, indeed, the definition of "German" didn't really come about until the Germans had lost the war. At any rate, defining the "other", i.e., who was excluded, combined with odd wacky genetic theories of the time, and mixed in antisemitism with it. The stress of the economic collapse of Germany during the Great Depression, cultural misconceptions about Jews in certain industries, the presence of Jewish refugees escaping the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil war, and the confusion and propogandization of Communism with the Jews all added fuel to the fire and combined with age-old fears and prejudices.
Nonetheless, in spite of this and the rise of the Nazis, none of this could have occurred if a lot of Germans didn't choose to simply go alone or sit on their hands.
Added to this, the complicity of Eastern European, and indeed Western European, populations can't be ignored. In spite of the intense suffering that they suffered at the hands of the Germans, Poles and residents of the Baltic States were complicit in the murder of the Jews. Romanians were as well. Ultimately, authorities in occupied France assisted in the deportation of Jewish residents of France, not all of whom who had French citizenship but many of whom did.
In remarkable contrast, however, Scandinavian countries were hostile to German efforts, with Denmark being notably so in spite of being occupied, but with Norway also being. Norwegians were particularly uncooperative with their occupiers in everything. Finland, with some slight exception, likewise did not cooperate, and even Italy, in spite of having passed antisemitic laws under the fascists, did not cooperate with efforts to murder Italian Jews until September 1943.
As noted, the murder of so many people on an industrial scale, by a modern nation, is hard to grasp and remains inexplicable. It couldn't have happened but for the fact that so many people turned a blind eye and chose to think of themselves, first.
Across the globe, on this day in 1942 Douglas MacArthur stated:
The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return,
