World knew already of Nazi horrors

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This article was published 10/11/2014 (3956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If all you knew of the Second World War came from Hollywood, you might be under the impression that Allied soliders were shocked, in 1945, to uncover the depths of depravity in Axis concentration camps.

It does make for a good ending. By the end of a two-hour war film, generally there have been hundreds of deaths, with dozens in close-up. It is good to remind the audience that the soldiers they were cheering for were killing because they had to.

Filming their reactions as one of shock drives home the emotional point, as well, visually reinforcing the horror of the Holocaust.

And probably many of those liberating troops tuly were shocked, to see — and to hear, to touch, even to smell — the actual physical horrors of places like Dachau and Buchenwald.

But not everyone was surprised.

Details of the Nazi concentration camps were filtering out into the press, even in Brandon, as early as November 1939.

The atrocities were covered in a British white paper, and some of them were printed in the Brandon Daily Sun.

Certain things that are common knowledge now, like the sheer scale of the attempted genocide, weren’t clear. But the cruelty was.

Calling the Nazi regime “reminiscent of the darkest ages of the history of man,” the story in the Sun detailed random floggings, lootings and public beatings of Jews, along with other “fiendish manifestations of sadism.”

Jews weren’t allowed to be sick — only dead — and couldn’t even lie on their backs, only their sides.

The document was almost kept secret, its contents deemed so “repugnant” that it was feared they would serve only to inspire hatred. They were released, though, to counteract “unscrupulous propaganda.”

It told of prisoners in concentration camps being tightly bound to a tree trunk in a hugging position as punishment — so tight that they could barely move, yet forced to shuffle around and around, with guards kicking at their ankles if they moved too slowly.

Another version of “tree binding” was often fatal. Prisoners would be bound face out, with their arms pulled back around the trunk and tied together. Thighs and feet would also be tied, tight enough to cut off circulation, and prisoners would be left hanging there for hours.

“Many,” the report said, “ended their sufferings by pretending to attempt to escape in order to be shot down.”

» ghamilton@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @Gramiq