Not saying NO Jews were killed before '42, but the determination to use extermination camps was not made until '42. And then it was only used because they could not mass deport the Jews. No one would take them. If Hitler's plan all along was extermination he never would have tried to let them emigrate to other countries. Not sure we're disagreeing. My only contention was that there is a large difference between the topic of this thread and the German population 'not knowing' what was happening to the Jews.
This is not entirely correct, I think. Concentration camps already existed at least since 1933 and Jews were deported to these concentration camps (and killed in them to some extent) long before 1942. In the so-called "Reichskristallnacht" on Nov. 9, 1938 alone, many Jews were killed (around 100) or deported to concentration camps (tens of thousands). To say it was "only used because they could not mass deport the Jews" is not entirely correct also, I think. Sadly enough, they might have preferred killing them to deporting them. But if you mean that "extermination" on a very large scale, as in hundreds of thousands of people, really began around 1941/1942, this is correct. Here are some links on the topic: http://holocaustcenter.org/Holocaust/nazi1941.shtml http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/education/timeline/index.html
I just looked through the first link, but even that roughly fits the timeline I pointed out. It was not until '42 that the mass extermination policy of the Nazis started in relation to Jews. The holocaust center link points out that Auschwitz was not constructed for Jewish extermination but as a POW camp. None of the sites contradict my assertion that the Final Solution was a result of not being able to deport the Jews. Again I'll point out that the Nazis DID in fact try to deport the Jews first. Only when mass deportation failed (deportation to other countries like the US) did the mass extermination begin. Several books I've read specifically link the failure of deportation to the ultimate decision to kill, rather than remove them.
