ABSTRACT
The widely discussed issue of what the German public knew of the Holocaust has been dealt with by recent historical literature.1 Scholars who examined this topic have shown that the main source of information on the mass shootings were soldiers serving on the Eastern Front who witnessed or participated in them. For example, in a letter that reached the Security Service after it was sent to Ribbentrop’s wife in November 1944, a private from Saxony asked, inter alia:
do you really think we soldiers don’t know what bestial murders have been perpetrated by our SS in Russia? Where for example are the 145,000 Jews of Lemberg who were there when they were transported little by little on trucks and shot not far from Lemberg?2
