ABSTRACT
Knowledge of the holocaust spread slowly during 1942, in part because Hitler and his entourage took care to conceal it. They used euphemisms and made sure that only those who ‘needed to know’ did. Any mention of the murder of the Jews was expressly forbidden. In July 1943 Martin Bormann, head of the party apparatus, issued a directive to all party leaders ‘by order of the Führer’: ‘In public discussion of the Jewish question any mention of a future total solution must be avoided. However, one may discuss the fact that all Jews are being interned and detailed to purposeful compulsory labour forces.’1
