Given the already describedstrains on the Jews, the negative effect of the heat, and thegreat overloading of most of the cars, the Jews attemptedtime and again to break out of the parked train cars, asdarkness had already set in toward 7:30 p.m.

Withthe coming of deep darkness in the night, many Jews escapedby squeezing through the air holes after removing the barbedwire.

“Actuallythe impact of letters from the front, which had been regarded as ex-traordinarily important, has to be considered more than harmfultoday,” he noted: “soldiers are pretty blunt when they describe thegreat problems they are fighting under, the lack of winter gear . . .insufficient food and ammunition.”

With smuggled letters, private diaries,and secret archives, Jewish victims made enormous efforts to leavebehind accounts of the atrocities the Nazis were committing.

Criticism of the disruption of publicorder was widespread, but should not be taken completely at facevalue. It undoubtedly veiled deeper moral objections that were oth-erwise difficult to articulate in Nazi Germany

ventuallythe criminal charges that relatives threatened to bring against hos-pitals, the dismay of local townspeople who wondered why the pa-tients “are never seen again”—“in one south German village, peas-ant women refused to sell cherries to nurses from the local statehospital”—and finally, in August 1941, the open denunciation ofinvoluntary euthanasia by Clemens August von Galen, the Catholicbishop of Münster in Westphalia, prompted Hitler to order the spe-cial killing centers dismantled.

he sterilization proceedings put the voices ofvictims into the historical record, an unusual occurrence in NaziGermany. Whether they were “pleading or imploring, beseechingor threatening, complaining or accusing, bitter or outraged, fright-ened or self-confident, resigned or enraged, oral or written, rhymedor unrhymed,” the appeals were generally free of the “condescend-ing” scientific language of biological racism

Thus, for leading opponents of the Nazis, and for the Jews andother minorities that the regime tormented, there seemed to be littlealternative but to abandon Germany altogether. Since most exilesnever returned, Germany’s political and intellectual life continuedto be structured by the Nazis long after their defeat

“Ifonly the good old days would come back again, just one more time.Why do we have to have this dreadful war, which has disrupted ourpeaceful lives, broken our happiness, and dissolved all our big andlittle hopes for a new house into nothing?”

But when the German cheers wouldnot stop, “Hitler sensed a popular mood, a longing for peace andreconciliation.” This was also an indication of the general content-ment with things as they were.

However, Germans did not want the war Hitler was determinedto wage in order to gain living space and empire.

what he saw was an increas-ingly Nazified community in which neighbors now took notice ofKarl’s behavior and club members adjusted their own. What Karlwas resisting as he stood alongside his wife was the pressure to con-form, if only for the sake of appearances.