Yes. The marksmanship of their executioners was a touch sloppy as I recall. They probably suffered quite a lot of pain before oblivion embraced them.
Oh dear.
How sad.
Never mind.
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There's knowing and knowing, though, isn't there? Most Americans and Brits 'knew' that the Germans were probably doing terrible things in the camps, but it wasn't until the footage came through that the true horror began to sink in. The sad truth is that it is a case of 'out of sight, out of mind' when it comes to evil.
Yes. And there was Le Carré (who, whatever his faults, never wavered in his loathing of communism).
But these are a/ relatively niche and b/ non-visual. Never underestimate the impact of images. In emotional terms, everything's just theoretical until we see it. The soviets learned from the Holomodor to keep the optics out of sight and, as a result, communism never had the visceral impact on people that the realities of Nazism did.