The Nazis were claiming they'd deport the Jews at first. It never goes directly to death camps, it's baby steps of normalization.
> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
- Milton Meyer, They Thought They Were Free - The Germans, 1933 - 1945
that was what opened to door to every creeping horror next
then they took away healthcare because they were illegal immigrants
then they took away the right to have jobs because...
they they limited where they could exist/shop/times of day in public because...
THEN they got to the concentration-camps
THEN they got to "well too many and bullets are too expensive/tedious, let's build gas ovens"
All it takes is "othering" a group of people by any characteristic and the majority of the rest of the population says "well that's not me so not worried"
Right now in America there thousands of people WITH GREEN CARDS (legal status) sitting in our concentration-camps, no criminal records, and they will be there for several months awaiting hearings before being deported.
Then you've got the teenage kids who have never lived in any other country that are being held in our concentration-camps and will be deported? To where?
The Nazis were claiming they'd deport the Jews at first. It never goes directly to death camps, it's baby steps of normalization.
> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
- Milton Meyer, They Thought They Were Free - The Germans, 1933 - 1945