KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (121 page)

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Authors: Nikolaus Wachsmann

BOOK: KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

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67
. This book includes a large number of direct quotations from prisoners and perpetrators. Many of these quotes come from contemporary documents. Others are taken from later sources, however, which poses methodological problems. On the one hand, few eyewitnesses were able to recall expressions they had heard
months or years earlier with absolute precision. On the other hand, paraphrasing all such quotes would sacrifice immediacy; the tone and wording of orders, after all, was a crucial part of the SS strategy of domination. In the end, I have decided to use some “retrospective quotes,” but only if source criticism—analyzing the internal consistency of the document and comparing it against others—led
me to conclude that the words quoted were likely to be a close approximation of what had been said.

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