wrong. They always felt justified—until, like Uwe in this story, they were forced to confront the consequences of their actions. We studied the Holocaust to understand how genocides were possible. The central questions to the Holocaust were, How could German citizens have allowed it to happen? How could they have turned a blind eye to what was going on all around them, let alone participated in it? None of us working on atrocities believed we’d ever see something like this in America. We rather naively believed Americans were different. Not so easily fooled. America had a free press and checks
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