What we need to observe here is that we have one conquering German military machine extending its power over most of Europe and Northern Africa. The entire organization was acting under the same orders and under the same policies. Yet there are marked differences in the stories in matters that are significant to the Holocaust.

      For example, it is axiomatic to the holocaust that it was the intention of the Nazis to exterminate all of the Jews. This does not explain the collaboration of the Zionist Jews with the Nazis. It does not explain why Jews in North Africa were not deported to camps much less exterminated. But there are larger problems.

      What it primarily does not explain is that even if these policies applied only in Europe, why there was different behavior in eastern and western Europe. For example we only have reports of "extermination" camps from Eastern Europe, not only only from Eastern Europe but only from Poland.

      Even more so, where the eastern tales are of singling out jews for special treatment there are almost no such western tales. France almost has no such tales yet we are told it was Nazi policy to single out Jews.

      By "almost no" tales I mean that there are so few such tales that they appear to be "me too" afterthoughts, in the sense of "we suffered too." These few stories appear without preamble and without the dozens of post war eyewitnesses common from the east.

      So how can we explain extermination camps only in Poland? For that we need to remind ourselves that the story of the holocaust has been purified over the years. At one time there were exterimation camps all over occupied Europe. By the time of the end of the war only a few now discredited claims of such camps outside of Soviet occupied Europe remained.

      That France and Italy do not have a tradition of extermination camps is as much a quirk of fate as was the way eastern europeans expressed themselves.

      As another example of these strangely variant implementations of the same orders consider the fitness to work issue. In the east the story goes that all Jews were sent to the camps and the vast majority were found unfit for work in the camps. In the west only Jews who were fit to work were selected for transport to work camps.

      This was a very strange difference. In the west this behavior was rational if they wanted workers; in the east this behavior was irrational if they wanted workers. In the west this behavior was irrational if they wanted to exterminate Jews; in the east this behavior is rational if they want to exterminate Jews.