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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303690.html
Extent of Nazi Camps Far Greater than Realized
[Washington Post] Monica Hesse - A decade ago, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum decided to create an encyclopedia of concentration camps. They assumed the finished work would be massive, featuring 5,000 to 7,000 camps and ghettos. Their ultimate count of more than 20,000 camps is far more than most scholars had known existed and might reshape public understanding of the scope of the Holocaust itself. "Instead of thinking of main death camps, people are going to understand that this was a continent-wide phenomenon," said Steven Katz, director of Boston University's Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies. "In most towns, there was some sort of prison, or holding area or place where people were victimized," says Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. "Think about what this means. For anyone who thinks this took place out of sight of the average person, this shatters that mythology. There was one Auschwitz. There was one Treblinka. But there were 20,000 other camps spread through the rest of Europe....What we are seeing in this project is that all of Europe was a camp."