It has been established that the Nazi death machine was nothing if not efficient. Prisoners were worked to death (those too sick or weak to work were culled early on), gassed, and their bodies were burned. The perpetrators were not eager to leave behind documentation or physical evidence. Anecdotal evidence, of course, gets hand-waved away by your side, but the experience of one of my best friends, now deceased, is relevant. Her name was Mia Immerman. She was an accomplished painter, and a prominent figure in Holocaust-remembrance groups. Her story is typical. She, a nine-year-old girl, and her parents were on a train in Belgium, attempting to reach France, and from there, England. The SS removed her parents from the train--they were never heard from again--but she managed to hide. Through the help of strangers, she found the home of relatives in Holland. They, too, were rounded up and removed to the camps. She, miraculously, reached England, and years later, America. All of Mia's aunts and uncles, her grandparents, the parents of her childhood friends, the friends themselves--everybody in the closely-knit Jewish community she grew up in--died in the camps.
Perhaps she was lying?
