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Conversation partners rarely pose the sort of intense questions Felbert does in this excerpt. Much more frequently, the impression is that, while the details the storyteller recounts may be surprising to his audience, the overall process of annihilation was something familiar. Felbert, for instance, is clearly familiar with the fact that Jews were transported in “cattle cars.” The listeners in the protocols rarely react with astonishment or dismiss what is being said as unbelievable or unacceptable. The annihilation of European Jews, to put it concisely, was part of the world the soldiers not only knew, but knew much better than even the most recent research would lead us to expect. Undoubtedly, not everyone had knowledge of everything.¹⁹¹ Nonetheless, the surveillance protocols are full of Holocaust specifics, from the asphyxiation of Jews using the exhaust fumes of motorized vehicles to the exhumation and burning of bodies as part of “Action 1005.” In it, Jewish concentration camp inmates were forced to dig up the bodies and burn them. Moreover, soldiers traded rumors so furiously that we must assume that nearly all of them knew that massive numbers of Jews were being murdered.

A second surprising aspect of the stories is the unpredictable turns they tend to take from today’s perspective. For instance, we would expect Kittel to conclude his narrative by telling how he tried to stop the killings for humanitarian reasons. But that’s not the upshot of his story:

Despite the expressions of horror he occasionally uses, Kittel’s objection to the executions is practical and technical. As far as he was concerned, the mass shootings could continue, but not where they were taking place.

What disturbs Kittel is the visibility of the executions and the fact that no one seems to have thought of the risk that the water supply could be infected. Felbert, however, is less interested in those issues than in how the story goes on: