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Notes -
So how do you explain testimony from survivors of Auschwitz where they tell very consistent stories about how they had no clue that the fires they saw in the distance were crematoria, and that they didn't understand what the Kapos meant when they whispered things to them like "You’re young and healthy!" and "everyone is healthy" ? In hindsight, they understood that these were instructions on what to say (or not say) to the sorting officer who would decide who would go to the work camps or to the gas chambers.
What motivation would these people have to lie (consistently) or what mechanism would result in them coming to believe a false story, very quickly after liberation?
To believe that the arriving prisoners could identify the gas chambers for what they were, you need to go a lot further than to believe that the prisoners knew that Auschwitz was (in part) an extermination camp, which already contradicts the testimony, but you also need to believe that they knew the manner of execution (even though using gas for executions was novel at the time), and that they either knew that the gassing would happen straight after arrival or somehow be able to recognize that a fake shower room is not a shower room.
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