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Before they used cattle cars to send Jews to die in the Holocaust, Germans used (the same) cattle cars to send their soldiers to die en masse in the First World War.
Just as German soldiers had been compelled to "die for the country," so Jews would be compelled to do so.
The Holocaust represented an enactment—a reenactment—of the First World War: Jews slaughtered in the death camps symbolized German soldiers who had been slaughtered in the First World War.
| LIKE SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER |
| German soldiers on the way to the Western Front: 2,037,000 dead; 4,300,000 wounded; 974,977 missing or prisoner; total casualties 7,311,977 (Whalen, 1984). |
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