Could you cite the claim that the broad German population knew about the extermination camps qua extermination camps before spring 1945? Of course the average

Could you cite the claim that the broad German population knew about the extermination camps qua extermination camps before spring 1945? Of course the average German would have been familiar with the idea of concentration camps, because Germany had begun to put Communists into such camps already in the 1930s and this was well-publicized. But when the Nazi leadership adopted the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in early 1942 and concentration camps became extermination camps, Germany was already under heavy wartime press censorship. The people living around the camps would have known that something was up, but the camps were deliberately constructed to be out of sight and out of mind of the bulk of the German population. This is not to let the German people off the hook. Germans were aware of the 1930s events like Kristallnacht and one can argue that they should have known that apathy in the face of these smaller atrocities would only encourage larger atrocities. But for most of Germany’s population, an awareness of the camps could only have come through this supposition or through rumour and innuendo, and not firm factual knowledge of their existence and operation.