NEW YORK—Remembering the mixture of fear and surprise they felt during the dark time in their past, a group of Holocaust survivors recalled the exact day that the Holocaust started right out of the blue, sources confirmed Tuesday. “You’d think there would’ve been some warning signs, but nope—everything was going along just fine until the Holocaust just up and started out of nowhere,” said Esther Herzfeld, 94, who added how scared and baffled she was when she and her family had to go abruptly into hiding after hearing that Jewish people were being rounded up by something called the Gestapo. “We were just minding our own business and everything was totally normal, with no curfew or persecutions or any limits on our rights, and all of a sudden, poof—the Holocaust was in full swing. No one could figure out how the Nazis randomly decided to go after Jews and the disabled and Roma and gay people, but by nightfall people were being grabbed off the street and sent to concentration camps, which had all been built over the previous 24 hours. It was crazy—no one had any clue anything bad was going to happen.” The nation’s Holocaust survivors also reportedly recalled that the suddenness of the Holocaust starting was probably why it took so long for anyone to come help them.

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