So, how best to put this?
If you are easily offended, I recommend you go no further.
I'm currently writing a story about a Hungarian man during WW II who's secretly a serial killer and to avoid prosecution he kills a Jewish man to 'prove' his loyalty to the Nazi party and lands a job manning the gas chambers at a fictional death camp.
And then things get worse from there.
What I need (if you're still reading this) are facts, or even just references that I can bookmark, to these things:
[hide]1. Were Hungarians allowed to work at death camps, and what's a reasonable time to get them to work? (I want the villain in there ASAP)
2. What was it like for a person working on the killing side of things in a death camp? What did manning the gas chamber entail? Did they do double duty with anything? How high were they in the chain of command?
3. Since those Nazis were authoritarian assholes, how much attention should I pay to the command structure so that this guy doesn't get himself fired or killed? He's the favorite soldier of the person in charge so I can play around with things a little, but ultimately he can't make his commanding officer look bad.
4. There was this one Nazi officer who vomited when he saw a ditch full of dead bodies. Who was that and when did it happen? I have a scene in mind when the serial killer witnesses this first hand and is pretty disgusted.
5. When did the camps finally start getting liberated by Ally forces? (In this fictional camp it's implied that they're going to be the last to go).
6. This camp is located in an isolated valley surrounded by mountains so it can be kept secret. How would they go about communicating with the outside world, if at all? If communication is cut off, what would be a better place to put the camp?[/hide]
If it makes me look less bad, he's only one of two POVs. The other one is of a woman sheltering a Jewish girl in a nearby town. It's kind of a simple 'good guy vs bad guy' story thing.
….So yeah, my imagination can get wander into scary places sometimes.
I do want to get inside a Nazi's head, but only so I can write from his perspective. I in no way sympathize with their ideology.
I will be going ahead with this story to finish NaNoWriMo, but it would be nice to have facts as I go along, even if I can only use them to hammer out the second draft.