. . . Himmler, in a speech to the SS generals on October 4, 1943, praised them for the dedicated and self-sacrificing zeal with which they had applied themselves to the task of extermination.
"Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time – apart from exceptions caused by human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written…"
Pardon, Herr General, I cannot refrain from writing it.
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
(The full text of Himmler’s speech can be read here [1].)