There was a point in Germany when the hostility towards Jews had to have rubbed the conscience of its citizens, but at that point the confidence of the nation was so intoxicating that denying what was morally wrong seemed easy. So Germans pretended not to be aware that their Jewish neighbors were being sent off almost certainly to die, knowing that this denial could not last forever. Another author, Carol Travis, refers to this phenomenon in an essay titled, In Groups We Shrink, in the book, Between Worlds. Psychologists call this social loafing, or diffusion of responsibility, where people seem to lose even common sense when in large numbers. A sustained honeymoon, so to speak, as an entire group of people pretend not to notice the sounds