I disagree with that assessment, personally. Rounding people up specifically for being of a certain group and then, no matter how you slice it, a fair bunch of them dying, will almost always have more of an impact than mixing a very small percentage of the population into the fighting force, and having some of them die on the frontlines or whatever.

Were some individual Jews saved by the concentration camps, that would have otherwise died in the fighting? Sure, 100%. Were Jews overall benefitting from being put in the camps? I find that unlikely.

Just swap things, and see how you'd feel, for example. Imagine they were rounding up specifically white people and putting them in camps where, at the very least, some of them were dying under horrible conditions. Would you feel that was better than white people simply being treated as anyone else, and many of those white men going to fight and die in the conflict, alongside everyone else? Alright, when I put it that way it doesn't sound so absurd after all, since you often didn't have a choice either way but, still, I'd personally prefer not to be singled out. I think I would rather take my chances in war than be at the mercy of people hostile toward me because of my group identity.

One more point; it wasn't just the young male Jews in the camps, either. So even if they on average benefited (which I still don't think they did), everyone else didn't. Children and grandpas and grandmas weren't going to go die on the frontlines, but they did die in the camps.

I'm not arguing no Jews ended up benefiting, but I don't think Jews as a whole benefited from the camps...aside from the excellent PR and propaganda after the fact, but that's a separate issue from treatment during the war. Anyway, it's certainly an interesting thought experiment if nothing else, though.

I disagree with that assessment, personally. Rounding people up specifically for being of a certain group and then, no matter how you slice it, a fair bunch of them dying, will almost always have more of an impact than mixing a very small percentage of the population into the fighting force, and having some of them die on the frontlines or whatever.

Were some individual Jews saved by the concentration camps, that would have otherwise died in the fighting? Sure, 100%. Were Jews overall benefitting from being put in the camps? I find that unlikely.

Just swap things, and see how you'd feel, for example. Imagine they were rounding up specifically white people and putting them in camps where, at the very least, some of them were dying under horrible conditions. Would you feel that was better than white people simply being treated as anyone else, and many of those white men going to fight and die in the conflict, alongside everyone else? Alright, when I put it that way it doesn't sound so absurd after all, since you often didn't have a fight either way but, still, I'd personally prefer not to be singled out. I think I would rather take my chances in war than be at the mercy of people hostile toward me because of my group identity.

One more point; it wasn't just the young male Jews in the camps, either. So even if they on average benefited (which I still don't think they did), everyone else didn't. Children and grandpas and grandmas weren't going to go die on the frontlines, but they did die in the camps.

I'm not arguing no Jews ended up benefiting, but I don't think Jews as a whole benefited from the camps...aside from the excellent PR and propaganda after the fact, but that's a separate issue from treatment during the war. Anyway, it's certainly an interesting thought experiment if nothing else, though.