Did anyone predict the Holocaust or something like it?
The only people I've found that seem to have had some prescience with regards to the fate of the Jews of Europe are Trotsky and Hermann Mann (brother of Thomas Mann).
Trotsky, in December 1938, wrote:
“It is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war the next development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the Jews.”
When Hitler came to power, Mann wrote a letter in which he said "that the Jews of Germany will be systematically annihilated, of that there can be no doubt." (This is quoted in Clive James' book Cultural Amnesia) That turned out to be slightly wrong, as Jews inside Germany had a better chance of surviving Nazi power than those in the stateless war zones to the east.
I've tried looking for others, but Google searches turn up a frustrating glut of crap websites dealing with Biblical prophecy and Nostradamus etc. Not the sort of sober information I'm looking for.
So AskHistorians, did anyone else see the Holocaust coming in any palpable sense?
For context, this time was tumultuous in Palestine. Jewish immigration was restricted, which many Jews saw as punishing Jews for Arab violence, and prevented Jews from leaving Europe. A white paper restricting immigration further was written in 1939. The Manchester guardian referred to it as "a death sentence for tens of thousands of Central European Jews". An MP said Jews were being forced to pick between migration and "extinction", and immigration restrictions in Palestine were making the latter choice impossible. He also referred to the decision as sacrificing Jews to appease Arab interests. That text is here.
Moreover, I'd a rude demographics make it obvious. About half of the Jewish population in Germany emigrated between the rise of nazism and the outbreak of war, despite difficulties in doing so. While you'd have to ask them what they thought was coming in Germany, surely this indicates that many knew something bad was coming, even if they couldn't know its scope.