So I'm almost positive that I read somewhere that yes, the public one about it but I'm having a hard time corroborating it. I bought a book called "What We Knew..." By Eric A Johnson but I haven't read it yet.
Were the camps known by the general public?
There is always more to say, and much will depend on what you mean here by the term "concentration camps". The existence of such camps was absolutely not a secret, but their use as part of an extermination campaign against the Jewish people was less well known. If by asking about "concentration camps" you are essentially asking about public knowledge of the Holocaust, then one section of our FAQ offers a number of links to earlier threads that address your question. You might like to review some of these while you wait for fresh responses to this query: