Number of Victims of the Holocaust - Reference Thread

[Marcus Wendel]

A post not about sourced estimated of the victims was split off into a new thread at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=170861

/Marcus

[paolosilv]

The borders changed during the war. According to the state of Hungary, approximately 550,000 Jews died during the Holocaust in that country.
http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/news/ ... enial.html

15.03.10
Hungary Criminalizes Holocaust Denial

President of Hungary Laszlo Solyom has signed a law making Holocaust denial a crime. Starting in April 2010, denying or trivializing the Holocaust will be punishable by up to three years in prison.
The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) issued a statement calling the law an important weapon in the fight against anti-Semitism, allowing the authorities to curtail the activities of extremists posing a threat to a peaceful society.

The Hungarian Parliament had rejected an amendment put forward by the main opposition party Fidesz to add to the bill an amendment making crimes by Hungary's pro-Nazi and communist regimes.

Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews and 50,000 Gypsies were murdered in the Holocaust.

======
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/es/article.php ... d=10005458
However, according to the US Holocaust Museum, it 's more:

Of approximately 825,000 Jews living in Hungary in 1941, about 63,000 died or were killed prior to the German occupation of March 1944. Under German occupation, just over 500,000 died from maltreatment or were murdered. Some 255,000 Jews, less than one-third of those who had resided within enlarged Hungary in March 1944, survived the Holocaust. About 190,000 of these were residents of Hungary in its 1920 borders.


They indicate it's about 563,000 Hungarian Jews who perished.

[michael mills]

.....approximately 825,000 Jews living in Hungary in 1941....

A grossly exaggerated figure.

According to the 1941 census of enlarged Hungary, the Jewish population was 725,007, that is, registered members of the Jewish community.

In addition the census found 58,329 so-called "Christian Jews", of whom 34,435 were subject to the anti-Jewish laws. All except 6,038 of the "Christian Jews" lived in Trianon Hungary, and 36,362 lived in Budapest alone.

Adding the "Christian Jews" subject to the anti-Jewish legislatiuon to the registered Jews yields a total of 759,447 persons subject to persecution as Jews. However, since the majority of the "Christian Jews" lived in Budapest, it is unlikely that many of them were deported.

Let us assume that the figure of around 255,000 Jewish survivors is correct. That figure would not include "Christian Jews, since such persons were considered Jewish only by the wartime Hungarian authorities, not by the Jews themselves.

Accordingly, the figure of 255,00 Jewish survivors must be compared to the 1941 census figure of 725,000 Jews. Subtracting 255,000 from 725,000 leaves a maximum figure of 470,000 who could have perished. The actual total is likely to be less than that, since the figure of 255,000 survivors would include only those who were not deported or who survived deportation and returned; it would not include surviving deportees who did not return to their former places of residence.

And the figure of 225,000 survivors might well be an underestimate. For example, the chapter on Hungary in the book "Dimension des Voelkermords" estimates that 293,000 of the 1944 Jewish population of enlarged Hungary survived. That would reduce the maximum number of victims to 432,000.

That is over 100,000 less than the grossly exaggerated figure of 563,000 dead postulated by Paolosilv.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- Please give sources or links for your figures so our readers can see them for themseves.

[uberjude]

According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, the number of Christians of Jewish origin was larger than the reported 58,000, and was perhaps more like 85,000, which would still only make the "Jewish population" 810,000, and, as Michael pointed out, many of those wouldn't be subject to the deportation.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/printarticle.aspx?id=1680

[michael mills]

My source for the figures from the 1941 census was:

"Hungarian-Jewish studies" by Randolph Braham ( N.Y. : World Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1966-1969)

My source for the figures quoted from "Dimension des Voelkermords" is:

"Dimension des Volkermords : die Zahl der judischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus", edited by Wolfgang Benz (Oldenbourg 1991)

[michael mills]

According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, the number of Christians of Jewish origin was larger than the reported 58,000, and was perhaps more like 85,000

All sorts of guesstimates of the number of "Christian Jews" were made, some up to 100,000.

But the bottom line is that only persons who were officially identified and recorded as such could have been subject to anti-Jewish measures, and the number of those persons was the number recorded in the 1941 census.

Furthermore, the category "Christian Jew" was an invention of the Hungarian authorities, not recognised by Jews themselves. When Jewish organisations counted the number of survivors after the war, they only counted persons they recognised as Jewish, ie they did not count "Christian Jews".

The issue is to compare like with like. If you include "Christian Jews" in the total number of Jews, then the survivor total must also include Christian jews.

If the survivor total only includes "real Jews", then it must be compared with the 1941 total of "real" Jews, excluding "Christian Jews".

[paolosilv]

Michael, I didn't postulate it. Those figures are from the US Holocaust Museum.

[michael mills]

Then the USHMM needs to go back and re-check its figures, which appear to be based on a number of unsupported assumptions, such as the number of "Jewish Christians" and the degree to which those persons were actually caught up in the German persecution of the Hungarian Jews.

It is not enough simply to accept the pronouncements of an organisation such as the USHMM. One must examine the assumptions and data on which such pronouncements are based.

In this case, the assumption of a Hungarian Jewish population in 1941 of 825,000 Jews is totally without foundation. It is 100,000 in excess of the figure actually recorded in the 1941 census. The USHMM has obviously added 100,000 "Christian Jews", again a figure unsupported by census data.

The method used by the USHMM to calculate the number of Hungarian Jewish victims is also faulty, which I will demonstrate with an algebraic equation.

Let X equal the total number of Jews in the enlarged Hungary of 1944, where "Jew" means a person officially registered as a member of the Jewish community.

Let Y equal the total number of Jewish survivors in 1945 in post-war Hungary and the parts of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that had belonged to Hungary in 1944, where "Jewish survivor" means a member of the Jewish community found by investigators to be still alive in 1945, either having returned home or living elsewhere.

Accordingly, the maximum potential number of Jewish victims is X-Y.

Let A equal the number of "Christian Jews" in the enlarged Hungary of 1944, where "Christian Jew" means a person officially registered as a member of a Christian denomination, but classified and recorded as Jewish according to the Hungarian law of that time.

Let B equal the number of "Christian Jews" who survived in 1945, meaning persons registered as members of Chrsitian denominations but who had been classified and recorded as Jewish by the wartime Hungarian Government.

Accordingly, the maximum potential number of "Christian Jewish" victimsof German persecution is A - B.

Therefore, the upper limit of potential Jewish victims, including "Christian Jews", is (X + A) - (Y +B).

The methodological error apparently made by the USHMM is to calculate the upper limit of the number of victims as (X + A) - Y. That is, they have omitted the number of "Christian Jewish" survivors, and have therefore over-estimated the number of victims by B.

The USHMM has also underestimated the number of genuinely Jewish survivors. It states that the number of survivors in the reduced post-war Hungary was about 190,000, a figure that is generally accepted. To that must be added the survivors in the former Hungarian areas that had been returned to Romania and Czechoslovakia.

According to the book "Dimension des Voelkermords", the estimated number of survivors in those areas was:

Areas returned to Romania.......................................................................58,000
Areas returned to Czechoslovakia or annexed by USSR.......................................33,000

TOTAL...............................................................................................91,000

Added to the 190,000 survivors in post-war Hungary, that yields a minimum total of 281,000 survivors. That figure does not include survivors from the part of Yugoslavia that belonged to Hungary in 1944, for which I do not have any data, nor does it include survivors who might have emigrated with returning home to be counted.

All in all, the above calculations support the number of survivors for the whole of Hungary in its borders of 1944 given by the book "Dimension des Voelkermords", namely 293,000.

Accordingly, the figure of 255,00 survivors given by the USHMM must be seen as a considerable underestimate.

[Sunbury]

I am puzzled Michael, you rely on an obscure book, and assume a major organistion like the USHMM is in error. You offer no proof mearly an exercise in statistics and assumptions. The old line if "lies. dammed lies and statistics" spring to mind. Anything can be proved by a set of assumptions, that does not mean they are fact.

To me the flaw in your argument is your taking the 1941 Census as an Absolute and not allowing for any demographic shift in populations from the 1941 Census to 1944. Laurence Rees in his book "Auschwitz A New History" does note that Hungrary in 1944 had a higher Jewish population than pre war (1941) due to Jews from surrounding Countries seeking sanctuary there. His view point is equally valid to the one you present, with the core difference, he does not take the 1941 Census as an absolute.

regards

sunbury

[michael mills]

Sunbury,

The 1941 census is a very good starting point, and is used by authorities on Hungarian Jewry such as Randolph Braham.

The crux of the matter is that the German and Hungarian authorities could only deport or otherwise persecute those Jews whom they could identify and lay their hands on. Those were persons who were registered in official records as members of the Jewish community, or persons who were not registered members of the Jewish community but were officially recorded by the Hungarian authorities as Jewish according to Hungarian law.

The data provided by successive Hungarian censi shows the official Jewish population to have been steadily decreasing (figures from the book "Hungarian Social Studies" by Randolph Braham:

1920.....................................................473,355
1930.....................................................444,567
1941.....................................................400,980 (excluding the areas annexed between 1938 and 1941)

The pattern of steady decrease suggests that by 1944 the number of registered members of the Jewish community would have been even less than in 1941, perhaps 15 - 20,000 less.

Of course, there were also Jews living in Hungary who were not officially registered. These were refugees who had entered Hungary illegally, mainly from neighbouring Slovakia, and were living underground, keeping their Jewish identity concealed so as not to be expelled from the country. Since their identies were unknown to the Hungarian authorities, it is unlikely that they were caught up in the round-up of Jews in 1944, unless they happened to be betrayed.

In any case, it is unlikely that their number exceeded the decline in the number of officially registered Jews between 1941 and 1944. Accordingly, taking the official figures of the 1941 census is a reliable way of setting an upper limit to the number of Jews who could have fallen victim to combined German and Hungarian persecution in 1944.

And what is this "obscure book" that you refer to? Do you mean "Dimension des Voelkermords"? It was edited by Wolfgang benz, head if the Institute for Research into Anti-Semitism at the Free University of Berlin, so it has a strong academic imprimatur.

Do you consider it "obscure" because you have not read it? Or because it is in a language you do not understand?

You are at liberty to accept the figure of "Christian Jews" in Hungary claimed by the USHMM, but you should note that it is considerably in excess of the number officially recorded in the 1941 census. That being the case, you should look carefully at the justification given by the USHMM for claiming a figure in excess of the official one based on the 1941 census.

Remember that the issue here is the maximum number of persons who could have fallen victim to the anti-Jewish actions of 1944. Some "Jewish Christians" may have been arrested and subjected to the anti-Jewish measures, thereby adding to that maximum, but the only persons in that category who could have been identified and seized by the Hungarian authorities were those who were officially recorded as belonging to that category. And that number is known from the 1941 census; the number of Christians recorded as subject to anti-Jewish laws was 34, 435.

Sunbury, my posts were based on official census data and calculations made by scholars in a book having academic sanction. Your criticism of my posts is based on nothing at all, except a rather vague and statistically unsupported statement by someone working for the BBC.

I respectfully suggest that you would do well to do a bit of solid research on this topic prior to venturing an uninformed opinion.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- Please avoid personal comments in posts. They detract from your argument, and are forbidden by our rules.

[paolosilv]

Hello, Moderators:

I wish to post this link to the downloadable book published by the A.D.L. on the abuses of Holocaust memory in recent years.

http://www.jcpa.org/text/holocaustabuse.pdf

It's an important subject, well-treated here, and I hope it can be seen by your readers.

Best,
Paolosilv

[Bizzie]

Michael, I didn't postulate it. Those figures are from the US Holocaust Museum.

Isn't 825,000 the Nazi estimate for jews living in Hungary in 1943? It may very well come from the holocaust museum but clearly they must be quoting Heydrich's 'official' figures,

[michael mills]

Isn't 825,000 the Nazi estimate for jews living in Hungary in 1943? It may very well come from the holocaust museum but clearly they must be quoting Heydrich's 'official' figures,

No.

The number of Jews given for Hungary in the table in the Wannsee Protocol is 742,800. That is a reasonable figure, although higher than the official figure based on the 1941 census.