How [many] Jews were killed for real?

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michael mills
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#361

Post by michael mills » 06 Feb 2016, 03:58

I found this passage written by you on 23 May 2013:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 8#p1793968
And keep in mind that in 1944 the Nazis valued slave labor much more than in 1942. In contrast to 1942, the WVHA had much more of a stake in deported Jews in 1944. There had been frequent talk about converting Lodz into a full fledged concentration camp. The reason the death rate at Birkenau was so much higher for the Lodz Jews than the Hungarian Jews was that the Lodz Jews had been starving in that ghetto for over 4 years by that point -- the Hungarian Jews had lived more or less normally until early 1944. So there were only around 2000 Lodz Jews who were selected for labor (I should add that my grandmother and three of her sisters were amazingly among them; my other grandmother had been in a transport from Hungary just 2 or 3 months earlier and survived).
I think that illustrates the point that I have been making. In 1944, Himmler wanted to use as many of the remaining Jews as possible for slave labour, rather than to kill as many of them as possible.

As you wrote, the reason why almost all of the deportees from the Lodz Ghetto were killed upon arrival at Birkenau was that they were in very poor physical condition, having been subject to malnutrition for four years. Presumably if they had been in better physical condition, more of them would have been selected for labour, to satisfy Himmler's increasing demand for slave labourers.

Thus, the reason why such a high proportion of the deportees from the Lodz Ghetto was killed was presumably not because Himmler was giving priority to extermination over exploitation for labour, but rather that most of the deportees were far to weak to be used for that purpose.

Paul Lantos
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#362

Post by Paul Lantos » 06 Feb 2016, 04:38

Agreed, many of the Jews who were killed were killed because of their poor condition. However the proportion from Hungary killed just a month or two earlier was also very high and the Hungarian Jews were not nearly as starved.

Except through Nazi eyes it is not an absolute requirement that tens of thousands of babies and old people be murdered in order to run a slave labor program for able bodied adults. Both from Hungary and from Lodz (yes, even in 1944) there were many young children, their mothers, and elderly who were exterminated. This makes NO sense if "bargaining chip" Jews was a priority, and the whole world basically watched the Hungarian extermination take place. Why not use the "useless mouths" as bargaining chips and put the able bodied to work? Yes, mass extermination was the MO of the regime, but the regime had changed policies many times during the war years. It DID eventually abandon mass extermination, but not until October or so of 1944.


michael mills
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#363

Post by michael mills » 06 Feb 2016, 05:41

Except through Nazi eyes it is not an absolute requirement that tens of thousands of babies and old people be murdered in order to run a slave labor program for able bodied adults.
It is not an absolute requirement. But it does do away with the burden of feeding those tens of thousands of babies and old people and allows concentration on feeding the able-bodied adults being used for slave labour (if only just enough to keep them alive and working).

Of course, it would not be absolutely necessary to actively kill the tens of thousands of non-workers; it would be enough to just lock them away and allow them to starve. That was the implicit solution in the decision made by Frank's cabinet in August 1942 to continue feeding only the 300,000 Jews working for the German war-effort in the Generalgouvernement (and indeed to increase their rations), while ceasing to supply food to the remaining 1.2 million, thereby condemning them to death. It was also implicit in Hitler's words to Horthy at the Klessheim meeting in April 1943, to the effect that in Poland Jews who could not work just had to "waste away" (verkommen).

However, allowing large numbers of imprisoned Jews to slowly die of starvation had the disadvantage (from the point of view of the German authorities) that the concentrations of starving Jews were likely to become sources of epidemics that might spread to more desirable parts of the population. Active killing at remote extermination centres got the job done more quickly and hygienically. It needs to be borne in mind that the German authorities regarded gassing as a form of euthanasia, as a "favour" to the unwanted population groups that, in the National Socialist way of thinking, needed to disappear so that more favoured groups could flourish. That is why Hitler, in his Political Testament, referred to the killing of the Jews as having been carried out in a "humane" way.

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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#364

Post by David1819 » 07 Feb 2016, 00:18

One fundamental fact has to be established before answering the question of how many Jews were killed.

How did the SS and NSPAD administration define who a is a Jew or what makes one a Jew? and does their method match todays understanding or the mainstream Jewish identity? It may sound like a silly question however the Nuremberg Laws were contradictory to that of NSDAP Office of Racial Policy on this subject. Göring one said something along the lines of "I will decide who is a Jew and who is not" infact the word Jew or Jews could mean a all kinds of things by the Nazi dogma. This has to be considered when looking at statistics produced by Germany at the time.

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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#365

Post by Paul Lantos » 08 Feb 2016, 03:51

michael mills wrote:However, allowing large numbers of imprisoned Jews to slowly die of starvation had the disadvantage (from the point of view of the German authorities) that the concentrations of starving Jews were likely to become sources of epidemics that might spread to more desirable parts of the population.
This argument made contextual sense in late 1941 / early 1942 in Poland. It does not make sense in 1944 regarding the Jews from either Lodz or Hungary. The ghettoization of Hungary's Jews only happened in order that they be deported to Auschwitz, so the Nazis never really established long term residential ghettos at all and the prospect of provisioning Jews or containing epidemics was irrelevant. If the regime wanted slave labor they could have selected suitable labor and let the rest go. Killing Hungarian grandmothers and babies was only necessary to fulfill an ideological end.

The Lodz Jews had already been starving for over 4 years, they had repeated typhus, dysentery, and tuberculosis epidemics, and despite all that and the 100k who had died at Chelmno there were still 50 or 60k starving people in the ghetto in the summer of 1944. All of 1943 and half of 1944 passed without the Nazis being particularly concerned about starvation or epidemics in Lodz, at least enough to resume deportations from Lodz other than 7000 or so early in 1944. The main reason is that Lodz was functioning as a de facto concentration camp. Killing 90% of its inhabitants, as happened in Aug-Sept 1944, sacrificed a great deal of forced labor.

Moreover, after the Chelmno deportations in 1942 there were very few elderly or young left in Lodz. There were youngish people (ie young teens) but not small children (other than those born in the ghetto). Ghetto inhabitants could only receive rations if they were working. So it was a functioning labor population. I agree that Himmler used the final liquidation as a way for the SS to seize this population once and for all. But why did he want to seize them? The answer lies in what he did with them.

There is a final argument to consider -- starvation and epidemics were the product of ghettoization, ie problems of the Nazis' own creation. The Nazis I think truly believed that epidemics were some essential feature of Jews -- Hitler's and Goebbel's rhetoric sure suggested that this was a core belief. And the Nazis never really accepted that backtracking on their anti-Jewish policy was an acceptable way to ameliorate the epidemics and starvation. If ideology had allowed the Nazis to free the Jews, that to a large degree would have solved the public health crises. In the Nazi mind extermination may have been merciful -- because it was a mind that never considered liberation as an option even when the war was lost.

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sarahgoodson
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#366

Post by sarahgoodson » 14 Feb 2016, 02:07

David1819 wrote:One fundamental fact has to be established before answering the question of how many Jews were killed.

How did the SS and NSPAD administration define who a is a Jew or what makes one a Jew? and does their method match todays understanding or the mainstream Jewish identity? It may sound like a silly question however the Nuremberg Laws were contradictory to that of NSDAP Office of Racial Policy on this subject. Göring one said something along the lines of "I will decide who is a Jew and who is not" infact the word Jew or Jews could mean a all kinds of things by the Nazi dogma. This has to be considered when looking at statistics produced by Germany at the time.
The Nazis never satisfactorily defined the term "Jew" and the definition changed throughout the Third Reich.

The first race law for the civil service in 1933 considered anybody with one Jewish grandparent to be a "Jew". The Nuremberg Laws in 1935 considered only people with three or four Jewish grandparents to be a "Jew". At the Wannsee Conference in 1942 it was stated that all those considered to be first degree Mischlinge (the Nuremberg Laws defined a person with one Jewish grandparent to be a first degree Mischling) were to be considered as Jews.

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Denying-History
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#367

Post by Denying-History » 08 Apr 2016, 12:05

It depends on your demands, such calculations are rather impossible. In their own documentation the Germans say that they killed 2,674,166.

This is not very exact as I am working off from a round up of the Numbers killed by mobile death squads which was calculated by that of Raul Hilberg and the Höfle Telegram.

A good source though for the Total number killed would be here, done by "The Anglo-American committee"
Germany 195,000
Austria 53,000
Czechoslovakia 255,000
Denmark 1,500
France 140,000
Belgium 57,000
Luxemburg 3,000
Norway 1,000
Holland 120,000
Italy 20,000
Yugoslavia 64,000
Greece 64,000
Bulgaria 5,000
Rumania 530,000
Hungary 200,000
Poland 3,271,000
USSR 1,050,000
Less dispersed refugees (308,000)
Total number of Jews killed 5,721,500
http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar01.html

Hope this helps.

uberjude
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#368

Post by uberjude » 14 Apr 2016, 02:00

What German documentation provides that figure?

Paul Lantos
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#369

Post by Paul Lantos » 14 Apr 2016, 20:56

Denying-History wrote:This is not very exact as I am working off from a round up of the Numbers killed by mobile death squads which was calculated by that of Raul Hilberg and the Höfle Telegram.
The Höfle Telegram doesn't mention mobile death squads.

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Denying-History
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#370

Post by Denying-History » 14 Apr 2016, 23:13

uberjude wrote:What German documentation provides that figure?
The Hofle Telegram Which makes a total of 1,274,166

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6fle_Telegram

And the Einsatzgruppen death totals a good example and the most well known is the Jäger Report. The total death of all these documents rounded up to a total of around 1.4 to 1.5 million people. Most likely more were killed by these squads as they do not mention the first gassing which were done by hoses hooked to cars that would cause the Exhaust to go into a brick room.

The Full Jaeger report can be found here.
Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for
Lithuania, has been achieved by EK 3. In Lithuania there are no more
Jews, apart from Jewish workers and their families.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/js ... eport.html
The Höfle Telegram doesn't mention mobile death squads.
Paul this is why I said "and" Its very huge that you pay attention that it say "and the Höfle Telegram."

The reports of the death squads were separate, they were tight written reports sent back to Berlin.

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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#371

Post by uberjude » 20 Apr 2016, 19:28

Denying, the Hofle-Telegram only provides information about Polish Jews in 1942, and only in the Operation Reinhard Camps and Majdanek. That is, it doesn't discuss Jews from other countries (most of whom were killed later at any rate), Jews killed in Poland after 1942, or even Jews killed in Poland prior to 1943 who weren't killed in those camps (e.g., Jews killed in Chelmno or the larger number of Jews who died in the ghettos)

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Denying-History
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#372

Post by Denying-History » 21 Apr 2016, 02:05

uberjude wrote:Denying, the Hofle-Telegram only provides information about Polish Jews in 1942, and only in the Operation Reinhard Camps and Majdanek. That is, it doesn't discuss Jews from other countries (most of whom were killed later at any rate), Jews killed in Poland after 1942, or even Jews killed in Poland prior to 1943 who weren't killed in those camps (e.g., Jews killed in Chelmno or the larger number of Jews who died in the ghettos)
Again the point is how many Jews were killed in their own "DOCUMENTATION"... meaning not according for all of them... I'm not saying it is death total of the holocaust or Treblinka... Also it wouldn't matter cause operation Reinhard was created in the idea of exterminating Polish Jewry... Again though Treblinka only killed in total around 900,000 people, the Telegram accounts 713,555 for Treblinka in 1942 alone.

uberjude
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#373

Post by uberjude » 25 Apr 2016, 16:24

no problem, just it is important to be precise in language--when you write "In their own documentation the Germans say that they killed 2,674,166," it may be incorrectly interpreted.

Paul Lantos
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#374

Post by Paul Lantos » 28 Apr 2016, 04:36

Denying-History wrote:Again though Treblinka only killed in total around 900,000 people, the Telegram accounts 713,555 for Treblinka in 1942 alone.
1) Not sure where your 900,000 figure comes from, that's a pretty high estimate.

2) That 713,555 cannot possibly be an accurate to-the-person accounting. Maybe it's in the neighborhood of the correct number, but the SS 1) did not do head counts of the Jews getting on the trains, 2) did not do head counts of the Jews taken off some trains at Lublin for labor, 3) did not account for MANY escapees from the trains (most of whom were immediately killed), and 4) did not count the Jews as they arrived in Treblinka. Given the state of utter bedlam and chaos at Treblinka under Eberl in the summer of 1942, when 300,000 or something Jews were killed there in a span of 6 weeks, one cannot imagine how they kept any records. Franz Stangl described seeing bodies along the rail tracks starting miles away from the camp and there were literally thousands of unburied corpses in the arrival area in the camp.

3) The deportation actions in Warsaw alone are thought to have killed 10,000 or more Jews; these were part of the Treblinka effort, though those Jews did not survive to arrive there.

4) The Hofle telegram count of those killed at Belzec is probably even less accurate than for Treblinka.

Point is, I would take every statistic with a big grain of salt.

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Denying-History
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Re: How [many] Jews were killed for real?

#375

Post by Denying-History » 05 May 2016, 03:15

Paul Lantos wrote:
Denying-History wrote:Again though Treblinka only killed in total around 900,000 people, the Telegram accounts 713,555 for Treblinka in 1942 alone.
1) Not sure where your 900,000 figure comes from, that's a pretty high estimate.
The Hofle telegram only counts for 1942... Treblinka worked into 1943... Is this really that hard to understand or do you not know the official estimate of Treblinka.
At the second Treblinka trial, another expert, Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler, raised this figure to 900,000 victims.

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/aktion ... gures.html
Paul Lantos wrote: 2) That 713,555 cannot possibly be an accurate to-the-person accounting. Maybe it's in the neighborhood of the correct number, but the SS 1) did not do head counts of the Jews getting on the trains, 2) did not do head counts of the Jews taken off some trains at Lublin for labor, 3) did not account for MANY escapees from the trains (most of whom were immediately killed), and 4) did not count the Jews as they arrived in Treblinka. Given the state of utter bedlam and chaos at Treblinka under Eberl in the summer of 1942, when 300,000 or something Jews were killed there in a span of 6 weeks, one cannot imagine how they kept any records. Franz Stangl described seeing bodies along the rail tracks starting miles away from the camp and there were literally thousands of unburied corpses in the arrival area in the camp.
Tell that to the Korherr report... honestly, Its an estimate report from 1943 that again gives the same number as the Hofle Telegram... and its based on the estimates for 1942.
Höfle Telegram is a decoded message, encrypted at source by the German Enigma machine.[12] A missing "5" is added in the table, and is considered to be the correct figure, because only the number 713,555 yields the correct total of 1,274,166, and also, the Korherr Report of 1943 substantiates that the total number of 1,274,166 Jews subjected to "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) in General Government is correct to the last incongruous digit.[2] The British decoded version of the Telegram would almost certainly be a transcription error, since British security clearly did not realise what this message was about (see above). It is unlikely that the numerical mistake would have been noticed by them at the time. Admittedly the interception and decoding was not 100% accurate (see reproduction)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6fle_Telegram

You can read the report here.

http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/korh ... r-kurz.php

also Try Reading this

http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1 ... l.pdf+html

Paul Lantos wrote: 3) The deportation actions in Warsaw alone are thought to have killed 10,000 or more Jews; these were part of the Treblinka effort, though those Jews did not survive to arrive there.
Source please? Also the warsaw ghetto wasn't the only place Jews were sent to Treblinka from.

Paul Lantos wrote: 4) The Hofle telegram count of those killed at Belzec is probably even less accurate than for Treblinka.
Uh Huh? Is this why a good number of estimates rely of the Hofle Telegram and the Korherr report? I again see no reason to conclude the number being inaccurate.
Paul Lantos wrote: Point is, I would take every statistic with a big grain of salt.
Ok? I still don't see how a Decoded message has anything to do with statistics...

If your really so big on takings a bite at the Telegram I would recommend reading this site.

https://www.sobiborinterviews.nl/en/vic ... e-telegram

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