Bush at Auschwitz Compared to What Hoess Said

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Roberto
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#31

Post by Roberto » 05 Jun 2003, 13:02

michael mills wrote:There is another way of looking at the figures on the link posted by Roberto (which I will now refer to for brevity as Roberto's figures, since he has defended them).

Roberto claims 2.7 victims for Poland in its pre-war frontiers, and 2.1 victims for the pr-war Soviet Union plus the Baltic States. That makes a total of 4.8 victims.

The claimed total of victims can be deducted from the total pre-war Jewish populations for those countries to arrive at a number of survivors, which can then be assessed as to its probability.

The problem with the above calculation is the estimate for Poland, which is controversial and has never been proved. I will assume a maximum of 3 million for Poland; that is the highest figure given in the 1930 census, and the likelihood is that any natural increase between 1930 and 1939 was offset by emigration.

Accordingly, we have the following estimates:

Poland 3 million
USSR 3 million
Lithuania 0.15 million
Latvia + Estonia 0.1 million

TOTAL 6.25 million

Deducting 4.8 million from 6.25 million leaves 1.45 million survivors.

But the above figure for survivors is manifestly too low. Roberto himself has defended a figure of 2.1 million as the minimum number of survivors in the post-war Soviet Union, not including the 0.2 million Polish Jewish refugees who were repatriated. The discrepancy in the number of survivors is therefore 0.75 million, including the repatriated refugees; that discrepancy can only be explained by an exaggeration in the number of victims by at least that much.
Two mistakes in the above.

The first is that Robel’s 2.1 million figure, as I said, refers to Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet Union within its pre-war borders plus the Baltic States, independently of where these Jews had lived before 17 October 1939. It would thus be appropriate to add Rumania to this calculation, as a part of the 1.9 million Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet Union within its pre-war borders are likely to have been Jews living in Rumania before the war.

The second is the blunt assumption that the pre-war Jewish population of Poland cannot have exceeded 3 million, which is completely unsupported.
John Zimmerman ([i]Holocaust Denial[/i], page 3 wrote:The number of Jews counted in the Polish census of 1931 was 3,113,900. Estimates of the Jewish population in 1939, the year Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union, place the population between 3.3 and 3.5 million.
The lower figure (3.3 million) reduces the delta established by Mills to 0.45 million, while the higher one (3.5 million) brings it down to 0.25 million. So if there's any exaggeration/double counting, it would not nearly as significant as Mills claims it to be.
michael mills wrote:Yet another way of looking at the figures for the countries concerned is to build up an stimate of the number of victims from contemporary figures.

At the beginning of 1944, the Soviet Jewish Committee estimated that a total of 1.5 million Soviet Jews had perished. That figure related to the expanded Soviet Union, since the population of the annexed areas (Baltic States, East Poland, Bessarabia/Bukovina) had been given Soviet citiznship, and the Jews of those areas were officially regarded as Soviet Jews.
Can we see the corresponding wording of the Soviet Jewish Committee’s report, please?
michael mills wrote:To that 1.5 million, we need to add the victims from the German-occupied parts of Poland. In 1940, the German authorities estimated the Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement (the four original districts, Warsaw, Lublin, Krakow, Radom) at 1.3 million. The highest estimate I have seen for the Jewish population of the areas of West Poland annexed by Germany is 0.6 million. Adding those two figures yields a total of 1.9 million.
The Korherr Report lists a total of 2,790,000 Jews of former Poland as having come under the domain of Nazi Germany. These are distributed as follows:

 630,000 in the newly acquired Eastern territories (i.e. the territories of Western Poland annexed to the Reich);

 160,000 in the Bialystok district;

 1,300,000 in the General Government at the time of its constitution;

 700,000 in the Lemberg district.

According to the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, there were at most 50,000 survivors from among these Jews at the end of the war:
[…]The number of Jews in Poland on Sep. 1, 1939, amounted to about 3,474,000. How many of them are still alive?

The Central Committee of Polish Jews which was organized at Lublin in August, 1944, ordered a registration of the Jews who survived. This registration was carried out by the Jewish Local Committees in different towns and gave the following results:

Up to June 15, 1945, it was found that 55,509 Jews had registered themselves in Poland. To this number must be added 5,446 registered Polish Jews still in camps in Germany, and 13,000 Jews on active service in the Polish Army, together 73,955 persons.

These statistics, do not however, enable us to determine how many Jews were finally saved from destruction during the German occupation. For this a critical analysis and explanation are required.

p.163

The number 55,509 must be reduced, as there were numerous mistakes in registration, caused by the fluctuation and internal migration of Jews in the first months after their recovery of freedom, the same persons being registered twice, or even several times, in different towns through which they passed. How many, it is impossible to check. Moreover, a certain number out of the 55,509 had returned from Soviet Russia.

The number of 13,000 officers and men of the Polish Army does not include such as were saved in German- occupied territory, but is made up for the most part of Jews who were in the U.S.S.R. during the war and voluntarily enlisted in the Polish Army which was organised there.

But the number of 5,446 given for Jews still in camps in Germany is not final, as only an insignificant proportion of the Jews in these camps have sent in their data to be registered by the Central Committee of Polish Jews or to any Local Committee.

Later migratory movements after June 15, 1945, and territorial changes affecting Jews who were living in Poland and Germany are not taken into account, as they are not essential to the problem under discussion.

Of the 40,000-50,000 Polish Jews who are still alive in Poland, about 5,000 are children. (Data of the Chief of the Section of the Children’s Assistance, Dr S. Herszerhorn, quoted from the Bulletin of the J.A.P. of Nov. 12, No 99/109). This is a maximum number and includes those who returned from Western Ukraine, Western White Russia and the Lithuanian Soviet Republic.

It must be borne in mind, however, that a certain number of Jews were saved by escaping abroad in 1939 (mainly to the U.S.S.R.); while in 1941, after the German invasion of Russia, some of the Polish Jews living in the U.S.S.R. saved themselves by fleeing into the interior. Altogether about 250,000 Polish Jews from various European and extra-European

p.164

countries were saved (U.S.S.R., England, Sweden, Switzerland, Roumania, Hungary; Palestine, and the U.S.A.).

From the above it may be deduced that in German-occupied Poland the Jewish population amounted to about 3,200,000 or 3,250,000 persons. Of this number at the end of war only 40,000-50,000 remained alive.[…]
Source of quote:

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpol6.htm

Assuming that the Central Commission’s figure for Jews who fell under German rule in Poland is too high and Korherr’s figures are correct, this would mean that more than 2,700,000 Jews were killed by the Germans in the General Government at the time of its constitution, the Lemberg district and the Bialystok district.
michael mills wrote:Let us assume that all the Jews of the German-occupied part of Poland perished (which is ahistorical, siince there was a significant number of survivors). Accordingly, the total number of victims would be 1.5 + 1.9 million = 3.4 million.
Assuming, of course, that the Soviet Jewish Committee’s estimate is correct and includes the areas mentioned by Mills. 2,700,000 Jewish dead in the areas mentioned in the Korherr Report, see above, would leave us with only 700,000 Jews for the Soviet Union in its pre-war borders and the Baltic States. This number is absurdly low, considering that the Einsatzgruppen alone reported a total of well over 500,000 Jews killed until the end of 1941 and a later report of Himmler’s to Hitler mentioned 363,211 Jews executed in Bialystok, Southern Russia and Ukraine in four months of 1942 alone. Hilberg considers a total of 900,000 Jews slain on the territory of the USSR within its pre-war borders plus the Baltic States, but it would be unrealistic to assume that the above mentioned two sources, which roughly add up to this figure, cover more than a part of the death toll during the 2 ½ - 3 years of occupation that the Soviet territories with the largest Jewish population – Belorussia, Ukraine and the Baltic States – were subject to.

Mills' ensuing considerations fall accordingly. The fallacy of his reference to Hilberg, who apparently did not have access to the figures of the 1959 Soviet census used by Robel, has already been addressed in my last post. And his often-discussed contention that "furthermore the figure for Hungary is inflated by a good 100,000" is also based on rather unconvincing mental gymnastics.

viriato
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#32

Post by viriato » 05 Jun 2003, 19:51

Hi Roberto. You wrote:
The first is that Robel’s 2.1 million figure, as I said, refers to Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet Union within its pre-war borders plus the Baltic States, independently of where these Jews had lived before 17 October 1939.
Does it mean that the number of 2,7 million figure atributed to Poland refers too to Jews killed in Poland "independently of where these Jews had lived before 17 October 1939"? It would be strange if the authors used a certain criterium in respect to the USSR and another one to Poland. Yet we all well know that many of the Jews killed in the pre-war Polish territory were from a lot of European countries and not only from Poland itself.


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Roberto
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#33

Post by Roberto » 05 Jun 2003, 20:33

viriato wrote:
The first is that Robel’s 2.1 million figure, as I said, refers to Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet Union within its pre-war borders plus the Baltic States, independently of where these Jews had lived before 17 October 1939.
Does it mean that the number of 2,7 million figure atributed to Poland refers too to Jews killed in Poland "independently of where these Jews had lived before 17 October 1939"?
No, this figure refers only to Jews who lived in Poland before the war.
viriato wrote:It would be strange if the authors used a certain criterium in respect to the USSR and another one to Poland.
This is not the case. If I understood Robel correctly, his figure of 2.1 million refers to those Jews from among

- the Jewish inhabitants of the Soviet Union before 17 October 1939,

- the Jewish inhabitants of the countries and areas annexed by the USSR until 22 June 1941 and

- Jewish refugees to the USSR until 22 June 1941

who were killed between 22 June 1941 and the end of German occupation on the pre-war territory of the USSR and in the Baltic States.

Those who were killed on (or deported to death camps from) territories of the expanded USSR belonging to pre-war Poland or pre-war Rumania (700,000 out of 2,800,000 deaths on the territory of the expanded USSR, according to Robel) are included in the figures for those countries.

Robel's figures do not include the relatively few German and Austrian Jews who were transported to the Riga and Minsk ghettoes, as the figure for Poland does not include the Jews from France, Germany, Hungary and other European countries sent to Auschwitz, Majdanek or Sobibor.

"Independently of where" in the quoted sentence means "independently of where on the territory of the expanded USSR as of 22 June 1941", as should become clear from the context.

viriato
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#34

Post by viriato » 10 Jun 2003, 15:00

Roberto excuse me but I'm still at loss with the explanation you made concerning Robel's article.

You wrote:
If I understood Robel correctly, his figure of 2.1 million refers to those Jews from among

- the Jewish inhabitants of the Soviet Union before 17 October 1939,

- the Jewish inhabitants of the countries and areas annexed by the USSR until 22 June 1941 and

- Jewish refugees to the USSR until 22 June 1941

who were killed between 22 June 1941 and the end of German occupation on the pre-war territory of the USSR and in the Baltic States.
But haven't the demographic losses of both "Jewish inhabitants of the countries and areas annexed by the USSR until 22 June 1941" and "Jewish refugees to the USSR until 22 June 1941" and "were killed between 22 June 1941 and the end of German occupation on the pre-war territory of the USSR and the Baltic states" already been counted in their original countries, mainly Poland and Romania? That is, the quoted number of 2.7 million of Poland already includes all the Polish Jews irrespective of the place where they were killed. If at the same time I count those Polish Jews who perished in the pre-war territory of the USSR I'm just double counting them.

Another thing. On a previous post you wrote:
So if anything is wrong with Robel’s calculations, the mistake(s) refer(s) to

[]

iii) the reduction of the Jewish population of the USSR between 1945 and 1959 due to assimilation, emigration or Stalinist deportations.
Quite plausible. But what might have been the respective numbers?

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#35

Post by Roberto » 11 Jun 2003, 12:12

viriato wrote:You wrote:
If I understood Robel correctly, his figure of 2.1 million refers to those Jews from among

- the Jewish inhabitants of the Soviet Union before 17 October 1939,

- the Jewish inhabitants of the countries and areas annexed by the USSR until 22 June 1941 and

- Jewish refugees to the USSR until 22 June 1941

who were killed between 22 June 1941 and the end of German occupation on the pre-war territory of the USSR and in the Baltic States.
But haven't the demographic losses of both "Jewish inhabitants of the countries and areas annexed by the USSR until 22 June 1941" and "Jewish refugees to the USSR until 22 June 1941" and "were killed between 22 June 1941 and the end of German occupation on the pre-war territory of the USSR and the Baltic states" already been counted in their original countries, mainly Poland and Romania?
Yes, that’s why Robel deducted 700,000 dead for the areas taken by the Soviet Union from Poland and Romania, considered in the respective country studies, from the 2.8 million dead on the territory of the Soviet Union as of 22 June 1941 he established by deducting 2.3 million survivors from an estimated original population of 5.1 million.
viriato wrote:That is, the quoted number of 2.7 million of Poland already includes all the Polish Jews irrespective of the place where they were killed. If at the same time I count those Polish Jews who perished in the pre-war territory of the USSR I'm just double counting them.
No, you are not.

1. Robel established 5.1 million Jews living on the territory of the Soviet Union within the borders as of June 1941 and 2.3 million survivors of the war, which means that 2.8 million perished. In order to establish the number of Jews killed in the Soviet Union proper, he deducted the victims among the Jewish population of Bialystok and Eastern Galicia (counted under Poland) and of Bessarabia and North Bukovina (counted under Romania). This means that the Jewish victims in the Baltic Republics (ca. 210,000, according to Robel's calculations) are included in the figure of 2.1 million for the Soviet Union proper. For Bessarabia, Bukovina and the "old Romanian district of Dorohoi" he considers 110,000 to 115,000 Jewish victims, which means that the delta of 585,000 to 590,000 Jewish dead corresponds to the Bialystok district and Eastern Galicia.

2. The Jews lost in the territories of the former Polish Republic that were occupied first by the Soviet Union in 1939 and then by Nazi Germany in 1941 are obviously included in both Golczewski's figure of 2,700,000 for Poland within its pre-war frontiers and Robels figure of 2,800,000 for the Soviet Union within its frontiers as of June 1941. This means that an addition of both figures (2.7 million + 2.8 million) would result in double counting of the Jews of Eastern Poland. This was not what Golczewski and Robel did, however.
viriato wrote:Another thing. On a previous post you wrote:
So if anything is wrong with Robel’s calculations, the mistake(s) refer(s) to

[]

iii) the reduction of the Jewish population of the USSR between 1945 and 1959 due to assimilation, emigration or Stalinist deportations.
Quite plausible. But what might have been the respective numbers?
A few ten thousand, says Robel. Is he wrong?

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#36

Post by viriato » 11 Jun 2003, 23:20

Thanks Roberto for your answer. As to your question concerning "the reduction of the Jewish population of the USSR between 1945 and 1959 due to assimilation, emigration or Stalinist deportations":
A few ten thousand, says Robel. Is he wrong?
I don't have any clue. This is the reason I was asking you in my previous post:
But what might have been the respective numbers?

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