Experts on Holocaust between 1945 - 1955

[steve248]

During the war Churchill was informed by the Top Secret deciphering of German radio messages that revealed some of the mass killings by Police units (but not the Einsatzgruppen) in the Ukraine in 1941-1942. He could not directly refer to these in his postwar writings because it would reveal to all that Britain was able to "crack" ciphered radio messages. It still was and still does.

What he could refer to was all the information in the public domain that the Polish Govt-in-Exile revealed to the public between 1939 and 1945.

If you obtain a copy of Reitlinger's "Final Solution" you can see the real paucity of what we would call today, scholarly publications. I was going to advise the least expensive copy on abebooks or amazon, but blimey, they are not inexpensive. Probably need to get one via the Inter-Library Loan Scheme.

[Paul H]

I don't think one can blame Churchill lack of publishing material on the holocaust as a security issue, its not like he had to give exact details or sources which he does not give on most things anyway.

Churchill published many other things that seemingly could be seen as security issues.

[michael mills]

Steve248 wrote:

Looking at his figures some are definitely on the low side. For example he has Hungary as Low/High 180,000/200,000 (the Anglo-American also has 200,000) and today the figure is double.

Steve, you have misunderstood what Reitlinger meant by "Hungary" in his calculation of the number of Jewish victims from that country. He was referring to the so-called Trianon Hungary, ie not including the regions annexed by Hungary during the war from Czechoslovakia (South Slovakia and Ruthenia), Romania (North Transylvania) and Yugoslavia (the Voivodina), whereas the higher figure that is double Reitlinger's includes the Jewish victims of those annexed regions.

The Jewish population of interwar Hungary was a bit over 400,000, and the number of registered survivors from that region was of the order of 200,000, meaning that Reitlinger's higher estimate of the number of victims from prewar Hungary, 200,000, was essentially correct (as was the Anglo-american figure).

The majority of the Jews deported to Auschwitz came from the annexed areas, since they were deported first, whereas the Jews from Trianon Hungary were the last to be deported, and the deportations were halted before they were completed, which is why the survival rate of the Jews of prewar Hungary was relatively high, whereas the majority of the Jews deported from the annexed regions perished.

Some of Reitlinger's estimates of the number of victims from other countries may be on the low side, but it should be pointed out that his high figure of 4.5 million is comparable to Hilberg's estimate of five million, which is the figure that was being bandied about at the time of the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the IMT.

[michael mills]

Duplicate deleted.

[wm]

Post-war the Holocaust wasn't as important as today, it was mostly seen as another historical event.
Searching for "extermination Jews" in "The Times" or The New York Times" article archives for the period 1946-1955 gives mostly reports from Palestine, Arab countries, Stalinist Russia, and relatively little about the Holocaust.
It's vastly different from a similar search for the period 2015-2020.

[Paul H]

Some of Reitlinger's estimates of the number of victims from other countries may be on the low side, but it should be pointed out that his high figure of 4.5 million is comparable to Hilberg's estimate of five million, which is the figure that was being bandied about at the time of the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the IMT.








So how does one explain Churchill's 1948 estimate of between 6-7million deaths?

[michael mills]

Just quintessential Churchillian bombast.