A honest question!

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

I often hear that people who deny/limit the holocaust say there were not as many jews in Europe as has been claimed to have been killed.

Therefore, I would like to know if there is any reliable source indicating this, or if it has been invented by these persons.

Furthermore, is it possible that the number of jews is larger than is actually counted? I mean, the countings in Poland can probably be questioned (statistics were not nearly as good back then as they are now). Furthermore, is it possible that people being angry at each other have told the Germans that the person they disliked were jew, and that person has then been executed as such? (such incidents have surely been seen before in history)

I am very much interrested in knowing, so please reply!

Christian

[michael mills]

The question here is whether or not the questioning of the "canonical" six-million figure (that is term used by the Israeli journalist Tom Segev in his very good book "The Seventh Million") is reasonable and based on rational criteria.

In my opinion, any statement that the number of Jews who died during the Second World War as a result of German Government actions is unreasonable, and likely to be disingenuous. Any statement that more Jews were killed by Soviet action than German is also tendentious and probably dishonest (eg I regard Sanning's book as dishonest).

Any statement that the number was less than three million ignores a lot of evidence, but may not necessarily be dishonest.

I would consider any estimate between three and five million to be reasonable, depending on how well it is argued. I myself think that the number was around four million, probably a bit above the four-million mark. One of the first historians of the destruction of the Jews, Gerald Reitlinger, estimated the number of dead, as opposed to the number displaced or missing, at between 4.2 and 4.6 million, and I see no reason to mistrust his critical view of excessively high estimates.

In my opinion, the six-million figure is definitely an exaggeration. It is based on the assumption that the total number of dead from Poland was around three million, and from the Soviet Union (exclusding the areas annexed from Poland) and the Baltic States was around two million. However, those totals were arrived at by comparing pre-war population guesstimates with post-war guesstimates, and calling the difference the number killed. Only a proportion of the assumed five million dead can be confirmed through reliable sources such as German reports, or the addition of various massacres.

Ferdinand Porsche is correct in his assumption of the unreliability of POlish censi. In fact, after the war, the man in charge of the 1930 Polish census, a certain Edward Szturm de Sztrem, admitted that the results had been falsified to reduce the proportion of the irredentist minorities, ie the Ukrainians, Belorussians and Germans. How the falsification affected the reported size of the Jewish population is not known. However, a motive to underestimate the number of Jews did not exist since, unlike the Germans, Belorussians and Ukrainians, they were not claiming a piece of Poland as their territory.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Thanks for your reply Michael - that's exactly what I wanted to know Thanks!

Christian

[Relay]

I often hear that people who deny/limit the holocaust say there were not as many jews in Europe as has been claimed to have been killed.

Therefore, I would like to know if there is any reliable source indicating this, or if it has been invented by these persons.

Furthermore, is it possible that the number of jews is larger than is actually counted? I mean, the countings in Poland can probably be questioned (statistics were not nearly as good back then as they are now). Furthermore, is it possible that people being angry at each other have told the Germans that the person they disliked were jew, and that person has then been executed as such? (such incidents have surely been seen before in history)

I am very much interrested in knowing, so please reply!

Christian

I use to ask a counterquestion to all who deny the holocaust.
The question i use to ask is
So the old lady who told me and all the others in the class her experience do you call her a liar??

So far i havent get any answer from anyone who deny the holocaust.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Good idea

Christian

[Dan]

Many old ladies lie grossly when describing their experiences. Many tell the truth, and many others have befuddled memories.

Perhaps if you could relate the specifics of this woman's experiences, we could comment on them.

Regards
Dan

[Snafu]

"The question i use to ask is
So the old lady who told me and all the others in the class her experience do you call her a liar??"

As a matter of fact I saw a survivor tale on national TV not long ago where an old lady from Hungary said the gas chambers of Bergen-Belsen worked "day and night", the period she spent there at the end of the war. Of course, Belsen was one of the absolutely worst places in Germany to be in April 1945, but the only Zyklon B gas chambers to possibly have existed in that camp were delousing facilities for prisoner garb. In other words, they were meant too keep prisoners alive and free from typhus, not mass murdering them, however the little old lady somehow conveniently forgot to inform us on this tiny detail.
Maybe she was in fact a brazen liar, maybe she felt a need of improving her story with the 'things anyway known to all', maybe she had manufactured a memory that she nowadays sincerely believed or maybe she had heard rumours and actually thought the crematorium housed gas chambers for massmurder at the time, being starved and probably too weak to judge accurately anyway.
In any event, the fact is that she was untruthful when retelling her experience about the gas chambers, whether conscious about the matter or not. And if she could be, then other survivor witnessess definitely can.
And yes, it is quite well proven that human beings have the ability to tell lies, especially about folk they dislike and when they get a lot of attention and credit for it.

[Roberto]

In any event, the fact is that she was untruthful when retelling her experience about the gas chambers, whether conscious about the matter or not. And if she could be, then other survivor witnessess definitely can.

“Can” doesn’t mean that they did, unless you apply the imbecile “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” reasoning that “Revisionists” are so fond of. Every eyewitness is a case in itself, and the credibility of one eyewitness or lack thereof does not tell us anything whatsoever about the credibility of any other.

[Roberto]

In my opinion, the six-million figure is definitely an exaggeration. It is based on the assumption that the total number of dead from Poland was around three million, and from the Soviet Union (exclusding the areas annexed from Poland) and the Baltic States was around two million. However, those totals were arrived at by comparing pre-war population guesstimates with post-war guesstimates, and calling the difference the number killed. Only a proportion of the assumed five million dead can be confirmed through reliable sources such as German reports, or the addition of various massacres.

Well, the method is not quite that simple. Besides establishing the pre- and post war Jewish populations of the respective countries and areas on the basis of various sources including but not limited to the census data, the authors in question (Frank Golczewski for Poland, Gert Robel for the Soviet Union) tried to determine how many of those missing after the war can be accounted for otherwise than as having been killed by the Nazis, the result of their research being that the number of such Jews (e.g. emigrants, post war assimilates and victims of Stalin’s deportations, in the case of the Soviet Union) is marginal (“im Bereich der Zehntausende”, i.e. “in the range of tens of thousands”, according to Robel). As the German data in fact cover only a part of the killings in the Soviet Union – mainly due to the fact that, since May 1942, the detailed reporting of the Einsatzgruppen was replaced by more vague “Mitteilungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten” which omitted figures on the number of Jews killed - , this method must be considered the only one appropriate to establish the total Jewish death toll for the Soviet Union, which Robel calculates at 2.8 million within the frontiers as of 22 June 1941 and 2.1 million within the frontiers of 01.09.1939, including in each case the Jews who perished in the ranks of the Red Army and Jewish civilians who succumbed to hunger or exhaustion while trying to flee the German advance. Golczewski’s estimate of 2,700,000 Jewish dead for Poland (which is close to Reitlinger’s higher estimate of 2,600,000 dead Polish Jews), while based on essentially the same methodology, can rely on German documentation to a larger extent, especially the train schedules, transportation documents and other documentary evidence that allows for a more or less exact reconstruction of the number of Polish Jews taken to the various extermination camps, where most of the killing of Polish Jews took place.

These are the figures compiled by German historian Wolfgang Benz from the various chapters of the study Dimensionen des Völkermords:

German Reich: 160,000 to 165,000

Austria: 65,459

Luxembourg: 1,200

France ("including foreign nationals"): 76,134

Belgium ("including foreign nationals"): 28, 518

Netherlands: 102,000

Denmark: 116

Norway: 758

Italy: 6,513

Albania: 591 ("deportees")

Greece: 59,185

Bulgaria (deported from Bulgarian-occupied areas): 11,393

Yugoslavia: 60,000 to 65,000

Hungary: 550,000

Chechoslovakia ("Reich Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia" plus Slovakia): 143,000

Romania: 211,214

Poland: 2,700,000

Soviet Union: 2,100,000

Total: 6,276,081 to 6,286,081

The estimates of Reitlinger and Hilberg may be found under the following links:

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/hil ... ountry.htm

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/reit_stats.htm

[Snafu]

Me: In any event, the fact is that she was untruthful when retelling her experience about the gas chambers, whether conscious about the matter or not. And if she could be, then other survivor witnessess definitely can.

Roberto: “Can” doesn’t mean that they did, unless you apply the imbecile “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” reasoning that “Revisionists” are so fond of. Every eyewitness is a case in itself, and the credibility of one eyewitness or lack thereof does not tell us anything whatsoever about the credibility of any other.

I never said "did" did I? I wrote "can" so your remark is pointless. Secondly, you are only correct so far as to allow for comparison between witness stories. The lack of credibility in one eyewitness can tell us a lot about the credibility of another insofar as they are incorrect about the same occurence in the same way.

Every witness is a case in itself, correct. This little lady did not tell the truth. That's the whole point. The question why a witness does not tell the truth however, is still an interesting one.

[Hans]

In any event, the fact is that she was untruthful when retelling her experience about the gas chambers, whether conscious about the matter or not. And if she could be, then other survivor witnessess definitely can.

Definitely, Snafu! For instance, David Irving's key witness Zoe Polanska Palmer told us apparently some untruths:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving-david/polanska/

[Xanthro]

This question is often asked and has been answered many times.

But I'll repeat it here. A huge amount of what constitutes dead depends on how someone measures they killing.

Not only by the methodology of how the counting takes place, but how the persons died.

Do you count the death from Disease in Ghettos and work camps. There are 100,000s of deaths here. These people weren't directly executed, but they certainly were put in conditions that lead to their death.

Do you count the deaths of persons fleeing the Germans? This can be over a million people.

Over 3 million were executed in camps, and we have records for these people such as transportation to the camps, but no transportation from the camps.

The numbers over this amount are based on how many people were killed outside the camps by the Death Squads. This is generally considered to be around 1 million, but there are less records for this. Now, we are over 4 million, before we even consider those not directly executed.

So, you'll never have an exact figure, and the methods of even honest measurement can differ greatly, then you have people who simply make things up.

Xanthro

[michael mills]

Over 3 million were executed in camps, and we have records for these people such as transportation to the camps, but no transportation from the camps.

Are you certain that there transportation records TOTALLING over 3 million. I think you will find there are not.

For example, there are German records documenting a bit over one million arrivals ("Zugang") at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek.

There are train schedules covering a short period at the beginning of 1943, showing trains taking Jews to the above camps, and to other destinations. But the surviving train schedules do not cover any where near the whole period of operation of those camps.

German records also document about 140,000 Jews taken to Chelmno.

About 200,000 Jews were registered as arriving at Auschwitz ("Zugang"), but that is only part of the total of arrivals, the number of which is not recorded.

German deportation records document about one million Jews deported from Hungary, the Reich, Slovakia, Greece, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy; a large proportion of these went to Auschwitz, but not all, and the final destination of many of the deportees is not known for certain.

In addition to the main camps mentioned above, there were many work camps scattered all over occupied Europe, and it is certain that many Jews died in those camps. But the number is not known for certain.

It may well be that three million Jews died in camps of one sort or another, but that is only an estimate, and it is incorrect to claim that that figure is PROVED by transportation records.

[Roberto]

The lack of credibility in one eyewitness can tell us a lot about the credibility of another insofar as they are incorrect about the same occurence in the same way.

Faulty reasoning. To the extent that the account of a witness to be considered as of dubious credibility (such as Gerstein) is independently confirmed by that of another witness whose credibility is not questionable (such as Pfannenstiel), it may be assumed that the unreliable witness accurately recounted the event where it is confirmed by the credible witness, even if it let its fantasy fly otherwise.

[Roberto]

Quote:
Over 3 million were executed in camps, and we have records for these people such as transportation to the camps, but no transportation from the camps.


Are you certain that there transportation records TOTALLING over 3 million. I think you will find there are not.

For example, there are German records documenting a bit over one million arrivals ("Zugang") at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek.

If you take all German records together, including train schedules, transportation documents and correspondence among Nazi officials such as Ganzenmüller’s letter to Wolff of 28.07.1942, they document a number far higher than “a bit over one million” for the camps in question. The Höfle memorandum alone documents the arrival of 1,274,166 Jews from the General Government at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek until 31.12.1942, thereof 1,249,433 at the three camps first mentioned, two of which functioned until late in 1943 and also “processed” Jews from other parts of Europe the transports of which – e.g. of Dutch Jews to Sobibor – can be traced individually.

There are train schedules covering a short period at the beginning of 1943, showing trains taking Jews to the above camps, and to other destinations. But the surviving train schedules do not cover any where near the whole period of operation of those camps.

This is not true. Train schedules allow for a very detailed reconstruction of transports from many places to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka during 1942, for example from the Warsaw and Czestochowa regions to Treblinka. On the basis of such documentary evidence, Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad managed to reconstruct the origins and dates of deportation of ca. 830,000 people taken to Treblinka and hundreds of thousands taken to the other two camps. The respective excerpts from his study on the Aktion Reinhard camps can be viewed under the following links:

http://holocaust-info.dk/treblinka/treb ... ations.htm

http://holocaust-info.dk/sobibor/sobibo ... ations.htm

http://holocaust-info.dk/belzec/belzec_deportations.htm

German records also document about 140,000 Jews taken to Chelmno.

145,500 people between December 1941 and March 1943 plus another 7,176 people between April 1944 and January 1945, to be precise. These were the figures considered by the Bonn County Court at the trial against the members of the Sonderkommando Lange in 1962/63. The court expressly pointed out that these were the indisputable minimum figures borne out by the documentary evidence alone underlying the verdict against the defendants (Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, page 145)

German deportation records document about one million Jews deported from Hungary, the Reich, Slovakia, Greece, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy; a large proportion of these went to Auschwitz, but not all, and the final destination of many of the deportees is not known for certain.

In fact almost all of the deportees (i.e. except for a few thousand taken off from transports from the Low Countries and France on the way) ended up at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The only transports from which a significant number – i.e. ca. 100,000 out of at least 400,000 (the number borne out by the Kassa records) – were possibly taken to other places rather than killed in the gas chambers were those from Hungary between 15 May and 9 July 1944.