6 Million?

[Roberto]

Because at the end of the day nobody knows the true figure and it will always remain speculation. What people object to is having the "six million" rammed down their throats as the figure one must believe or else.

I don't see anyone trying to ram anything down my throat. "6 million" is just a handy reference to estimates by historians ranging from Reitlinger's 4.2 to 4.6 million to the more than six million established by Benz et al, in my opinion.

[tonyh]

And its a handy trademark to be repeated ad nauseum, until people can mouth it without thinking or judging, in my opinion.

Tony

[Roberto]

And its a handy trademark to be repeated ad nauseum, until people can mouth it without thinking or judging, in my opinion.

Tony

How come I don't feel exposed to the "trademark" that certain people are so obsessed with?

Maybe it's because I don't care about the media, especially those in the U.S.

[LeighLancs]

The trouble with Irving in this case was his determination to falsify the holcaust. He'd find a small anomaly or mistruth and blow it up into something out of proportion. Mind you, modern powerful Jews were just as guilty of this for their action against him, same as they were in the compensation claims etc.

Read Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry. If it was written by a non-Jew there is no way in a million years it would ever find its way onto the shelves.

[Oskar]

"""I wonder why there has been such an insistence on 6 million as being the true number of exterminated Jews"""

It is i9nteresting to note that at the end of "Schindler's List," the film says "This movie is dedicated to the more than six million Jews killed in the Holocaust."

Any comments as to why this number keeps increasing with time?

Oskar[/quote]

[Oskar]

"""I wonder why there has been such an insistence on 6 million as being the true number of exterminated Jews"""

It is i9nteresting to note that at the end of "Schindler's List," the film says "This movie is dedicated to the more than six million Jews killed in the Holocaust."

Any comments as to why this number keeps increasing with time?

Oskar

[Roberto]

"""I wonder why there has been such an insistence on 6 million as being the true number of exterminated Jews"""

It is i9nteresting to note that at the end of "Schindler's List," the film says "This movie is dedicated to the more than six million Jews killed in the Holocaust."

Any comments as to why this number keeps increasing with time?

Oskar

If so, the reason would be that previously unavailable documentation is becoming available in the sequence of the opening of archives in Eastern Europe.

But where did you get the idea that the number is increasing with time? Have a look at my post of Thu May 23, 2002 11:44 am on this thread. Especially the link where Reitlinger’s estimates are compared with those of the Anglo-American Committee in April 1946:

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

[Oskar]

Roberto:

Very interesting post. Just two questions:

1). What are the possibilities that the 6.2 million figure is WAY off?

2). Conversely, how reliable would you put the 4.8 million figure estimated by Kohrrer (am I spelling it correctly)?

Regards,

Oskar

[Mensch Meyer]

Because at the end of the day nobody knows the true figure and it will always remain speculation. What people object to is having the "six million" rammed down their throats as the figure one must believe or else.

Tony

It's only since the Iron Curtain fell, that "uncertainties" concerning the accurate number of victims are being somewhat tolerated. Actually what happened is that with the collapse of communism in 1989 the plaque at Auschwitz which for decades had listed over Four Million victims suddenly was replaced by the POLISH GOVERNMENT in an gesture of reproachment with the German Government, and a new plaque cited 1. 2 million victims instead, which in effect was further broken down into less than One Million Jewish and the balance indicating NON-Jewish victims.

Auschwitz being the flagship of the Holocaust, the SIX MILLION number of victims having being reduced by nearly Three million by the Polish government's official stats, it has become impossible for the guardians that the "SIX MILLION" be defended - it posed too much of a stretch...

Never the less the question still remains:

1) Which number do we have to believe?
2) Down or up to which number saves you from harassment?
3) Which number can we believe without being an Anti-Semite?
4) Which number can we believe without being branded as a "Racist"?
5) And most of all, which number is correct, and why?

Aside from the official Auschwitz changes, why is holocaust doubt growing? Maybe it's because of facts like these:

Dec. 31 1945 - French Research for Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
8,000,000

Aug. 19 1998 - Chief Rabbi from Poland in German Newspaper SUDDEUTCHE 6,000,000

April 20 1978 - LE MONDE (French) 5,000,000

Jan 23 1995 - DIE WELT (German) 4,500,000

Oct. 1 1946 - Int. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg document # 008-USSR
4,000,000

Oct. 1 1946 - Int. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg document # 3868-PS
3,000,000

July 18 1990 - The Peninsula Times Tribune's San Francisco CA
2,000,000

May 5 1997 - USA TODAY 1,500,000

June 11 1990 - Germany's largest Jewish Weekly, ALLGEMEINE JUDISCHE
WOCHENZEITUNG 1,500,000

Sept 01 1989 - LE MONDE 1,433,000

Feb 02 1995 - German Mag. BUNTE 1,400,000

Jan 22 1995 - German newspaper WELT am SONNTAG 1,200,000

Jan 27 1995 - DIE WELT 1,100,000

Dec. 21 1984 - Holocaust Institute, Munich: 1,000,000

Dec. 31 1989 - AUSCHWITZ: TECHNIQUE AND OPERATION
OF THE GAS CHAMBER by Jean-Claude Pressac 928,000

Sept. 27 1993 - DIE WELT 800,000

Jan 22 1995 WELT am SONNTAG 750,000

May 1 1994 - FOCUS magazine 700,000

Jan 31 1994 - THE AUSCHWITZ CREMATORIUM, By Jean-Claude
Pressac 470,000

Jan 8 1946 - German News Reels, WOCHENSCHAU # 137, censored by
the Allies 300,000

Jan 6 1990 - FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU 74,000

May 12 1996 - GIESSENER ANZEIGER 69,000

Aug. 08 1994 - International Information Center document # 10824) 66,206

May 11 1979 Tracing Service Arelson (International Red Cross) 52,389

---------------end of list---------------

Now what? Pick your favorite number - facts don't matter, truth does not matter, death certificates do not matter to the Holocaust guardians, Anti-German propaganda does matter.

Norman Finkelstein: "There's no business like Shoa business! "

[David E M]

Where does this figure 6 Million come from?. There were 6 Million Jews killed in the Tsarist Pogroms, there were 6 million Armenians killed by the Turks, there were 6 Million Cambodians killed by their own government. Why always 6 Million?

[Roberto]

Roberto:

Very interesting post. Just two questions:

1). What are the possibilities that the 6.2 million figure is WAY off?

Not too high, I would say. It results from the addition of partial estimates contained in detailed country studies published in the recent book Dimensionen der Völkermords, edited by German historian Wolfgang Benz. Unlike many of their predecessors, the authors could draw on evidence and data that have only become available in the last decade.

2). Conversely, how reliable would you put the 4.8 million figure estimated by Kohrrer (am I spelling it correctly)?

I presume you mean Reitlinger. Korherr was Himmler’s statistician who, at Himmler’s request, prepared and submitted in April 1943 a study called “THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN JEWISH QUESTION”, which covers the period until 31.12.1942. An English translation of that report you may find on the thread

The Korherr Report
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 8712dc6e64

At the end of his report Korherr stated the following (my translation):

From 1937 to the beginning of 1943 the number of Jews, partially due to the excess mortality of the Jews in Central and Western Europe, partially due to the evacuations especially in the more strongly populated Eastern Territories which are here counted as off-going, should have diminished by an estimated 4 million. It must not be overlooked in this respect that of the deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the occupied Eastern territories only a part was recorded, whereas deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all. In addition there are movements of Jews inside Russia to the Asian part which are unknown to us. The movement of Jews from the European countries outside the German influence is also of a largely unknown order of magnitude. On the whole European Jewry should since 1933, i.e. in the first decade of National Socialist German power, have lost almost half of its population.

Mind that this was the situation as of 31.12.1942.

In his detailed study The Final Solution, Reitlinger tried to give only such figures that were borne out by the documentary evidence he had access to at the time (his study was published in 1953) and to avoid estimates. His figures must thus in many cases be considered minimum figures. Reitlinger himself stated in regard to several of his estimates (namely those regarding Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union) that

Owing to the lack of reliable information at the time of writing, these figures must be regarded as conjectural

Source of quote:

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

Best regards,

Roberto

[Roberto]

It's only since the Iron Curtain fell, that "uncertainties" concerning the accurate number of victims are being somewhat tolerated. Actually what happened is that with the collapse of communism in 1989 the plaque at Auschwitz which for decades had listed over Four Million victims suddenly was replaced by the POLISH GOVERNMENT in an gesture of reproachment with the German Government, and a new plaque cited 1. 2 million victims instead, which in effect was further broken down into less than One Million Jewish and the balance indicating NON-Jewish victims.

Meyer’s ignorance cries to heaven. The four million figure established by a Soviet investigation commission was never believed by historians on this side of the Iron Curtain. The first to contest it was actually former camp commander Rudolf Höß at his Warsaw trial in 1947:

William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and Schuster New York, 1960
Page 973

How many hapless innocent people - mostly Jews but including a fairly large number of others, especially Russian prisoners of war - were slaughtered at the one camp of Auschwitz? The exact number will never be known. Hoess himself in his affidavit gave an estimate of ‘2,500,000 victims executed and exterminated by gassing and burning, and at least another half million who succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000’. Later at his own trial in Warsaw he reduced the figure to 1,135,000. The Soviet government, which investigated the camp after it was overrun by the Red Army in January 1945, put the figure at four million. Reitlinger, on the basis of his own exhaustive study, doubts that the number gassed at Auschwitz was ‘even as high as three quarters of a million.’ He estimates that about 600,000 died in the gas chambers, to which he adds ‘the unknown proportion’ of some 300,000 of more ‘missing’, who were shot or died of starvation and disease. By any estimate the figure is considerable.

Emphasis is mine. The figure of 1,135,000 victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, given by Höß at his Warsaw trial, is in line with most posterior estimates by historians:

- Dr Josef Kermisz, from the Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, wrote in 1949 that this Commission had evaluated the number of victims of Auschwitz at 1 500 000;

- Gerald Reitlinger in 1953 estimated at 800 000 to 900 000 the number of Jewish victims of Auschwitz;

- Raul Hilberg, in The Destruction of European Jews, 1961, estimated the number of Jewish victims of Auschwitz at 1 million and the total number of victims of Auschwitz at 1.1 million.

- Helmut Krausnick declared in 1964, at the process against former members of the Auschwitz staff in Frankfurt, that the total number of victims of Auschwitz was between on million and one and a half million;

- Georges Wellers in 1983 provided an estimate of 1.3 million Jewish victims at Auschwitz and a total of 1.5 million victims of the camp;

- Franciszek Piper, in a study that started in 1980 and the results of which were presented in 1991 and 1994, gave as the total number of victims of Auschwitz a minimum of 1.1 million and a maximum of 1.5 million.

The fact that Höß gave this figure in the depositions at his Warsaw trial and in his memoirs is one of the strongest indications against the allegation that either were in any way influenced by his captors. Would the Poles have tortured or otherwise influenced Höß into providing a figure that countered the one upheld by the Polish government at the time (and until 1990)? As John C. Zimmermann writes in his online article How Reliable are the Höss Memoirs:

Höss was directly challenging the credibility of his captors. He simply could not have written this under duress. Rather, if he was being forced to write these memoirs the 4 million number would certainly have turned up. Also, this shows that his memoirs were not tampered with by the Polish or Soviet authorities. This could explain the reason - though the author has no information to this effect - the Höss memoirs were not released by the Poles until 1958, more than eleven years after they were written.

Source of quote:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschw ... s-memoirs/

Auschwitz being the flagship of the Holocaust, the SIX MILLION number of victims having being reduced by nearly Three million by the Polish government's official stats, it has become impossible for the guardians that the "SIX MILLION" be defended - it posed too much of a stretch...

Nonsense. The estimate of 5 to 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust has never depended on a figure of 3 to 4 million dead at Auschwitz, given that it is largely based on the population statistics of the countries involved. As many as 2,100,000 Jews were killed by Einsatzgruppen and other German formations in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, according to recent research (Gert Robel in Benz et al, Dimensionen des Völkermords). At least 1.5 million Jews perished in the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, according to the judgment of the Landgericht Düsseldorf at the first Treblinka trial in 1965. And then there was Chelmno, with at least 152,000 dead according to the findings of the Landgericht Bonn at the trial against members of Sonderkommando Lange in 1962/63, and the many “plain” concentration camps and ghettos where hundreds of thousands perished. So the lowest serious estimate on the death toll of Auschwitz-Birkenau (ca. 800,000, according to Pressac) still leads us to an overall death toll well over five million.

Never the less the question still remains:

1) Which number do we have to believe?
2) Down or up to which number saves you from harassment?
3) Which number can we believe without being an Anti-Semite?
4) Which number can we believe without being branded as a "Racist"?
5) And most of all, which number is correct, and why?

Meyer may believe whatever fits into his apologetic bubble. Historians believe what is borne out by the evidence, and so do I.

Aside from the official Auschwitz changes, why is holocaust doubt growing?

Because of the increasing number of anti-Semitic whiners like Meyer, perhaps? “Holocaust doubt” is not “growing”, as a matter of fact. It is something that exists only in the minds of fanatical morons.

Maybe it's because of facts like these:

Dec. 31 1945 - French Research for Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
8,000,000

Aug. 19 1998 - Chief Rabbi from Poland in German Newspaper SUDDEUTCHE 6,000,000

April 20 1978 - LE MONDE (French) 5,000,000

Jan 23 1995 - DIE WELT (German) 4,500,000

Oct. 1 1946 - Int. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg document # 008-USSR
4,000,000

Oct. 1 1946 - Int. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg document # 3868-PS
3,000,000

July 18 1990 - The Peninsula Times Tribune's San Francisco CA
2,000,000

May 5 1997 - USA TODAY 1,500,000

June 11 1990 - Germany's largest Jewish Weekly, ALLGEMEINE JUDISCHE
WOCHENZEITUNG 1,500,000

Sept 01 1989 - LE MONDE 1,433,000

Feb 02 1995 - German Mag. BUNTE 1,400,000

Jan 22 1995 - German newspaper WELT am SONNTAG 1,200,000

Jan 27 1995 - DIE WELT 1,100,000

Dec. 21 1984 - Holocaust Institute, Munich: 1,000,000

Dec. 31 1989 - AUSCHWITZ: TECHNIQUE AND OPERATION
OF THE GAS CHAMBER by Jean-Claude Pressac 928,000

Sept. 27 1993 - DIE WELT 800,000

Jan 22 1995 WELT am SONNTAG 750,000

May 1 1994 - FOCUS magazine 700,000

Jan 31 1994 - THE AUSCHWITZ CREMATORIUM, By Jean-Claude
Pressac 470,000

Jan 8 1946 - German News Reels, WOCHENSCHAU # 137, censored by
the Allies 300,000

Jan 6 1990 - FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU 74,000

May 12 1996 - GIESSENER ANZEIGER 69,000

Aug. 08 1994 - International Information Center document # 10824) 66,206

May 11 1979 Tracing Service Arelson (International Red Cross) 52,389

---------------end of list---------------

The propagandist seems to be cheerfully mixing apples with oranges. He is kindly invited to show us what exactly each of these figures refer to. I presume that some refer to the overall Jewish death toll of the Holocaust, others to the total death toll of Auschwitz-Birkenau, still others to the death toll among the registered inmates of Auschwitz (which was but a fraction of the total death toll of that camp), overall or in a given period, and that a few of these sources (namely those “censored by the Allies”) contain downright lies. The mentioned figure from Pressac I can verify myself to be wrong, because I have Pressac’s The Crematoria of Auschwitz at hand. Pressac’s estimate is that ca. 800,000 people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The difference between his figures and those of Piper (1.1 to 1.3 million dead) are explained mainly by the fact that Pressac considers Piper’s estimates on the number of Jewish deportees from Poland to be too high.

Now what? Pick your favorite number - facts don't matter, truth does not matter,

To folks like Meyer they don’t matter a damn thing, for sure.

death certificates do not matter to the Holocaust guardians,

Meyer is requiring death certificates for people gassed or shot in great big bleeding batches upon arrival at a certain destination. I’d consider that hilarious if it were not so sick.

Anti-German propaganda does matter.

The only anti-German propaganda I see lies in the howling of folks like Meyer, for whom Germany and National Socialism seem to be one and the same thing. Germany would be much better off without such people. Image-wise and in every other respect.

Norman Finkelstein: "There's no business like Shoa business! "

Making money out of the suffering and dying of millions of people, to the extent that it happens, is rather disgusting. But no more so than the propaganda howling of Meyer et al.

Waiting for Victor’s lecture on good manners …:lol:

[Roberto]

Where does this figure 6 Million come from?. There were 6 Million Jews killed in the Tsarist Pogroms, there were 6 million Armenians killed by the Turks, there were 6 Million Cambodians killed by their own government. Why always 6 Million?

The established death toll of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians is 1 to 1.5 million, and on Pol Pot’s killings there are estimates between one and two million:

Armenian Massacres (1915-23)
 The big massacres occured in 1915, but there were rumblings before and after:
 1909:
 Rummel: 30,000
 Eckhardt: 6,000
 1915-18:
 Britannica: 600,000
 Dict.Wars: 600,000 died of starvation, disease and exhaustion
 Steven Katz in Is the Holocaust Unique? (Rosenbaum, ed.): 475,800-775,800
 Encarta: 800,000
 Kuper: 800,000
 Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century: 1,000,000
 Eckhardt: 1,000,000 civ.
 Robert Melson in Is the Holocaust Unique?: 1,000,000
 Christopher Walker, Armenia : The Survival of a Nation (1980): 1,000,000 (in Turkey, 1915-16), plus an additional 50- 100,000 (invasion of the Caucasus, 1918)
 Porter: 1,000,000 to 1,500,000
 Rummel: 1,404,000 domestic, 83,000 foreign
 War Annual 8 (1997): 1,500,000
 1919-23:
 Christopher Walker: 250,000 (in Turkey, 1919-22)
 Robert Melson in Is the Holocaust Unique?: 500,000
 Rummel: 440,000 domestic, 175,000 foreign

Source of quote:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Armenian

Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975-1978)
 Pol Pot's reign of terror is probably the second most widely publicized genocide of the century, so it's pretty easy to find estimates:
 Math Ly, member of Cambodian Politburo: 3,300,000 (21 May 1987 AP)
 Rummel: 2,000,000 domestic + 35,000 foreign democides
 SIPRI 1989: 2,000,000
 Elizabeth Becker When the War Was Over (1986): as many as 2,000,000
 D. Smith: 1 to 3 million
 Eckhardt: 1,500,000 civ. + 500,000 mil. = 2,000,000
 War Annual 6: 2,000,000
 Kutler, Stanley: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996): 2M
 Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism: 1,300,000 to 2,300,000
 Clodfelter, Michael, Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995): 1,200,000 to 2,000,000
 Wallechinsky: between 1 and 2 million.
 Dict.Wars: 1M ("Cambodian Civil War of 1970-75") to 2M ("Kampuchean Civil War of 1978-98")
 P. Johnson: 1,200,000.
 Marie Martin, Cambodia, a Shattered Society (1994) cites:
 US State Dept.: 1.2-1.8M
 Demographer En Meng Try: 1.0-1.2M
 Encarta: "...may have caused more than 1 million..."
 Chandler, David, Brother Number One (1992): "conservative estimate" of 800,000 to 1,000,000.
 Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1991): in the text she gives the range of estimates as 0.7 to 2.0 M. In a footnote, she favorably cites Michael Vickery's estimate of 700,000 to 1,000,000.
 Chomsky (1987): 750,000, citing Vickery.
 These are the numbers quoted in Pol Pot's 1998 obituaries:
 "more than 1 million" (New York Times, Newsweek, Time)
 "1.5 million or more" (Washington Post)
 "up to 2 million" (U.S. News and World Reports)
 The most detailed calculations that I've seen are by Ben Kiernan in The Pol Pot Regime (also in "The Cambodian Genocide", Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, Samuel Totten, editor, 1997). He estimates 1,671,000 (21%) killed out of a population of 7,890,000, including...
 Vietnamese: 10,000 (100%)
 Chinese: 215,000 (50%)
 Lao: 4,000 (40%)
 Thai: 8,000 (40%)
 Cham: 90,000 (36%)
 Urban Khmer: 500,000 (25%)
 Rural Khmer: 825,000 (16%)
 Average: If we take these 25 estimates and figure that "more than" means 20% more, while "up to" means 20% less, and "between" means dead center, then both the median and mean of all these estimates is 1.6M

Source of quote:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Cambodia

Hitler:
 Extermination of the Jews:
 Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution (1953): between 4,194,200 and 4,851,200 (this number is accepted by Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978))
 Brzezinski: 5,000,000
 Chirot: 5,100,000
 3,000,000 in death camps.
 1,300,000 massacred.
 800,000 by dis./maln. in ghettos
 Rummel: 5,291,000
 Grenville: 5-6M
 Davies, Europe A History (1998): 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.)
 MEDIAN: ca. 5.6M
 Nuremberg indictment: 5,700,000 (accepted by Britannica)
 Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990): 5,596,029 to 5,860,129
 P. Johnson: 5,800,000
 Wallechinsky: "nearly" 6,000,000
 Urlanis: 6M
 Soviet Prisoners of War killed:
 Urlanis: 3,912,000
 12 March 1995 Times-Picayune: nearly 3.5M
 Our Times: 3,300,000
 Rummel: 3,100,000
 MEDIAN: 3.0-3.1M
 Mazower, Dark Continent: 3M
 Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 3,000,000
 Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960): 2,000,000 dead and 1,000,000 never accounted for, presumed dead.
 Britannica: 2,600,000
 Gypsies:
 Hammond: 250,000.
 Rummel: 258,000.
 Mazower, Dark Continent: 200,000-500,000.
 Porter: 500,000
 Brzezinski: 800,000
 Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust" in Is the Holocaust Unique? (A. Rosenbaum, ed.) cites these:
 US Holocaust Memorial Museum: 250,000
 "several published estimates": >1,000,000
 Pauwels and Bergier: 750,000
 Financial Times (London): 500-750,000 in death camps and another million shot outside.
 Homosexuals:
 Chirot: 10-15,000
 Rummel: 220,000
 Euthanasia of Handicapped:
 Hugh G. Gallagher: 275,000, citing Breggin (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
 Victims of Wehrmacht:
 Acc2 historical exhibit curated by Hannes Heer: The common soldiers of the Wehrmacht murdered 1.5M Jews, 3.3M POWs + 5-7M non-Jewish civilians (17 May 1995 Agence France Presse; 22 Feb. 1997 AP)
 General political prisoners:
 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): over one million died in concentration camps, not counting those deliberately targeted for extermination.
 Rosenburg, The Haunted Land: 26,000 political death sentences passed by German courts.
 HITLER TOTAL:
 Courtois: 25,000,000
 Rummel: 20,946,000 democides
 Brzezinski: 17,000,000
 Urlanis: 15-16,000,000 (11-12M civilians + 3.9M POWs)
 Our Times: 13,000,000 (6M Jews + 7M others)
 Compton's: 12,000,000
 Grenville: 10,000,000, including 2M children.
 NOTE: These numbers only include outright murders, but keep in mind that some 18M civilians and 17M soldiers died in the European War. That's 35,000,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on Hitler to one extent or another.

Source of quote:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm

[R. J. Kimmel]

Why not simply let history pass into history. My feeling is that the holocaust will always raise doubts, and as the years go by these doubts will become greater. This may be mainly do to embellishment of information. You have today the great grandchildren of "survivors" taking up the reins, and in one sense what is said parallels crying wolf too many times. How long will the citizens of Germany feel that the have to bare the guilt of their anscestors and to pay retrobution for something that should have truly passed into history many years ago. How can money satisfy the passing of a loved one?

RJK

[Roberto]

Why not simply let history pass into history. My feeling is that the holocaust will always raise doubts, and as the years go by these doubts will become greater.

Hardly so. As the years go by research will enhance the knowledge of issues that have so far remained obscure and we might come closer to understanding why the Nazis did what they did. Especially as we now have the Eastern European archives at our disposal, which were barred to previous researchers.

This may be mainly do to embellishment of information.

Very unlikely. After almost 60 years of criminal investigation and historical research, whatever embellishment there may have been has most probably been sifted out.

You have today the great grandchildren of "survivors" taking up the reins, and in one sense what is said parallels crying wolf too many times.

What are the quote marks supposed to mean?

How long will the citizens of Germany feel that the have to bare the guilt of their anscestors and to pay retrobution for something that should have truly passed into history many years ago.

Ever met a German citizen who felt that he was bearing the guilt of his ancestors? I haven't. I am a German citizen, by the way.

How can money satisfy the passing of a loved one?

Not at all. But when you've been through hell on earth, it's better to receive a little monetary compensation for it, however symbolic, than to receive nothing.