How [many] Jews were killed for real?

[taylorjohn]

The Nazi persecution of the Jews may not have been the main reason for Stauffenberg but from what I have read I do believe that the crimes committed by the SS/SD and the Police in Eastern Europe and the former USSR were important factors in motivating the other senior officers (whom I mentioned in my previous reply) to act against the Nazi regime.

Unfortunately, you are correct, that the western Allies (and the Soviets for that matter too) did very little to help the plight of European Jewry during WW2.

[David Thompson]

Let's get back on topic.

[finnjaeger]

I read the thread through in a haste but from what i read i couldn´t find any statement which would say the generally accepted number (like un UN)? Is there such, or has there been any attempts to have one? Mr Thompson said there are lot of estimates from the bodycount out there for each to make his own mind on the issue. If this is true then what makes some people holocaust denials if there are no officially accepted number? The total denial is obvious reason but i mean if someone is just accepting the 1.4million mentioned here (or something). Or does that depend on the viewpoint of the country in question?

best regards, TK

[cyberdaemon]

You will never know the truth, just thin in some books the count's are 5 million jews some say 6 million jews but what about all the jews killed in ghettos and in other places.

Regards.
Hans.

what about these jews transfered into soviet gulags , or who died by the hands of communists ?

[nickterry]

One thing that needs to be thrown onto the woodpile of these discussions is the more recent data from post-Soviet historians who have been recalculating losses in (1941 borders) Soviet Union:
Jewish victims out of total civilian victims
RSFSR 144-170,000 of 655,825 civilians killed
Ukraine 1,430,000 of 3,178,084
Belorussia 810,000 out of 1,360,034

Moldavia 130,000
= part of wartime Transnistria, mostly at Romanian hands
Lithuania 215-220,000 of 436,535
Latvia 75-77,000, of 313,798
Estonia 1,000 of 61,307
total: ca. 2.8 million out of 6 million civilian dead (excl. Leningrad blockade)

The Baltic states and Moldovan figures conform to Western sources, the figures for the Slavic nations are significantly higher. Obviously the figures for the Ukraine include Galicia, those for Belorussia include the Bialystok district. Overall figures for Moldova were incomplete for comparative purposes.

source: Ilya Altman, Zhertvy Nenavisti, Moscow, 2002, p.303
for overall statistics, Pavel Polyan, Zhertvy dvukh diktatury, Moscow, 2002, pp.735-738

Figures include neither those deported to Germany, ca. 3 million civilians, of whom somewhere between 25-33% disappeared before repatriation, nor POWs, for which there are of course a host of other Soviet military casualty statistics and German reports.

Both authors, indeed most now working on the occupation of the Soviet Union, base their overall calculations on the investigations of the Soviet Extraordinary Commission (GARF fond 7021), which functioned by literally creating a committee in every single district (rayon - Kreis) and town beginning in many cases as early as weeks after liberation and continuing to work until 1948 and beyond. Thus the aggregated local information functioned as a kind of census of wartime losses.

The truly scary thing is how often German sources agree with the postwar Soviet investigations. These being not simply the infamous Ereignismeldungen but all the manifold other reports which catalogued killings galore of all kinds. Since there are so many points of congruence, it strengthens the veracity of those Soviet reports for localities where there was not so much detail in the German reports.

In some cases, I have noticed obvious roundings-up and possible exaggerations in the Soviet reports, whereas in many, many more instances, the Soviet reports do not include, for example, mortality from starvation or such figures are included in district reports and not the provincial level. Moreover, a staggering number of small-scale shootings are not included. If an isolated group of fleeing peasants are shot down in a forest by German troops, with no Soviet witnesses, they don't show up in Soviet investigations but they do show up in German reports. So I would revise the figures downwards to take account of some roundings-up, but revise them back up again to take account of all the deaths which were *not* included.

(My statements based on examining EVERY district in Belorussia, the Russian provinces of Kalinin, Smolensk, Kaluga, Bryansk, Orel, Kursk, and the Ukrainian provinces of Sumy and Chernigov plus a survey of German reports from over 70 divisions, 25 corps, 7 armies and parallel SS records.)

Note how in the RSFSR, Jewish mortality is significantly less proportionate to Slavic mortality, on the order of 1:4, whereas in the Ukraine and Belorussia, the proportion neared 1:1, with a disproportionate number of Jewish victims in Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, and more like 1:1.5 in eastern regions. These proportions indicate the degree to which Jewish communities were able to flee ahead of the invaders, which meant: not very much for those in the west, where the panzers overran the Pale of Settlement in some sectors within 2 and a half weeks. Plenty of evidence that those that did escape often found themselves caught further east, thus there were quite a lot of Lithuanian Jews in Belorussian ghettos, and Belorussian Jews in Russian ghettos.
The figures given for particular ghettos generally conform to a logical percentage of the Jewish population recorded in the 1939 Soviet census. Matters are slightly more difficult with the Kresy, since the last decent census was well before the war, but here, too, the number of victims generally conforms to both pre-war population minus call-ups and minus the now precise NKVD statistics for the deportations of 1939-40. (for the latter, see memorial.org website for book on repression of Poles, in bibliography/online books section for latter, referred to on the forum previously.)

No wonder denialists have shied away from looking at the Soviet Union; there it was not a matter of half a dozen camps, but involved events in several *thousand* localities.

To repeat, 2.8 million Jews murdered on Soviet territory as of 22.6.1941 - half the Holocaust.

[alf]

Micheal wrote.

But the numbers derived from such documentary sources simply do not add up to six million. I would challenge anyone to show that they do

Actually the converse holds true. Micheal must present HIS physical evidence as to what happened to the people killed.

The figures from 4-6 million have been so well documented, why Micheal ignores such evidence is what he needs to explain. Where did all the missing go? No one to my knowledge has ever explained it, but obviously in the holocaust denial circles it is a "proven" fact, so perhaps Micheal will allow us the uninitiated access to that secret knowledge. Or are philo-semites blind to only what anti-semites can see?

But please no such unsupported sweeping statements as "I diasgree with Browning" blah blah, but explain exactly why each of the major historians is wrong, the verifable sources used to reach a position denying the standard conclusions. Especially now as the only denier historian ( and i use that term historian VERY loosely) David Irving is busy recanting his views, ( see the another post in this forum).

That is the actual challenge

[iwh]

I agree with Alf. Any real revisionist historian does not simply say that x,y or z did not happen. They have to give an alternative history together with all the evidence and proof that their new theories require. All historians of the period agree with a rough figure of 6 million deaths. We use it as a general figure of reference.

Any historian who happens to disagree with this needs to give an alternative. It is simply not good enough to say the numbers are false. If the rough figure is not 6 million, then indeed, where did they all go? If, as some believe, they all left Europe for the USA and other countries, then where is the travel documentation, cargo manifests, newspaper reports of mass populatiion movements etc etc etc?

The historical community has shown the rough 6 million figure to be the accepted norm. if you don't agree with it, then give an alternative, by all means, but make sure you can provide a proof that is better than the one we already have.

[gaussianum]

I'm sure this has been pointed out many times, but just for readers to know what the historical "norm" is (if there is one), let me just present what I've found regarding this issue. In William L. Shirer's: " The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich", 1960, Crest Book, page 1273, one can read:

" The figure given in the Nuremberg indictment was 5,700,000 and it tallied with the calculations of the World Jewish Congress. Reitlinger in his prodigious study of the Final Solution concluded that the figure was somewhat less--between 4,194,200 and 4,581,200."

The book was written in 1959/1960. Since then a lot of other studies have reviewed this number, but even if we ignore newer studies, noone can seriously claim that 6 million jews died. No serious present-day historian would stand by such a number.

[iwh]

noone can seriously claim that 6 million jews died. No serious present-day historian would stand by such a number.

Why not? Figures provided by Gutman and Rozett are estimated at 5,859,622. Figures given by Wolfgang Benz, which are the most recent, are at 6,269,097. According to Shermer and GroBman in their book Denying History, p 177, most historians believe these to be the most accurate.

Of course, we still do not know for certain the numbers of jews who died in the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded in 1941. It's quite possible that the numbers could be higher.

[gaussianum]

Is Wofgang Benz, apart from being director of an Institute for the study of anti-semitism, a serious historian? Here's a review of his book: "A german historian examines the holocaust", reviewed by Samuel Totten:

" As interesting as the book is, there are numerous places where Benz makes a point but neglects to provide adequate explanatory information. For example, Benz states that "In autumn 1943 there were once again, as in the time of the Einsatzgruppen, massacres in which the victims were murdered in shooting operations" (p. 140). By that time, of course, the Nazis were killing millions of people in the gas chambers of the death camps, thus the reader naturally wishes to know why the Nazis reverted, at least in certain cases, to "shooting operations", again.

Another major drawback of this book is that it does not include footnotes, thus one is not sure where Benz has obtained certain of his facts or whether his assertions are corroborated by the latest research. This is not a little disconcerting for one who wishes to be absolutely certain that a particular point is totally accurate. For example, speaking of Kristallnacht, Benz asserts that "…more recent research reveals that far more the 1000 synagogues and houses of worship fell victim to the pogrom…" (p. ?) but he never states who conducted the research, where it was published or when.

It is not a little disconcerting that a book published by Columbia University Press includes so many typographical and spelling errors, including: the use of "loose" for "lose" (p. 55); "oversees" for "overseas" (p. 71); "propoganda" for "propaganda" (p. 72); "pires" for "pyres" (p. 99); and "tatoo" for "tattoo" (p. 148). Finally, this reviewer came across the following major error: "…the killing of the disabled…had been halted in 1941" (p. 143). In fact, while the Nazis publicly stated that the murder of the disabled was halted, the killing of such individuals continued in secret. As Berenbaum (1993) notes: "On August 24, 1941, almost two years after the euthanasia program was initiated, it appeared to cease. In fact, it had gone underground" (p. 65). And, as is stated in the United States Holocaust Museum's (n.d.) pamphlet entitled "Handicapped", "the 'euthanasia' killings continued…under a different, decentralized form…. In all, between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and physically handicapped persons were murdered from 1939 to 1945 under the T-4 and other 'euthanasia' programs" (n.p.)."

So, he makes a lot of unsubstantiated statements, and downright erroneous ones, which is hardly the work of a serious historian.
I'm going to check your alternative sources. Regards

Here's the review link:

http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/css/Css_3 ... torian.htm

[wolfangel]

I agree with Alf. Any real revisionist historian does not simply say that x,y or z did not happen. They have to give an alternative history together with all the evidence and proof that their new theories require. All historians of the period agree with a rough figure of 6 million deaths. We use it as a general figure of reference.

Any historian who happens to disagree with this needs to give an alternative. It is simply not good enough to say the numbers are false. If the rough figure is not 6 million, then indeed, where did they all go? If, as some believe, they all left Europe for the USA and other countries, then where is the travel documentation, cargo manifests, newspaper reports of mass populatiion movements etc etc etc?

The historical community has shown the rough 6 million figure to be the accepted norm. if you don't agree with it, then give an alternative, by all means, but make sure you can provide a proof that is better than the one we already have.

And all you do is cite three authors with differing numbers.As Schirer also has a different number.
My God,can we not all agree that millions were killed and let it be left at that?
Why the morbid fascination of exactly how many died?Is it any less evil that 5.8 million died,or 4.7 million,or 6.2 million?

[Denim Demon]

Just a thought, is it not possible that the germans killed people that they thought were jews
but who in fact were not? the nazis did not held the slaves in high regard either.
what would it matter if a few thousand non jews got mixed up in the numbers as killed jews.
then the figure would follow in the records which the calculated accont were based on.

[wolfangel]

Just a thought, is it not possible that the germans killed people that they thought were jews
but who in fact were not? the nazis did not held the slaves in high regard either.
what would it matter if a few thousand non jews got mixed up in the numbers as killed jews.
then the figure would follow in the records which the calculated accont were based on.

Yes,but notice the topic:How Many JEWS were killed for real.
The 6 million (or whatever)is used for Jews ONLY.It does not include Norweigens,French, homosexual,mentally retarded,etc.
The number goes much higher with using ALL the peoples slaughtered by the Nazis.

[nickterry]

noone can seriously claim that 6 million jews died. No serious present-day historian would stand by such a number.

Why not? Figures provided by Gutman and Rozett are estimated at 5,859,622. Figures given by Wolfgang Benz, which are the most recent, are at 6,269,097. According to Shermer and GroBman in their book Denying History, p 177, most historians believe these to be the most accurate.

Of course, we still do not know for certain the numbers of jews who died in the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded in 1941. It's quite possible that the numbers could be higher.

I posted a lengthy explanation of the revised figures regarding murdered Jews in the Soviet Union above. So we now know much more for certain what the numbers are.

Funny how none of the deniers and semi-deniers have tried to challenge that post yet.

[iwh]

Is Wofgang Benz, apart from being director of an Institute for the study of anti-semitism, a serious historian? Here's a review of his book: "A german historian examines the holocaust", reviewed by Samuel Totten:

If you are going to be objective, at least give both sides of the story. Quoted from the same source you mentioned;

In his foreword, Arthur Hertzberg asserts that "Benz's book is the first written by a German scholar of the younger generation to this story with exactness and absolute candor" (p. ix). I cannot attest to the accuracy of that statement, but I do agree that the book pulls no punches, is well written, and is thorough in its presentation.



Throughout the volume Benz drives home a number of points that both curriculum developers and teachers need to understand and convey to students, if the latter are to gain a clear and accurate understanding of the Holocaust. For example, speaking of the Wannsee Conference, Benz correctly states that "The total annihilation of the Jews throughout Europe, then, was pronounced as a matter that had long been decided upon, and at least half of those taking part in the discussion had a very clear idea of how the mass murders were being carried out or how they were yet to be executed" (pp. 6-7). Far too many curricula used at the secondary level either imply or overtly state that the purpose of the Wannsee Conference was to decide the fate of the Jews; rather, it was used to announce what had already been decided.


On a different note, Benz also does a good job of delineating the evolution of the killing process - from the gassing of the mentally and physically handicapped in the late 1930's, to the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland and the Soviet Union, to the experimentation with the operation of the gas vans beginning in late 1941, and, ultimately, to the gas chambers in the death camps in the 1940's.


While I recommend this book to educators (particularly at the secondary and university levels), for it is informative and raises a number of critical issues worthy of serious consideration,

Not all negative then...

As to the shootings mentioned by Benz in Autumn 1943, this can actually be confirmed in Christopher Browning's book...Ordinary Men (Penguin) P225. Here we have a table of shootings carried out by Police Battalion 101. According to the chart, 16,000 jews were shot at Majdanek and 14,000 shot at Poniatowa in November 1943.

However, this takes us away from the main issue...the number of jews killed of which there is no mention in your source. Perhaps we can assume that he got these figures correct?