Number of Victims of the Holocaust - Reference Thread

[MattNutt]

The object of the research sections of the forum is to exchange information

Well then David, please tell me

How many Jews died while interned at:

Auschwitz?

Belzec?

Bergen-Belsen?

Chelmno?

Majdanek?

Ponary?

Sobibor?

Treblinka II?

And could you also tell me

The remains of how many Jews are currently buried in the Auschwitz ash pond?

The remains of how many Jews are currently buried in the Sobibor ash mound?

Thanks.

[David Thompson]

MattNutt -- Also from the forum rules:

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Consider this your warning.

[David Thompson]

An uninformative post from MattNutt, which failed to comply with the forum rules, was removed pursuant to the warning posted at viewtopic.php?p=2104415#p2104415 and viewtopic.php?p=2104465#p2104465

[Bryce2004]

...I hope to present 'clean' versions of the workings in due course, and to cross-reference them with the camps etc.

So you plan on telling us how many Jews died in each camp?

Thank you.

Please start with Auschwitz and Majdanek.

The original plaque at Auschwitz read:

FOUR MILLION

PEOPLE SUFFERED

AND DIED HERE

AT THE HANDS

OF THE NAZI

MURDERERS

BETWEEN THE YEARS

1940 AND 1945

And the original plaque at Majdanek read:

MAJDANEK 1941 - 1944


5 OVENS

6 GAS CHAMBERS

1,300m³ COMPOST

820,000 PAIRS OF SHOES


2,000,000 MURDERED PEOPLE

FROM AROUND THE WORLD

A combined death toll of 6 million people (mostly Jews).

Just a wee bit of an exaggeration I would say.

It would be nice to know what the true death toll figures are for these two camps.

Where does it say Jews on either plaque?

[Waleed Y. Majeed]

A newer danish source mentions some 500 were deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. 51 adults and 2 children born in the camp died.
https://folkedrab.dk/artikler/danmark-og-holocaust

waleed

[mark_gr]

How do people even come up with the victim tally for a camp like Birkenau and then be so sure about it when the records are incomplete?

[Javey74]

I did some research into Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau on their reported figures, again they can only be approximate due to incomplete records.

[Ameliya]

Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task.

[Br. James]

Hi Ameliya, and welcome among us!

I certainly agree with your comment that "Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task." -- and we see that it hasn't gotten much easier today. The figures on the number of people killed in the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico stand at 64, though other sources claim that the number of deaths due to that tragedy are quite different. For example, in May a Harvard University study estimated a broad range — between 800 to 8,500 — had died for reasons related to Hurricane Maria. Quite a disparity!

Again, it's good to have you here!

Br. James

[Javey74]

Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task.

I don't think you could ever have a complete record in any situation like this.

Even if you had records showing say 1,000.980 which is usually rounded to an estimate of 1.1 million. That exact figure could never be proved as any one individual within that figure could have escaped, or even got away on a death march towards the end of the war. Names of individuals are often changed to survive crossing borders.

Did the German SS guards record exactly how many they started with on a death march and how many died on the way. Also how many were left behind as they were too sick to walk. I don't think so. The ones that did survive were liberated usually as they were marching as the guards fled.

The German SS where meticulous is recording figures of prisoners entering the camp, and the numbers of people put to death, but recording deaths towards the end of the war was not a priority, by then it was all about getting rid of the camps through demolition and hiding all the evidence they could.

So because of this you will never have true and accurate records only close estimates at best.

[NickA]

Victims of the German 'Final Solution of the European Jewish Question'

Germany - 150,000 Austria - 48,767 Luxemburg - 720 Netherlands - 100,000 Belgium - 23,484 France - 76,134 Denmark - 116 Norway - 758 Finland - 8 German refugees handed over Italy - 6,513 Albania - 591 Greece - 59,185 Yugoslavia: - 65,000 Hungary - 410,000+ (1940 borders) Czech Republic - 77,297(1940 borders) Slovakia - 66,000 (1940 borders) Romania - 120,919 (1940 borders) Estonia - 1,000 Latvia - 77,000 Lithuania - 140,000 (1939 borders) USSR - 1,050,000 (1939 borders - Belorussian SSR - 250,000 (1939 borders) - Ukrainian SSR - 656,000 (1939 borders) - Russian SFSR - 144,000 Poland - 2,890,000 (1939 borders) - western Poland - 1,600,000 (German occupation from 1939) - eastern Poland - 1,210,000 - Wilno district - 80,000 Total - 5,364,492 as a minimum

I have almost no problem with those figures - but I'm disturbed to see a top scholar of the Holocaust Deborah Lipstadt (or possibly just her publisher?) put on the cover of her book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory" that Deniers are:

"those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy"

A statement I'd have said was seriously untrue - six million is not the number of deaths in the camps.

Total death in camps is at least 2,848,000. Auschwitz complex 1 million, Treblinka 2 925,000, Belzec: 434,508, Sobibor: at least 167,000, Chelmno: 156,000–172,000, other facilities that the Germans designated as concentration camps: at least 150,000. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... ersecution

I don't know who Anne Applebaum is other than "She has edited at The Economist and The Spectator, and was a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post (2002–06).[4] Applebaum won the Pulitzer Prize in April 2004 for Gulag: A History published the previous year.[5]" - Wiki - but she comments "The vast majority of Hitler’s victims, Jewish and otherwise, never saw a concentration camp". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands

Elsewhere I've seen that bullets took around 2.5 million Jewish victims. And its claimed that gas vans took 2 million (though many of those were presumably in camps and included in Lipstadt's results)

Its not a very important falsehood from a top Holocaust scholar (maybe an accident?). But its quite a bizarre one.

And is widely quoted, 297 Google hits.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi NickA,

The original doesn't quite say that:

"The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the “true victims” of World War II.

For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how—despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence—this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, “independent” research centers, and official publications that promote a “revisionist” view of recent history.

Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value-relativism, and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge. Thus the movement has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another."

Cheers,

Sid.

[Nickdfresh]

...I hope to present 'clean' versions of the workings in due course, and to cross-reference them with the camps etc.

So you plan on telling us how many Jews died in each camp?

Thank you.

Please start with Auschwitz and Majdanek.

The original plaque at Auschwitz read:

FOUR MILLION

PEOPLE SUFFERED

AND DIED HERE

AT THE HANDS

OF THE NAZI

MURDERERS

BETWEEN THE YEARS

1940 AND 1945

And the original plaque at Majdanek read:

MAJDANEK 1941 - 1944


5 OVENS

6 GAS CHAMBERS

1,300m³ COMPOST

820,000 PAIRS OF SHOES


2,000,000 MURDERED PEOPLE

FROM AROUND THE WORLD

A combined death toll of 6 million people (mostly Jews).

Just a wee bit of an exaggeration I would say.

It would be nice to know what the true death toll figures are for these two camps.

Where does it say Jews on either plaque?

I would add the plaques are Holocaust Denier 101 red herrings that are irrelevant as no one used or uses them to count the number of deaths...

[NickA]

The original doesn't quite say that: "The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians

I don't entirely understand what you're saying. Anybody uttering the statement "the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps" is not acting - nor seeking - to improve popular understanding. It could simply be a laughable error - but I don't think you're saying that.

For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas

At least one of them was himself a survivor of two camps (not death camps, however). He wasn't treated as a harmless crank - he was taken very seriously for a while before he endured a prolonged campaign to shut him up. I presume the French establishment had then a lot of secrets concerning collaboration that would have been exposed if he was listened to. I don't think there's anything ahistorical or denialist about what I've said - now they're all dead there's quite a lot of acceptance of the dark secrets of wartime France were allowed to die with them. (Non-specialist here - am I wrong?)

... now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how—despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence—this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, “independent” research centers, and official publications that promote a “revisionist” view of recent history.

Some of the evidence seems never to have been examined. The reputation of Simon Wiesenthal (but only after he was safely dead) was entirely trashed. Almost nothing he said about himself during the war or after the war could be believed. The SWC very quickly started paying him off to be excluded from contributing to the history that Americans would learn. Elie Wiesel, friend of Presidents, acted rather like a High Priest. Other Holocaust survivors were very happy to show off - and have photographed - their tattoos. What problem did Wiesel have with it? (Note - other survivors, real or alleged, were chasing this for 30 years)

Lipstadt ... argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge. Thus the movement has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another."

I think Lipstadt (or someone else on her behalf, she seems to be able to raise a team) needs to explain why she's now implying that maybe 9 million Jews died in the Holocaust, 6 million in the camps and 3 million in a hail of bullets (or was it 2.8 million I saw in a reference?). And some more in gas vans without necessarily spending any time in the camps.

[NickA]

I did some research into Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau on their reported figures, again they can only be approximate due to incomplete records. (Shows Image)

Gassing people is almost the least mysterious part of the Holocaust. This procedure was quite widely used (sometimes in vans).

The official Holocaust figure is taken from Raul Hilberg. Itself a bit strange - since he was hated and obstructed for many years. Hilberg's seminal "Destruction of European Jewry" he couldn't get any printer to accept it for 6 years and it was vanity published in very small print?! for the Eichmann trial.

But we now agree on his figure and agree that some 1.1 million were gassed at Auschwitz, 90% of them Jewish.

However, there's quite a serious mystery about that number - I see this:

Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He became known for having escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and for having co-written a detailed report about the mass murder that was taking place there.[2] ... The information the men dictated to Jewish officials when they arrived in Slovakia on 24 April 1944 ... became known as the Vrba–Wetzler report.[1] ... the War Refugee Board published it with considerable delay in November 1944 ... There was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments.

... In March 1990 [Rudolf] Vrba said: "[Raul] Hilberg's estimate of 1 million killed [in Auschwitz] is a gross error bordering on ignorance ... According to my observations there were 1,765,000 victims which I counted" - cited to http://www.jta.org/1990/03/06/archive/n ... er-figures.

Is the difference due to the Germans murdering/gassing an awful of Russians? (Don't think so, though its possible)

Was their killing genocide? The Germans didn't feed other POWs into the gas-chambers, these victims would have been pretty much selected for their ethnicity.

***

There is another mystery, though I'm not sure how significant it is. How did the commies arrive at a figure of 4 million for deaths at Auschwitz? How could they get it so wrong? Did they use evidence we've never heard of? The Russians seem to have murdered Wallenberg - were they covering up some giant mass-murder (eg 3 million) of their own?