Holocaust Question

[Andy]

I was wondering what other minorities were put in the Concentration Camps besides Jews. And how many of them were killed?

[Daniel L]

Jehova's witnesses, homosexuals, protestant and catholic leaders, romes, mentally handicapped, slavs, pow's, communists, labor unionists, socialists and other politically dissidents are just a few that one could mention, there are further groups.

regards

[Roberto]

I was wondering what other minorities were put in the Concentration Camps besides Jews. And how many of them were killed?

I have the following figures on the overall death toll of Nazi genocide and mass murder after the article Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft und des Zweiten Weltkriegs, by Hellmuth Auerbach, published in: Wolfgang Benz et al, Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile, 12th edition 2002 by dtv Munich, pages 161-163:

- about 6 million Jews;
- about 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war;
- about 2.5 million Christian Poles;
- at least 100,000 forced laborers from the Soviet Union;
- at least 500,000 Yugoslavs who perished in German labor and concentration camps;
- at least 100,000 Czechoslovak civilians;
- at least 84,000 non-Jewish deportees from Northern and Western Europe (including Italy);
- about 219,600 Gypsies of various nationalities;
- about 100,000 primarily German mentally ill and handicapped (so-called "euthanasia");
- about 130,000 non-Jewish persons of German nationality who actively or passively opposed the regime due to political or religious reasons.

To the above I would still add the following:

- Ca. 1 million victims of German anti-partisan operations in the occupied Soviet territories:

Hundreds of ruined villages and a death toll that passed an estimated one million bore terrible testimony to the price paid for Hitler’s ‘kind of terror’.

Source of quote:

Richard Overy, Russia’s War, Penguin Books 1998, page 151.

- Ca. 1 million starvation victims of the siege of Leningrad, the purpose of which was the eradication of the city and its population (the German troops had specific instructions not to accept a surrender of the city even if it were offered and to fire on everyone who might try to leave the city in the direction of the German lines).

A total for Leningrad and vicinity of something over 1,000,000 deaths attributable to hunger, and an overall total of deaths, civilian and military, on the order of 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 seems reasonable.

Source of quote:

Harrison E. Salisbury The 900 Days. The Siege of Leningrad, 1970 Avon Books, New York, page 594.

I would also add an unknown but certainly large number of civilians who died of starvation, exposure, disease and mistreatment in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union under the living conditions imposed on them by the Nazi occupiers. My sources in this respect are the following works referred to by R.J. Rummel in his book Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, Transaction Publishers New Brunswick & London, 1992:

Gil Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, 1972 Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, pages 54-58:
6,500,000 to 7,500,000 (“from famine disease, exposure; 0.5 million assumed to have died after the war and are not included”)

Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, translated by Colleen Taylor, 1972 Alfred A. Knopf, New York, page 140:
5,000,000 (“famine/disease; from Soviet demographer M. Maksudov")

It doesn't become clear from Rummel's references whether the figures cited include the above mentioned victims of the siege of Leningrad or not, so I'll assume that they do include them.

Auerbach's figure for Yugoslavs who perished in German labor and concentration camps seems too high to me; if also including the civilian victims of anti-partisan operations and reprisal executions in the areas of Yugoslavia occupied by German forces, it would be more plausible.

As to Auerbach's figure for Christian Poles, I have also seen lower ones, namely the following:

In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting reparations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jewish victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.

Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944—45 to liberate Poland.

Source of quote:

http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource/poles/poles.pdf

As to Auerbach's figure of at least 84,000 non-Jewish deportees from Northern and Western Europe (including Italy), I don't know if it includes victims of anti-partisan operations and reprisal executions on the territory of those countries, so I'll assume that it does.

Regarding the concentration and extermination camps proper, I have Wolfgang Sofsky's figure from his book Die Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager, Frankfurt am Main 1993. Sofsky seems to have counted a minimum of 3,894,305 dead in all concentration and extermination camps he assessed.

The number of Jews among the victims of the concentration and extermination camps I would consider to have been ca. 3,000,000, according to Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews.

Hilberg's breakdown of the Jewish death toll by causes can be viewed under the link

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

Hilberg's overall total for Jews is lower than the one mentioned in Auerbach's above list, but this may be attributed to the fact that his figure for open air shootings, which occurred mainly in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, is considerably lower than what has resulted from more recent research, namely Gert Robel's assessment published in the book Dimensionen des Völkermords, by Wolfgang Benz et al. Robel estimated the deaths among Jews in the Soviet Union without the Bialystok area and the Romanian occupation zone at over two million.

This would mean that roughly 900,000 of the victims of concentration and extermination camps were not Jewish.

The other inmates of the concentration camps included political opponents of the Nazi regime, Jehova's witnesses, homosexuals, common criminals, Gypsies and, after the outbreak of the war, political prisoners from all countries occupied by Nazi Germany, as well as forced laborers and prisoners of war from certain countries, especially the Soviet Union.

A breakdown of the number of inmate deaths in all camps by nationality or ethnicity should be rather hard if not impossible to come by, but I know there are such breakdowns for some individual camps. I'll see what further data I can provide.

[witness]

deleted

[Roberto]

Further to my last post, here we have the example of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, the memorial site of which can be reached online under

http://www.mauthausen-memorial.gv.at/en ... ichte.html

A breakdown of the inmates by nationalities, as well as a listing of the various prisoner categories, can be accessed from that site.

[Marcus]

- at least 500,000 Yugoslavs who perished in German labor and concentration camps;

Can you provide some info on these victims, thanks.

/Marcus

[Roberto]

- at least 500,000 Yugoslavs who perished in German labor and concentration camps;

Can you provide some info on these victims, thanks.

/Marcus

I'll try, but at the moment I only have Auerbach's figure which, as I said, I consider too high if referring only to Yugoslav citizens who perished in German camps.

[Daniel L]

Since Andy doesn't specifically ask for the concentration camps in german hands perhaps we should also include the croation camps:

32 000 jews
26 000- 39 000 romes
between 330,000-390,000 serbs

Further there were other people died due to Ustascha actions such as muslims and croatian political dissidents etc.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/

http://www.iwm.at/publ-jvc/jc-06-05.pdf

regards

[viriato]

charlie don't surf quoted:

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/

On page V of the above mentioned site we can read:

There are no reliable statistics on the number of Muslim victims. The Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina were ethnic Slavs and spoke a variety of Serbian and Croatian dialects. Croatian nationalists as well as the radical Ustaša leaders perceived all Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina as Croats; the regime aimed to convert them to Catholicism. They were persecuted for religious and political rather than racial reasons.

Another case of a misleading text. We are to believe that the Croatians persecuted the Muslims of BH the same way they persecuted the Serbs, Jews and Roma and for that reason they were killed. However as far as I know the Muslims were not in the main persecuted by the Croats, on the contrary they were mostly on the side of the Croatian regime and most of the Muslim victims were the result of primary of the Chechniks and then of the Titoist partizans.

[cybercat]

Not entirely true. The partizans did kill Muslims but generally those that supported the Nazis and the Ustasa. There were Muslim brigades within the partizans - 16th Muslim Brigade from Vares area was one. However, if you look at the roll of honour in that brigade there were many Serbs in command positions. The town of Zenica also had partizan formations as did Sarajevo - both cities are predominantly Muslim. This is the reason for the failure of the 13th SS Handzar Division. The nazis by placing them alongside chetnik formations in 1944 literally invited the members of this division to desert to the partizans. The chetniks indeed were the main culprits for the deaths of Muslims in the Drina Valley and Sandzak in 1941/42 and also in Crna Gora (Montenegro) it is no surprise that Muslims would not want to fight on the same side. However, strange as it may seem there were Muslim Chetniks in the Zenica region during WWII (as there were Muslim volunteers with the Chetniks 1992-95 in Ilidza, Sarajevo).

The partizans cleverly declared an amnesty for Muslims SS troops if they deserted their units thus causing the eventual collapse of Handzar as an effective military formation.

[cybercat]

It must also be pointed out that Handzar was on paper a croatian formation wearing a croat flag on their sleeves. In the partizans many Muslims wore a star and crescent moon on their caps - the partizans were no fools they realised that without the Muslims on their side in Bosnia then they could never win the war as the majority of major actions in WWII took place on the territory of Bosnia and Hercegovina so they at that time appealed to Bosnian national and Muslim sentiments in order to recruit.

[Daniel L]

Glad that this was brought up since I'm writing about Croatia and nationalism right now. My idea is that the muslims were treated better after the germans decided to use the muslims in a waffen ss division. The decision of doing so was probably most made because strengthening the bonds with other islamic countries and because the bosnian muslims had reported atrocities made by the ustascha. This and because the ustacha needed support in areas were there weren't so many catholic croatians led to the better treatment of the muslims. If this is wrong please point it out to me.

As for the 13 SS Gebirgsjägerdivision Handschar (is Handzar the croatian spelling?) I have another reason for its failure. The failure was not only because of that it was placed against muslim partisans but also due to the fact that it was infiltrated by muslim partisans who tried to make the soldiers do mutiny.

best regards/ daniel

[viriato]

cybercat thanks for your enlightment of the political situation of the Muslims of Yugoslavia in WW2. However I think that my point still stands. The wording I quoted leads anyone not familiarized with the subject to think that the Muslims were persecuted by the Croats and only by them which is of course entirely untrue.

As to the number of death Muslims and according to the sources quoted in

http://www.wargamer.com/sp/ww2/losses/default.asp

they range from 86 thousand to 103 thousand.

[Kaisertreue]

The figures quoted by Roberto are highly contentious and are almost certainly exaggerated in all areas. I suggest reading around and making up your own mind from various sources.

[Daniel L]

What makes his sources unreliable?

regards