I've encountered a few people who claimed that the actual figure was far lower, closer to one or two million. Is there any truth in this? Is there any concrete proof of the 6 million figure?
I can tell you right now that the number is higher than one or two million. there exists today a compiled database of more than three million names of jewish victims of the holocaust, and it may be as high as 4.2 million names in total. The Nazi regime did keep some records on their killings. There exist reports from camp leaders about the average rates of the camps as well as information taken from Adolph Eichmann himself which rests it at roughly the 6 million mark. If you compare this information to postwar census data and the prewar information on total amount of jewish population in specific areas you also end up with a figure ranging from around 5.3 million to 6.2 million. We may never know the exact number thanks to uncertainty of actual jewish population in some areas (for example, stalinist russia) as well as the actions of the Einsatzgruppen, which often killed "subhumans" without doing any paperwork recording the exact numbers. The number may vary wildly but the 6 million figure is the most accurate APPROXIMATION we have based on the given information
sources: Wilhelm Höttl, an SS officer and a Doctor of History, testified at the Nuremberg Trials and Eichmann's trial that at a meeting he had with Eichmann in Budapest in late August 1944, "Eichmann ... told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 (six million) Jews had perished until then – 4,000,000 (four million) in extermination camps and the remaining 2,000,000 (two million) through shooting by the Operations Units and other causes, such as disease, etc. http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/faq.asp http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The war against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-34302-5.p. 403 Martin Gilbert (2002). The Routledge atlas of the Holocaust, 3rd Ed. London: Routledge. p. 245. ISBN 0-415-28145-8.
The 'few people' you have encountered are holocaust deniers, a nasty kind of neonazism (though it also occurs in people with no nazi sympathies for a variety of reasons). You might want to have a look at this section of our FAQ. Note that a favourite tactic of deniers is to state that 'they are just asking questions', thereby implying that there is any controversy over the existence and extent of the holocaust (which there is not). Don't fall in this trap.