I have found conflicting numbers regarding this statistic. This source suggests a number of 3 million survivors. This entry (seems more accurate) gives a number of 3.5 million (out of a 1933 population of 9.5 million). Google search didn't have anything definitive.
My question is, what is the commonly accepted number of deaths during the Holocaust, and if it was over 3 million, how did so many survive? If the Nazis wanted to murder every Jew, how did their concentration camps neglect 1/3rd of the target population? Were some individuals not imprisoned, or were there many that hid from authorities? I find it hard to believe that the Gestapo could miss 1/3rd of the group they targeted most severely.
I remember reading that many Jews were deported to or fled to the Middle East, causing riots in Palestine in the late 1930s. How large was this migration, and what made the Middle East the prime destination?
From the rise of Nazi Germany to the outset WW2 nearly 600,000 Jews managed to leave Europe or make it to neutral countries. Many were still emigrating as late as 1941. Approx. 250,000 Jews, many from Germany and Austria, managed to move to Mandate Palestine in the 5th Aliyah. To answer the question why this was the most popular destination, it's because most countries had set up restrictions barring Jews from emigrating. Palestine was one of the least popular destinations during the huge wave of migration up until the 1920's. Most wanted to go to areas of new settlement like US, Canada, Argentina, or the UK. The 5th Aliyah doubled the Jewish population in Mandate Palestine; 6 years of immigration vs the 40 years of prior immigration + the Old Yishuv population. At this point, European Jews were desperate for a destination that would take them. Also, many idealistic, socialist, Zionist Jews were attracted to a place under a Jewish led government.
Nearly 120,000 managed to come to the US in the 1930's, also with large contingents of German and Austrian Jews. Another 90,000 managed to emigrate to the UK, many from Italy and Germany. Nearly 85,000 emigrated to countries in Latin America. Even smaller numbers emigrated to far off places like Shanghai (18-20,000), Canada, Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain.
At the end of WW2, most of the surviving Jews lived in the USSR (about 2+ million), the UK (350-400,000), and France (200,000), making up the vast majority of Jews in Europe. With respect to the Jews in France, while many died, most were "foreign Jews" that were not "native french citizens". Civil authorities in France did more to protect them, though transports from 1942-1944 killed some 75,000 Jews in France.
The other remaining Jews in Europe who survived the Holocaust were held in Displaced Persons camps with about 250,000 people. These would have been the survivors of the some 7+ million Jews living in the area where the Holocaust mostly took place; Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Southern Europe, Greece, Romania, etc...
There were also small surviving populations that had managed to hide throughout the war. Small populations of Jews survived in Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and Italy, where civil authorities still managed to defy the Nazis.
Polish Jews returning from being deported from the USSR also numbered some 250,000 people. Many would emigrate in the next few years because of antisemitic violence.
The Jews of Budapest managed to escape liquidation during the Holocaust in Hungary, and about 120,000 survived in Budapest. Along with others who would wind up in DP camps, some 190,000 Hungarian Jews survived the war. Most would survive because the Holocaust in Hungary did really begin until the summer of 1944, less than a year before the war ended.
In the years after WW2, many in the DP camps would emigrate to Israel, and many Jews from French North Africa would move to France to further boost the European Jewish population.