If you ask Google, "How many Jews died during the Holocaust?" the first answer that will come up is the commonly heard number, "6 million".
If you ask Google, "How many Jews actually died during the Holocaust?" and now quite a few new number come up. "2 million" is the first result. Click on any of the links and the number goes as low as 1.4 million.
So where did this 6 million number come from, and what is the real answer?
Would this, in any way, have to do with your recent banning in /r/history over saying, and I quote:
The gas chamber in Majdanek have been debunked. No one was gassed there.
[Inserted video of denialist rambling which I won't give the time of day of a link.]
Along with your post in /r/banned, where you complain about this stating:
"I guess any evidence that shows a concentration camp wasn't a Nazi death camp is banned from History"
I have to ask because, while this question is easily answered, it seems you have quite the loaded gun coming into this conversation.
Regardless, in the event you aren't looking for a pedestal, this is one of the more popular subjects on this sub as you might imagine. We have two sections of our FAQ with a few questions dealing with this. Further, simply searching "holocaust" into the searchbar will give you plenty of discussions not in the FAQ for you to peruse.
In terms of sourcing:
My quick reference guide for specific holocaust denialism would be this website. It's very first topic, "What proof exists that the Nazis practiced genocide or deliberately killed six million Jews?", gets right into the meat and potatoes:
Based on population and census statistics here is the provided rough breakdown of deaths:
Germany - 195,000
Austria - 53,000
Czechoslovakia - 255,000
Denmark - 1,500
France - 140,000
Belgium - 57,000
Luxemburg - 3,000
Norway - 1,000
Holland - 120,000
Italy - 20,000
Yugoslavia - 64,000
Greece - 64,000
Bulgaria - 5,000
Romania - 530,000
Hungary - 200,000
Poland - 3,271,000
USSR - 1,050,000
Total Number Jews Killed - 5,721,500
From the page:
(This estimate was arrived at using population statistics, and not by adding the number of casualties at each camp. These are also available -- for instance, a separate file with the ruling of a German court regarding the number of victims in Treblinka is available. The SS kept rather accurate records, and many of the documents survived, reinforced by eyewitness accounts).
A common source of contention, which deniers like to pick at, is that "only" 2-3 million were killed in the camps and use that to show that the numbers are 'flip flopping' or something to that effect. This ignores that a significant amount of the killing, as we can see near to over half, were done 'manually' outside of the camps via other means. The fact is is that nearly 6,000,000 jews don't just disappear. Certainly some can be ascribed to 'shit happens' and it was a war but to this level? This kind of scale? That kind of deliberate targeting which, according to Michael Shermers and Ben Kiernan's works, left 91% of the Polish, 90% of the Baltic, and 88-89% of the German/Austrian/Bohemian-Moravian of the Jewish population dead. 83% of the Slovakian population did not just disappear because of war...and if you include that number alone you're at roughly 3,600,000 dead Jews.
The full table here:
| Country | Est. Pre-War Jewish pop. | Est. Jewish population killed | Percent killed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poland | 3,300,000 | 3,000,000 | 91 |
| Baltic countries | 253,000 | 228,000 | 90 |
| Germany & Austria | 240,000 | 210,000 | 88 |
| Bohemia & Moravia | 90,000 | 80,000 | 89 |
| Slovakia | 90,000 | 75,000 | 83 |
| Greece | 70,000 | 54,000 | 77 |
| Netherlands | 140,000 | 105,000 | 75 |
| Hungary | 650,000 | 450,000 | 70 |
| Belorussian SSR | 375,000 | 245,000 | 65 |
| Ukrainian SSR | 1,500,000 | 900,000 | 60 |
| Belgium | 65,000 | 40,000 | 60 |
| Yugoslavia | 43,000 | 26,000 | 60 |
| Romania | 600,000 | 300,000 | 50 |
| Norway | 1,800 | 900 | 50 |
| France | 350,000 | 90,000 | 26 |
| Bulgaria | 64,000 | 14,000 | 22 |
| Italy | 40,000 | 8,000 | 20 |
| Luxembourg | 5,000 | 1,000 | 20 |
| Russian SFSR | 975,000 | 107,000 | 11 |
| Denmark | 8,000 | 120 | 2 |
| Finland | 2,000 | ? | ? |
| Total | 8,861,800 | 5,933,900 | 67 |
EDIT: Thanks to the wonderful /u/searocksandtrees for formatting this!
My two textual sources for this subject are:
Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan
Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer; this last one is a bit more 'pop history' and deals with general myths but it was recommended to me by my Genocide Studies professor and its section on Holocaust denial is very well sourced. I like it alone for its bit on dealing with the 'major' holocaust deniers and their motivations.
Hopefully one of the subject experts can drop by to sort this out for you, but meanwhile, you may be interested in other posts which have tried to clarify counts. Note that sometimes the term "Holocaust" is used more broadly than others, so it's important to ascertain who is being counted (i.e. number of Jewish people vs all people), and by what means (i.e. in death camps vs by all means).
Why does the wikipedia page say that only 3 million Jews were killed? I thought it was 6 million?
How many Jews were systematically exterminated in gas chambers in the Holocaust
Of the 6 million killed in the Holocaust, how many were actually Jewish?
you may also find this FAQ of interest