I was wondering around on the Telegraph when I saw an article about new data suggesting as many as 20 million Jews died in the Holocaust. This was surprising to me because I always read 6 million in school and online, and this is why my grand mother often told me before she died. So I looked into it briefly at work at I saw other figures ranging from 1.8 million to 2.5 million to the usual 6 to 12 to 20 million. Even for camp deaths like Auschwitz they changed their own numbers on a plaque form several million to just 800,000. I made sure I wasnt accidentally on Neo Nazi or white supremacist websites, so its a little puzzling to me, I know records from WWII from a collapsed country isnt that accurate but 1.8 million to 20 million seems way to broad for Jews alone. I saw mentioned a lot were discrepancies with mass graves on how big they really were to how fast cremating bodies took back in the day compared to a couple hours today to gas chambers and wooden doors making the deaths really slow versus the all metal constructions in US prison. All of those as possible reasons why numbers are so broad.
Did the Americans or Russians mess up in calculating, or were mislead by fabricated Nazi documents?
Im absolutely lost on how many Jews actually died since no one seems to have a definite answer. I always believed my grandmother from when she lived in those days about 6 million, but now im confused how many died. This is rather important as Jew, I cant exactly be proud if I dont even know how many really died.
Alright, well lets start off with a point:
1.8 million to 2.5 million
I want to make this absolutely clear that these numbers have absolutely no basis in fact for the amount of Jews killed in the holocaust.
So lets get to the question of how many Jews died in the Holocaust? Well there is no singular answer, historians are divided on just how many.
Timothy Snyder is his book Bloodlands estimates the total of Jewish dead via the camps and shootings at 5.4 million.
Raul Hilberg, in his book The Destruction of the European Jews one of the most famous holocaust studies estimates the total dead at 5.1 million.
German historian Wolfgang Benz, is probably the highest estimation at about 6.2 million
Finally two historians, Guttman and Rozett, who collaborated on an article for an Encyclopedia of the Holocaust put the total at 5.9 million.
The lowest estimate was made by Gerald Reitlinger, who put it at 4.9 million.
Here is a handy dandy chart compiled by /u/elos_ and formatted by /u/searocksandtrees that shows the estimated loss of life per country.
| 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 |
Now where do we get these numbers? Allow me to quote Michael Shermer, who has made a goal of refuting Holocaust deniers:
The German historian Wolfgang Benz, for example, comments on the problem of depending only on confessions of Nazis: “But historic research is not dependent on confessions of the perpetrators. Original and undeniable sources are available for the research and calculation of the dimension of the genocide, but there are massive difficulties still. A major part of the murder actions was secret, covered through euphemistic expressions like the Final Solution, and proofs for the crimes had been destroyed during a last effort of the NS regime. Thus it will never be possible to quote an absolute figure that counts every single human, but it is possible to position the measure beyond every speculation.”
Benz describes two methods of calculation: “the direct estimating method which sums up the number of victims in concentration camps, extermination camps, through killing squads plus all additional material about killed people; [and] the indirect method of statistical comparison [although] there is a lack of useful statistics (mainly in the east European countries) and the often changed borders make some of them incomparable.”7 By combining the two methods and looking for a convergence of evidence on one range of figures versus another, we can estimate figures with a high degree of confidence. Reitlinger, Hilberg, and Gutman and Rozett derive their figures by various methods, including population demographics before the war, the number reported transferred to camps, the number reported killed, the number estimated killed, the number liberated from the camps, the number killed in “special actions” by the Einsatzgruppen, and the number remaining after the war. Hilberg cautions that “margins of error may be wider than they seem” and that “exactness is impossible.”8 But these margins are not so wide that, for example, six million would become six hundred thousand.
Indeed, the range of estimates is typical for scientific data, necessary when figures have been estimated and cannot be stated with certainty. In the physical and biological sciences, for example, estimates often include error bars to show the range of possible error variance, not unlike those social scientists use for polling data. In our example, the error variance is about 8.5 percent, or about half a million. Moreover, a convergence of evidence provides us with a high degree of certainty that the figure lies near six million.
One method used in compiling these estimates is the “addition” method, which arrives at the number of victims by counting the number killed through (1) general privation (starvation and disease), especially in the ghettos; (2) shooting, especially by the Einsatzgruppen; and (3) imprisonment in the camps, especially the extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec, and Treblinka. We have voluminous data on privation, as Jewish councils as well as the Germans themselves kept statistics for the purpose of rationing food and space. The RSHA kept detailed records of Einsatzgruppen actions, including the number of victims, and much of this material still exists. We also have many deportation lists for the camps, with rosters of names— lists that were sometimes compiled so the security police could be properly billed. Working from the other end, the “subtraction” method uses prewar demographics and subtracts emigrations, numbers remaining in Europe
Alright, lets move on.
Even for camp deaths like Auschwitz they changed their own numbers on a plaque form several million to just 800,000
The initial estimate was around 4 million based off of the Soviet's own estimates, which were wrong. Modern historians put the death toll at about 1.1 million.
Did the Americans or Russians mess up in calculating, or were mislead by fabricated Nazi documents?
No, the problem is new evidence comes to light, especially with the collapse of the Soviet Union and we in the west get access to more evidence. The number is unlikely to shift any more though, unless substantial new evidence comes to light, which seems unlikely at this point.
Im absolutely lost on how many Jews actually died since no one seems to have a definite answer. I always believed my grandmother from when she lived in those days about 6 million
6 million is the number we tell people because its a nice, rounded, easy to remember number for school children. We don't want sit school children down and go "okay kids, remember that exactly 5, 498,xxx Jews died in the Holocaust" We simply history for people all the time. 6 million isn't technically correct, its just rounding up slightly for the purposes of simplifying a complex situation.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
I assume this was the article you read? Because looking and it, and the Independent article it is quoting from, there's a big discrepancy. The Telegraph says:
The number of locations is almost double previous estimates made by the same institution and, all told, they may have imprisoned and killed between 15 to 20 million people.
The Independent says:
The editors of the vast project, which is being compiled from hundreds of scholars into seven volumes due to be published by 2025, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania.
Emphasis mine. The latter indicates the 15-20 million figure is the total number of people (the majority of whom would be non-Jews) who went through the entire Nazi camp system, not just the number of people killed in it. On the flip side of course a considerable number of Jews were killed before ever entering the camp system.
Looking at the website of the actual publication there's no mention of a major revision of the total number of Holocaust victims, only the number of Nazi camps, both those related and unrelated to the Holocaust. And the New York Times article they link to again says 15-20 million died or imprisoned.
To me this seems like a newspaper misunderstood what a number meant and created a sensationalized headline around it.
Follow-up: How do historians arrive at these different conclusions? Are specific figures given a wide range of estimation?