Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you.

##What Was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to 11-17 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.

##But This Guy Says Otherwise!

Unfortunately, there is a small, but at times vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, "entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."

It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.

##So What Are the Basics?

Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.

The early killings were carried out foremost by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the Einsatzgruppen, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.

By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.

Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.

##The Camps

There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps were later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.

Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.

The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.

Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was a vast complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.

##How Do We Know?

Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. This site catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. I'll end this with a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.

##Further Reading

• "Third Reich Trilogy" by Richard Evans
• "Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution" by Ian Kershaw
• "Auschwitz: A New History" by Laurence Rees
• "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning
• "Denying the Holocaust" by Deborah E. Lipstadt
• AskHistorians FAQ

This is a sadly, when one deals with Holocaust history and the public, antisemites, and 'cypto' fascists, sadly a fairly common experience these days. Hopefully I can make a few points that would be helpful to you in trying to counter the perversion of history by the individual you mention.

Firstly I would like to point out that there were different types of camp. There were prison and work camps, often referred to as ‘concentration camps’, such as Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen. At these camps many internees died of disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings, and murder by guards. Beside the concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) there were also work camps, where prisoners would be forced to act as slave labour for the Reich industry in sites such as the IG Farben plant at the Monowitz concentration camp, and finally, the death camps (Vernichtungslager), such as Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór. These camps were designed explicitly for the mass murder of internees. The distinction between the two can be somewhat blurred, Auschwitz was a large site with many subcamps, some being work camps such as that operated by IG Farben (a German manufacturing company), and other such as Auschwitz-Birkenau II, being death camps. A further point of note is that even in those sites which were not explicitly designed for mass killing, such as the ghettos and concentration camps, killing was often still a fundamental aspect of the mission of those sites. The historian Christopher Browning has on this point written quite extensively, and shown that there was a clear 'exterminationist' philosophy within the ghetto leaderships in Warsaw and Łodź ghettos, which sought to create conditions which would indirectly lead to the death of the inhabitants through disease and starvation.

The specific camp population would be in near constant change, with the death of prisoners, and the arrival of new ones. Within the death camps this was even more pronounced. Further, the transport of prisoners, particularly Jews, would be influenced by broader Nazi policy and timeframe. For example, in the early period of the death camps' operations it was mainly Polish Jews who were sent, however later they were followed by the German and Western European Jews. In many cases the prisoner populations were mixed, but in some cases specific groups were sent to specific sites.

The public often have a great deal of misconceptions about the Holocaust. The historian Dan Stone discussed an ‘Auschwitz syndrome’. Essentially, when people think of the murder of the European and Soviet Jews, they think of Auschwitz. However this is not that accurate. Firstly, Auschwitz was but one camp among several. And perhaps more importantly, a very large portion of deaths occurred outwith the camps, around 1.3 million Jews being shot or gassed in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union alone .I’ll link below some statistics from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is, I find a crucial point which is often dismissed, disregarded, or simply just unknown within the those groups which may at the very best be called "skeptics", but it is absolutely necessary to note that not all victims of the Holocaust died in the camps, but also in massive numbers in both organised and ad-hoc massacres in Eastern Europe. There is an absolute abundance of evidence for this. For example, we have a report from November 1st 1941 from a company commander in the 433rd Infantry Regiment which states:

As agreed with the SS Dienststelle, I have brought the selected Jews and Gypsies from the Prisoner of War camp of Belgrade... The location where the shooting took place was very advantageous. It is situated north of Pancevo, directly on the Pancevo-Jabuka road, where the shrubbery is so high that one can hardly climb up. Across this shrubbery is an area of swamps, and beyond that – a river... Therefore it takes only a limited number of guards to prevent escapes of prisoners...After arriving at about 1.5-2 Km from the chosen place, the prisoners were taken off the trucks and walked to the location, while the trucks with the civilian drivers were sent back immediately to prevent them from having any possible basis for suspicion. After that, I ordered the road blocked for any kind of traffic for reasons of security and secrecy...

The digging of ditches takes most of the time, whereas the shooting is very quick (100 men 40 minutes).

...At first my soldiers were not impressed. On the second day, however, it became clear that one or the other did not possess the nerves to carry out the executions for a longer period of time. It is my personal impression that one does not have any mental qualms while actually shooting. These appear days later while one reflects upon it quietly in the evening.

Further evidence of ad-hoc massacres can be found in the report of the 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment from August 12th 1941 in Ukraine:

[Jewish males] were shot. Only a few skilled workers employed in the Wehrmacht repair workshops were permitted to remain.

The driving of women and children into the marshes did not have the expected success, because the marshes were not so deep that one could sink. After a depth of about a meter there was in most cases solid ground (probably sand) preventing complete sinking....

It was also conspicuous that in general the population was on good terms with the Jewish sector of the population. Nevertheless they helped energetically in rounding up the Jews. The locally recruited guards, who consisted in part of Polish police and former Polish soldiers, made a good impression. They operated energetically and took part in the fight against looters....

The total number [shot] by the Mounted Units was 6,526....

Regarding the issue of population numbers and demographics, it is rather useful to look to the minutes of the Wannsee conference, held in early 1942. The conference was essentially where the 'Final Solution' as a mechanised process was decided upon and organised, with the adoption of the death camps as the primary method of killing, and the logistical preparations required for this arranged. Within the minutes of the meeting, we find quite clearly a report on the Jewish population of Europe and the Soviet Union, along with the clear intention to exterminate that population.

The upmost relevance of this in relation to Holocaust deniers is in noting that such evidence, along with reports of killings such as those included above (created by the Nazis themselves), was used as evidence in the post-war war crimes trials of Nazi officials. During these trials it is remarkably telling that the accused would rarely, if ever, dispute the authenticity of the evidence, rather instead making easily debunked arguments about their ignorance of the genocide, or in claiming they held no responsibility as they were only 'following orders'. Surely, if there was to be any doubt about the authenticity of claims about the continental genocide of Soviet and European Jews and the accompanying documentary record, it would be from these men, who faced the possibility of execution if found guilty, who would make claims of inauthenticity. They didn't however, and the very fact of that goes quite some way in proving their legitimacy.

However, it must be recognised that the Holocaust was also part of a larger project of the Nazi Regime. To paraphrase the historian Peter Longerich, “Judenpolitik was part of a far broader Rassenpolitik.” Essentially what is meant here is that the persecution of the Jews went alongside that of many others, and none should be forgotten. The precise numbers of deaths are difficult to calculate exactly, but here are some which are very trustworthy ones determined by expert historians.

Some statistics from the USHMM:

Number of Deaths:

Jews	6 million
Soviet Civillian	around 7 million (including 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians, who are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)
Soviet prisoners of war	around 3 million (including about 50,000 Jewish soldiers)
Non-Jewish Polish civilians	around 1.8 million (including between 50,000 and 100,000 members of the Polish elites)
Serb civilians (on the territory of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina)	312,000
People with disabilities living in institutions	up to 250,000
Roma (Gypsies)	196,000–220,000
Jehovah's Witnesses	around 1,900
Repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials	at least 70,000
German political opponents and resistance activists in Axis-occupied territory	undetermined
Homosexuals	hundreds, possibly thousands (possibly also counted in part under the 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials noted above)

​

Jewish loss by location:

Auschwitz complex (including Birkenau, Monowitz, and subcamps)	approximately 1 million
Treblinka	approximately 925,000
Belzec	434,508
Sobibor	at least 167,000
Chelmno	156,000–172,000
Shooting operations at various locations in central and southern German-occupied Poland (the Government General)	at least 200,000
Shooting operations in German-annexed western Poland (District Wartheland)	at least 20,000
Deaths in other facilities that the Germans designated as concentration camps	at least 150,000
Shooting operations and gas wagons at hundreds of locations in the German-occupied Soviet Union	at least 1.3 million
Shooting operations in the Soviet Union (German, Austrian, Czech Jews deported to the Soviet Union)	approximately 55,000
Shooting operations and gas wagons in Serbia	at least 15,088
Shot or tortured to death in Croatia under the Ustaša regime	23,000–25,000
Deaths in ghettos	at least 800,000
Other	at least 500,000

What you are seeing is that in a spontaneous conversation in which you know the topic only superficially there's a snowball's chance in hell that you would will be able to convince such a person, unless you're familiar both with the Holocaust history and Holocaust denial.

They always have their primitive but sometimes obscure talking points ready, so unless you know how to answer them, you might be stumped.

The first thing you should ask that sack of filth about is his evidence. It's not up to you to prove, for example, that he is wrong about not even 6m Jews being in the occupied areas. He is making the claim, he must prove it.

If you want to turn the tables you can always:

1 Show them the documents that show that extermination was a state plan and the extermination intent existed, such as these: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/06/debunking-david-coles-auschwitz-video.html#docs

2 Show them the documents proving mobile and stationary gas chambers.

Gas vans: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2015/10/contemporary-german-documents-on.html

Key Auschwitz gas chambers documents: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2015/05/rebuttal-of-mattogno-on-auschwitz-part_3.html

Most Auschwitz GC-related documents: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2012/10/index-of-published-evidence-on.html

The Franke-Gricksch report, describing the mass murder of Jews in the Auschwitz gas chambers: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2019/08/nazi-document-on-mass-extermination-of.html

3 Show them this scholarly demographic country-by-country German study establishing the number of the killed Jews as being between 5 and 6 million.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/220100

Be ready to use these rebuttals to the common denier memes: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/05/rebutting-twitter-denial-most-popular.html

Also be ready to fend off the accusations of "forgery" by asking for specific evidence of the evidence presented having been forged.

Now to the specific points:

census records do not support such a figure. There weren’t even 6 million Jews in occupied areas that could have been killed. To my understanding, there were appx 3+ million Jews in Poland alone, of which ~90% were murdered.

The "census records" might be referring to the World Almanac canard debunked here: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/05/rebutting-twitter-denial-most-popular.html#worldalmanac

That there were that many - and more - Jews in the occupied territories is proven by the above-mentioned study, as well as the basic facts, one of which you have already mentioned - about 3 million Jews in Poland.

The Wannsee protocol gives the number of European Jews as 11 million (albeit its figure for France is wrong, so the sum is exaggerated - Korherr is more correct): https://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-wannsee/dokumente/protokoll-januar1942_barrierefrei.pdf

According to the Korherr report there were 10,3 million Jews in Europe (incl. USSR) in 1937: https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/korherr/korherr-kurz.php

For 17.9.39 Korherr lists 3,120,892 Jews in the so called Reich area (incl. Germany proper, the Protectorate, parts of occupied Poland etc.): http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/Korherr2-3.jpg

And that was just the very beginning, before the millions of Soviet Jews, Polish Jews who were on the Polish territory occupied by the Soviets, and other European Jews were caught up in the occupation.

E. g. up to 31.12.42 Korherr gives these "evacuation" stats for the occupied European countries (France etc.) as well as a partial result for the occupied Soviet territories: 792,818. And for the first quarter of 1943: 49,254. http://www.statistik-des-holocaust.de/Korherr2-6.jpg

The sum is 842,072, added to the previously mentioned number it is already 3,962,964.

But, again, Korherr himself stresses that his Soviet number (633k) is woefully undercounted ("Dabei konnte von den Todesfällen der sowjetrussischen Juden in den besetzten Ostgebieten nur ein Teil erfaßt werden, während diejenigen im übrigen europäischen Rußland und an der Front überhaupt nicht enthalten sind."). Most probably it contains only the Einsatzgruppen victims, whereas many more German units were shooting Jews. E. g. the Korherr report doesn't include most of the 363,211 Jews executed just in a few months of 1942 as reported by Himmler to Hitler, since most of those victims were killed by the "stationary" police forces: https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2019/11/report-to-hitler-jews-executed-363211.html It also wouldn't include the hundreds of thousands shot by the Ordnungspolizei units.

Now add to this all the Jews that would be deported from the occupied countries mention by Korherr after the first quarter of 1943; include all the Rumanian and Hungarian Jews mention by Korherr (he estimates about 1 million in sum). Add all the Soviet Jews not appearing in the report, as acknowledged by Korherr himself. And you will end up with an estimate above 6 million.

But for the details I still refer you to the study in German above.

of the large amounts of Jews that WERE killed, it wasn’t due to systematic extermination, but disease and starvation. He seems to give himself an out here by arguing the Germans were so focused on just winning the war and for their own people, that the starvation/disease was just an unfortunate consequence of supply lines being cutoff.

This cannot apply even in principle to the pure extermination camps like Treblinka (about 800,000 victims), Belzec (about 430,000 victims), Sobibor (about 170,000 victims), Kulmhof (about 150,000 victims) since those were not concentration camps in the first place. They were very small patches of land where no more than a couple of thousand persons could live at one time. Their only function was literally extermination.

Now, Auschwitz-Birkenau was both a concentration camp and an extermination camp. But most of the Jews that died there (about 800,000 out of about 900,000, with the total death toll, incl. non-Jews, being about a million acc. to the more recent data) never became its inmates since they were gassed after a selection upon arrival, which means typhus/supply lines/etc. couldn't make a contribution here in principle.

Next point to consider is that the absolute majority of these victims died long before the bombings might have begun to have some sort of an effect. Nor is there any evidence that they had any effect on, say, food supplies to Auschwitz.

Finally, about half of all Jews died outside of any camps (due to mass shootings, starvation in the ghettos etc.).

So it's a bogus, ignorant, deceptive talking point throughout.

Not to mention that putting innocent people into typhus-ridden camps is also murder.

And in any case, the extermination is documented, so what's the point of this lie?

Start small - ask him to explain where the more than 100,000 Jews deported to Kulmhof (Chelmno) in 1942 go, since it wasn't a concentration camp, and to explain away all the explicit extermination references to this camp:

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/07/sonderkommando-kulmhof-in-german.html#excursus

The Sonderbehandlung of about 100,000 Jews in the territory of my district, approved by you in agreement with the Chief of the Reich-Main-Security Office, SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich, can be completed within the next 2-3 months.

Sonderbehandlung - special treatment - was a code word for murder (as is proven, not merely assumed, at the link).

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/09/sonderkommando-kulmhof-in-german12.html http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.de/2017/09/sonderkommando-kulmhof-in-german15.html

... the camp Kulmhof ... to which mainly Jews unfit for work from the Warthegau, in particular from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, were at that time regularly transferred, was closed on 1/4/43. From a reliable source, the Forschungsstelle has now learned that the police guards there later re-exhumed the Jews buried in a little wood near Kulmhof and had to burn them in specially constructed furnaces. After being granted a lengthy leave, these guards were assigned to frontline duty.

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2019/09/german-document-reveals-kulmhof-chelmno.html

Their activity with this Sonderkommando, which consisted in the immediate fight against and annihilation of state enemies...