For those like @Hassan Al-Somal claim that they have no opinion whether the Holocaust occured, while at the same time show extremism hatred against Jews.
When did the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis become well known at 6 million?
Contrary to popular belief this has nothing to do with Nazi records. There is this “half-myth” that floats around that the Nazis were great record keepers and thanks to these records we can accurately identify the number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. This is inaccurate.
To be clear the Nazis were great record keepers when they wanted to be. When it came to government administration, military accounting, and economic output the Nazis kept fantastic records. Moreover, many Nazi Generals survived the war and wrote extensively about their experiences before and during the war.
When it comes to the Holocaust we do have source documents that prove a lot and these documents are beyond valuable. They are exceedingly rare though and there isn’t a master list or anything like that. There is a good reason for this though.
As WW2 got going Hitler personally ordered the extermination of disabled persons in the infamous “Aktion T4”. This included a signed order from Hitler to identify, round up, and exterminate all disabled persons. There was an immediate response from the German people and the international community. So Hitler publically backtraced and canceled the order while continuing the extermination in secret. Protesting families were told that their loved ones were being transported to hospitals when really they were killed in the very vans that were supposed to take them there (the Nazis used gas vans as well as gas chambers).
Hitler was thus never going to sign an order to kill all the Jews nor would anyone else. The entire SS high command was very hush-hush about the whole thing. They used code words, destroyed documents, bug up mass graves to burn the bodies, and very secretly went about their evil work.
There was never a list of all the Jews the Nazis killed. There were not even lists for individual concentration camps. In rare instances, we have records that show how many death certificates were sent out by the Nazis or how many inmates in a camp had died but these records are incomplete. At Auschwitz for instance there is a book that records some 70,000 who had died in the camp but this list excludes the 900,000 who were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival and the other 120,000 that died in the death marches or from various acts of brutality.
So where do we get “6 million” from and when did we identify that number?
So to answer the question the first estimate of “6 million” came about in 1945. A top SS official named Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl stated under oath that Adolf Eichmann had reported 6 million Jews killed. This was the first estimate we really had and it was based just upon a single confession.
Past that we have to turn to data to find the answer. Prior to WW2 various nations and groups collected census data as we do today. A few examples include
We then know that by the time the war ended there were only about 3.5 million Jews left in Europe and somewhere around 9 million left globally.
So we have a disparity here of about 6 million. The question is how many of these people died in the Holocaust and how many died from other causes? You have to factor in death rates, birth rates, and the effect WW2 had on those statistics.
This is why figures vary because it depends on how you factor in death rates, birth rates, and what census data you use. Some historians peg the number at 5.2 million others say it could be as high as 6.2 million. Sadly we won’t ever know.
When it comes to totaling up how many were killed at the various camps we are also having to infer a bit.
Take Treblinka, an extermination camp I studied extensively. Thanks to a report from Chief SS Statistician Richard Korherr and another Telegram from top SS Offical Herman Hofle we know 713,000 Jews had perished at Treblinka by the end of 1942. The two documents had identical statistics showing that there was data being collected and kept ultra-classified. This data was related to “Operation Reinhard” which was the operation of the extermination camps and the liquidation of many Ghettos in Eastern Europe.
The problem is that Treblinka operated into 1943 too and no records exist from this year. This is where train station controller Franciszek Ząbecki comes into the picture. This guy ran a train station right by Treblinka and noticed that trains arrived full of Jews and departed empty. He figured out what was going on, joined the Polish Resistance, and started painstakingly recording every train arrival for posterity. He also smuggled out many “way bills” that show how many were on each train. Thanks to him we can estimate how many trains arrived in 1942 and 1943. We can then do some basic math to find out how many Jews on average were on each train and come to a total estimate of 800,000ish.
Why “ish”? Well because we cannot verify exactly how many people were on each train. In 1943 Treblinka slowed considerably and while we have some “way-bills” that confirm numbers it’s hard to take these at face value. So the best estimate is 850,000 give or take. We are 100% more than 712,000 were killed there but we cannot give an exact number. Franciszek Ząbecki for his part did his own calculations based on what he saw and recorded and estimated the total at over 1 million- and he could be right.
So obviously it’s all rather complex and it took lots of serious study and research to accurately identify the number of victims. However, the numbers we do have are 100% accurate and based on mountains of evidence.
Based on my studies here is where the poor souls who were murdered in the Holocaust died. These are just my estimates based on my studies and certainly this is not the end all be all of estimates- but it paints a picture.
When did the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis become well known at 6 million?
Contrary to popular belief this has nothing to do with Nazi records. There is this “half-myth” that floats around that the Nazis were great record keepers and thanks to these records we can accurately identify the number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. This is inaccurate.
To be clear the Nazis were great record keepers when they wanted to be. When it came to government administration, military accounting, and economic output the Nazis kept fantastic records. Moreover, many Nazi Generals survived the war and wrote extensively about their experiences before and during the war.
When it comes to the Holocaust we do have source documents that prove a lot and these documents are beyond valuable. They are exceedingly rare though and there isn’t a master list or anything like that. There is a good reason for this though.
As WW2 got going Hitler personally ordered the extermination of disabled persons in the infamous “Aktion T4”. This included a signed order from Hitler to identify, round up, and exterminate all disabled persons. There was an immediate response from the German people and the international community. So Hitler publically backtraced and canceled the order while continuing the extermination in secret. Protesting families were told that their loved ones were being transported to hospitals when really they were killed in the very vans that were supposed to take them there (the Nazis used gas vans as well as gas chambers).
Hitler was thus never going to sign an order to kill all the Jews nor would anyone else. The entire SS high command was very hush-hush about the whole thing. They used code words, destroyed documents, bug up mass graves to burn the bodies, and very secretly went about their evil work.
There was never a list of all the Jews the Nazis killed. There were not even lists for individual concentration camps. In rare instances, we have records that show how many death certificates were sent out by the Nazis or how many inmates in a camp had died but these records are incomplete. At Auschwitz for instance there is a book that records some 70,000 who had died in the camp but this list excludes the 900,000 who were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival and the other 120,000 that died in the death marches or from various acts of brutality.
So where do we get “6 million” from and when did we identify that number?
So to answer the question the first estimate of “6 million” came about in 1945. A top SS official named Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl stated under oath that Adolf Eichmann had reported 6 million Jews killed. This was the first estimate we really had and it was based just upon a single confession.
Past that we have to turn to data to find the answer. Prior to WW2 various nations and groups collected census data as we do today. A few examples include
- The Jewish Almanac in 1938
- The German Minority Census of 1939
- The Polish census of 1939
- Census data from the USSR from 1933–1940
We then know that by the time the war ended there were only about 3.5 million Jews left in Europe and somewhere around 9 million left globally.
So we have a disparity here of about 6 million. The question is how many of these people died in the Holocaust and how many died from other causes? You have to factor in death rates, birth rates, and the effect WW2 had on those statistics.
This is why figures vary because it depends on how you factor in death rates, birth rates, and what census data you use. Some historians peg the number at 5.2 million others say it could be as high as 6.2 million. Sadly we won’t ever know.
When it comes to totaling up how many were killed at the various camps we are also having to infer a bit.
Take Treblinka, an extermination camp I studied extensively. Thanks to a report from Chief SS Statistician Richard Korherr and another Telegram from top SS Offical Herman Hofle we know 713,000 Jews had perished at Treblinka by the end of 1942. The two documents had identical statistics showing that there was data being collected and kept ultra-classified. This data was related to “Operation Reinhard” which was the operation of the extermination camps and the liquidation of many Ghettos in Eastern Europe.
The problem is that Treblinka operated into 1943 too and no records exist from this year. This is where train station controller Franciszek Ząbecki comes into the picture. This guy ran a train station right by Treblinka and noticed that trains arrived full of Jews and departed empty. He figured out what was going on, joined the Polish Resistance, and started painstakingly recording every train arrival for posterity. He also smuggled out many “way bills” that show how many were on each train. Thanks to him we can estimate how many trains arrived in 1942 and 1943. We can then do some basic math to find out how many Jews on average were on each train and come to a total estimate of 800,000ish.
Why “ish”? Well because we cannot verify exactly how many people were on each train. In 1943 Treblinka slowed considerably and while we have some “way-bills” that confirm numbers it’s hard to take these at face value. So the best estimate is 850,000 give or take. We are 100% more than 712,000 were killed there but we cannot give an exact number. Franciszek Ząbecki for his part did his own calculations based on what he saw and recorded and estimated the total at over 1 million- and he could be right.
So obviously it’s all rather complex and it took lots of serious study and research to accurately identify the number of victims. However, the numbers we do have are 100% accurate and based on mountains of evidence.
- We have confession from top SS officials, top Nazi officials, camp commandants, camp guards, Gestapo members, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squad) members, and even just low ranking SS guys
- We have eye witness testimony from hundreds of thousands of people. Many were Sonderkommandos, which were Jews forced to work in the gas chambers. Others are Polish, Soviet, Greek, German, French, and Romani camp survivors. Some witnesses were even people who managed to escape the death camps during the revolts there.
- Census data is beyond reproach considering we have multiple sources that are all relatively close in their estimates. There is variance but we are talking about a few percentage points. Both the Nazis and Jews showed there were 9 million Jews in Europe and after the war every census ever done (and there have been hundreds) all showed that the global Jewish population shrank around 6 million
- We have some scattered documents that fill in the blanks. For instance the mobile killing squads neatly recorded every single massacre and sent these reports into Berlin for SS leaders to see. We have hundreds of these reports.
Based on my studies here is where the poor souls who were murdered in the Holocaust died. These are just my estimates based on my studies and certainly this is not the end all be all of estimates- but it paints a picture.
