This Holocaust Author's Auschwitz Blog

About The 6,000,000 An Assessment — The Holocaust

Please note. This assessment is an on-going study and reflects where I have reached in My research and not where I have concluded it. There is an overall estimate at Yad Vashem which has managed to collate in excess of 4,000,000 known Names of those Jews who were Murdered during the period of The Holocaust. While this represents a monumental achievement, it is a tragedy that there are nearly some 2,000,000 other Jews of Europe whose names might well be lost to us. Toward History, which relies on the cold hard facts of detail, we are scraping around for, and not just a sense meaning nor of comprehension, but for the last remnants of a Jewish People whose presence was intended to be totally obliterated. What Hitler has achieved, above anything else he had set his Worldview upon, was an Annihilation of the Jewish People of Europe Toward an eventual Remembrance of the 6,000,000 Assessment, the work to add to those names continues.

Ever since 1946, when the most comprehensively quoted figure for the total number of Jews Murdered in The Holocaust, was given as the 6,000,000 approximation, Humanity has yet to come to terms with the magnitude of the atrocity. This assessment was first wielded at The Nuremberg Trials of the German Major War Criminals, and ever since, the much targeted figure has been researched widely. Such an approximation has provided History with tomes so mighty, Library’s are filled and enhanced by their revealing and absorbing nature. For me, and as it is with any writer’s hand, any attempt to comprehend an account so appalling, so terrifyingly real, can make us so shudder at its realisation, that the words to fathom its meaning are barely credible. There are some however, who are in abject denial as to the extent of this, The Jewish Catastrophe. They are simply entering the arena of our concern because this subject is in relation to the Jewish People. While we, who are deemed responsible to History for what we comment upon, when we are guided by Research and Knowledge of this very Truth.

Some though are seemingly in raptures attempting to revise the actual Veracity of what 6,000,000 Murdered Jews succumbed to! But merely denying the very veracity of this Truth does not revise it, nor does it alter the scope of History or its intrinsic value. Tied to that, and ever since the awful Fact was first mentioned, History has as yet failed to come up with any better terms than Genocide, The Holocaust or The Shoah to fully endorse a World’s horror. The Account, for that is what we look into to deliver a Human cost, more or less agrees with that initial and Catastrophically assessed figure. We move on from there slowly, attempting in the dialogue we choose, to present to the World a more balanced appraisal of why this occurred and why We, Human Civilisation, so abjectly failed to prevent The Holocaust from happening!

While it will always remain so abundantly clear, that Hitler, Eichmann, and those other’s of the Nazi’s dealt in the cold calculated Facts of The Final Solution, we must deal also with the Human dimension and emotion of The Holocaust slaughter of 6,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children. There is no precise figure for this Human cost, other than that 6,000,000 approximate number so as to represent the enormous loss of the Jewish People Murdered in The Holocaust. For us, the purveyors of a reflected analysis, we are the bystanders to a terrible injustice voiced and Perpetrated in our name.

Our Christian values have been trampled upon and our Religious understanding by passed in selection of a Genocidal policy which has larcenous undertones. It is a continuing shame and stain on all our History that what was Perpetrated was colluded with and assisted while we remained seemingly indifferent to a People’s struggle. What Adolf Eichmann confirmed in such a matter of fact way, as a statsitical conversion, cannot be allowed to stand as other than an accounting task for which he was heavily involved. Though most research does not stray far from this overall assessment, there is always going to be a disparity in the numbers accounted for because of human error, human intervention and the Human cost!

What the entire research confirms though is that the total number of those Jews Murdered is from Hilberg’s low Assessment to Benz’s more up to date Account, at least accepted and at worst a flagrant loss of the Human factor in this, The Jewish People. Extrapolated from Census returns, from estimates of Population Growth and the effects of depopulation caused by Hitler’s Final Solution and what has been gained from before and after The Catastrophe, we will always arrive at an assessment that is somewhere between these margins. Prior to Hitler’s aggressive War, which he commenced on September 1st. 1939, and it was Hitler’s aggression in Invading Poland that World War Two commenced, there had lived 16,500,000 Jewish People. When War had finally destroyed what was left of Hitler’s 1,000 year Reich some 10,500,000 Jews remained. Simple math suggests here that 6,000,000 Jews are no longer residing upon God’s green Earth.

“..death of one man is a tragedy ..death of millions is only statistics.” Josef Stalin.

Oddly how it is that any tyrannt can so mimic each other or mirror a sentiment that is both brutal in frankness and Catastrophic in consequence. Here, what Stalin states, Eichmann will deliberate over as he pushes the Jews of Europe further into total extinction. To counter balance this, Simon Wiesenthal reminds us that we are dealing in the Destruction of The Jewish People, and such a dimension as The Holocaust should not be allowed to disinter the Human Cost.

The Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry suggested had a wide ranging difference, though the overall consensus was that over 6,000,000 Jews were Murdered. Their figures showed, in a range from previous sources, the First and Second example, that their Assessment was proprtionately greater or equal to them in every case, the Third example, except for the case of Austria.

01. Poland: 2,350,000 Jews. 2,600,000 Jews. 3,271,000 Jews.

02. Russia: 700,000 Jews. 750,000 Jews. 1,050,000 Jews.

03. Rumania: 204,000 Jews. 209,000 Jews. 530,000 Jews.

04. Hungary: 180,000 Jews. 200,000 Jews. 200,000 Jews.

05. Czechoslovakia: 241,000 Jews. 251,000 Jews. 255,000 Jews.

06. France: 60,000 Jews. 65,000 Jews. 140,000 Jews.

07. Germany: 160,000 Jews. 180,000 Jews. 195,000 Jews.

08. Holland: 102,700 Jews. 102,700 Jews. 120,000 Jews.

09. Belgium: 25,000 Jews. 28,000 Jews. 57,000 Jews.

10. Greece: 57,000 Jews. 60,000 Jews. 64,000 Jews.

11. Yugoslavia: 55,000 Jews. 58,000 Jews. 64,000 Jews.

12. Austria: 58,000 Jews. 60,000 Jews. 53,000 Jews.

13. Italy: 8,000 Jews. 8,000 Jews. 20,000 Jews.

14. Bulgaria: No Estimate. No Estimate. 5,000 Jews.

15. Norway: 700 Jews. 700 Jews. 1,000 Jews.

16. Denmark: 100 Jews. 100 Jews. 1,500 Jews.

17. Luxembourg 3,000 Jews. 3,000 Jews. 3,000 Jews.

Totals:- 4,204,400 Jews. 4,575,400 Jews. 6,029,500 Jews.

Wolfgang Benz 5,290,000 – 6,200,000 Murdered Jews, Benz was a leading German Holocaust Scholar and his contention, though the estimates read in the range described, he stressed that The Holocaust of The Jews possibly exceeded that figure of 6,200,000 Murdered.

Lucy S. Dawidowicz 5,934,000 Murdered Jews, Dawidowicz used Census analysis.

Gregory Frumkin 4,500,000 Murdered Jews, Frumkin, who Edited The League of Nations

Statistical Year Book’s conducted a study which suggested the figure could be enhanced by a further 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 Murdered..

Martin Gilbert 5,750,000 Murdered Jews,

Yisrael Gutman 5,590,000 – 5,860,000 Murdered Jews,

Raul Hilberg 5,100,000 Murdered Jews, and he breaks down that assessment still further to where:

i) 2,900,000 Jews were Murdered in the various Camps??? STAT

ii) 1,400,000 Jews were Murdered by der Einsaztgruppe

iii) 800,000 Jews Died as a consequence of privation in Hitler’s Ghettos in Byelorussia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Ukraine.

Of this Account, Hilberg asserts that 3,000,000 of these were Polish Jews, representing nearly 59% of all those Murdered Jews of The Holocaust. Also, and it is abundantly clear, that from even the most conservative estimate available, more than 90% of all Polish Jews were Murdered during The Holocaust period. What should also be Remembered, and which no Holocaust Survivor, Scholar, Academic, Writer or Researcher ever fails to mention, Jews were not the only People targetted, but ALL Jews were targeted and they alone are the subject of that is termed The Holocaust.

I am constantly made aware that the disparity in the figures might cause confusion, but it is clear, whether we are looking at the loss of 6,000,000 Jewish Lives, in Total, or the Destruction of 50,000 Jews at Belsen, the Murders by der Einsaztgruppe of more than 1,250,000 Jewish People, the Account is a Catastrophic one. The figures I widely endorse and use in my work are by no means exclusive, as Ghetto’s, Towns and Shtetl’s, other Camps in the Reich, all added toward that final assessment Hitler chose to call die Endlosung der Judenfrage, The Final Solution of The Jewish Question. The figures set out below are an approximation of those 4,658,500 Jews Murdered in these specific areaas and Camps including all x6 Death Camps, so numbered.

But be careful whilst dealing with the seeming abstract of Accounts, Figures, Numbers, these are totalling an appalling Human cost for which These Jews of Europe paid, the ultimate price!

1. Belzec 600,000,

Belsen, 50,000,

2. Birkenau (Auschwitz) 1,100,000,

Buchenwald, 56,500,

3. Chelmno, 152,000,

Dachau, 35,000,

der Einsatzgruppe, 1,250,000,

4. Majdanek, 200,000,

5. Sobibor 250,000,

Stutthof 65,000 and

6. Treblinka 900,000

Makes a Total of Jews Murdered 4,658,500.

Don’t forget too that this figure reprents those Murdered Jews under these headings and are not composite of all those Jews, Murdered in the many other Concentration Campos, Labour Camps, Gehhot’s which filtered the Jewish People toward Destruction. Given German thoroughness, and the demands of Hitler to ensure full weight of those measures he proposed to deal with the Jewish Situation are brought to bear, there is an abundance of documentation.

Though mostly incomplete, it all manages to contain in striking detail, the removal of those Jews from Ghetto’s, Towns and City’s throughout Europe to one of the 6 Death Camps in Poland. It is a common misconception that though all of Hitler’s Camps dealt in The Destruction of The Jews of Europe, they were not all Death Camps. That distinction belongs to Auschwitz, of which Birkenau was The Death Camp, with Chelmno and Majdanek. The 3 Aktion Reinhard Camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka then make up that Industrialised process of Murder.

If statistics are to enter the equation, and conducted Census’s form a major Statistic from which we have gathered so much information, there were about 9,400,00 Jewish People in the sphere of influence to be controlled by Hitler, his Nazis and those alligned or collaborting with him. Here again, we deal in uncertainty with respect to Soviet Russia whose secretive nature did not dispence with the relevant information required to make a sensible assessment of the number of Jews who resided within its borders.

That said, The Wannsee Conference had decided that there were some 11,292,300 Jews who could be brought into The Final Solution of which 5,000,000 of these Jews would be accounted for from within Russia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The 6,000,000 Jews Murdered during the period of The Holocaust, on the basis of these figures still represents well over 53% of all those Jews Murdered.

Death Toll Auschwitz.

There will never be an exact toll of those who were Murdered at Auschwitz, as records vary in depth and description. Many documents too were destroyed by the Nazi’s seeking to conceal their fixed solution to a Jewish Question. An immediate count of those records, though sparse, with additions from Witness sources, from Survivors and the Testimony gained during The Nuremeberg Trials, all provided a view of the Calamity which could not be corroborated. Both Eichmann and the Camp Kommandant Rudolf Hoess were in some form of agreement. Eichmann believed some 2,000,000 had been Murdered in Auschwitz, while Hoess gave a more liberal assessment of between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 Murdered. While the Russian estimate of some 4 Million gained a public acceptance, and a monument was placed to endorse this figure, it was somewhat frowned upon as mere Soviet propaganda, and less than an accurate assessment.

“..first and foremost perpetrator was Adpolf Hitler. ..without him it would have been inconceivable.” Raul Hilberg.

In 1961 Raul Hilberg decided himself in his book, The Destruction of European Jews, to use German railway timetable records to total the number of Nazi departures. These Transports were assessed for their Nazi consistency, rather than accounting for the arrivals of these ‘resettlement’ trains at the various Death Camps. For Auschwitz, Hilberg arrived at a figure of some 1,000,000 Jews having been Murdered within the Camp. This has been as accurate an assessment as has ever been, and was established by Hilberg before technology and further records were available.

Merely symbolic! A collection of some of the Ashes of Those Jews Murdered here within Auschwitz. This accounting of Hilberg’s, which is as close as we are ever likely to get to that Final assessment, still stands solidly today. It is highly unlikely, unless some tiemly intervention appears, courtesy of new found records compiled by Nazi officials, that we will ever know how many Jews, or others were Murdered at Auschwitz, let alone for the totality of The Final Solution. For me however, I would rather stick to the composite estimate of 6,000,000 Jews Murdered in The Holocaust, as defining Hitler’s assault upon the integrity of The Jewish People of Europe. For Auschwitz and Birkenau, the 1,100,000 figure composes a lasting Monument Always to Remember, Never to Forget.

“..Arrived ..Auschwitz ..July 2nd. or 3rd. 1944. ..about 200 men. ..women 70 or 80 seventy or eighty. ..rest I saw ..getting into ..a number of trucks. ..also a closed vehicle with ..sign of ..Red Cross. I saw them all go off. ..to ..gas chambers.” Georges Wellers.

As late as 1983, research into the Murder rate at Auschwitz, gathering information from Nazi ‘transport’ data, similar in many respects to Hilber’g’s analysis, was given a further assessment. Provided by the French Historian Georges Wellers, the account had demonstrated that approximately 1,613,000 people Died there. These were People who were Murdered by various means which included Gassing. We know from Testimony elsewhere this Gassing was done by Zyklon ‘B’, an insecticide found to be capable of Killing People, more cheaply than Bullets. Many within Auschwitz were ritually Tortured and Hanged.

How many chose their own way out, by running into the Electrified fence cannot be accounted for. So many must have been that discouraged, so brutalised, or maybe even knowledgeable of what was coming, chose to end it all, on their terms. Those others who were left to Starve did so or succumbed to the many Diseases prevalent when such abuses and excesses were endorsed. Of those Auschwitz Murdered, garnered from Weller’s Research, 1,350,000 were found to be the Jewish victims, 83,000 were Polish victims, some 20,000 were Gypsies and over 12,000 were Russian POW’s. Figures for those Jehovah’s Witnesses and Homosexuals Murdered have not been realistically confirmed or verified. We know too from this source that well over 150,000 Poles had been imprisoned within Auschwitz over the duration of the Camps existence.

Franciszek Piper, Director of Research at the Auschwitz Museum, published his own findings in 1989. Using captured Camp records, the register of prisoners, train time table of arrivals, and combining all of that with those lists existing of Nazi deprtations, Piper was able to establish that 90% of all those Murdered at Auschwitz were Jews. This represented some 1,100,000 Jewish Murdered, a figure recognised still to this day. His account also suggests that there were between 140,000 and 150,000 Poles who were victims and some 23,000 Gypsy souls who lost their lives.

According to the Polish American Congres, between 5 and 6 Million Polish citizens were killed during World War Two. Of this figure, 3,000,000 of whom were Polish Jews, they were killed during the period of The Holocaust so as ‘to further the Third Reich’s anti-Semitic policies.’ Their analysis shows that, of the 1,100,000 Jews deproted to Auschwitz, more than 90% of them perished, presenting some 1,000,000 Polish Jews to this study.

While it is always an essential in my study to ensure I am committed to the Remembrance of These Jews of Europe, it isncumbent upon me to ensure that is is never forgotten also, that many other people, many other nations suffered. Of the 3 Million Polish Citizens who died, there is anecdotal evidence which more than suggests, that nearly 2 Million of these Polish Citizens were Killed because of their ethnicity and again, Hitler’s hatred for other People’s. This same congress assessed that, of those other’s Transported to Auschwitz, there loss is accountable as:

Poles 150,000 with 75,000 (50% Murdered),

Gypsies 23,000 with 21,000 (91% Murdered),

Russian POW’s 15,000 with 15,000 (100% Murdered), and

Others, 25,000 with 15,000 (60% Murdered)

within Auschwitz and Birkenau’s confines.

“..I was in ..camp Birkenau ..part of ..Oswiecim Camp. ..a woman in ..last month of pregnancy. ..had to walk ten kilometres to ..place of work ..toiled ..whole day ..digging trenches. ..already ill and ..asked ..German ..for permission to rest. ..refused ..laughed at her and ..together with another SS man ..started beating her. ..situation of all ..women who ..were pregnant ..only during ..very last minutes were they permitted to stay away from work. ..newly born children ..if Jewish ..were immediately put to death.” Severina Shmaglevskaia.

Day 30: Fast Approaching!

1933 September 8th. the Second World Jewish Congress is held in Geneva.

Jewish awareness is often hindered by the nature of acceptance. The Jews, on the whole, have largely accepted that all Men are good, and barely some are evil! What is emerging however, is the evil nature of Hitler and his regime and this Congress has not been fully awoken to the threat, nor made fully aware that The Jewish People of All Europe face a cataclysmic confrontation with a Destruction so intensive, 6,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children will be sacrificed before the altar of Bigotry and Hatred.

1939 September 8th. 37 of Trzebinia’s Jews and 30 of Ostrow’s Jews are murdered while the Wehrmacht occupies Lodz, Radom and Tarnow.

The progress of the Wehrmacht is nothing short of a ‘Blitzkrieg’, leaving 10’s of 1,000’s of Polish Soldiers, isolated, cut off and impotent to the German onslaught. With Military skills forged on the Spanish plains, bolstering a Franco Dictatorship, Hitler’s legions gain an expertise which will sweep all before it in blistering efficiency. The World will look on in awe and suspect that World domination is clearly within Hitler’s grasp! Not since Attila has the rapidity of success swept a swathe of devastation before it.

1941 September 8th. Leningrad encircled.

For 900 whole days the Russian City of Leningrad is put under a siege. The brutality of the Campaign leaves the people of Leningrad, beaten and starved, but resistant to all that Hitler can throw at them. It is the resilience of People, not to cow down, not to give in, not to be defeated that will win the day!

1943 September 8th. over 5,000 Jews are expelled from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz while more than 3,400 of Moravska Ostrava’s Jews too are also transported to Auschwitz. Italy announces its surrender and the Germans move swiftly to occupy Rome.

Such news must propel the people of Europe into all forms of rapture. Anne Frank, writing in Her Diary from her Secret Annex, records the event on September 10th. and is totally buoyed by the news that the liberation of all of Europe is a step closer. Tragically, for many of The Jews of Europe, those still living, and for those 7 of the 8 hidden in the Secret Annex, Survival was not to be.

“.. Wednesday ..September 8th. ..listening to ..7 o’clock news when we heard an announcement:

‘..Here is some of ..best news of ..war so far: Italy has capitulated.’

Italy has unconditionally surrendered!” Anne Frank.

1944 September 8th. the First German V2 Rocket lands in Britain.

Hitler’s secret Weapons are supposedly set to crush all Allied opposition. While a reign of terror strikes all over England, once more the strength and resilience of a Nation will not be bullied by the likes of Hitler or his Weapons of Destruction. The pace of the Allied drive toward Germany shows no sign of delay.

A Book a Day, or so of suggested reading!

34. Hart, Kitty I Am Alive.