Historians, Academics and Researchers as far back as 1948 have been able to agree on the number of those Jews who were Murdered during the period of The Holocaust. There is, of course, a margin for error, and the accepted norm is between a divergence of 8 – 10% of the overall Total. So while we might accept that there were 6,000,000 Murdered Jews, as an abbreviated focus for attention, that figure could be reduced to some 5,520,000 or upward toward 6,600,000 Murdered Jews. When adequate Testimony of those who compiled the figures, Mueller, Himmler and Eichmann proves elusive to say the least, there are the almost exacting records kept by The Death Camps, and the OSR’s, these Operational Situation Report’s compiled by der Einsatgruppe. All these tally, with a good degree of certainty that our approximation is indeed very accurate and we have no reason to discount the very effort that went into obtaining these figured for us.
But here are some of the figures relating to those Jews Murdered in various camps and by varying means.
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 Jews Murdered.
We should always remember too that at Babi Yar where the Killing Reached a crescendo unsurpassed, even by Auschwitz’s standard, and where
“..Sonderkommando 4a in collaboration with Einsatzgruppe HQ and two Kommandos of police regiment South, executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941.”
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 Nuremberg Trials, all provided a view of the Calamity which could not be corroborated. Both Eichmann and the Camp Kommandant Rusolf 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 himself in his Book The Destruction of European Jews, used German railway timetable records to total the number of Nazi departures. These Transports were assessed 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. This accounting, which is as close as we are ever likely to get to that Final assessment, still satnds solidly today.
It is highly unlikely, unless some tiiemly intervention appears, courtesy of new found records compiled by Nazi officials, that we will ever know how many Jews, or others were Murdered. 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, as 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, was established. 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 including Gassing, we know from Testimony elsewhere this was done by Zyklon ‘B’. Many too were ritually Tortured and Hanged and 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 Murdered, garnered from the Research, 1,350,000 were the Jewish victims, 83,000 were Polish, some 20,000 were Gypsies and over 12,000 were Russian POW’s. Figures for those Jehovah’s Witnesses and Homosexuals have not been 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 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 Gypsies.
