By John Wear
The Atlanta
Journal and Constitution newspaper estimates that only half of the
Jewish “Holocaust survivors” around the world in 1985 had received restitution
under the BEG.[24] If this 50% estimate is
accurate, it would mean that approximately 5.8 million European Jews survived
German persecution during World War II. Such a large number of surviving Jews
is not consistent with a German program of genocide against European Jewry.
Did 6 Million Jews Die
in World War II?
The allegation that 6 million Jews
died in World War II is today widely considered to be an established historical
fact. For example, the Encyclopedia Judaica states, “There
can be no doubt as to the estimated figure of some 6 million victims.”[1] The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. is
described in its information sheet as a “living memorial to the 6 million Jews
and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism who perished in the
Holocaust.” However, an analysis of the 6 million Jewish wartime deaths shows
that this figure is not the result of any careful investigation, research or
calculation.
History of the 6
Million Jewish Deaths Figure
The 6 million figure of Jewish
deaths had been used and predicted long before the end of World War II. An
ancient Jewish prophecy had promised the Jews their return to the Promised Land
after a loss of 6 million of their people.[2] According
to the book Breaking the Spell by Nicholas Kollerstrom,
publications and speakers had referred to the death or persecution of 6 million
Jews on at least 166 occasions before the end of World War II.[3]
For example, the 10th edition,
vol. 25 of the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1902
states:
While there are in Russia and Rumania 6
millions of Jews who are being systematically degraded…” An article in the
March 25, 1906 edition of the New York Times worried about
the “condition and future of Russia’s 6 million Jews…” The article further
states “…the Russian Government’s studied policy for the ‘solution’ of the
Jewish question is systematic and murderous extermination.” Max Nordau,
cofounder of the World Zionist Organization, warned in 1911 of the
“annihilation of 6 million people” at the Zionist Congress in Basel,
Switzerland.[4]
The New York Times on
December 2, 1914, made an appeal for aid for Jews. The paper stated:
The American Jewish Relief Committee, called
into being at a conference of more than 100 national Jewish organizations which
was held at Temple Emanu-El on October 25 to consider the plight of more than 6
million Jews who live within the war zone…”[5]
The figure of 6 million Jewish deaths
was used by Martin H. Glynn, the Governor of New York. Glynn wrote an article
entitled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” that was printed in The
American Hebrew magazine published by the American Jewish Committee.
In this article Glynn states:
Six million men and women are dying from lack
of the necessaries of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for bread. And
this fate is upon them through no fault of their own, through no transgression
of the laws of God or man; but through the awful tyranny of war and a bigoted
lust for Jewish blood.”
Glynn’s article was printed on
October 31, 1919. The allegation was the “threatened holocaust of human life”
was occurring after the Great War.[6]
The Chicago Tribune on
July 20, 1921 published an article headlined: “Begs America Save 6,000,000 in
Russia.” This article claimed that “Russia’s 6 million Jews are facing
extermination by massacre. As the famine is spreading, the
counter-revolutionary movement is gaining and the Soviet’s control is waning.”
The United Jewish Campaign of New York in 1926 set a fundraising goal of
$6,000,000 to help the “dying” Jews of Europe. On December 29, 1931 a Montreal
newspaper ran a baseless claim from Rabbi Stephen Wise that 6 million Jews
faced starvation in southeastern Europe.[7]
The New York Times on
May 31, 1936, published an article headlined “Americans Appeal for Jewish
Refuge.” This article appealed to Great Britain to “…throw open the gates of
Palestine and let in the victimized and persecuted Jews escaping from the European
holocaust.”[8] Also in 1936, Chaim Weizmann is
reported to have said to the Peel Commission:
It is no exaggeration to say that 6 million
Jews are sentenced to be imprisoned in this part of the world, where they are
unwanted, and for whom the countries are divided into those, where they are
unwanted, and those, where they are not admitted.”[9]
On January 9, 1938, the New
York Times reported another false claim of 6 million Jewish victims
of persecution.[10]
In an article appearing in the June
25, 1940 issue of the Palm Beach Post, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who
was the administrative committee chairman of the World Jewish Congress, said
“if the Nazis should achieve final victory 6 million Jews in Europe are doomed
to destruction.” Not a single Jew had been interned and Hitler was
still pleading for peace. Yet the so-called Holocaust and the 6
million Jews doomed to destruction was already established.[11]
The number of 6 million appeared
again on January 4, 1945, when the Jewish chief of Soviet atrocity propaganda,
Ilya Ehrenburg, stated that this is the number of Jews that had died in World
War II.[12] On January 8, 1945, the New
York Timespublished an article in which Jacob Lestchinsky, a Communist
correspondent for the New York Jewish Daily Forward, estimated
that the Jewish population in Europe had been reduced from 9,500,000 in 1939 to
3,500,000. Lestchinsky stated: “Of the 6 million European Jews who have died, 5
million had lived in the countries under Hitler’s occupation.”[13] How Ehrenburg and Lestchinsky came up with their
numbers fully four months before the end of the war is anyone’s guess.
Immediately after the end of the war
in Europe, an article in the Pittsburg Press on May 13,
1945, headlined “Nazis Destroy 6 Million Jews.”[14] In
June 1945, some Zionist leaders were also able to state that 6 million Jews had
died during the war. These Zionist leaders made this statement even though the
chaos in Europe at the time made any definitive demographic studies impossible.[15]
The figure of 6 million Jews who
died in World War II reappeared at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in
Nuremberg. The number of 6 million used at the IMT is based primarily on the
hearsay evidence given by the written deposition of German SS-bureaucrat Wilhelm
Höttl.[16] The verbal but never cross-examined
testimony of Dieter Wisliceny, who said that 5 million Jews had died during the
war, is also used to substantiate the figure of 6 million.[17] These
two men claimed that they heard these statements from Adolf Eichmann, but
Eichmann later disputed that he ever made these statements.[18] Thus,
the prosecution’s claim at the IMT that 6 million Jews died in World War II is
based solely on hearsay evidence from two German SS-bureaucrats seeking
exemption from punishment whose only source later said that he never made the
statement.
The 6 million figure of Jews
murdered by Nazi Germany was regarded as a proven fact by the end of the IMT.
Sir Hartley Shawcross stated in his closing address that “more than 6 million”
Jews were killed by the Germans, and that
“…murder [was] conducted like some mass
production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau,
Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Majdanek and Oranienburg.”[19]
Why 6 Million Is an Overstated Number
Stephen F. Pinter, who was a U.S.
War department attorney stationed in Germany after the war, disputed the claim
that millions of Jews were murdered by Germany. In a statement made in 1959, he
wrote:
From what I was able to determine during six
postwar years in Germany and Austria, there were a number of Jews killed, but
the figure of a million was certainly never reached. I interviewed thousands of
Jews, former inmates of concentration camps in Germany and Austria, and
consider myself as well qualified as any man on this subject.”[20]
The eyewitness testimony of Jewish
survivors of the German concentration camps is often cited to establish the
genocide of 6 million European Jews by Germany. However, the New York Jewish
publication Aufbau documents in 1965 that 3,375,000 inmates,
the vast majority of whom were Jewish, had survived the German camps and were
receiving reparations from Germany.[21] How
could there be 3,375,000 survivors of the German concentration camps receiving
reparations from Germany 20 years after the war was over if Germany had mass
murdered 6 million Jews? Norman Finkelstein, the author of The Holocaust
Industry, quotes his mother as asking,
If everyone who claims to be a Holocaust
survivor actually is one, who did Hitler kill?”[22]
As of January 1984, there were 4.39
million successful individual restitution claims under the terms of the German
Federal Compensation Law (BEG) of 1953 and 1956. This law provides monetary
compensation to individuals who were “persecuted for political, racial,
religious or ideological reasons” by the wartime German government. The great
majority of these successful restitution claims were from Jews. Raul Hilberg
estimates that about two thirds of the allowed claims had been from Jews.[23] Using Hilberg’s conservative estimate would mean
that over 2.9 million Jews had received BEG restitution claims by January 1984.
The number of 2.9 million Jewish
claimants understates the number of Jews who survived World War II because as
of 1985 Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia
were not eligible for BEG restitution. Also, some European Jews who survived
World War II died before the German BEG restitution law was enacted in 1953.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper estimates
that only half of the Jewish “Holocaust survivors” around the world in 1985 had
received restitution under the BEG.[24] If this 50% estimate is accurate,
it would mean that approximately 5.8 million European Jews survived German persecution
during World War II. Such a large number of surviving Jews is not consistent
with a German program of genocide against European Jewry.
The Holocaust story also originally
claimed that about 4 million Jews died at Auschwitz-Birkenau. As late as 1988, on
page 19 of the official Auschwitz State Museum Guidebook, the official figure
of 4 million Jews killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau is affirmed. The 4 million Jews
who perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau had also been used by the Soviet State
Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, the Supreme
National Tribunal in Poland, and the IMT in Nuremberg. The estimate of 4
million Jews who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau was based on the evidence of
hundreds of surviving prisoners and the opinion of experts.
Scholars such as Israeli Holocaust
expert Yehuda Bauer and Dr. Franciszek Piper decided around 1989 to lower the
Auschwitz-Birkenau death count. Dr. Piper states in his book Auschwitz:
How Many Perished, “Altogether, a total of about 1,100,000
Jews ended up in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the years 1940-1945.”[25] The
number of approximately 1 million Jews who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau is most
often used as the official figure today, although some researchers such as
Jean-Claude Pressac use much lower estimates. By dramatically lowering the
figures, the camp curators were in effect admitting that the Communists and
other officials had fabricated numbers that were too inflated to be believable.
The 4 million Jewish deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau had to be lowered to
approximately 1 million in order to maintain the credibility of the Holocaust
story.
Since the figure of 6 million Jews
who died in German camps is based on the 4 million Jews who died at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, one would think that the 6 million Jewish deaths in the
German camps should be lowered to about 3 million. However, the official number of Jews
dying in German concentration camps remains at 6 million even though this is
now obviously an overstated number.[26]
Another factor making impossible the
official number of 6 million Jews dying in German camps is the fact that
thousands of corpses could not possibly have been cremated every day at
Auschwitz-Birkenau as is commonly claimed. Ivan Lagacé, manager of a large
crematory in Calgary, Canada, testified at the 1988 Ernst Zündel trial that
based on his experience it would have only been possible to cremate a maximum
of 184 bodies a day at Birkenau. Lagacé stated that the claim that the 46
retorts at Birkenau could cremate over 4,400 bodies in a day was “ludicrous,”
“preposterous” and “beyond the realm of reality.”[27]
The book The Dissolution of
Eastern European Jewry by Walter Sanning is probably the most
scholarly study ever written of 20th century Jewish demography, especially in
its analysis of World War II related Jewish population changes. Sanning bases
his study almost exclusively on Allied, Zionist, and pro-Zionist West German
sources. His analysis includes evidence given by the wartime U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State, the Institute of Jewish Affairs, the American Jewish Year
Book, official census publications, and the pro-Zionist Institute for
Contemporary History in Munich. Sanning keeps his book as free of emotion as
possible in order to contribute to a genuine discussion underlying the charge
of German genocide.
While it would be impossible for
anyone to give an exact number of Jews who died in the German camps during
World War II, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry proves
that not anywhere close to 6 million Jews died during the war. Sanning
calculates that the worldwide losses suffered by Jews during the Second World
War are in the neighborhood of 1¼ million.[28] He
estimates that 15,967,000 Jews were alive in 1941 before the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, and that the Jewish population was reduced to approximately
14,730,000 after the war.[29]
Importantly, Sanning shows that many
of these Jewish losses were caused not by the direct impact of the war or by a
program of German genocide, but by Soviet barbarism. Sanning states that
hundreds of thousands of Jews lost their lives during the Soviet deportation to
the east or in the Siberian labor and concentration camps. Sanning concludes
that the food supply, shelter, and clothing provided to the Jewish inmates in
the Soviet camps was woefully inadequate, and that medical attention was almost
completely lacking.[30] Sanning’s conclusion is
supported by Jewish historian Gerald Reitlinger, who states:
“In Southern Siberia the death-rate was very
high for…Jews….”[31]
According to Sanning’s analysis,
more Jews died in Soviet camps than died in German camps during the Second
World War.
Further Reading:
- Do The
Sonderkommandos Prove A Holocaust or Holohoax? Debating Eyewitnesses Accepted
By Historians
ENDNOTES
[1] Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971
edition, s.v. “Holocaust.”
[2] Blech, Benjamin, The Secret of Hebrew
Words, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1991, p. 214.
[3] Kollerstrom, Nicholas, Breaking
the Spell: The Holocaust, Myth and Reality, Uckfield, UK, Castle Hill
Publishers, 2014, pp. 158-174.
[4] Bradberry, Benton L., The Myth
of German Villainy, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2012, p. 198.
[5] King, M. S., The Bad War: The
Truth Never Taught About World War 2, 2015, p. 42.
[6] “The Crucifixion of the Jews Must
Stop,” The American Hebrew, Vol. 105, No. 22, New York, Oct. 31,
1919, p. 582.
[7] King, M. S., The Bad War: The
Truth Never Taught About World War 2, 2015, pp. 69, 83, 203.
[8] Bradberry, Benton L., The Myth
of German Villainy, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2012, p. 199.
[9] Rudolf, Germar,
“Holocaust Victims: A Statistical Analysis,” in Gauss, Ernst (ed.), Dissecting
the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of Truth and Memory, Capshaw, AL:
Thesis and Dissertations Press, 2000, p. 184.
[10] King, M. S., The Bad War: The
Truth Never Taught About World War 2, 2015, p. 112.
[11] Ibid., p. 149.
[12] Hoffmann, Joachim, Stalins
Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945, Munich: Herbig, 1999, pp. 390-393, and in
Hoffman, Joachim, Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941-1945,
Capshaw, AL: Thesis and Dissertations Press, 2001, pp. 189-190, 402-405.
[13] King, M. S., The Bad War: The
Truth Never Taught About World War 2, 2015, p. 202.
[14] Bradberry, Benton L., The Myth
of German Villainy, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2012, p. 199.
[15] Irving, David, Nuremberg: The
Last Battle, London: Focal Point, 1996, pp. 61-62.
[16] Rudolf, Germar, “Holocaust Victims: A
Statistical Analysis W. Benz and W. N. Sanning—A Comparison,” in Gauss, Ernst
(ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of Truth and
Memory, Capshaw, AL: Thesis and Dissertations Press, 2000, p. 183.
[17] Turly, Mark, Inconvenient
History, Vol. 1, No. 3, Winter 2009; see also Taylor, Telford, The
Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir, New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992, p. 248.
[18] Aschenauer, Rudolf (ed.), Ich,
Adolf Eichmann, Leoni, Bavaria: Druffel, 1980, pp. 460-461, 473-474, 494.
[19] International Military Tribunal, Trial
of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, 42
Vols. Nuremberg: 1947-1949. (The “blue series”) / IMT, Vol. 19, p. 434.
[20] Stephen Pinter letter in the national
Catholic weekly, Our Sunday Visitor, June 14, 1959, p. 15.
[21] Stäglich, Wilhelm, Auschwitz: A
Judge Looks at the Evidence, Institute for Historical Review, 1990, p. 31.
[22] Interview with Norman Finkelstein, by
Viktor Frölke, in Salon.com, “Shoah business,” Aug. 30, 2000. See also
Finkelstein, Norman, The Holocaust Industry, New York: Verso,
2000, p. 81.
[23] Hilberg testimony in Zündel case, Toronto
District Court, Jan. 18, 1985. Transcript p. 1229.
[24] Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
Sunday, March 31, 1985, p. 15A. See also Weber, Mark, “Wilhelm Höttl and the
Elusive ‘Six Million’,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol.
20, No. 5/6, Sept./Dec. 2001, pp. 29-30.
[25] Piper, Franciszek, Auschwitz:
How Many Perished, Krakow, 1994, p. 37.
[26] Duke, David, Jewish Supremacism:
My Awakening to the Jewish Question, 2ndedition, Mandeville,
LA: Free Speech Press, 2007, p. 287.
[27] Canadian Jewish News, Toronto,
Feb. 12, 1985, p. M3. See also Kulaszka, Barbara, (ed.), Did Six
Million Really Die: Report of Evidence in the Canadian “False
News” Trial of Ernst Zündel, Toronto: Samisdat Publishers Ltd., 1992, p.
270.
[28] Sanning, Walter N., The
Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, Costa Mesa, CA: Institute for
Historical Review, 1990, p. 198.
[29] Ibid., p. 199.
[30] Ibid., pp. 106-109.
[31] Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final
Solution, New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, Inc., 1961, p. 499.
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