Archive/File: camps/auschwitz/victims total.victims

 4.0 Compiling Estimates of the Numbers Exterminated

   When the extermination camps failed to achieve their objective, the
   total extermination of European Jewry, by the end of 1942, Heinrich
   Himmler commissioned a statistical report in order to determine what
   'progress' had been made.

   In January of 1943, Dr. Richard Korherr, a noted statistician who was
   outside SS circles, working with Adolf Eichmann and camp commanders,
   began compiling reports and figures to present to Himmler. As
   Breitman relates,

      Korherr's job was complicated by the fact that, even in a report
      designed for Himmler, he was not supposed to spell out the facts
      in black and white.  It was easier to state how many Jews were
      still alive than what had happened to the others.  To be sure,
      Korherr could state that through various means the Jewish
      population in the Reich and the Government General had
      diminished by 3.1 million between 1933 and 1942.  In spite of
      his generous use of the term "evacuation," however, which
      Himmler seconded, to mislead those who would read the document
      in later years, Himmler had to correct Korherr's wording in one
      place.  Where Korherr had written of the "special treatment" of
      the Jews, Himmler had insisted on either the "transportation of
      the Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian East" or the
      "sifting of the Jews through the camps." These were among the
      officially approved terms to camouflage the realities of the
      Final Solution.  (Korherr's reports in NA RG 238, NO-5193 and
      5194, Himmler's correction of wording in Brandt to Korherr, 20
      April 1943.  NA RG 238, NO-5196.  Raul Hilberg, The Destruction
      of the European Jews {Chicago, 1961}, 2nd expanded ed., 3 vols.
      {New York, 1985},I, 322-23, reviews the whole range of Nazi
      terms that veiled the realities.) (Breitman, 242)

   Note that Himmler was successful in his attempts to camouflage
   reality to the degree that present-day Holocaust denial insists that
   Jews were simply "relocated to the East," and not exterminated.

   Eichmann's interrogation regarding the total number of victims
   supports Fleming's figure of about five million killed (Request
   eichmann eichmann.005), while figures compiled by Yehuda Bauer, of
   Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, are somewhat higher.  Bauer's figures are in
   the right-most column:

       German Reich (boundaries of 1938)       130,000   125,000
       Austria                                  58,000    65,000
       Belgium                                  26,000
       Belgium & Luxembourg                               24,700 
       Bulgaria                                  7,000
       Czechoslovakia (boundaries of 1938)     245,000   277,000
       France                                   64,000    83,000
       Greece                                   58,000    65,000
       Hungary & Carpatho-Ukraine              300,000   402,000*
       Italy                                     8,000     7,500*
       Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia              200,000
       Luxembourg                                3,000
       Netherlands                             101,800   106,000
       Norway                                      677       760
       Poland (boundaries of 1939)           2,700,000
       Polish-Soviet area                              4,565,000
       Romania (boundaries prior to 1940)      220,000    40,000
       USSR (boundaries prior to 1939)         800,000
       Yugoslavia                               54,000    60,000*
                                               -----------------
                                             4,975,477 5,820,960
                                          * May be underestimated
  Dawidowicz provides estimates of the numbers of Jews killed in the
  Final Solution as follows - her figures are marginally higher than
  those offered above:

  Country	Estimated Pre-Final	Estimate Jewish
                Solution Population	Population Annihilated 	%
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
  Poland	3,300,000		3,000,000		90
  Baltics	  253,000		  228,000		90
  Germany/Austria 240,000		  210,000		90
  Protectorate	   90,000		   80,000		89
  Slovakia	   90,000		   75,000		83
  Greece	   70,000		   54,000		77
  The Netherlands 140,000		  105,000		75
  Hungary	  650,000		  450,000		70
  SSR White Russia 
                  375,000		  245,000		65
  SSR Ukraine*	1,500,000		  900,000		60
  Belgium	   65,000		   40,000		60
  Yugoslavia	   43,000		   40,000		60
  Romania	  600,000		  300,000		50
  Norway	    1,800		      900		50
  France	  350,000		   90,000		26
  Bulgaria	   64,000		   14,000		22
  Italy		   40,000		    8,000		20
  Luxembourg	    5,000		    1,000		20
  Russia (RSFSR)* 975,000		  107,000		11
  Denmark	    8,000		      ---		--
  Finland	    2,000		      ---		--
              ----------------------------------------------------
  Total		8,861,800		5,933,900		67

  * The Germans did not occupy all of this republic

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