The Holocaust Reviewed: Part One

How Many Jews Were Killed?

The significance of the Holocaust, or the alleged mass murder of six million Jews by Nazis during World War Two, lies not so much in its effect upon Nazis or Jews, but in its use to suppress any discussion or argument on the topic of race since the end of the Second World War. For this reason alone, an overview of the basic facts surrounding the Holocaust is of critical importance.

NAZIS ESTIMATE 4.5 MILLION JEWS UNDER THEIR CONTROL

The Nazis themselves said that they only had 4.5 million  Jews under their direct control (see the analysis of the Wannsee Minutes) and they would have, in 1941 at least, when that estimate was made, had no particular reason to lie.

This figure is of particular interest when it is considered that as of 1988, some 4.3 million claims for compensation had been filed against the West German government by Holocaust survivors, according to the Federal German government.

Despite this, estimates by non-Nazi sources of the numbers of victims of Nazi concentration camps has varied wildly from six million to 11 million, depending upon which source one cares to consult.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SIX MILLION FIGURE

The figure of six million was arrived at on the basis of two sources: first on the evidence of a former SS officer, Wilhelm Hottl, who before the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials stated that Adolf Eichmann, head of the Jewish Division of the Gestapo, had told him that 4 million Jews had died in concentration camps and 2 million had died "elsewhere". (Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Germany, Vol. XXI, Doc, 2738-PS, p. 85).

The other source for this is a statement taken from the former commandant of the Auschwitz camp, Rudolf Hoess, who in a written statement declared that four million Jews had been killed at Auschwitz alone. Hoess was hanged at Auschwitz by the Soviets immediately after making this statement.

This figure quoted by Hoess is however universally acknowledged as being too high, especially as Hoess was relieved of his command of Auschwitz in 1943, long before the camp was closed down, and as such would not have been able to tell with any certainty how many Jews passed through its gates by August 1944.

JEWISH SCHOLARS DENY SOAP, LAMPSHADES HORROR STORIES

At the end of the war it was claimed that the Dachau and Bergen-Belsen camps in Germany (from where the horrific pictures of scores of dead bodies emanated) had operating gas chambers; and that in camps in Poland, Jews had been killed in "steam chambers" or had been skinned to make lamp shades, gloves and their body fat made into soap.

All of these horror stories have in the subsequent years been refuted by all serious scholars, including the leading Jewish scholar on the issue, Raul Hilberg (who in 1998 was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, and author of the world famous book "The Destruction of the European Jews").

JEWISH ESTIMATE SEES NUMBER OF HOLOCAUST DEAD DROP TO 2.8 MILLION

According to Hilberg, as quoted in an article written by himself in the 1998 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia under the heading Holocaust, the six camps, their means of killing and their total number of victims was as follows:

"Chelmno had gas vans, and its death toll was 150,000; Belzec had carbon monoxide gas chambers in which 600,000 Jews were killed; Sobibor's gas chambers accounted for 250,000 dead; Treblinka's for 700,000 to 800,000; At Majdanek, some 50,000 were gassed or shot; and in Auschwitz, the Jewish dead totaled more than 1 million."

- Raul Hilberg, "Holocaust," Microsoft "Encarta" 98 Encyclopedia. 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)"

This only accounts for 2.8 million dead: (as the other camps did not have gas chambers); if Hilberg's figures are correct, then the number of six million dead drops, by Jewish estimates, by half to just over 3 million, even if the verified Einsatzgruppen victims are included.

Hilberg offers no explanation for the fact that the Nuremberg trials (both Hottl and Hoess) claimed figures twice as large (or in Auschwitz's case, four times as large); more disturbingly, no attempt is ever made to correct the still quoted figure of six million which is so popular with the media to this day, and which has been repeated so often that it is an article of faith for many.

Hilberg, who has spent 36 years studying the Holocaust and the subsequent Nuremberg trials, has himself often changed his estimates: in 1985, he told a Canadian court that that five million Jews were killed during the war - substantially up on his 1998 estimate of 2.8 million. (Scientific evidence of Holocaust missing, The Sault Star Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, January 18, 1985).

THE SHRINKING NUMBERS OF DEAD AT AUSCHWITZ

The best example of how the figures for the number of Jews killed varies can be seen from this table: the left hand column is the number of dead as alleged in the source, stated in the right hand column. From this overview it can be seen that estimates of the number of people who died in Auschwitz has varied over the years from 9 million to 73,000.

Number of Alleged Dead in Auschwitz

Source

9,000,000

Cited by the French documentary, Night and Fog, which has been shown to millions of school students worldwide.

8,000,000

The French War Crime Research Office, Doc. 31, 1945.

7,000,000

Also cited by the French War Crime Research Office.

6,000,000

Cited in the book “Auschwitz Doctor” by Miklos Nyiszli. It has since been proven that this book is a fraud and the "doctor" was never even at Auschwitz, even though the book is often cited by historians.

5,000,000 to 5,500,000

Cited in 1945 at the trial of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hoess, based on his “confession” which was written in English, a language he never spoke.

5,000,000

Cited on April 20, 1978 by the French daily, Le Monde. Also cited on January 23, 1995 by the German daily Die Welt. By September 1, 1989, Le Monde reduced the figure to 1,433,000.

4,500,000

In 1945 this figure was cited by another witness at the aforementioned Hoess trial.

4,000,000

Cited by a Soviet document of May 6, 1945 and officially acknowledged by the Nuremberg War Crimes trial. This figure was also reported in The New York Times on April 18, 1945, although 50 years later on January 26, 1995 (see below), The New York Times and The Washington Post slashed the figure to 1,500,000 citing new findings by the Auschwitz Museum officials. In fact, the figure of 4,000,000 was later repudiated by the Auschwitz museum officials in 1990 (see below) but the figure of 1,500,000 victims was not formally announced by Polish President Lech Walesa until five years after the Auschwitz historians had first announced their discovery.

3,500,000

Cited in the 1991 edition of the Dictionary of the French Language and by Claude Lanzmann in 1980 in his introduction to Filip Muller's book, “Three Years in an Auschwitz Gas Chamber.”

3,000,000

Cited in a forced confession by Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commander who said this was the number of those who had died at Auschwitz prior to Dec. 1, 1943.  Later cited in the June 7, 1993 issue of Heritage, the most widely read Jewish newspaper in California, even though three years previously the authorities at the Auschwitz museum had scaled down the figure to a minimum of 1,100,000 and a maximum of 1,500,000. (see below).

2,500,000

Cited by a famous "witness to the Holocaust," Rudolf Vrba, when he testified on July 16, 1981 for the Israeli government's war crimes trial of former SS official Adolf Eichmann.

2,000,000

Cited by no less than three famous Holocaust historians, including Leon Poliakov (1951) writing in “Harvest of Hate”; Georges Wellers, writing in 1973 in “The Yellow Star at the Time of Vichy”; and Lucy Dawidowicz, writing in 1975 in “The War Against the Jews.”

2,000,000 to 4,000,000

Cited by Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer in 1982 in his book, “A History of the Holocaust.” However, by 1989 Bauer revised his figures and determined that the actual number was lower: 1,600,000.

1,600,000

This is a 1989 revision by Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer of his earlier figure in 1982 of 2,000,000 to 4,000,000, Bauer cited this new figure on September 22, 1989 in The Jerusalem Post, at which time he wrote' 'The larger figures have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn't reached the public yet."

1,500,000

In 1995 this was the “official" number of Auschwitz deaths announced by Polish President Lech Walesa as determined by the historians at the Auschwitz museum. This number was inscribed on the monument at the Auschwitz camp at that time, thereby "replacing" the earlier 4,000,000 figure that had been formally repudiated (and withdrawn from the monument) five years earlier in 1990. At that time, on July 17, 1990 The Washington Times reprinted a brief article from The London Daily Telegraph citing the "new" figure of 1,500,000 that had been determined by the authorities at the Auschwitz museum. This new figure was reported two years later in a UPI report published in the New York Post on March 26, 1992. On January 26, 1995 both The Washington Post and The New York Times cited this 1,500,000 figure as the new "official" figure (citing the Auschwitz Museum authorities).

1,471,595

This is a 1983 figure cited by historian Georges Wellers who (as noted previously) had determined, writing in 1973, that some 2,000,000 had died. In his later calculation, Wellers decided that of the 1,471,595 who had died at Auschwitz, 1,352,980 were Jews.

1,433,000

This figure was cited on September 1, 1989 by the French daily, Le Monde, which earlier, on April 20, 1978, had cited the figure at 4,000,000.

1,250,000

In 1985, historian Raul Hilberg arrived at this figure in his book, “The Destruction of the European Jews.” According to Hilberg, of those dead, some 1,000,000 were Jews.

1,100,000 to 1,500,000

Sources for this estimate are historians Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (later of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) in their 1984 book, “Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp”; also Dr. Franciszek Piper, the curator of the  Auschwitz Museum, writing a chapter in that book. This estimate was later also cited by Walter Reich, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, writing in The Washington Post on September 8, 1998. The upper figure of 1,500,000 thus remains the "official" figure as now inscribed at Auschwitz, with the earlier figure of 4,000,000 having been removed from the memorial at the site of the former concentration camp.

1,000,000

Jean-Claude Pressac, writing in his 1989 book “Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers.” This is interesting since he wrote his book to repudiate so-called "Holocaust deniers" who were called that precisely because they had questioned the numbers of those who had died at Auschwitz.

900,000

Reported on August 3, 1990 11, by Aufbau, a Jewish newspaper in New York.

800,000 to 900,000

Reported by Gerald Reitlinger in his 1953 book, “The Final Solution.” This figure is notable, considering the fact that it reduces the Auschwitz death total from the 4,000,000 figure that was widely in vogue in 1953.

775,000 to 800,000

Jean-Claude Pressac's revised figure, put forth in his 1993 book, “The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Mass Murder's Machinery”, scaling down the figure from Pressac's 1989 claim of 1,000,000 dead. At this juncture, Pressac said that of the new number, 630,000 were Jews.

630,000 to 710,000

In 1994 Pressac scaled his figure down somewhat further; this is the figure cited in the German language translation of Pressac's 1993 book originally published in French. Again, this is substantially less than Pressac's 1989 figure of 1,000,000.

73,137

This figure was reported in The New York Times on March 3, 1991 and was based entirely on the wartime German concentration camp records that had been captured by the Soviets and just recently released. According to this figure, of those dead, 38,031 were Jews. These records state that the total of all persons who died in the ENTIRE German prison camp system from 1935 to 1945 were 403,713. To repeat: a total of 403,713 persons of all races and religions was officially recorded to have died (of all causes. typhus, old age, measles, etc.-and execution) in the entire prison camp system over a 10 year period. Of those 403,713 a total of 73,137 died at Auschwitz. Of those 73,137 who died at Auschwitz, 38,031 were Jews.

- (This table and its contents first appeared in The Barnes Review, January / February 2001)

Above left: This was the plaque on display at the Auschwitz camp until 1989: note the "4 million" victims. Above right: This is the plaque currently on display at Auschwitz (2002) - note the suddenly reduced number of victims to 1.5 million - a casual reduction in the number of deaths by 2.5 million.

GROSS EXAGGERATIONS ARE THE NORM IN HOLOCAUST STORIES

The staggering casualness with figures of dead Jews is illustrated further by a review of two of the more famous "Holocaust Survivor" books:

- Olga Lengyel’s "Five Chimneys: a woman survivor’s true story of Auschwitz" (Granada/ Ziff-Davis, 1947, 1972); and

- Kitty Hart's "Return to Auschwitz" - paperback edition by Granada (1981, 1983).

"100,000 EVERY FOUR DAYS" = 6 MILLION IN 8 MONTHS

The blurb on the cover of Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys: a woman survivor’s true story of Auschwitz (Granada/ Ziff-Davis, 1947, 1972) quotes the New York Herald-Tribune: "Passionate, tormenting". Albert Einstein is quoted: "You have done a real service by letting the ones who are now silent and most forgotten (sic) speak."

What does Lengyel say?

"After June, 1943, the gas chamber was reserved exclusively for Jews and Gypsies.. Three hundred and sixty corpses every half-hour, which was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes, made 720 per hour, or 17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift. And the ovens, with murderous efficiency, functioned day and night. However, one must also reckon the death pits, which could destroy another 8,000 cadavers a day. In round numbers, about 24,000 corpses were handled each day. An admirable production record, one that speaks well for German industry." (Lengyel, 'Five Chimneys: a woman survivor’s true story of Auschwitz’ pp 80 - 81).

This implies almost 100,000 corpses per four working days, or a million in 40 days, or six million in 240 days (eight months). This for the Auschwitz camp alone - not including any other camp.

FURTHER OUTRAGEOUS EXAGGERATIONS

Kitty Hart, a Polish Jewess, wrote in her book "Return to Auschwitz" - paperback edition by Granada (1981, 1983) wrote the following:

"Working around the clock, the four units together could dispose of about 18,000 bodies every twenty-four hours, while the open pits coped with a further 8,000 in the same period." (Hart, "Return to Auschwitz" p 118).

This means 26,000 bodies every 24 hours, or 182,000 every week, reaching the magic 6 million figure in an astonishing 33 weeks, or eight months.

"200,000 EVERY FIVE DAYS" = 6 MILLION IN 30 DAYS

Martin Gilbert, a well known Jewish writer and biographer of Winston Churchill, holding a senior and supposedly respected position within the academic community, also glibly passes off the most outrageous figures with regard to Auschwitz in his book "Auschwitz and the Allies" (Gilbert, Martin, New York: Henry Holt, 1981). In this book he states:

"The deliberate attempt to destroy systematically all of Europe’s Jews was unsuspected in the spring and early summer of 1942: the very period during which it was at its most intense, and during which hundreds of thousands of Jews were being gassed every day at Belzec, Chelmo, Sobibor and Treblinka." (Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, p.26).

If it is assumed, according to Gilbert's figures, that a minimum of 200,000 Jews per day were being gassed (he says "hundreds of thousands"), this amounts to one million every five-days, or 6 million in 30 days.

This is obviously impossible, and makes a complete mockery of the supposed "academics" who claim to be authorities on the Holocaust.

Revisionist Historians and Forensic Investigation

It is this casual juggling with millions of numbers (in the Auschwitz example above, the figures differ by as much as 8.4 million) and the serious lack of any direct physical evidence to support the allegations of mass gassings, which has encouraged the rise of what is known as revisionist holocaust studies.

Increasingly large numbers of historians around the world are researching the whole issue of the Nazi concentration camps, some going to great lengths such as taking forensic samples from the remains of the camps, doing analysis of soil at alleged mass grave sites and studying in detail survivor accounts of such mass murders. All of these activities are reviewed in the following sections.

Part Two: The Wanssee Conference Reviewed

Part Three: Auschwitz: Extermination or Labor Camp?

Part Four: Treblinka: A Forensic Examination

Part Five: Faked Holocaust Memoirs - Simon Wiesenthal

Part Six: The Theater of Lies - the John Demjanjuk Case

Part Seven: Germans of Jewish Descent who served Hitler

Part Eight: The Holocaust as Viewed by a Jewish Scholar

or back to

"The Final Solution - Nazi Policy Towards Jews"