Holocaust Facts: Where Does the Figure of 6 Million Victims Come From? Considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent decades, is this number still considered accurate by scholars of the subject?
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SUBSCRIBE Open gallery view An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.Credit: AP
new-hdc-logo Haaretz Get email notification for articles from Haaretz Follow Apr. 7, 2021
One of the most well-known, if not iconic, facts known about the Holocaust is the number of Jewish victims killed by Nazi Germany up through the end of World War II. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is also this number - six million - that Holocaust deniers aim at when trying to discredit the essential nature of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust: Facts and figures Holocaust facts: Prominent museums, archives and research institutions Merkel first German chancellor to visit Dachau Where did the number six million come from? And considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent decades, is it still considered accurate by scholars of the subject?
Read more: The Nazis Tolerated Gays. Then Everything Changed | Holocaust Movies: 21 of the Best Beyond Schindler's List
The number seems to have first been mentioned by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, an Austrian-born official in the Third Reich and a trained historian who served in a number of senior positions in the SS.
In November 1945, Hoettl testified for the prosecution in the Nuremberg trials of accused Nazi war criminals. Later, in the 1961 trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, he also submitted to a lengthy series of questions from the prosecution, speaking under oath from a courtroom in Austria.
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On both occasions, he described a conversation he had had with Eichmann, the SS official who had principal responsibility for the logistics of the Jewish genocide, in Budapest in August 1944. In the 1961 testimony, Hoettl recalled how “Eichmann … told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 Jews had perished until then -- 4,000,000 in extermination camps and the remaining 2,000,000 through shooting by the Operations Units and other causes, such as disease, etc.”
On its website, Yad Vashem, Israel’s principal Holocaust research center, quotes the Eichmann reference, and then says that both early and more recent estimates by a variety of different scholars have fallen between five and six million.
Such estimates are arrived at by comparing pre-war census data with population estimates made after World War II. The Germans, though they treated their plan for annihilation of the Jews as a state secret of the highest order, also kept scrupulous records of deportations and gassings, which also serve as a vital source of data.
- Advertisment -
One of the earliest researchers, Raul Hilberg, came up with a figure of 5.1 million in his 1961 classic “The Destruction of the European Jews.” In the third edition, from 1985, he provides a lengthy appendix explaining how he calculated the estimate.
Lucy Dawidowicz, in her “The War Against the Jews” (1975), used prewar birth and death records to come up with a more precise figure of 5,933,900. And one of the more authoritative German scholars of the subject, Wolfgang Benz, offered a range of 5.3 to 6.2 million. Each used his or her own method to arrive at the totals.
Get breaking news and analyses delivered to your inbox Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign Up Yad Vashem itself also has its Names Database, an ongoing project in which it attempts to collect the name of every Jewish victim of the Nazis. It relies on testimony from family and friends of those who perished, official archives from the period, and local commemoration projects. As of early 2012, Yad Vashem estimated that the database contained the names of a little over four million different individuals (an exact number is not yet possible because it believes that some hundreds of thousands of people appear in multiple records).
- Advertisment -
Beyond comprehension
One of the largest sources of uncertainty concerns the number of Jews murdered in the Soviet Union. Whereas the Jews of the countries of Europe occupied by the Germans were for the most part deported to death camps, where fairly good records were kept, the murders in the USSR were carried out by Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), as the German army made its way east. Their records were far less comprehensive, so that it is possible only to make a rough estimate of the numbers of Jews killed – generally between 800,000 and 1 million.
The overall death and destruction that took place during World War II may well be beyond human comprehension. Historians estimate that military casualties on all sides, in both the European and Pacific theaters, reached up to 25 million, and that civilian casualties ranged from 38 million to as high a figure as 55 million – meaning that somewhere between 3 and 4 percent of the world’s total population died in the conflict.
Nonetheless, the murder of the Jews of Europe is in a class by itself – not because of the numbers, but because of the ideology behind it, which placed the elimination of an entire people and their culture from the earth as one of its primary goals. It was unique because Nazi propaganda focused so intently on the Jews as an almost supernatural cause of evil, and the German war machine remained devoted to killing Jews up to the very last day of the war, long after it was clear that that war was lost.
That is to say: Murdering the Jews was an end in itself, and it was used to motivate the German nation to great sacrifices of its own.
That being said, there were other groups and peoples that were singled out by Nazi eliminationist ideology. Most notable among these were the Roma, or Gypsies, with estimates of the number killed ranging from 90,000 to 1.5 million. (One reason estimates vary so widely is attributed to a traditional secrecy and silence among the Roma regarding what they endured.) Proportionally, these numbers are as high or higher than the fraction of Jews who were killed. But it was the nomadic way of life, rather than their supposed racial background – which was Aryan – that made them enemies of the regime. And indeed, by late 1943, Nazi policy centered upon non- sedentary nomadic Gypsies, and declared those Roma who had settled in a single place to be considered like citizens of that place.
“Six million” is not, and was never intended to be, a precise accounting. But the number, which has now been part of the public consciousness for more than 50 years, would never have continued to be cited if it did not mirror the scholarly tallies that have followed in the succeeding decades, and confirmed that rough figure.
This article was originally published in August 2013
Who were the "six million" murdered in the Holocaust? The number is so large it is almost impossible to comprehend. It does not convey who they were, where they lived, information about their families, what their dreams were, how they died, or whether and how they were related to us.
The Jews are a people of memory. Our history is an integral part of us and we pass it from generation to generation. Each year we tell the story of Passover–the exodus from Egypt–and recall the revelation at Mount Sinai. In the Yizkor prayer recited on the Jewish holidays we remember the collective tragedies of our people as well as our own personal losses. Every year we commemorate the yahrzeits (anniversaries) of deceased relatives.
Millions of our brethren were murdered without a trace during the Shoah. It is incumbent upon us to remember them. If we do not take action, their legacies will be lost to us forever. Since 1955, Yad Vashem has been fulfilling its mandate to preserve the memory of Holocaust victims by collecting their names, the ultimate representation of a person’s identity, as it is written:
"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (Yad Vashem), an everlasting name that shall not be cut off."
(Isaiah 56 : 5)
Pages of Testimony preserve the memory of Jews who were murdered in the Shoah for eternity. Each Page records the victim's full name, date and place of birth, place of residence before the war, profession, parents' and spouse's names, and circumstances of death, as well as a photograph when available. The Pages are completed by survivors or their descendants, as well as friends or acquaintances of victims, and stored for perpetuity in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names as public commemoration for the Jewish people and all of mankind.
The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names currently contains 4.8 million names, including approximately 2.7 million from scanned Pages of Testimony and the remainder that have been retrieved from archives and other sources. In November 2004, the Names Database was uploaded onto Yad Vashem’s website
A revolutionary milestone in Holocaust remembrance and learning, this resource provides the opportunity to submit additional names and conduct searches from any computer worldwide–enabling anyone to check whether their loved one has been memorialized–or simply to learn more about the ordinary men, women and children who fell victim to the Nazis’ genocidal policy.
Millions of victims remain unidentified. Yad Vashem is issuing an urgent call to Jewish families and communities to recover their names. Unless we assume responsibility for completing this vital mission, some of them may be lost to us forever. This is a race against time, before those who remember them are no longer with us.
Submit Pages of Testimony today so they will be remembered for generations to come.
【 在 wewill2009 (daluobe) 的大作中提到: 】 : 关于犹太人600万死亡 : 这是以色列最有影响的一家报纸给出的说明 : 这是以色列最早的报纸 : 英文版面与纽约时报国际版一起发行和销售 : https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/holocaust-facts-6- : million-where-is-the-figure-from-1.5319546 : Holocaust Facts: Where Does the Figure of 6 Million Victims Come From? : Considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent : decades, is this number still considered accurate by scholars of the subject? : Share in Facebook : ...................
她开头的原话是：
“30万人是没有数据支持，确实是这样，当时有很多，
》》》》30万人是从一个人的笔记里面大概估计《《《
，也有估计3000的，有估计2万，有估计50万，有估计7万的，
那最后
》》》》》》解放之后这个中国历史学家找了其中一个人的话以30万作为南京大屠杀的数据，
然后一直保留下来。《《《《《
”
那两点都是完全错误的
她作为历史教师，实在是太无知了
如果在以色列，有历史教师说“6百万犹太人被害死没有数据支持，是出自某个人的笔
记。。。，也有人估计是5万，也有人估计是3万，最后是找了个人的话作为数据一直保留下来了”，那个人肯定也会被赶出学校。
关于“30万以上”来源的历史事实
https://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/62602683.html
关于犹太人600万死亡
这是以色列最有影响的一家报纸给出的说明
这是以色列最早的报纸
英文版面与纽约时报国际版一起发行和销售
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/holocaust-facts-6-
million-where-is-the-figure-from-1.5319546
Holocaust Facts: Where Does the Figure of 6 Million Victims Come From?
Considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent
decades, is this number still considered accurate by scholars of the subject?
Share in Facebook
Share in Twitter
Send in e-mailSend in e-mail
Save
Save article to reading list
Zen Read
Print article
News coverage you can trust
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Open gallery view
An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem
Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem
Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.Credit: AP
new-hdc-logo
Haaretz
Get email notification for articles from Haaretz
Follow
Apr. 7, 2021
One of the most well-known, if not iconic, facts known about the Holocaust
is the number of Jewish victims killed by Nazi Germany up through the end of World War II. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is also this number - six
million - that Holocaust deniers aim at when trying to discredit the
essential nature of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust: Facts and figures
Holocaust facts: Prominent museums, archives and research institutions
Merkel first German chancellor to visit Dachau
Where did the number six million come from? And considering the amount of
original research that has been done in recent decades, is it still
considered accurate by scholars of the subject?
Read more: The Nazis Tolerated Gays. Then Everything Changed | Holocaust
Movies: 21 of the Best Beyond Schindler's List
The number seems to have first been mentioned by Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, an
Austrian-born official in the Third Reich and a trained historian who served in a number of senior positions in the SS.
In November 1945, Hoettl testified for the prosecution in the Nuremberg
trials of accused Nazi war criminals. Later, in the 1961 trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, he also submitted to a lengthy series of questions from the prosecution, speaking under oath from a courtroom in Austria.
- Advertisment -
Ads by Brightcom
On both occasions, he described a conversation he had had with Eichmann, the SS official who had principal responsibility for the logistics of the
Jewish genocide, in Budapest in August 1944. In the 1961 testimony, Hoettl
recalled how “Eichmann … told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 Jews had perished until then -- 4,000,000 in extermination camps
and the remaining 2,000,000 through shooting by the Operations Units and
other causes, such as disease, etc.”
On its website, Yad Vashem, Israel’s principal Holocaust research center,
quotes the Eichmann reference, and then says that both early and more recent estimates by a variety of different scholars have fallen between five and
six million.
Such estimates are arrived at by comparing pre-war census data with
population estimates made after World War II. The Germans, though they
treated their plan for annihilation of the Jews as a state secret of the
highest order, also kept scrupulous records of deportations and gassings,
which also serve as a vital source of data.
- Advertisment -
One of the earliest researchers, Raul Hilberg, came up with a figure of 5.1 million in his 1961 classic “The Destruction of the European Jews.” In the third edition, from 1985, he provides a lengthy appendix explaining how he calculated the estimate.
Lucy Dawidowicz, in her “The War Against the Jews” (1975), used prewar
birth and death records to come up with a more precise figure of 5,933,900. And one of the more authoritative German scholars of the subject, Wolfgang
Benz, offered a range of 5.3 to 6.2 million. Each used his or her own method to arrive at the totals.
Get breaking news and analyses delivered to your inbox
Email *
Please enter a valid email address
Sign Up
Yad Vashem itself also has its Names Database, an ongoing project in which
it attempts to collect the name of every Jewish victim of the Nazis. It
relies on testimony from family and friends of those who perished, official archives from the period, and local commemoration projects. As of early 2012, Yad Vashem estimated that the database contained the names of a little
over four million different individuals (an exact number is not yet possible because it believes that some hundreds of thousands of people appear in
multiple records).
- Advertisment -
Beyond comprehension
One of the largest sources of uncertainty concerns the number of Jews
murdered in the Soviet Union. Whereas the Jews of the countries of Europe
occupied by the Germans were for the most part deported to death camps,
where fairly good records were kept, the murders in the USSR were carried
out by Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), as the German army made its
way east. Their records were far less comprehensive, so that it is possible only to make a rough estimate of the numbers of Jews killed – generally
between 800,000 and 1 million.
The overall death and destruction that took place during World War II may
well be beyond human comprehension. Historians estimate that military
casualties on all sides, in both the European and Pacific theaters, reached up to 25 million, and that civilian casualties ranged from 38 million to as high a figure as 55 million – meaning that somewhere between 3 and 4
percent of the world’s total population died in the conflict.
Nonetheless, the murder of the Jews of Europe is in a class by itself – not because of the numbers, but because of the ideology behind it, which placed the elimination of an entire people and their culture from the earth as one of its primary goals. It was unique because Nazi propaganda focused so
intently on the Jews as an almost supernatural cause of evil, and the German war machine remained devoted to killing Jews up to the very last day of the war, long after it was clear that that war was lost.
That is to say: Murdering the Jews was an end in itself, and it was used to motivate the German nation to great sacrifices of its own.
That being said, there were other groups and peoples that were singled out
by Nazi eliminationist ideology. Most notable among these were the Roma, or Gypsies, with estimates of the number killed ranging from 90,000 to 1.5
million. (One reason estimates vary so widely is attributed to a traditional secrecy and silence among the Roma regarding what they endured.)
Proportionally, these numbers are as high or higher than the fraction of
Jews who were killed. But it was the nomadic way of life, rather than their supposed racial background – which was Aryan – that made them enemies of
the regime. And indeed, by late 1943, Nazi policy centered upon non-
sedentary nomadic Gypsies, and declared those Roma who had settled in a
single place to be considered like citizens of that place.
“Six million” is not, and was never intended to be, a precise accounting. But the number, which has now been part of the public consciousness for more than 50 years, would never have continued to be cited if it did not mirror the scholarly tallies that have followed in the succeeding decades, and
confirmed that rough figure.
This article was originally published in August 2013
欧洲国家，俄罗斯，以色列，是有法律反对denial大屠杀的，
这么说是肯定进监狱的
【 在 wewill2009 (daluobe) 的大作中提到: 】
: 她开头的原话是：
: “30万人是没有数据支持，确实是这样，当时有很多，
: 》》》》30万人是从一个人的笔记里面大概估计《《《
: ，也有估计3000的，有估计2万，有估计50万，有估计7万的，
: 那最后
: 》》》》》》解放之后这个中国历史学家找了其中一个人的话以30万作为南京大屠杀的
: 数据，
: 然后一直保留下来。《《《《《
: ”
: 那两点都是完全错误的
: ...................
一个老师上课讲的东西居然不敢让人知道，能说这个老师没有问题？？那些汉奸走狗就是在混淆是非！颠倒黑白！
600万是比较初略的估值，而不是有些人说的收集到的死亡人数相加之和
而有人乱传谣言：
差不多都收集到了600万个名字
那更是在胡说八道
https://www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/names-recovery-project/why-collect-
names.html
Who were the "six million" murdered in the Holocaust? The number is so large it is almost impossible to comprehend. It does not convey who they were,
where they lived, information about their families, what their dreams were, how they died, or whether and how they were related to us.
The Jews are a people of memory. Our history is an integral part of us and
we pass it from generation to generation. Each year we tell the story of
Passover–the exodus from Egypt–and recall the revelation at Mount Sinai.
In the Yizkor prayer recited on the Jewish holidays we remember the
collective tragedies of our people as well as our own personal losses. Every year we commemorate the yahrzeits (anniversaries) of deceased relatives.
Millions of our brethren were murdered without a trace during the Shoah. It is incumbent upon us to remember them. If we do not take action, their
legacies will be lost to us forever. Since 1955, Yad Vashem has been
fulfilling its mandate to preserve the memory of Holocaust victims by
collecting their names, the ultimate representation of a person’s identity, as it is written:
"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a
name (Yad Vashem), an everlasting name that shall not be cut off."
(Isaiah 56 : 5)
Pages of Testimony preserve the memory of Jews who were murdered in the
Shoah for eternity. Each Page records the victim's full name, date and place of birth, place of residence before the war, profession, parents' and
spouse's names, and circumstances of death, as well as a photograph when
available. The Pages are completed by survivors or their descendants, as
well as friends or acquaintances of victims, and stored for perpetuity in
Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names as public commemoration for the Jewish people
and all of mankind.
The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names currently contains 4.8 million names, including approximately 2.7 million from scanned Pages of Testimony and the remainder that have been retrieved from archives and other sources. In November 2004, the Names Database was uploaded onto Yad Vashem’s website
A revolutionary milestone in Holocaust remembrance and learning, this
resource provides the opportunity to submit additional names and conduct
searches from any computer worldwide–enabling anyone to check whether their loved one has been memorialized–or simply to learn more about the ordinary men, women and children who fell victim to the Nazis’ genocidal policy.
Millions of victims remain unidentified. Yad Vashem is issuing an urgent
call to Jewish families and communities to recover their names. Unless we
assume responsibility for completing this vital mission, some of them may be lost to us forever. This is a race against time, before those who remember them are no longer with us.
Submit Pages of Testimony today so they will be remembered for generations
to come.
这第二贴里引用的权威性说明清清楚楚地用了6次“estimate”
600万就是个通过多个数据源估算（”calculate the estimate“），最后第二出来的
估计值
每个去做的人只有靠估算
用这个说是比南京大屠杀多年研究出来的更准是毫无论证的
况且“30万以上”不得不被用的一个最主要原因是：日本国没有提供任何相关的直接统计资料--除非被中方挖掘出来，尽管他们肯定有或有过
最大的缺乏是：向长江抛弃的尸体数目；和焚毁或其它方式处理的尸体数目
但是有1个直接负责人坦白过： 10万+5万
【 在 wewill2009 (daluobe) 的大作中提到: 】
: 关于犹太人600万死亡
: 这是以色列最有影响的一家报纸给出的说明
: 这是以色列最早的报纸
: 英文版面与纽约时报国际版一起发行和销售
: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/holocaust-facts-6-
: million-where-is-the-figure-from-1.5319546
: Holocaust Facts: Where Does the Figure of 6 Million Victims Come From?
: Considering the amount of original research that has been done in recent
: decades, is this number still considered accurate by scholars of the
subject?
: Share in Facebook
: ...................
http://58.213.139.243:8088/imgpath/zz2/200504/HTM/05.HTM
据中央档案馆保存的日军战俘太田寿男1954年的供词：
当时桅日军碇泊场司令部少佐的太田寿男，与另一名安达少佐，共同指挥800名士兵，
30只小船和10辆汽车，在1937年12月14日至18日间，分东西两区作业，将10万具尸体投入扬子江中，及运往扑克东方洼地烧毁、埋没，其中2100名重伤濒死者；另由进入南京部队处理了5万具尸体。