When it comes to justifying the original 4 million figures, Holohoaxsters are quick to dismiss Eastern European historians. Hence I did not mention it. I originally also didn't mention Friedman. I don't expect anyone to keep their word and pay up, I merely wanted to point out the false assertion that there is no respectable Western historian using that figure.
But that wasn't Wroclaw's challenge. He stated, quite clearly, that the aim was to find a historian who arrived at a total of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust basing that number on 4 million dead at Auschwitz.
You're
never going to be able to cite anyone who made a calculation of 'Auschwitz - 4 million Jews killed, rest, must have been 2 million, therefore 6 million'.
That's because the 4M figure was always people not Jews.
Philip Friedman presented
some fairly detailed calculations regarding losses in Poland, starting with an overall demographic balance - the 'subtraction' method. Then he estimated losses by phase, and then he identified how many non-Polish Jews died in Poland - 1 million - while stating that the rest died in the USSR, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. He used a figure of 5,787,000 for the Europe-wide death toll, from the Institute of Jewish Affairs. And that source doesn't use Auschwitz to arrive at its total at all. It was based on a straight demographic balance.
In fact, Friedman doesn't even mention an Auschwitz death toll in this section. He mentions Auschwitz earlier, but doesn't give a figure. He does for Majdanek, using the high initial figure then saying a very large percentage were Jews. Then more numbers for Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, etc. And all that following more numbers regarding shootings and ghettos.
Quite separately to this, Friedman wrote a brochure on Auschwitz, and without checking it I'm sure he used a 4M figure there. For people.
There are many mistakes in Friedman's presentation, but for a first draft there is a lot that stands up today after decades of research. He certainly did a better job than Solzhenitsyn or Conquest on the Gulag and Terror.....
The camp totals in the individual reports in German Crimes in Poland add up to 6.331 million, and they don't even include all the other causes of death being talked about in 1945-46
Auschwitz - 4M people
Majdanek - 360,000
Treblinka - 781,000
Belzec - 600,000
Chelmno - 340,000
Sobibor - 250,000
Those numbers have been reduced to about 2.6 million by historical research. The balance of the Holocaust, about 2.7 million, was being documented and discussed in 1945 - killings in the USSR, the ghettos and much else were certainly being presented in 1945-46 at Nuremberg and in other venues.
The biggest drops have been in precisely those camps - Auschwitz and Majdanek - where it was obvious that Jews and non-Jews were the victims. Because the East Bloc, and many in the west, were uncomfortable with acknowledging Jewish specificity and had to drown the awkward fact of genocide in assertions that all had suffered equally.
But seeing as you're such a fan of Friedman, perhaps you can comment on this section
The Jewish population of Wilno (65,000) paid a heavy tribute in blood, action against them lasting without interruption from June 22 to Sep. 5 (the date of the establishment of the ghetto). Afterwards it was renewed in the middle of October and went on until Christmas Eve.
p.150.
The Germans pretended that they took the Jewish male population for labour, and drove them to a small wayside halt called Ponary 10 km from Wilno on the railway from Wilno to Landwarowo. There they were shot in masses and buried in the ditches dug to contain petrol by the Red Army. From October, the time of the "Cleaning" in the ghetto, onwards women and children were also brought to be killed. This monstrous mass action, which lasted half a year, accounted in the first period after the establishment of the ghetto for the deaths of about 30,000 Jewish victims; and in the second period for those of more than 15,000. (G. Jaszunski, Dos Naje Lebn Nr. 6, M. Balberyszki, Dos Naje Lebn Nr. 9, Sz. Kaczerginski: "Ponary", Archives of the Central Jewish Historical Committee. Records from Wilno.)
and tell us what else we have on Ponary since Friedman wrote his essay in 1946.
For some reason all the other deniers never want to discuss Ponary. Can't think why....