• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Holocaust numbers

Status
Not open for further replies.

Algebra34

Banned
A
Joined
Sep 6, 2009
Messages
637
Back in junior high school (middle school) we would get time in the school library for a study hall. We were able to play these little films that were on some kind of cartridge. One of the topics was the holocaust. The documentation was pretty gruesome. It showed a bunch of what looked like to me live skeletons walking around behind barbwire fences. It also showed mass open graves with hundreds of bodies piled on top of one another. It also depicted hangings and firing squads. Now maybe I remember it wrong but I could swear at one point in the footage it showed ovens and even some poor soul who was still alive motioning from inside an oven.

I hear about holocaust denial these days. Now I've never had a doubt about the holocaust happening but I understand that some of this denial is based on numbers. Six million is the number I have heard disputed. But what if it was just one million or even 100,000? Isn't that terrible enough? Is it all about numbers or is it that some people just think it didn't happen at all?

In any case is there a list of known victims somewhere? Like we know of Ann Frank for instance. How many are the confirmed holocaust victims with identities and where is this record kept? And I'm not saying that just because only a certain amount can be confirmed that this is all that perished, I'm just curious.

Is there a list of confirmed identities somewhere?
 
Last edited:
Search the History section. There are quite a few threads on the holocaust there, including a link from Parky76 to a project that is aiming to confirm the identity of as many victims as possible.
 
gtc said:
Search the History section. There are quite a few threads on the holocaust there, including a link from Parky76 to a project that is aiming to confirm the identity of as many victims as possible.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I wasn't sure where to post this. Maybe history would have been better.
 
Algebra34 said:
Now maybe I remember it wrong but I could swear at one point in the footage it showed ovens and even some poor soul who was still alive motioning from inside an oven.
Click to expand...

That incident you do indeed remember wrongly. Not to be too crude, but to struggle to shove a live person into an oven would be inefficient. People were killed then cremated.
Your point about the numbers killed is exactly right. Any number is terrible enough.
 
MG1962 said:
Here is that project gtc mentioned

The current number of confirmed dead is 2 million. Interestingly the memorial built is designed to take up to 8 million. Hopefully it never will
Click to expand...

Wow that's great to try and accomplish a memorial like that. It must really be hard though being that entire families were killed and all their belongings either stolen or destroyed. However many it is I hope they get to honor as many as possible.

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
kerikiwi said:
That incident you do indeed remember wrongly. Not to be too crude, but to struggle to shove a live person into an oven would be inefficient. People were killed then cremated.
Your point about the numbers killed is exactly right. Any number is terrible enough.
Click to expand...

Some of the footage I would think was taken by the Germans. Especially the shootings and hangings. I remember all the victims were naked. They were trying to cover themselves right up to being shot or hung. Even all the bodies in the graves. The woman, the men all of them naked. The other footage looked like forces (American, Russian?) coming to save them. I swear I remembered what looked like ovens outside and in one clip there was someone laying in a hole in a wall weakly waving to the camera for help. I don't know, maybe I just misinterpreted it. In any case I've never seen such graphic footage anywhere else. It was a bit much for a thirteen year old but I'll never forget it I'll tell you that much. I wonder to this day where that footage can be found.
 
The Shoah Foundation has videotapes of testimony from survivors. I'd imagine they'd have some of the footage you're talking about as well.

ETA: Also, keep in mind, the 6 million is just the number of Jewish people that died in the Holocaust. When you add in the rest of the victims of the systematic campaign of murder, you get about double that number.
 
Last edited:
Algebra34 said:
Some of the footage I would think was taken by the Germans. Especially the shootings and hangings. I remember all the victims were naked. They were trying to cover themselves right up to being shot or hung. Even all the bodies in the graves. The woman, the men all of them naked. The other footage looked like forces (American, Russian?) coming to save them. I swear I remembered what looked like ovens outside and in one clip there was someone laying in a hole in a wall weakly waving to the camera for help. I don't know, maybe I just misinterpreted it. In any case I've never seen such graphic footage anywhere else. It was a bit much for a thirteen year old but I'll never forget it I'll tell you that much. I wonder to this day where that footage can be found.
Click to expand...

Memory can be pretty unreliable, even (especially?) traumatic memory.
Why not get in touch with your old school? They may still have those materials.
 
Algebra34 said:
Back in junior high school (middle school) we would get time in the school library for a study hall. We were able to play these little films that were on some kind of cartridge. One of the topics was the holocaust. The documentation was pretty gruesome. It showed a bunch of what looked like to me live skeletons walking around behind barbwire fences. It also showed mass open graves with hundreds of bodies piled on top of one another. It also depicted hangings and firing squads. Now maybe I remember it wrong but I could swear at one point in the footage it showed ovens and even some poor soul who was still alive motioning from inside an oven.

I hear about holocaust denial these days. Now I've never had a doubt about the holocaust happening but I understand that some of this denial is based on numbers. Six million is the number I have heard disputed. But what if it was just one million or even 100,000? Isn't that terrible enough? Is it all about numbers or is it that some people just think it didn't happen at all?
Click to expand...
What if the number is twice that?
In any case is there a list of known victims somewhere? Like we know of Ann Frank for instance. How many are the confirmed holocaust victims with identities and where is this record kept? And I'm not saying that just because only a certain amount can be confirmed that this is all that perished, I'm just curious.

Is there a list of confirmed identities somewhere?
Click to expand...


13 million especially if you count forced labor and starvation labor, they did exterminate a lot of Roma, mentally ill, developmentaly disabled, members of the communist party, homosexuals and others. Considering something like 15-20% of the population of Poland died as a result of the war, a lot of people died in WWII, lists were not kept exactly.

The German did keep accurate records however, which were broken apart and scattered by the post war government (not destroyed.), however the did not keep records of the Einsatzkommando or the other informal acts of pogrom.

In The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester there is also considerable discussion of how slave labor was recruited in France.
 
kerikiwi said:
That incident you do indeed remember wrongly. Not to be too crude, but to struggle to shove a live person into an oven would be inefficient. People were killed then cremated.
Your point about the numbers killed is exactly right. Any number is terrible enough.
Click to expand...

Um, I can't recall, but bodies twitch for a number of reasons, when you are emaciated and in organ failure from starvation, you don't struggle much. I can't remeber what Frankl says in his book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
He worked at the crematoria in the camp near Dachau.

But I may have the wrong person, I think it was Frankl, it has been a long time since i read the book.
 
Last edited:
Dancing David said:
Um, I can't recall, but bodies twitch for a number of reasons, when you are emaciated and in organ failure from starvation, you don't struggle much. I can't remeber what Frankl says in his book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
He worked at the crematoria in the camp near Dachau.

But I may have the wrong person, I think it was Frankl, it has been a long time since i read the book.
Click to expand...

Dead bodies also 'twitch'.
The burning of living people is very unlikely. The whole thing was bad enough without adding fictions.
 
Algebra34 said:
Wow that's great to try and accomplish a memorial like that. It must really be hard though being that entire families were killed and all their belongings either stolen or destroyed. However many it is I hope they get to honor as many as possible.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There's also a Dutch digital monument. That one's nearly complete in listing the Dutch victims of the Holocaust. But then, Holland had at the time the best civic registry in the world. Don't hold your breath that you'd ever get a complete list of, say, all 3 million Polish-Jewish victims.

But to answer your other question in the OP: there's not really discussion about the numbers. Of course numbers get refined all the time by new research - the numbers are, after all, approximations. There are those who argue there were only 100,000 victims, or 1 million victims. But they all turn out to be Holocaust deniers in disguise who only use the "numbers discussion" to try to cast doubt on the whole notion of the Holocaust.
 
I recently completed Evans' The Third Reich at War and am now reading Hitler's Empire (discussing how the Nazi's organized their occupation). Both books have very good chapters on the origin and implementation of both the effort to exterminate Jews as well as the terrible toll on other nations...primarilly Poles, Slavs, Russians, etc.

In one respect, the numbers issue has always been short-handed at, say, 6 million and that lack of specificity has always made it easy for deniers to attack. Interestingly enough, they require a specificity about numbers that they don't apply to documents, speeches, photos, etc. -- but that's as maybe. At the very base, between Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian Jews specifically targeted by the Nazi action groups and the death camps, we're talking in the 4 million + zone -- with a huge chunk of that coming mainly from Poland -- and that is before adding in Jews from other occupied European countries.

A good measure of the Nazi's ambition in this area are the figures that were developed by Hydreich for the Wansee (sp?) conference...which reviewed numbers of Jews already being processed by the Nazis (i.e. death squad action teams, death by labor and the growing population of camps pre the full innovation of death camps in 1941/42). The conference also reviewed how many Jews existed throughout Europe and how they would be handled as they came under Nazi overlordship. So, in the end, it is the Nazi-own numbers that speak best for not just their murderous ambition but also their "success".

As an aside...and I could be mis-remembering here -- but I think both Hoess and Eichman essentially bragged about a million or more done away with at Auschwitz alone, either during their trials or in German documentation. I also think that Treblinka was responsible for between 700,000 and 800,000. And keep in mind German efficiency-- they shot, I think, somewhere in the range of 30,000 in just a day or two at Babi Yar...multiply that across the Ukraine and the Eastern theater and you begin to piece together the enormity of thier crimes.
 
Dancing David said:
Well, I always thought that the big industrial style camps were in Poland for a reason... like the Poles and other Slavs were next.
Click to expand...


Indeed, reading Hitler's Empire (Mark Mazower) it becomes pretty clear, based on documents, etc., that after the Jews, Poles and Slavs were going to be eliminated -- especially because Hitler thought of the area of the General Government as part of the future heart of Germany and not a place for Poles. Certainly, the methods used on the disabled, mentally ill, Jews, gypsies and Russian POWs would have been employed to completely eliminating Poland from the map.
 
The quick and dirty answer is that we know the holocaust happened for the same reason we know Napoleon existed: cross-evidence.

We have pictures of Napoleon AND contemporary eyewitness reports by both friends AND enemies AND the borders of the countries that were changed at the time AND evidence of massive armies being raised at the time AND the house on St. Helena AND the tomb in Paris AND... all pointing to the existence of such a man. It is possible for, say, a picture to be faked (or to be of a fictional character). It is not possible for all such evidence together to be faked when it all points in the same direction.

Similarly, we have eyewitness reports AND census numbers AND the reports by the killers themselves (mountains of evidence alone right there) AND pictures of the camps AND the contemporary newspaper accounts AND Hitler's will (for example) AND the Nuremberg trials AND all those missing relatives of survivors AND... (etc., etc. etc.) all pointing to one conclusion, to wit, the killing -- either in the death camps, or by the "special action" squads, or by starvation and disease and aktions in the ghettos, etc., etc. -- of somewhere (most seriously historians agree) between, about, 5,100,000 to 6,700,000 Jews by the Germans, with the old figure -- 6,000,000 -- being probably the best estimate we'll ever have.

I am speaking here of the Jewish holocaust. By similar methods we know the Nazis also murdered (as opposed to having killed in the battlefield) about 6,000,000 others -- homosexuals, gypsies, the retarded, and (above all, numerically) Soviet POWs.
 
parky76 said:
I thought it said 3 million. But its all just Zionist-Khazar lie..right?

:(
Click to expand...

You may be right. reading the site they said they had two million pages. The way it read it seemed that each victim was assigned a page. They do clearly mention it is a work in progress, so who really knows the level of evil that will eventually be uncovered
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom