Denial of the Denial, or the Battle of Auschwitz: Debates about the Demography and Geopolitics of the Holocaust 9781618111197

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DENIAL OF THE DENIAL, OR THE BATTLE OF AUSCHWITZ

DENIAL OF THE DENIAL, OR THE BATTLE OF AUSCHWITZ The Demography and Geopolitics of the Holocaust: The View from the Twenty-First Century

Alfred KOKH and Pavel POLIAN, editors

Sergeui Silichtchev, Beate Brown, translators

Boston 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-936235-34-6 (hardback) Copyright © 2012 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved

Cover design by Ivan Grave Published by Academic Studies Press in 2012 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

CONTENTS

Alfred Kokh and Pavel Polian FROM THE EDITORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VII

I Alfred Kokh A DENIAL OF DENIAL

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Pavel Polian THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS . . . . . . . Deniers or Revisionists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soviet and Post-Soviet Traditions of Silencing and Denying the Holocaust The Anti-Semites International: The Holocaust Deniers’ Conference in Tehran and Its World-Wide Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deniers Punishment and History’s Arbitration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 6 . 6 31 49 60

II Sergio Della Pergola THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POSTSOVIET JEWRY. GLOBAL AND LOCAL CONTEXTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic Population Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Early Contextual Explorations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contemporary Global Jewish Population Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jewish Migration in Comparative Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Living Conditions and Demographic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 85 . 86 . 87 . 90 . 95 . 100

Wolfgang Benz THE DIMESIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Dieter Pohl JUST HOW MANY? ON THE DEATH TOLL OF JEWISH VICTIMS OF NAZI CRIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baltic countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soviet Union (in the borders of 1938) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Romania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Czechoslovakia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 129 . 133 . 137 . 138 . 139 . 140 . 141 . 142

ALFRED KOKH AND CONTENTS PAVEL POLIAN, EDITORS

Mark Kupovetsky JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II WITHIN THE PREWAR SEPTEMBER 1939 AND POSTWAR BORDERS OF THE USSR Expanding the Data Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Innovative Analytical Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis of Statistical Source Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ethno-Demographic Balance of the Jewish Population in the Prewar and Postwar Territories of the USSR in 1941-1945 . . . . . . . . . .

149 150 150 151 157

Alexander Avraham THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Aron Shneer THE HOLOCAUST IN LATVIA ACCORDING TO THE MATERIALS OF THE “HALL OF NAMES” YAD VASHEM. “PAGES OF TESTIMONY” AS A SOURCE FOR THE RESEARCH OF THE HOLOCAUST IN LATVIA . . 183 Analyzing Prewar Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Analyzing the War Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

III Pavel Polyan THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST . . . . . Victims of the Holocaust — Who Are They? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Demographic Balance of the Jewish Population of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Demographic Balance of European and World Jewry . . . . . . . . . The Demographic and Social Consequences of the Holocaust . . . . . .

201 201 203 219 255

Alfred Kokh Af ter word. THE TRIAL OVER THE SIX MILLION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Pavel Polyan AFTERWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

Appendicies Appendix 1. Selected Bibliography on Holocaust Denial . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Appendix 2. The First Soviet Estimates of the Victims of the Auschwitz Death Camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Appendix 3. Europe’s Dead and Killed Jews by Countries and Categories: Different Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

< vi >

FROM THE EDITORS

Alfred Kokh and Pavel Polian

FROM THE EDITORS

For decades, the question of Shoah, or the Holocaust, has remained a critical issue, both historically and politically. The latest twist in the spiral is so sharp because of two independent processes. The first is the modernization of anti-Semitism in the West, where they long stopped talking about ritual murders and now claim that the Holocaust was a hoax, and simultaneously, that the Israelis are creating a “Palestinian Holocaust.” The second is the new state haven, Iran, given to anti-Semitism in the East. These two processes, until recently independent of each other, have now been joined into one and definitely need study. The purely scholarly problem of determining the number of victims, like other aspects of the demography of the Holocaust, have suddenly been closely embroiled in geopolitics and the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is now a context that has been forced upon it. Our book is imbued with these ties and interrelationships. This book consists of three parts and appendixes. Parts one and three are written by the editors, while the second is a kind of primer of selected articles on the demographics of the Holocaust which formed the basis for preparing part 3. We must tell you that in the course of working on the book, its very concept changed internally, and at one point we thought that the “floor” (that is, space in the book) should be given to the opposing view. Literally: we wanted to include a separate section with demographically relevant texts by the deniers, thereby hoping to model a kind of debate with them. < vii >

ALFRED KOKH AND PAVEL POLIAN

We would be showing our readers deserved trust, we hoped. We assumed that once they saw what the scholars and deniers had to say, the readers would compare the arguments, decide how serious and scientific they were, and come to their own independent and correct conclusion. Theoretically, they could do that without our help, but to find the primary sources for both sides would require major effort. Public libraries rarely carry works by the deniers (and certainly specifically “demographic” ones would be even rarer). Internet users would find the deniers (and with a little more effort, their demographic works) more easily than they would the classic works by historians and demographers of the Holocaust. Overcoming this parallel existence was part of structural plan — a plan that we had to give up at the last moment. We did it when we learned that publications that included texts by deniers could be considered — at least in Germany — as distribution and propaganda of works that were harmful to young people. The context is taken into account, of course, but there was a high likelihood that the book would indexed, that is, rated as literature unacceptable for distribution in Germany. Writing or editing such a work is a criminal offense, and the book would be listed in the special Index of literature and other mass media harmful to young people and therefore fully or partially banned in Germany (only special scholarly libraries would be able to have the book legally in their collections). Just as it would be wrong to delete Germany from the audience of this book, it would be just as wrong, in our opinion, to ignore its legal field. We did not want to end up after a year and a half of intensive work as authors of a book at risk of having the same legal status as Mein Kampf. In our context, this is absurd, but let’s not forget what the other extreme cost Germany and accept this situation with humility and understanding. It is actually a fairly good illustration of the content and issues of part of our book. That is Part 1, which has Alfred Kokh’s Foreword and Pavel Polian’s article “The Denial of the Holocaust and its Geopolitics.” We examine the issues of evolution and structure of the denier movement, including aspects of their historical and legal reasonability as well as problems of its anti-Semitic and geopolitical instrumentalization, especially in view of the open threat to the existence of the state of Israel from its political enemies, primarily Iran. The writers in the second part can be divided into three groups. The first is professional demographers who use a specific demographic method < viii >

FROM THE EDITORS

of analysis, primarily balance models: Sergio Della Pergola (director of the Harman Institute of Modern Jewry, Jewish University of Jerusalem) analyzes global and European Jewry, and Mark Kupovetsky (executive director of the Russian-American Center of the Bible and Judaica, Russian State University of the Humanities, Moscow) the Jewish population of the Soviet Union and neighboring countries. The second group is professional historians, who analyze the situation in individual European countries affected by Shoah and then summarize the results from each into a whole. This is what Wolfgang Benz (currently director of the Center for Studying Anti-Semitism, Berlin Technical University) did with country studies within an existing fundamental project carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which he headed. Dieter Pohl (scholar at the Institute of Contemporary History, Munich) did the same thing, but in the 2000s and incorporating numerous new data that were discovered in the archives of Eastern Europe. The third group is archivists and historians from Yad Vashem, who are creating a unique data bank on the victims of the Holocaust. Alexander Avraham gives a detailed characterization of the history of the creation and structural functioning of the data bank, while Aron Shneer shows, on the relatively small example of Latvia, what research potential it contains. The texts by Della Pergola and Benz are in translations made from the original publications. Pohl, Kupovetsky, and Shneer reworked their original articles for this book and Avraham wrote his text especially at our request. References to the publications in the second part are given in the first footnote of each article. Part 3 consists of Polian’s article and Kokh’s Afterword. Polian gives an overview of the history of demographic analysis of the Holocaust and attempts to analyze the data and introduce as many corrections as possible (the corrections are insignificant per se). He also raises some structural questions (for example, on the relationship between Shoah and the question of Jewish identity) and analyzes specifics of methodology, which in the case of the deniers borders on lack of conscientiousness. The book ends with three appendixes. The first gives a selected bibliography of works both of the deniers and authors who analyze their activity. The second is documents of the Soviet administration that record and in part analyze the horrible reality that the liberators found in Auschwitz and Birkenau. The third is a compilation table showing almost all the many structural variations in estimating the number of victims of the Holocaust. < ix >

ALFRED KOKH AND PAVEL POLIAN

The editors thank Alexander Avraham, Wolfgang Benz, Sergio Della Pergola, Dieter Pohl and Aron Shneer for taking part in the project and providing all kinds of support. Also, I. Altman, V. Belkin, A. Vishnevsky, S. Maksudov, V. Nadein-Raevsky, N. Pobol, S. Polian, I. Rabin, B. Frezinsky, and A. Shinder for their help in locating hard-to-find information and discussing the manuscript.

FROM THE EDITORS

I

ALFRED KOKH AND PAVEL POLIAN

Alfred Kokh

A DENIAL OF DENIAL

The cross on which Christ was crucified was made of two parts. One was cypress, the other, rosewood. Imagine a couple of barely finished logs, one of which was to be buried deep into the ground, so that the body on the cross would not topple over. Massive logs, heavy, with axe marks and sharp splinters . . . . By today’s standards it seems that an impoverished prophet would be crucified on a cross made of valuable woods. But historians have an easy answer. Today, cypress and rosewood are rare and valuable and used for furniture and musical instruments. But at the beginning of the new era, there were forests of them in Palestine. It was cheap, cypress and rosewood lumber abounded. Perhaps Jesus had made something from that wood himself, he was a carpenter after all, like his stepfather, Joseph. Then the forests were chopped down. Agriculture gradually faded out. The Arabs took over the empty lands after banishing the Jews. They tried to make it habitable, but new cypress groves, cedar woods, and plantations of palms and olives did not grow. After the Crusades that land lay another eight hundred years in dust and stones, turning into a desert. But in the twentieth century, Jews from all over the world returned to the Promised Land and they began planting trees. When you travel through Israel today, you never stop marveling at the human energy expended on the country. The mountain slopes along the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are hand planted with cedars and cypresses. There are orange and tangerine orchards from Jerusalem to the south. All of Galilee is olive gardens and wheat fields. On the way to Eilat you see kibbutzim with huge plantations of date palms. None of this had been there before. It was all done by people.

ALFRED KOKH

Perhaps, in a few decades, cypress and rosewood lumber will be found in every scrap pile, as they did in the days of Christ. Now, when the discussion has grown heated once again about the right of Jews to the land of Israel, you hear various arguments from all sides. Excerpts are read from the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran. There are appeals to prophets and promises of suffering in hell. Orators use diplomatic chicanery and blatant historical sophistry. There are bribes and threats. In this discussion the arguments include dynamite, armies, and blackmail. But I don’t hear anyone using what I consider the most important argument, which is simple and clear. Does not land belong to those who make it better and cleaner, who restored it to its former beauty, who replaced the woodcutter’s ax with the gardener’s watering can? Who brought water to the lifeless desert, who irrigated the fields that had not known the plow for a hundred years, who built marvelous white cities in place of miserable clay huts, who laid roads instead of camel paths, constructed hospitals, destroyed epidemics, and liquidated hunger. But the discussion does not quiet down. A new generation of politicians is using new approaches in this struggle. What needs to be done to put an end to Israel’s existence? The answer is easy — make the West, in its broadest sense, including Russia, that is, the entire Christian world, stop supporting the Jews and their state in Palestine. For all the skill of the Israeli Army, it simply will not have the resources to withstand Islamic pressure for long. Oil, military equipment, and human resources are not limitless, and the Arab (and more broadly, the Islamic) world has significantly more of them than Israel would without the support of the West. What needs to be done to rupture the tie between the West and Israel? The most important impact would come from a revision of twentiethcentury history. And of the Holocaust in particular. If people in West can be taught that there was no Holocaust, that it was just “a Jewish trick,” that Jews exploited being victims for vast riches incommensurate with their real losses, then I’m sure that the support of people in the street will be undermined. And if the mood of the voters changes, then sooner or later, so will the actions of politicians and therefore of nations. And then, they could declare war on Israel, especially if they prepared for it. Get the atom bomb, buy up a lot of conventional weapons, missiles, and tanks with petrodollars. This is precisely what Iran is doing. The current Iranian president is a very smart man. He began in just this way — he held a conference on the Holocaust in Teheran where they wanted to show that there had been no Holocaust.

A DENIAL OF DENIAL

This book is devoted to this topic. Here’s the point. Polemics between proponents of the historical, traditional concept of the Holocaust and the so-called deniers, or, as they call themselves, revisionists, always takes place long-distance. The only place where they can be placed for a face-toface discussion is a courtroom, where the denier is the defendant and the traditionalist is the expert witness. As in the worst days of the Inquisition (whose greatest victims were the Jews, by the way), today, in the heart of Europe, people are being put in prison for their thoughts and feelings! Yes, it’s very possible that these people are devious and have evil intentions. Yes, probably, they violate facts and practice filthy intrigues. But is that reason enough to put someone behind bars? Then they should be joined by the authors who publish articles on the superiority of the Jews and their chosen status on the basis that most of the Nobel laureates are Jewish. Isn’t that an example of intrigue and evil intent? And don’t these people do a disservice for the Jews and help the revisionists? Russian history scholarship has an entire movement that denies the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Should all those people be sent to prison for mocking the memory of the victims of Batyi? The discussion on permissible methods of having a discussion about the Holocaust has turned into an independent discipline. On the one hand you have millions of innocent victims, and on the other people sitting in prison whose guilt is openly claiming that those victims do not exist. Today, more than sixty years after the end of World War II, nothing plays into the hands of the revisionists more than being tried and nothing incites anti-Semitic feelings in neutral observers than the harsh sentences for the deniers. Practice has shown that attempting to have direct dialogue with the revisionists has been an extremely difficult and thankless task for the scholars, the majority of deniers are fanatically anti-Semitic, and they are not interested in the truth but in a platform for the propaganda of their phobias and the inevitable scandals that will follow. So, scholars can, of course, continue to pretend that the deniers no longer exist and refuse to debate with them. But on the other hand, I understand that the rejection of public debate even with the most unpleasant and despicable opponent, combined with the constant threat of a prison cell, creates sympathy among the unsophisticated public for the “innocent victims of Zionism” and casts doubt on the existence of real and incontrovertible evidence about the scale of the Holocaust.

ALFRED KOKH

If this “strange war” continues, then through the efforts on the one hand of the devious messengers of radical Islamic circles and sincere proponents of the “renaissance of the Aryan spirit” and on the other, of the linear and short-sighted actions of the traditionalists, there will be a change in Western public opinion and the seeds of doubt being sown by both sides will grow into a harvest: the denial of the Holocaust will no longer be a marginal point of view but a commonplace, an unquestionable fact. And what will happen then? Here is what will happen: after some time, the gardens of Israel will wither and flourishing groves will be replaced by dusty deserts. Filthy, shaggy dogs and hungry Arab urchins will wend their way down roads, begging — some for bones, others for money from passing tourists. Impoverished Bedouins, as they did a thousand years ago, will brew coffee in their tents. Some of the Jews will be killed, some will move to Europe and America. And Palestine will be silenced for many centuries again except for the muezzin’s call to morning prayer for the faithful Muslims in Jerusalem. Palestine will turn into a bad copy of Egypt, Syria, or Jordan, with their filth, petty trade, and complete absence of progress. But if you think it will end there, you are an incurable optimist. Inspired by their success, Islamic leaders will call upon their brethren in Europe to wage holy war against the infidels, and millions of Muslims in France, Great Britain, Holland, Germany and all over Europe will rise under the green banner of the Prophet. After that 9/11 will seem but a minor, insignificant episode. They will decide that the uncovered beauty of European women offends their Muslim religious feelings. They will demand the women don the burqa. No? You refuse? Then a few public murders, a few terrorist acts, and European women won’t wait for official decisions by the authorities and put on the black floor length sacks and cover their faces. You want to teach Darwin? Deny that the world was created by Allah? How about a few school burnings and executions of teachers? Ninety percent of school children are Muslim! You want to believe in Christ and deny the divine nature of the Koran? Bombs in churches and monasteries, beatings of priests and monks will bring you to your senses. Remember how the Kosovar Albanians treated Christian sites. And don’t even try to imagine what will happen to European Jews. They won’t be able to hide in Europe. The holy wrath of the religious fanatics will find them just as easily as in the Middle East.

A DENIAL OF DENIAL

I may be exaggerating, but this is how I see it. It’s totally wrong for some of the deniers to think that they are merely restoring “historical truth” and rehabilitating the “unjustly slandered” German people. Since I, Alfred Kokh, contrary to public opinion, am half German and half Russian, and not Jewish, I have nothing against the rehabilitation of the German people. But not at any price. I am prepared to hear the deniers’ arguments, but only if they are factually reliable and logical. But if the arguments boil down to a search for the mythical Jewish conspiracy, then I pass, because conspiratology is as false a science as alchemy. And if the proponents of the traditional version use no other argument but “Shame on you for denying!” then I (and many others, by the way) am not likely to support that turn in the discussion. We (that is, my colleague in this work, Pavel Polian, and I) decided to publish this book to respond finally (or perhaps, just one more time?) to what should be long-closed questions. I don’t want to preempt the contents, but I will tell you that we tried to present as strictly as possible the demographic arguments of both the traditionalists and the deniers, thereby modeling some semblance of discussion between them and most importantly between their arguments. In compiling the second part of the book, the anthology, we tried to limit ourselves to articles that reflect the issues to the greatest degree. We intentionally did not include any individual stories, despite their indisputable drama and tragedy, because even the most heart-breaking personal story cannot be proof when millions of deaths are turned into statistics. In that sense, demographic materials, the data of censuses, studies of migration, and even forensic reports are more important for establishing the truth than a personal drama, even though these dry materials may not seem convincing at first on an emotional level. We do not imagine that after the publication of this book, when all the existing arguments on both sides will be seen and heard, the discussion between traditionalist historians and the deniers will come to an end. But for unprejudiced people capable of attending to logical arguments, the discussion will become much clearer. If we achieve that goal, we will consider our work done.

PAVEL POLIAN

Pavel Polian

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS

We are not responsible for the political consequences of revisionism. Of course I do not like Zionists very much, but I am not an anti-Semite and I do not hate Jews . . . < . . . > The State of Israel does not have the right to exist. What is to be done with these Jews? We are a cultured people, we cannot destroy them. What is to be done with them? I don’t know. Jürgen Graf. From a 2002 interview.1 Either these people really don’t know anything, or they just want to pull the wool over people’s eyes. What took place cannot be denied any longer. For it indeed did take place. From an interview with Joseph Erber, former Commandant of the women’s camp in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.2 It would be interesting to know what the current status of the “JewishOswiecim Lie” is. Is it acceptable again in high society salons, can it be uttered in high society conversations or street talk? Or is it still forbidden? I will not spend another day of my life telling my German people again and again how it exterminated my Jewish people . . . Wolf Birman. “Yitzhak Katzenelson, a Jew”.3

DENIERS OR REVISIONISTS? 1 The history of the Second World War is alive: it still holds much that is unknown, uninvestigated, little understood, distorted or even falsified. Historians keep correcting each other; they scrutinize each other’s theories to find things to be redefined, adjusted or even disproved. They engage in fruitful discussions that help shed light on certain details, review interpretations, offer well-justified and unbiased revisions.

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS

In the heat of polemics, concepts are blown to pieces, professors’ reputations are ruined, and even whole countries may occasionally find themselves in the epicenter of disgrace, in the not-so-pleasant-situation of history falsifiers and political liars, as, for example, the USSR in the case of Katyn or Poland in the case of Kielce or Jedwabno. All of this is part and parcel of the normal historical process, and everything would have been fine had it not been for those whose idée fixe became not the study of history but its distortion. But are they up to wearing the robes of historicity, they whose “historicism” boils down to a denial of the Holocaust and, by the same token, a whitewash of Hitler’s regime? After the end of World War II, in various European countries publications began to appear that questioned the veracity of many of the findings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that tried the major Nazi war criminals. In most countries these authors are called “Holocaust deniers” or “Holokaustleugner” in German (disseminators of lies about the Holocaust). Though they themselves refer to each other in the flattering and deferential way as “revisionists,” thereby crediting themselves with an ineradicable disposition toward a quest for truth and, as a consequence, toward the scholarly revision of the prevailing views based on newly found or newly reinterpreted data, etc. Such self-designation makes them feel good about themselves and bolsters their claim to legitimacy. Moreover, such legitimization occurs not so much from their association with the subject they purport to revise but from appearing to be in the service of the highly respectable Dame, the Science of History.4 They see themselves as the reverse side of the coin, but one as important as the face of that coin which is written history. Moreover, they want to bring history down to their own level: the historians with whom they clash, they, the “revisionists,” call nothing other than “Holocaustniks” or “exterminationists,”5 i.e. adherents of another “theory” based on the patently absurd assumption that somebody was exterminating Jews. An important peculiarity of the deniers is that they are pathologically serious. Like hyenas, they dig through texts and testimonies, in search of what they believe might be “weak point.” And should something “suitable” arise, then like a school of Piranhas, gripped by collective predatory rapture, they pounce upon the seemingly easy prey. If, for example, one of the witnesses to the events dropped words to the effect that he had seen in Treblinka a whole mountain of shoes, probably about 40 meters high, then one can rest assured that they would ascribe to this observation the highest category of credibility as almost the cornerstone of the “exterminationist” history

PAVEL POLIAN

of the Shoa, while the Journal for Historical Review would soon publish a couple of articles exposing the deception with charts, graphs, and snide remarks about the 190 million people whose shoes might have been capable, according to calculations, make up such a “mountain.” Another article will aim to prove, once and for all, how such a construction is not possible. Fazit: all witnesses are mercenary liars, all “exterminationists” — charlatans, therefore, excuse me, but there was no Holocaust!6 Such stylistics and argumentation are from the arsenal of propagandists, not scholars. The question is begged: are those people fit to wear the robes of historicity, they who do not even try to hide behind the halo of reasoning the asinine ears of anti-Semitism? Can a decent person shake their hand? Most certainly not, these folks are not handshake-worthy. But to just despise or ignore them, not noticing or replying to them, that too is not an option! Golda Meyer once let it drop: “No, we shall not lower ourselves to propaganda.” A recent echo of the same sentiment typical of Israel’s establishment was uttered by Simon Perez: “Good and correct politics do not need advertising, it speaks for itself.” Unfortunately this has become one of the components of the State of Israel’s worldview. As a result, Israel has to constantly defend itself and wrestle for every inch of the information ground, which was ceded without a fight to begin with.7 How successful the deniers’ propaganda can be and how well anyone who so wishes can “educate himself ” is exemplified in an episode at the beginning of Kenneth Stern’s book. He refers to an exchange between an NBC correspondent and one of the protesters against NBC’s showing of the film “Holocaust,” which took place in New York on 9 September 1979. This typical demonstrator explained: Because this is a Zionist attempt to force upon Americans a guilt complex so that we would not be able to react objectively to our Middle East policies that is costing our taxpayers billions of dollars, thrown away at Israel’s military needs.” — “But wasn’t the Nuremberg Tribunal proof of the authenticity of the Holocaust?” — “No, these days not a single serious historian perceives it to be anything other than the unjust court of the victors.” — “And so Jews were never killed in Germany?” — “No, in Germany there was discrimination against the Jews, and the government aimed to deport them, but not destroy them.8

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS

And this — in America! So must one struggle against this? Proving that two times two is still four? But the boundless hyperactivity of the deniers thrown against the equally outstanding passivity of neoliberal politicians, journalists, and, sometimes, historians, with all their heads in a postmodernist muddle, proves that, yes one needs to fight them! But how? “Getting oneself “dirty” by participating with them in public “debates”? Proving to them point by point that they are incorrect here and there and explaining why? Or smiling haughtily and contemptuously during joint talk shows? Or else to do neither and completely turn over the initiative into their unlazy hands? 2 The denial of the Holocaust is not that young, in 2007 it could have celebrated its 60th anniversary. Moreover from the very start it was a fully international pastime. The first to engage in it and even, for a while, set its tone were the French — at first a convinced fascist collaborationist, and later — a convinced communist and socialist. As early as 1947, one of them, Maurice Bardeche, aired his doubts in the press concerning the authenticity of at least part of the documents from the Nuremberg Tribunal about the concentration camps:9 he was the first to “realize” that it wasn’t the SS-men that were behind the Nazi crimes, but the exceptionally harsh war-time conditions causing the emaciation of the population and epidemics, as well as, last but not least, the prisoners themselves, who were, as is well known, an embittered and cruel lot. An even more refined argument in the same spirit was presented by Paul Rassinier, a French parliamentarian who had been an anti-Nazi French Resistance fighter and a prisoner of the German concentration camps, Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora. In 1948 he published a book, Le Passage de la Ligne (The Crossing of the Line), in which, without denying the politics of terror and the extermination of Jews in concentration camps, he puts the blame for all this on the so-called “prisoner-functionaries” — the kapo, the wardens of the barracks, blocs, etc.10 Moreover he refused, in principle, to accept the reliability of any witness testimony. In 1964, in his book, The Drama of the European Jews, Rassinier went even further and was the first to insist that there had been no gas chambers. His other important claim to fame is his conspiracy theory: that

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the myth of the six million exterminated Jews is a “cynical falsification” that is needed only by Israel in order to extract reparations from Germany which are calculated based on the number of fatalities. It should be noted that in 1961 there appeared the monumental historical epic by Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. It had the effect of a matador’s red cloth on Rassinier, inspiring his series of demographic-statistical “denunciations,” realized mainly with the help of misquoting and out-of-context juxtaposition of various archival sources and quantifications.11 In 1978, Rassinier’s major works were united under one book cover — Debunking the Genocide Myth — and published in the US in English.12 In Germany of the 1950-1960s there was something going on as well. In 1952 in Tubingen, Dr. Herbert Grabert established the Institute for German Post-War History, while in 1958 in Hannover, a Committee for the Restoration of Historical Truth was organized, and it felt no shame about using such familiar expressions about the Jews being a “cancerous tumor on the body of people.” Right-wing radical newspapers in 1962-1963 disseminated information about Hitler not knowing anything about the crimes, and though the Holocaust was not great, it was, nevertheless, the well-deserved punishment for the Jewish trade practices and for the murder of patriots by the Bolsheviks.13 In 1967 in Austria, Franz Sheydl’s three-volume The History of How Germans Were Outlawed, which once again alleged that there had been no gas chambers and that it was all based on propaganda pranks of the Allies. Though when it came to the actual denying of the Holocaust, the Holocaust which still stood before the eyes of millions of testifiers and eyewitnesses, no one then would dare to go that far. The galvanizing spark flew later, in the 1970s, when a series of publications about Auschwitz appeared stating that it was a patently deceitful myth.14 The demon of Holocaust denial must have reached the US in the early 1950s. It arrived and fell on fertile soil, manured by those who in the US were called “isolationists.” I am referring to those politicians,15 journalists, and historians16 who considered US participation in WWII to be an unjustifiable mistake, and the crimes perpetrated by the US (the bombing of German and Japanese cities, the postwar proscription of Germans, the famine in postwar Germany) to be atrocities no lesser than the German crimes. Clearly such an approach, fraught with the search and the quick “detection” of those population groups (i.e. Jews) interested in the war, inevitably relativized all German crimes, including the Holocaust. < 10 >

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In the US, this great nation of emigrants, the denial of the Holocaust initially took on a rather specific form of the myth, the myth about how all or most of the Jews remained intact: none of them perished, or at least not the majority of them, but safely emigrated to either Palestine or the US, and still live among us, and nobody — under the pressure of the Jewish lobby — bothers to conduct a population recount.17 And as to the numbers, there were never any 6 million, there were no more than 600,000 people, the maximum amount of Jews that ever lived in Germany (such an assumption is especially curious not so much in its use of demographical data, but in how it was applied, namely by “ignoring” millions of Eastern-European Jews, it dissected and rudely distorted the data!). The key figure of early American isolationism was Harry Elmer Barnes, a respectable professor, a German history specialist who already from the times of WWI justified German policies and condemned American policies.18 Germany, according to Barnes, was beyond any blame: it was England and Poland that forced it to tangle in that war. The same thesis served as the foundation of the book by David L. Hoggan, The Forced War, which was published in German in 1964.19 The “forced war,” the “preventive strike,” the “peaceful and happy life under Hitler” — all of these were the favorite themes of deniers’ historiography. It would have been swell if this mythography could totally do without Jews! But to do without them (even in their absence) was just impossible. Barnes also took the first place in the public accusations of the State of Israel: in 1968 he accused the 20-year-old state in receiving billions of deutschmarks from Germany for non-existent corpses. Another key figure among the Holocaust deniers in the US was Austin J. App, who was a professor of English Literature at Scranton University (before the war) and at the La Salle College (after the war), he also served for many years as the president of the Federation of Americans of German descent, and a tireless and shameless anti-Semitic enthusiast. In the first months after the war, even as he justified German policies, he did not deny the Holocaust. He even called for the punishment of the culprits, including those on the winning side — people guilty of plundering or violating the rights of the civil population. But his world-view, as he set upon his chosen path, could not help but evolve, and in 1974 he published the book, The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German people for hard marks with fabricated corpses, in which he laid down his “Eight Axioms,” that have become a kind of catechism for the Holocaust deniers.20 < 11 >

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Here is the gist of them: 1. As it tried to solve the Jewish question, Germany had in mind the deportation and not the annihilation of Jews. If they had intended to exterminate, then would they have left half a million of Jews alive in the concentration camps? Of course not. And they did survive, and then moved to Palestine, and are continuing to tirelessly milk Germany. 2. Not a single person died in a gas chamber in any of the concentration camps on German soil, and there is more and more proof that no one was killed by gas in Auschwitz. The Nazi gas chambers simply did not exist. Those that were built in Auschwitz were merely for disinfection purposes, while in the crematoria they were incinerating the corpses of the dead, and people could have died for thousands of different reasons, including British-American bombings. 3. Most of the Jews about whose fates nothing is known were from the territories that were under the Soviets and not the Germans. (The subtext here being that if they really were killed, could it have been by the Soviets?) 4. In the majority of the cases where the Jews were liquidated by the Germans, these were subversive elements, partisans, spies, saboteurs — i.e. criminals, whose punishment is not prohibited by international law. 5. If there was any likelihood that the Nazis had indeed exterminated 6 million Jews, then the World Jewry would have allocated funds for an investigation, and Israel would have opened up its archives. However, none of this has happened, and instead they are harassing everyone who is trying to expose their cheating. So what is this “six million” if not forgery? 6. Neither the Jews nor their mass media have the slightest proof of the veracity of their tales. All of the confessions by Höss, Eichmann, and others were given under extreme duress or else falsified. 7. It is the accusers and not the accused who must prove that the number of victims was 6 million, but the Talmudists and Bolsheviks forced Germany into paying without asking too many questions. 8. But even in the calculations of the number of victims made by Jewish scholars, there are such absurd discrepancies, that it is beyond any doubt that there is no scientific basis for their accusations. Very characteristic of App is his passionate desire to harness the Jews together with the Bolsheviks in one relay team. Both were interested, first, in the blowing out of proportion the lies about their own losses, and, < 12 >

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secondly, in the masking of their own crimes against the Jews, which were greater, as App assumes, than those of the Germans.21 No less interesting is App’s tendency to personify any pro-Jewish policies: for the US, such an incarnation was the Secretary of Finance, Morgentau, while for the USSR, for some reason, it was Ilya Ehrenburg. In the policy-setting article that opened the first issue of Journal of Historical Review, App arrogantly threw down the gauntlet to all “exterminationists”: Those who throw around large round numbers, like six million gassed, four million in Auschwitz, two million by mobile units in Russia, let them come up with the proofs — the graves, the bones, the ashes. Six million corpses do not just disappear. They accuse, so they must prove. But in their default, it seems that it is up to us Revisionists to show that the figure of six million is a totally unsubstantiated, brazen lie. What slender means I have had at my disposal, including some ten trips to Europe, including Dachau, Arolsen, and many interviews, induce me to estimate the number of Jewish casualties under the Third Reich at 300,000 in round numbers. Until Jewish publicists come up with solid evidence to the contrary, which so far they have not even realistically tried to do, I will consider 300,000 casualties — some from executions, from reprisals, most of them (like Anne Frank) from diseases.22

Though perhaps App’s greatest peculiarity was that the anti-Semite in him was so much stronger than the anti-historian, he did not confine himself just to Holocaust denial or WWII in general. He would throw bridges to the Doomsday War in the Middle East or the energy crisis of 1973, for all of which the same were to blame, namely the Jews. In other words, he was the first denier of geopolitical persuasion who began to consciously “dig” under Israel’s right to exist. In the 1970s there appeared a whole series of publications that were specifically devoted to Auschwitz, in particular, Hexeneinmaleins der Lüge (Dubious Combinations of Lies) by Emil Aretz and Auschwitzlüge, 1973, by Thies Christoferson, the ex-sondefuhrer of the SS for agriculture in one of the Auschwitz branches in 1944, who had priority in coining the very promising term — “Auschwitz lie.” In 1973, a lawyer from Hamburg, Wilhelm Stäglich, published a short essay, “The Myth of Auschwitz,” which in 1979 came out under separate cover, published by the Grabert publishing house in Tubingen.23 Having laid his legal skills on the altar of the denier pathos, he found himself a part in the < 13 >

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denier choir: his main role became the disavowal of documentary and witness testimonies. Having analyzed the proceedings of the Wannsee conference, Staglich threw out all the phrases whose meaning was clear in the Jewish context, and what remained was a text that was imbued with an almost paternal concern by the Third Reich for the Jews who were being resettled to the East, enough to make one cry. He also questioned the testimonies of the eyewitnesses to the selection and gassing in Auschwitz — the doctors and the members of the sonderkommando.24 By rights, one of the more “successful” authors among the deniers is Richard Harwood, whose book, Did Six Million Really Die? Truth at Last came out in 1975 practically at the same time in England and in Germany.25 A. Suzman and D. Diamond from South Africa took it upon themselves to verify the author’s identity.26 The results proved to be negative: there was not a single instructor, student, or even graduate from London University by that name.27 In essence, in all of these books, practically regardless of the author or his surreptitiousness, the same theme is endlessly harped upon — that of the Jewish world conspiracy and the peaceful evacuation of Jews from the camps. In this connection, there is an interesting episode related in the late 1970s to a film journalist Ebbo Deman by Joseph Erber, the ex-director of a woman’s camp at the concentration camp in Birkenau and a participant in one of the Auschwitz trials in the 1960s. Once (while in prison!) he came across the book by the above-mentioned Emil Aretz in which he read, with amazement, that no Jews had been exterminated in Auschwitz. This agitated him to such an extent that he wrote the publishing house, asking for the writer’s address, who was clearly misled by his informants, and whom he wanted to enlighten, as it were, strait from the horse’s mouth. The publishing house informed him that the poor author had gone the way of all flesh. Erber’s words in this connection, as pronounced during the trial, are cited as an epigraph to this article (see).28 3 The old guard of deniers, Bardeche, Berns, Rassinier, Hoggan, and App, did not scruple of anything: they resorted to any, including the most absurd, accusations and “arguments,” often contradicting not only the historical truth and common sense, but each other as well.29 Far from making them any more convincing, it rather served to discredit the movement in the < 14 >

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eyes of many, which is why the new generation of deniers that took their place started by conducting a “revision” of their own historical “legacy.” The revision, however, was not of the strictest kind: having rejected the most incongruous of their accusations, the deniers of the late 1970s set to work with the same enthusiasm, but with a new elegance and in new clothes. Their incontestable leader, Arthur R. Butz, was an American of German-Italian descent and an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.30 In 1976 he published a book, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry,”31 which proved to be a turning-point for the new generation of Holocaust deniers. For the first time in this field there appeared a book equipped with the full scholarly apparatus — references, footnotes, etc., that polemicized not only with the opponents, but with the “inaccuracies” of the previous deniers themselves. The consistently calm tone, without hysterics, that was maintained throughout the entire book, was also something new. Thus it comes as no surprise that the book received significant attention and was reviewed by many reputable newspapers. But what is even less surprising is that this book was published by that same “brown” American publishing house, Noontide Press, and that it was translated into German, moreover it was published in parts in issue after issue of the right radical newspaper, Deutsche Nationalzeitung. Behind the scholarly packaging and the lulling gauze of calm objectivity there hid the same poorly camouflaged anti-Semitism. Just the mocking quote marks alone (“Holocaust”) are worth a thousand words for those who suffered through the Holocaust and did or didn’t survive! Butz did not ignore the demographic aspects. He reiterated that after the war America quietly took in those same millions that the Jews came up short of after the war. It makes one wonder why the Americans did not also take in the SS St. Louis with merely a couple of hundred Jews on board? The victorious nations, according to Butz, even on the eve of their victory had conducted an incredibly concerted campaign of falsifying thousands of documents with the help of which they later put Germany in the dock at Nuremberg. (It makes one wonder why, given that falsifying drive, they did not dash off some decision of the Wannsee conference or another centerpiece document about the extermination of the Jews?) Even the Nazi criminals, according to Butz, were driven by the global Jewish backstage manipulators to the point where they did everything in their power to wrongfully incriminate themselves at the celebrated trials at Nuremberg, Frankfurt, or < 15 >

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Jerusalem. (It makes one wonder also, if those Jewish conspirators were so powerful, how is it possible that Hitler was able to come to power and be so triumphant over some ten plus years?) An event that caused a veritable commotion, if not panic, in the American deniers’ milieu was the airing by NBC in the spring of 1978 of an 8-hour and 4-part TV series, “Holocaust,” by Herbert Brodkin and Robert Berger, which was watched by 49% of the nation’s viewers.32 A feeble attempt to counter this powerful media blow was the publication, in the middle of the summer of 1978, of the previously mentioned collection of denier studies by Rassinier. At the same time the “Holocaust” TV series and its incredible success served in no small measure to consolidate and institutionalize the deniers. In 1978, in the small town of Torrance near Los Angeles a private Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was established. Its first director was Lewis Brandon,33 who had recently arrived in California from England. However, the real master of the institute, who kept in the background, was Willis A. Carto, the treasurer of the organization, Liberty Lobby, and one of the most infamous racists and anti-Semites in the US. In the early part of 1981, due to internal differences, he fired Brandon and appointed Tom Marcellus as director. Formally, the activities of the institute and of its quarterly publication, Journal of Historical Review (JHR),34 was not only devoted to the Holocaust, but all other “departures from the historical truth,” regardless of the time and place of their occurrence. Though it precisely brings to mind the comment by Russia’s ex-Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin: “Whatever social organization we try and establish, we still get the CPSU,” — even the research on the prisoners of war from the times of the American Civil War inevitably managed to get compared and juxtaposed with the Holocaust. Corresponding “bridges” — and this probably is the most notable fact — were thrown not only into the past, but into the future, i.e. into the current politics: IHR seemed to be cautioning its tax-paying fellow Americans about the perils and catastrophic consequences which could result from the US following the track of pro-Zionist and pro-Israel policies.35 In other words, already toward the end of the 1970s, the theme of Holocaust denial was fully perceived as an instrument of political pressure on Israel. Be it in a veiled manner or openly, the question was stated as follows: if the deniers of the Holocaust are correct, then the State of Israel is no longer legitimate, as it was created on the foundation of the non-existent bones and ashes of millions of victims. < 16 >

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In September 1979, IHR held its first Conference of Revisionists in Torrance, California, which subsequently became an annual event. The second one took place in the summer of 1980 at the Pomona College in Claremont, California.36 These conferences were highly conducive to the consolidation of the deniers’ movement.37 When it came to participating in other anti-Semitic forums, the deniers were not forgotten. Thus, Butz took part in the so-called Nation of Islam Saviors’ Day organized in 1985 by Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Black Muslims in America.38 In another similar forum — the International AntiZionist Conference, that had been scheduled to take place in November 1992 in Stockholm, and where Farrakhan, David Irving, Robert Fauirisson, and Fred A. Leuchter were supposed to participate.39 (By the way, sessions of the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee which existed in 1983-1994, comprised exclusively of “helpful” Jews and preside over by Colonel General David Dragunskiy, had a pronounced “anti-Zionist,” i.e. anti-Israel orientation, could hardly be listed among such events: the Committee never dealt with the issue of the Holocaust or its denial, because according to the ideological doctrine of the CPSU, there was no Holocaust in the USSR, instead there were the crimes of the Nazi savages against the Soviet people regardless of nationality). However, the conference did not take place in Stockholm, instead on 19 November 1992 another conference was held, in Germany, in the city of Weinheim, and was organized by the chairman of the right-wing radical National Party of Germany, Günter Deckert. Approximately 120 deniers participated, including F. Leuchter, who told about the results of his research and concluded his presentation with the following: “The Holocaust was not technically possible.” The audience applauded: 45 years of repentance was more than enough, especially for sins which, it turned out, had never taken place. At the end of the conference Deckert called for the establishment of an international commission which would verify whether or not the Holocaust ever took place. “It is time to get rid of the lie! Let’s do away with the Holo!” he concluded.40 A major event in the denier community was the international conference held by the so-called “Adelaide Institute” and organized by Frederick Toeben in 1994.41 It took place in Australia on 7-9 March 1998. Around fifty people participated, including Arthur Butz, Jürgen Graf, Robert Faurisson and others.42 The latest events of this kind were two international conferences with the pretentious title — On the Global Problems of World History — one of < 17 >

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which took place on 6-7 October, 2001 in Trieste,43 and the other on 2627 January, 2002 in Moscow.44 But conferences aside, perhaps the more effective instrument of public opinion manipulation was, despite its total non-recognition by professional historians, the Institute of Historical Review’s periodical, the JHR quarterly which was published in Torrance and tried, as much as it could, to pose as a scholarly publication (its first editor was Mark Weber).45 The journal very quickly became the central forum for the deniers of the entire world. The first issue came out in the spring of 1980, and the last, 96th one, in MayAugust 2002.46 About the time of the JHR’s first appearance, at the very end of the 1970s, there climbed two more “stars” in the deniers’ sky, and both were from Europe. The first one was the German professor Helmut Diwald from Erlangen, a well-known expert on ancient history and the author of the monumental work, History of the Germans, which was published in October 1978. Only a brief a couple of pages were devoted to the monstrous events of modern times, and only in terms of their being full of “deliberate errors, falsifications and exaggerations aimed at a total disqualification of an entire people.” The genocide of the Jews was seen by him as the history of an incomplete emigration: The term “general solution” or “final solution” during the war should be understood as follows: since emigration after the war became impossible, all Jews were supposed to be evacuated from Central Europe to the East, isolated from the German population, and concentrated in new ghettoes. This plan was outlined by the Chief of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich on 24 June 1940. What actually took place in the subsequent years remains, despite all the literature, unclear . . . .

And about the gas chamber in Dachau he wrote that it had been built by the Americans, about the high death rate in Auschwitz — that it was due to its inmate contingent having a high concentration of the weakest and most unfit people, and all this long after a series of “Auschwitz trials” in Frankfurt in 1963-1965! The second “star” was the French literary scholar, Robert Faurisson, from the University of Lyon.47 In his book In Defense of Memory — Against Those Who Falsify History: The Question of Gas Chambers (1980), both the Shoa and the gas chambers were declared to be Zionist fabrications and on that basis they were denied. To eliminate such a number of people, he insisted, was simply technically impossible. Moreover he claimed that the < 18 >

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Anne Frank diaries had been forged by her father. Faurisson was fired from his job for all this, and later, accused of falsifying history, he was tried and imprisoned for 3 months and fined 21,000 francs. The case by itself was not that exceptional, but it became significant as hundreds of people stood up for Faurisson’s right to express his thoughts, and a petition to that effect was even signed. They were joined by the Holocaust denier, John Bennett, from Australia, as well as the famous scholar and publicist, Noam Chomsky, who is Jewish and resolutely opposed to Faurisson’s views, and yet he defended Faurisson’s right to conduct any kind of research, even if considered unpopular by society. Specifically in “Noam Chomsky’s Search for the Truth” he had written: I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.48

This statement instigated heated polemics in the academic and public circles of Europe, America, and Israel. The “Faurisson Case” proved how significant divergences and interpretations of the concept of “human rights” can be, as well as the boundaries of its application. In 1985 yet another French denier, Henry Roques, had his say. In his dissertationn which he defended in the University of Nantes, he likewise denied the existence of gas chambers and accused the SS Officer, Kurt Gerstein, who was one of the first to notify the Allies about what was going on in Auschwitz, of making it all up.49 Such aggressive institutionalization of the deniers, in turn, forced — a better word could not be found — both the scholars and the politicians not only to begin paying attention to them, but to respond as well. An impressive form of such a response was the International Conference of the Liberators of Nazi Concentration Camp Prisoners, which was organized by the American council of remembrance of Victims of the Nazis and which took place on 26-28 October 1981 at the US State Department in Washington. One of its main goals became the refutation of neo-Nazi propaganda that, allegedly, there was no mass extermination of Jews and people of other nationalities in Hitler’s concentration camps on the German-occupied territories.50 < 19 >

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With the emergence of the JHR, the deniers got their hopes up for the long-awaited (even if partial!) recognition by the world of real, serious historians. With this goal in mind, the first issue of the JHR, which came out in the beginning of 1980, was sent out for free to 12,000 members of the Organization of American Historians, thereby causing heated discussion among the members as to whether or not they should react to the JHR. Carl Degler, the president of this Organization, supported the idea of creating a group of independent experts for the assessment of the contents of the received journal, but this idea was never realized. A similar discussion took place some 10 years later, in 1990-1991, this time inside the Association of American Historians, the main issue being whether or not the papers published in the JHR should be included in bibliographies. The Association finally declined to have anything more to do with the JHR because of the Holocaust deniers’ glaring lack of professionalism as historians, and especially because of the anti-Semitism that they exuded from everywhere: the Association basically likened speaking or corresponding with the deniers to discussing affirmative action with practicing Ku-Klux-Klanners. Incidentally, the “revisionists” were the first to begin compiling their own bibliography; their works through 198151 were provided in an annotated list prepared by Keith Stimely: http://www.ihr.org/books/stimely/stimely. shtml. The autobibliography of the JHR publications has been fully developed as well.52 What one cannot deny the deniers is the extent of their energy and creativity. An example of their very original form of activity became the JHR’s establishment of the “Revisionism Followers’ Conference Prize” in the amount of $50,000 that would be awarded to anyone who could present to the jury uncontestable proof of the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews in gas chambers during World War II. By publishing the Prize Charter in April 1980 and circulating it to potential contestants, the organizer were hoping to lure their opponents into the trap of a dialogue (and a scandal to boot) that would normally be inevitable in such a case. And there were two rather prominent figures who accepted the challenge despite its obviously provocative nature.53 They were Simon Wiesenthal54 and Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor, who had been attacking the IHR in his contributions to the Jerusalem Post newspaper. Mermelstein not only took up the gauntlet but also threatened to sue the IHR in case its reply was not received by January 20, 1981. < 20 >

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Wiesenthal’s contest was the first to come to an end as he proposed submitting the case for adjudication to a justice of California’s Supreme Court. The IHR did not accept and proposed instead a jury composed of Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, and Ditlieb Felderer,55 who were all members of the JHR Editorial Board and well-known deniers. On learning about that triumvirate, Wiesenthal called off his application, refusing to take part in a farce where one of the sides was claiming the roles of both the judge and the prosecutor. However, Mermelstein was undaunted and filed, in February 1981, a lawsuit against the IHR, Carto, and Brandon. Already at the preliminary hearing judge Thomas T. Johnson entered it on the record that the question of whether Jews were or were not gassed at Auschwitz would not be debated because that was an indisputable fact. The opposite side was not even heard, and that’s quite a shame. After all, it was then unclear what the process of adjudication was all about. It would have been much more effective and compliant with due process not to dismiss the accusations as patently absurd, but to expose their absurdity and record it in a court decision.56 However that may be, the court ordered the IHR to pay Mermelstein $90,000 ($50,000 in prize money and $40,000 in damages) and to publish an apology to all Auschwitz survivors, repeating the wording of the indictment.57 The case was materially conducive to the loss of “standing” and “scientific reputation” by the IHR. It also demonstrated that an open confrontation with Holocaust deniers, presided over by an independent third party, could be much more effective than simply ignoring them. A contemptuous and belittling stance taken vis-à-vis those people, based on the belief that they deserve no better, and avoidance of a direct clash with them is even more of a windfall for them than contact and engagement. They invariably interpret that as a fear of the truth on the part of the “exterminationists” and celebrate a “victory.” In today’s situation where Holocaust denial can also be seen as law infringement such “contact” is unavoidable anyway, at any rate when pursuing legal action against deniers. And it is not a matter of Jews and true historians against the opposing deniers; it is a fight for the minds of all the others, that is, the public at large. It cannot be overlooked that this struggle has long brought the deniers and those whom they attack into a competitive kind of relationship. And the deniers’ aggressive and often inventive and creative tactics have been scoring more and more points for them. < 21 >

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An ad campaign for denier-sponsored lectures in university newspapers can serve as a typical example. The ads ran something like this: “The History of the Holocaust: What’s Wrong with It? A Case for a Wide Debate.” The campaign was launched by Bradley Smith from California, who drove it in a big way. Together with Mark Weber,58 he organized in 1987 The Committee on Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) which was sponsored by William Curry, an entrepreneur and an anti-Semite from Nebraska, who had come up with the idea in the first place. His own attempt to place such a paid ad in The Daily Nebraskan in 1986 failed,59 but Smith was the ideal man for his project — one who was both aggressive and success-driven. Curry’s failure told Smith that he had no hay to make with large regional newspapers whose ad revenues ran into millions of dollars. So he changed his target audience opting for small-circulation papers published by major American universities. Out of something like 35 universities contacted by Smith starting in 1989, 15 responded favorably60. Announcements of the CODOH lectures appeared on the first pages, but were usually accompanied by editorial comments critical of the project’s ethics and scholarly value. Nonetheless, thousands of young people read that “information” and hundreds surely took the bait. But the campaign’s main achievement was elsewhere. Probably without planning it in advance, the deniers squarely hit the “carotid artery” of American democracy, the First Amendment to the US Constitution which enshrines the freedom of speech. It was this subject that most of the university debates were centered upon, some of them spilling over into university newspapers and even into some major national ones.61 In early 1992, Smith decided to take a second go at it and circulated a new ad to university papers, titled in Latin: “Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus” (False in one thing, false in everything) in which he was accusing Simon Wiesenthal and Stephen Wiese of spreading rumors of the so called “Jewish soap,” which had allegedly been made by the Nazis from Jewish corpses. But this time he had zero success: none of the papers agreed to run the ad, including those that had carried the first one. Yet on the whole, Smith’s “campus” campaign did not only achieve its objective, but even surpassed it. Firstly, almost a half of the universities contacted did not shut their doors before him; secondly, many students, teachers, and even managers were quite enthusiastic about the project; and, thirdly, TV stations showed an interest in the deniers for the first time. < 22 >

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However, there was an unintended side effect, too: as a result of the campaign, many universities introduced or expanded their courses in the history of the Holocaust. But that was more of a response to the success of Smith’s campaign than a sign of interest in its content.62 4 One of the central figures in the Holocaust denier community is doubtless Ernst Zündel, a.k.a. Cristof Friedrich),63 a photo touch-up artist by trade originally, who has been residing in Cananda since 1958. He is the author of the book The Hitler We Loved and Why,64 as well as the “Holocaust 101” digest. However, his contribution to the denier movement is not so much as a creative person (he seldom ventures into anything more than leaflets and brochures) but as an organizer — the deniers’ global manager of sorts and their most effective showman. Just like G. Grabert Zündel was early to realize the role that could be played by the media in the advancement of their common cause. The publishing house Samizdat Publication he had founded in Toronto back in 1976 soon became all but the largest one in the right-wing extremist universe. It prints and sends to Germany and all over the world both the deniers’ writings and other kinds of anti-Semitic and racist literature, as well as recordings of Hitler’s speeches, period films and songs, in particular, the film “A German and A Jew Visiting Auschwitz. Since 1990, he has been disseminating his views over the radio waves and, starting in 1994, the Internet as well (www.zundelsite.org). The site is developed and administered by his wife and comrade-in-arms Ingrid Zündel-Rimland. Holocaust denial being against the law in Canada, Zündel has had to stand several trials there. In 1985, he was sentenced to 15 months in jail for fomenting hatred through the publication and dissemination of false and provocative writings, but soon was released on appeal citing procedural irregularities65. In early 1988 he was again tried and sentenced in Canada, but this time to only 9 months in jail. Appearing at the trial as witnesses were J. Burg,66 R. Faurisson, D. Irving, and F. Leuchter, an engineer from Boston who had consulted several State governments and individual penitentiaries on matters of setting up equipment for death sentence execution.67 The latter’s role and “services” deserve a special mention. The Zündel trial was already in progress when Irving and Faurisson got in touch with Leuchter and, after two days of shoulder-rubbing, sent him on a generously financed (by Zündel) “expedition” to the German death camp sites in < 23 >

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Poland. His retinue was comprised of his wife, a drafstman, a cameraman and an interpreter. While in Oswiecim and Majdanek, he took samples of the air and the concrete rubble on the gas chamber ruins, which he then sent for chemical analysis to a laboratory based in his native Massachusetts. The direct product of that “blitz analysis” was Leuchter’s An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland,68 which soon saw two separate publications: one by Zündel’s Samizdat and the other by Focal Point Publications in London (which belonged to D. Irving).69 The analysis which, incidentally, had been performed with numerous violations of the air sampling protocol did not reveal any significant traces of the Zyklon-B gas but did find them in the disinfection chamber at Auschwitz-1. Leuchter’s testimony at the trial detailing his newly obtained “scientific findings” certainly produced a strong impression on both the Judge and the public. The prosecution was definitely taken aback and chose to concentrate on trying to call into question Leuchter’s qualifications for conducting such experiments,70 rather than on the report itself. Only gradually, as experts were invited to evaluate the report, did the fog enveloping it started to dissipate — much like the cyanide vapors whose traces he had been so unsuccessfully searching for. Capitalizing on his success, Leuchter established, in 1989, a company that offered advice on execution techniques as well as equipment for practically any type of capital punishment. As a result of a lawsuit that was brought against him by Shelly Z. Shapiro, President of the Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice,71 and Beate Klarsfeld, Leuchter had to admit to the abuse of a Doctor’s title and engineering activity, recanted on his Report and other dubious writings and pledged to keep away from all those things in the future. But all that did not change much in the perception of Leuchter by his former and future comrades. His contribution to Holocaust denial proved far more significant than his courtroom achievements. The Leuchter Report, despite its obviously unscientific, speculative, and dubious nature (or perhaps thanks to it), clearly hit the bull’s eye, and many perceive it as the ultimate scientific proof that no Holocaust has ever taken place. That is why the Report has become for the deniers as much of an icon as the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion are for the anti-Semites in general. As for Zündel himself, his trial came to an end in 1992, and he was declared a wanted man in a number of countries. In 2003, he was extradited < 24 >

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from the US to Canada and from there to Germany where he stood trial in November 2005 and then in February 2006 for fomenting interethnic enmity and was sentenced to 5 years in prison, the maximum punishment for that offence. He is serving his term in Mannheim.72 The same Manheim court sent Zündel’s lawyer, Silvia Stolz,73 to jail as well. She got 3.5 years for her classically perfect, unadulterated, animal antiSemitism. However, as Zündel languishes in jail, his site74 keeps publishing his letters from captivity, documentary evidence from his trial, and references to other deniers’ web pages. In Zündel’s forced absence, the denier orchestra, although not as loud as before, has not fallen apart. The first fiddle, however, is now played by other soloists, like D. Irving and the new star in the denier constellation Jürgen Graf,75 the author of The Holocaust Swindle, The Holocaust on the Test Stand, and other books and brochures.76 These writings were ruled anti-Semitic and racist by the District Court of Baden in north Switzerland, which sentenced him, on 21 July 1998, to 14 (some say, 15) months in jail, while his publisher Foerster got 12. In addition, both were fined 8,000 Swiss francs (5,500 USD), and told to surrender the 55,000 francs (about 38,000 USD) received from the sales of Graf ’s writings.77 The court ordered the publications themselves to be confiscated and destroyed. As a result, Graf was fired from the private school where he was teaching literature. In a bid to escape the punishment, Graf emigrated first to Byelorussia, and then to Russia, where they welcomed him with open arms and where he resides to this day. Back in 1995, Graf and an Italian by the name of Carlo Mattogno paid two visits to Russian archives: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF) and the Russian State Military Archive (RSMA), where they went through tens of thousands of pages, making copies of some four thousand. Here are the conclusions they contrived to come to: We now know not only what documents are in these two archives, but also what documents are not there . . . Documents showing clearly that no prisoners were killed in gas chambers, or which disprove the existence of a wartime German extermination program, would probably have been removed or destroyed.78

The Myth of the Holocaust and other writings by Graf (for example, Treblinka. A Critical Analysis of the Official Version) are available in Russian as well, on the internet site Russkaya Liniya.79 J. Graf never tires of pleading < 25 >

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political innocence: “We are not responsible for the political consequences of revisionism. Of course I do not like Zionists very much, but I am not an anti-Semite and I don’t hate Jews . . . ”80 “I don’t hate Jews”! Bravo! Another noted denier of the new generation, along with Mattogno and Graf, is Germar Rudolf,81 a professional chemist, who came to prominence as a denier back in the 1990s when he published the book Dissecting the Holocaust under the pen name of Ernst Hauss. In 1993, following his illegal attempt to analyze the samples he had taken from the walls of the Oswiecim gas chambers in 1991, he was fired from the Max Plank Institute in Stuttgart. Nevertheless, he did publish the so-called “Rudolf ’s Conclusion,” an article on how he found no traces of cyanide on the gas chamber walls at Auschwitz, something that was touted as an irrefutable proof of no Holocaust having ever taken place, the only basis for the whole thing being a collusion between the Allies and the World Jewry. Starting in 1992, Rudolf was reading lectures on Holocaust denial. He was a contributor to the anti-Semitic Arab newspaper Alshaab and initiated the preparation of a consolidated collective monograph The Fundamentals of Recent History in which he played a key role. Rudolf became a member of the narrow circle of German deniers who were coordinating and defining the different efforts and actions undertaken by the “revisionists.” Central to that circle was the figure of a retired Major General Otto Ernst Remer, Director of the Remer-Heipke publishing house and the President of J.G Burg Society. He was also the publisher of the anti-Semitic Remer-Depeche magazine. In early 1993, Remer and his group, fearing renewed persecution in Germany, moved the center of their activity to Britain where they founded a twin publishing house named “Cromwell.” Already in Aaugust 1993, it started publishing a monthly magazine Deutschland Report which mimicked the RemerDepeche format. From November 1994 to June 1995 the Stuttgart Land Court had held a trial of Germar Rudolf82 which once again showed the entire arsenal and even a certain finesse of the deniers’ methods of proving the “non-existence” of the Holocaust (which combined both legal and illegal techniques, playing games with aliases, confusing cross-references, etc.). Rudolf was sentenced to 14 months in jail for publishing the above-mentioned “Rudolf ’s Conclusion,” which was branded anti-Semitic. Trying to escape imprisonment, Rudolf fled to Spain, then to Britain (where he set up a publishing house in Hastings) and, finally, to the US where he got married and asked for political asylum, which he was denied. < 26 >

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In October 2005, he was arrested in the US and extradited to Germany. The trial that was held in Mannheim sentenced him to 30 months in jail and confiscated the publisher’s bank account. Six months prior to that, in March 2005, Rudolf published his Lectures on the Holocaust, written in the form of a dialogue between Rudolf the Teacher and the Listener, a pretty intelligent student who asks questions that are answered by his wise and knowledgeable instructor. As time wore on, the revisionists’ argumentation was becoming increasingly sophisticated and, at the same time, ever more impudent. In the last count, as was noted by a historian from Munich Jürgen Zarusski, for the deniers “ . . . it is not a matter of science or scientific integrity in one form or another, albeit based on erroneously conceived tenets, but a specific form of political propaganda whose starting point and the ultimate goal is anti-Semitism.”83 Were it otherwise, they simply could not have possibly ignored the numerous and uncontestable witness accounts given by both the victims of the Holocaust (suffice it to cite the recovered notes written by sonderkommando members and buried in the ash pits near the crematoria84) and its survivors. Instead, we hear ravings of world Jewish conspiracy, of millions of survivors passed off as victims, millions of documents fabricated by the Jews, some of them on behalf of their very executioners. They stubbornly keep on “referencing” statements by certain organizations that had been fully disavowed back in the 1950s (like, for instance, claims of gas chambers having been used in Dachau). Another typical method of theirs is using the least reliable sources of information on the Holocaust, such, for example, as the “Hitler Diaries” discovered by Irving or the collection of documents brought to Switzerland on April 29 and 30 by the former GESTAPO Chief Mueller. The deniers also love to look for Jews in their ranks, and they do find them. This, in their view, acquits their movement of any accusations of antiSemitism and imparts it a patina of tolerance and, consequently, legitimacy. If such “helpful Jews” fail to materialize, they are bred in a test tube. Like, for instance, a certain Roger Dommergue Pollacco de Menasce who sprang into existence 1999. He had allegedly written a letter to Steven Spielberg consisting of incredibly hackneyed denier rhetoric but crowned with an extremely original title “Was There Really a Holocaust?”85 A relatively late addition to the deniers’ toolkit were the chemical tests of air samples made by America’s Leuchter in February 1980 and Germany’s Rudolf, in 1991. From the scientific point of view (taking into account the volatility of gaseous substances), the very idea of such sampling < 27 >

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is preposterous, to say nothing of such “material evidence” as empty gas cans found in great numbers at Auschwitz. But here again, it is not a matter of chemistry, nor is it that of history. The so-called Leuchter Report and “Rudolf ’s Conclusion” were hailed by the revisionists and readily included in their arsenals. As well as the democratic rhetoric invoking the freedom of speech and of scientific research, etc. The deniers keep saying that they are political prisoners and nothing less than martyrs in the cause of Germany’s national resurrection. There are few people as adept at passing themselves off as sufferers for the truth as the actual enemies of the truth — the Holocaust deniers. 5 Not infrequently, and more and more often of late, the deniers have been openly supported and reinforced by professional (or, at least, universityeducated) historians. One of the most important among those historians who have effectively sided with the deniers is the already mentioned professor from Erlangen Hellmut Diwald who, according to J. Zarusski,86 has established something of a “bridgehead for the revisionists” in the academic milieu. However, a virtual godsend for the deniers was professor Ernst Nolte. His name is linked to the debate on totalitarianism that flared up in the 1980s and was obviously shouldered by the deniers. Though not a de facto denier, Nolte, while examining misdeeds committed by other countries, was seeking to relativize Germany’s crimes (including the Holocaust), thus creating the necessary prerequisites for revising and glamorizing German history. In discussing the Holocaust, he maintained that Aryan victims at Auschwitz outnumbered Jewish ones, and that the Wannsee Conference may have never taken place at all. The einsatzkommandos and einsatzgruppen operating in the occupied territories were not killing Jews because they were Jews, but because they were partisans. He did not overlooked the fact that most books on the Holocaust were written by Jews. He believed that Hitler had a right, as he put it, to “intern” Jews. In his eyes, that was sufficiently justified by Haim Weizman’s statement made in September 1939 to the effect that after Germany’s invasion of Poland all the Jews of the world will join the fight on Britain’s side.87 As was noted by J. Zarusski, Nolte was the first and probably the only professional historian who paid a tribute of respect to the “revisionists” and < 28 >

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who, in all seriousness, referenced some of their writings. In so doing, he was extending his hand to the deniers — ostensibly, on behalf of the science of history itself, a hand which they had long been eagerly waiting for and which gave a blessing to what later came to be known as “moderate revisionism.” The latter, as opposed to “radical revisionism” did not dispute or deny all of the Holocaust wholesale, but did so partially and selectively.88 However, the most flamboyant and passionate figure among Holocaust deniers is the British historian David Irving, who is the movement’s unofficial guru.89 His first world bestseller, The Destruction of Dresden came out in 1963 and contained significantly exaggerated estimates of Germans killed during the British bombings of the city. In 1997, he published Hitler’s War90 in which he whitewashes Hitler and puts the entire blame for the mass killings on Himmler. Shifting the center of gravity to the question “Who is to blame?” and thus recognizing, albeit selectively, the Nazi crimes, Irving, in a sense, revised the early revisionists themselves, who had been denying all and everything. In the 1991 edition of the book, he replaced references to the Holocaust as a reality by far less definitive characterizations. In 1987, he claimed that the diary of Ann Frank was a forgery and publicly denied the existence of the gas chambers. And in 2000, he sued an American researcher Deborah Lipstadt for calling him one of the most noted and dangerous deniers in her book Relative: the Denial of the Holocaust.91 Irving lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay the Penguin Books publishers 3 million pounds in damages and legal costs. Unable to do so, Irving declared bankruptcy, forfeiting his house in London. Despite his declared renunciation of his old views, the full texts of his books are available on the Internet, including Nuremberg: The Last Battle where he says that the Nazis’ gas chamber atrocities were exaggerated by the Allies. Published on the Internet are also the different versions of his Hitler’s War. In 2005, Irving was arrested in Austria on a warrant issued back in 1989. He was tried and sentenced to three years in prison on charges of neo-Nazi activities one of which is, according to Austrian law, a public denial of the Holocaust.92 He was released on parole in 2006 and deported from the country. How deeply the poison of denial can penetrate the minds of even highly educated historians is evidenced by the case of Erwin Adler, assistant professor of Munich’s Brothers Scholl Institute of Political Science, who < 29 >

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became the center of a resounding scandal in 1996. When asked about the destruction of Jews during the war he had this to say: “I just have no knowledge of that, I wasn’t there when it happened.”93 The Institute interceded in his behalf, but the University removed him +from the faculty nonetheless. But if one takes Adler’s words, “I just have no knowledge of that, I wasn’t there when it happened,” and compare them the deniers’ staple utterances, the ugly sound of it will be all too familiar, epitomizing as it does the entire poisonous philosophy of Holocaust denial: “Whether it happened or not, we don’t know for sure, but most likely it didn’t.” Holocaust denial is one of the few remaining niches for today’s antiSemite to take (“Criticizing Israel” is another such outlet). Masquerading as “revisionism,” anti-Semitism is regressing to its national-socialist sources with their well-developed system of Aesopian figures of speech.94 In essence, the revisionists are targeting not only the Jews, they are targeting everybody. A perfect breeding solution for denialism, notes J. Zarussi, is provided by pseudo-pluralism with its “Anything Goes” credo or, in broader terms, the all-conquering atmosphere of post-Modernism with its historical projection of “Nothing Was!” The circle of those interested in “revisionism” is so far narrow enough, at least on the European stage, but its adepts are so active that the noise they manage to make is quite audible and is growing ever louder. Besides, they have now discovered a new vast space for extensive growth — in Russia, Ukraine, and, perhaps, Poland and the Baltic states.95 In many countries, anti-Semitic and denier passcodes are quite recognizable, even in election campaigns. Incidentally, the United States is one of them. Here, the presidential race of 1992 saw as many as two deniers on the Republican ticket: the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke — who proposed relegating Jews to “West Israel,” a reservation to be set up in Manhattan and Long Island96 — and Patrick Buchanan.97 Also, the very elegant Jean-Marie Le Pen of France does not only combat the Magrebians’ onslaught, but somebody else’s as well. He does not deny the Holocaust, but speaks of it as a very minor detail of the Second World War; and yet his National Front party garners 15 to 20% of the national vote. In Austria, Germany, and Italy right-wing radicals can count on 5-10% of the votes, but if the same electoral slogans were taken up by a larger traditional party, that share could shoot up to the “Le-Penian” 15-20%. < 30 >

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Anti-Semitic politicians do not always lose elections, they win them, too. Like, for example, the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman who never used the word Holocaust other than in quote marks. Similar leanings are popular in another former satellite and ally of the Nazi Germany — Slovakia.98 The last and the most dangerous case in point is President Ahmadinejad, whom we will keep coming back to in this article.

SOVIET AND POSTSOVIET TRADITIONS OF SILENCING AND DENYING THE HOLOCAUST 1 Carrying on the “traditions” of Czarist Russia, the USSR was a country that practiced state-sponsored anti-Semitism. As distinct from the official anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany where it took on truly cannibalistic forms, the USSR practiced it in a more “humane” variety which comprised a system of open and concealed discrimination and prohibitions, as well as the struggle against “cosmopolitism,” “Zionism,” and other euphemistic designations of the Jewish nation. There were no pogroms or anything like that in the USSR, and claims that a massive deportation of Jews was being prepared in 1953, logical as this might seem from circumstantial evidence, have to this date practically no documentary support.99 Based on their place of residence as of June 22, 1942, almost a half of the Holocaust victims died on the territory of the USSR. But in the context of that country’s politics, showing any respect for the Jewish victims was out of the question. The war was still in progress, but officers of the Red Army’s Main Political Department were already busy thinking how to best present its results. If the Jew-slayer Nazis were using Zyklon B to exterminate none other but Jews and were surfeiting themselves with Jewish blood, the internationalist-minded Bolsheviks were using political peroxide of their own making to expurgate that particular ethnic component from the monstrous crimes committed at Auschwitz and Baby Yar. Their strategy was not to minimize the number of victims, but to supplant one specific group of victims (Jews) by another, far less defined one (“Soviet people”). Already in possession of exhaustive information on Auschwitz, the USSR issued, using the ESC as its mouthpiece, a statement dated May 8 (!), 1945 “On the Monstrous Crimes of the German Government in Oswiecim” which < 31 >

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said that “over the period in existence of the Oswiecim camp the German executioners have exterminated no less than 4 million citizens of the USSR, Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Holland, Belgium, and other countries.” Well, what do you know — the Shoa of peaceful Soviet citizens! A Jewish catastrophe without Jews!100 When the war was over, the ban was extended to the very memory of the Holocaust and its enshrinement. Only in postwar Minsk was there built a monument telling the story of the Holocaust and bearing an inscription in Yiddish. A monument in Nevel had its six-point star of David “circumcised” to a five-pronged Communist one. Initiatives in building monuments to Jewish victims of Nazism were punished, too: the scientist and inventor V. Fundator, one of the designers of the famous Soviet T-34 tank, lost his job as the result of his intention to put up a memorial sign in his native shtetl Cherven in Byelorussia, while the seven people who wanted to build such a monument in Odessa were sentenced to 8-10 years in a labor camp for attempting to set up an “anti-Soviet and nationalist organization.” In 1948, the well-known Soviet actor Mikhoels was killed, and permission was denied for the publication of the “Black Book”; in 1949, the Jewish Museum in Vilnius was closed down. The Spectre of “Cosmopolitism,” conjured up in the Kremlin, was roaming the country and it was Jews — yes, none other but the surviving Jews! — who were filling the disgraceful lists of victims of not one, but two dictatorships.101 Soviet ideology, which was called upon to both sing the praises of the regime and cover its shame, had no place for a number of historical facts: golodomor, occupation, ostarbeiter slave labor, Soviet POWs, Vlasov’s army and other collaborationists, Jewish genocide, etc. — all such topics were taboo, unmentionable not only in writing but even in conversation! Ideology cannibalized history. With regard to the Holocaust, the ideological response of the Soviets was conceived of in a peculiarly internationalist spirit: to repeat, the main thing here was to obscure the purely ethnic, anti-Jewish element of Nazi policies, coupled with deliberate nonseparation of Jews, as a specific group, from the rest of the Nazi Germany’s victims. Accordingly, they were denied recognition of many of their civil and human rights, including the right to remember. As for the historiography and victim commemoration, the above-described “Internationalism” was expressed in the absence of Jewish attribution of the victims, their verbal proxies being “peaceful citizens” and, a particularly frequent one, “Soviet people.” Thus, the public was instilled with the belief that the Holocaust was nothing unique, that the Nazis were destroying all Soviet citizens: < 32 >

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Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Poles, and, well, Jews, too, it seems. Even in the poignantly clear cases like Baby Yar, the struggle for fair treatment and, if anything, compromise wordings was encountering stubborn ideological resistance and the unbendable dictatorial “No.” Maria Altman, the author of the book The Denial of the Holocaust. The History and Contemporary Trends is quite right when she writes: . . . Everything that was happening with this theme in the fields of history and socio-political writing in prior years (the 1950s through the 1980s) could be safely classified as a variety of Holocaust denial. This was expressed in silencing and concealing both the fact of the Holocaust itself (above all, that of Soviet Jews) and the existing documentary evidence of it that is kept in the state archives.102

M. Altman identifies the following six distinct tendencies in Holocaust depiction or interpretation in the Russian nationalist-patriotic materials: 1) direct and complete Holocaust denial; 2) calling into question its existence or, at least, some of its facts; 3) understatement of the scale of the tragedy; 4) distortion of events and facts; 5) misinterpretation of the term “Holocaust” itself; and 6) justification of Holocaust. Their favorite tools are claims that the Germans, in collusion with the Zionists, were destroying only Soviet Jews, and, above all, claims of the “Russian Holocaust” allegedly organized by Jews in the USSR. There is also a version of the “surviving Jews” myth contending that they were secretly evacuated to Tashkent in 1941.103 In everyday life, elements of Holocaust denial were already present in the Soviet “anti-Zionist” literature104 which accused “Zionists” of “capitalizing” on the sufferings of Jewish victims, exaggerating their number and, most importantly, being in a collusion with the Nazis. A classical example of such an approach is provided by a Candidate of History Sciences thesis which was defended at a closed session of the Scientific Council of the Order of the Red Banner Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The title of the thesis was a telling one: “On the Ties between Zionism and Nazism.” The aspirant was the current Head of the Palestine Autonomy Mahmud Abbas who was mentored by the former Director of the Institute, former Chief of the Main Intelligence Department of the KGB, and the former Prime Minister of Russia, Academician Evgeniy Primakov.105

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2 Until the late 1980s, the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon and a research subject was off-limits to Soviet historians. The situation changed under Gorbachev, and even more so, under Yeltsin. It was during their office that the Soviet (and then, the Russian) state gradually renounced statesponsored anti-Semitism as an ideological doctrine: Suslov’s ideological reins, saturated with tellings-off of dissenters at staff meetings and faculty councils, slipped out of the trembling hands. That had at least three consequences. First, post-Soviet Jewry used the fruits of liberty to initiate a virtual renaissance of Jewish life in Russia, both in its confessional and secular-cultural aspects. One of the expressions of that process was the revitalization of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian Judaica which certainly could not obviate the central Jewish problem of the 20th century — the study of the Holocaust. The ensuing resurgence of such research projects could only be compared to the recoil of a powerful spring. Very indicative in that context was the creation, in June 1992, of the Holocaust Science and Education Center and the appearance of the first articles and even monographs on the Holocaust in the territory of the former USSR. The second consequence of the de-etatification of anti-Semitism was its privatization. Anti-Semitism became a private matter for Russian citizens, and those of them who had such a propensity could now indulge that phobia with reckless abandon and, basically, with impunity, because the State, while discarding its anti-Semitism, did not give much thought to the legal bounds within which it would agree to put up with that form of its citizens’ private initiative. In those years, though, anti-Semitism lost its leading role in the context of general xenophobia. Now the main enemies were the peoples living in the Caucasus or, as they were called then and are still referred to today “persons of the Caucasus ethnicity.” Anti-Semitism as a phobia was reincorporated into a broader spectrum of worldview concepts, such as right-wing radicalism, chauvinism, and even Fascism, all of which feel quite at home in Russia. Sure enough, the deniers also found a place in that constellation, but Russian patriots had to content themselves with remakes of their Western colleagues’ creations because local-based expertise in the matter had yet to be generated, except for the pathological “exotics” like “raceologists” and “geo-politicians.”106 Not long ago, the Fuhrer of the “geo-politicians,” Alexander Dugin, came out in defense of Ahmadinejad. The latter, according to Dugin, does not < 34 >

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deny the Holocaust (oh no, nothing of the sort really!) but is simply trying (“maybe somewhat clumsily, at times”) to draw the world’s attention to the fact that the Holocaust is nothing less than a “religious thing,” deeply rooted in Judaism. Locking the Holocaust within religion and even equating it with the execution and sacrifice of Jesus Christ in Christian tradition, Dugin is trying deviously to swap the Holocaust for Christicide and, in so doing, totally withdraws it from the historical and political context. At the same time, he gives his blessing for Ahmadinejad-the-Talmudist’s fresh cabbalistic discoveries and revelations. Which, however, have to be construed by a Sanhedrin called the UN Security Council. But perhaps even more dangerous are Dugin’s provocative speculations meant to hitch up Russia to Iran as part of the geopolitical concept of the global struggle for a multipolar world. Indeed, who else should Russia be joining forces with, if not Iran? After all, Iran is slated to be the next victim of the States run amuck, and Russia is next in line.107 The third consequence is of a purely demographic nature. Unwilling to test how much better is anti-Semitism of the Pamyat society style than its state-sponsored variety of the “Doctors’ Case” style, considerable masses of the Jewish population have rushed to emigrate, voting with their feet against both editions. On December 15, 2006, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, responding to the Tehran Conference provocation, presented the report “The Value Orientations of the Russian National-Radicals” along with the paper “The Holocaust: a Memory and a Warning,” a joint project with the Holocaust Center intended for members of the media.108 The Report provided an overview of contemporary neo-Nazism, xenophobia, and Holocaust denial.109 The project was supported by of the Russian Federation’s Ombudsman for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin, who emphasized that it would be good if human rights activists extended the project to such problems as the Roma genocide, anti-Caucasus, and antiRussian phobias. The Vice-President of the Russian Jewish Congress Major General of the Military Justice Service Grigoriy Kroshner said that the origins of the Holocaust, its progress, and consequences were extremely important for Russia’s understanding of the nature of neo-Nazism and should serve as a reminder for today’s public of the danger of the drift towards xenophobia and anti-Semitism. He cited the data from Russia’s Office of the General Prosecutor, which lists some 150 organized groups of nationalist persuasion with a total membership of 10,000, of whom 80% are people under 30. On < 35 >

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the other hand, he believed, the law enforcement authorities were gradually increasing their efforts to fight extremism.110 3 However, the myths and ideological concepts of the old Soviet statesponsored anti-Semitism have proved tenacious of life, and very much so. Their echoes can be heard quite distinctly even today when Russian realities do not only reflect problems associated with the Holocaust, but also the various aspects of a peculiar form if its denial. The State Duma offers as much of a vent for denier sentiments as any anti-Semitic site. When in January 2004 a group of Duma deputies moved that January 27 (The International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day) be marked by a minute of silence during that day’s Duma session, deputy V. V. Zhirinovsky flatly and scandalously refused to do so, saying that for him it was “unacceptable”: “We have enough holidays as it is. Does that mean that Russian Parliament must celebrate something on each such occasion? What kind of Russian parliament are we, if we rise to honor the memory of Jews?” He was supported by Deputy N. Narochnitskaya, representing the Rodina (Motherland) Party, who said that the Holocaust theme was “blown out of proportion.”111 When polled in 2007, Russian parliamentarians unanimously objected to making Holocaust denial a criminal offence. They were of the opinion that it was a matter of ethics, and not one of criminal justice. They did not deny the Holocaust as a tragedy of the Jewish people, but since many other nations, they believed, had lived through tragedies of no lesser dimensions, there was no need for setting the Holocaust apart in any way. Rather, it would be more correct to adopt a different law — one punishing the denial of Fascism and its atrocities. In other words, at the core of that argumentation is again nonrecognition — if not of the Shoa as a fact, then of its historical uniqueness. At the same time, Duma members pointed out other issues where similar collisions might transpire (for example, Armenian Genocide, USSR’s contribution to the victory in World War II, or the number of victims of National-Socialism). Therefore, as was noted by Deputy V. Ilyukhin, “Adopting such a law would be tantamount to a ban on human thought, reasoning, and analysis that is why I just don’t accept that idea . . . That smells of certain obscurantism.”112 Despite the fact that Holocaust deniers have set foot in Russia just recently (literally so in the case of Switzerland’s Jürgen Graf, for instance, < 36 >

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who lives with his Ukrainian wife in Moscow and out of legal reach of his savage homeland’s law enforcement), the classical Western “revisionism” has found here a very fertile and welcoming soil. On the one hand, there is the practical absence of any knowledge of the Holocaust among the general public in Russia, resulting from the half-century-long policy of silencing. On the other hand, the availability of Mein Kampf and overabundance of other books, including the biographies of top Nazi bosses that the numerous publishing houses of the type of Moscow’s “Russkiy Vestnik” or Smolensk’s “Rusich” have flooded the market with to quench the Russian anti-Semite’s hunger for knowledge. To make the satiation complete, they are now offering desserts from the bakeries of Holocaust denial which occasions no interest, let alone, rebuff on the part of the official authorities and is gradually making its way (albeit in a mitigated form) into popular science and even fiction books. Internet monitoring shows that Holocaust denial finds an interested audience among extremists of all hues — both “Leftist” and “Rightist,” Russian Orthodox, Islamist, and even Pagans and Satanists. Naturally, there are peculiar Russian accents and “twists.” Russian deniers’ idée-fixe, in our view, is the deep-rooted concept of multiple Holocausts, the Jewish one being just one of them. The Soviet thesis of the international character of World War II victims and the categorical refusal to single out Jews from among them has gained in a second lease on life in that concept, its second edition and, for the first time, a second wind. Starting in 1996, Yury Mukhin’s newspaper “Duel” became one of the main forums for Russia’s Holocaust deniers113. Its Internet site, www.duel. ru, contains dozens of articles and books on the subject, including (or, to be exact, mostly) translations. As early as the mid-1990s, there appeared Russian translations of many “works” by several Western Holocaust deniers (like Roger Garaudy and Jürgen Graf ). The Myth of the Holocaust: The Truth about the Fate of the Jews in the Second World War has gone through at least two editions — first, in 1996 in the “Russkiy Vestnik”114 newspaper and then under separate cover, sponsored by a Gennadiy Andreyevich Kubryakov and with a foreword by Oleg Platonov, the owner and Editor-in-Chief of the Institut Russkoi Tsivilizatsii publishing house.115 As befits a true revisionist, he included a certain caveat in his foreword: Of course, that number, too, is very large and calls forth our deep commiseration. However, can one really speak of Jews’ unique sacrifice, if the share of the Russian people (including Malorussians and Byelorussians) in that 55 million is no less than 27 million men, women, children, and old < 37 >

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people? It is the Russian people, and not any other people, that had to drink the deepest cup of suffering in the Second World War, saving the entire humanity from the “New World Order,” something that even today there are attempts to impose by Hitler’s’ inheritors — American presidents and their colleagues in Israel.

In 1997, Platonov was the first Russian to take part in the annual conference of the IHR. The same year he was accorded, along with Jürgen Graf, the dubious honor of becoming a member of the JHR’s Editorial Board.116 Following that Ernst Zündel, on his Internet site, declared Russia no less than the promised land of revisionism! On January 26-27, 2002, Moscow was the venue (where else if not in the “promised land”?) of the International Conference on the Global Problems of World History117 which was generally devoted to globalization as a Zionist challenge. Taking part were such well-known deniers as J. Graf and Americans David Duke and Russell Granata.118 In May 2003, the Holocaust Revisionism Internet site (www.revisio. msk.ru) opened, sponsored by Slaviansky Soyuz (The Slavic Union), whose inauguration was announced in Russia’s most popular Internet publication, “Russkiy Zhurnal” (The Russian Journal). The author and owner of the site, N.V. Salamandrov, introduced it as a long-term educational, historical, non-profit, anti-disinformational, independent Russian information resource,” and as “an extensive collection of intellectual works by analysts and historians, religious and public figures, politicians, and private citizens, whose activities are driven by a search for the Truth, as well as, ordinary news items with a bearing on the issue,” and also as “making a stand against all falsifiers of History” who are, for some reason, confined to only “Zionists and Russophobes.

The deniers; methodology is characterized by Salamandrov as a departure from the propagandistic opposition of “friend — foe” (like it — not like it) in favor of “happened — did not happen” (truth — falsehood). The site offered over 400 texts written exclusively by “friends” and associated, one way or another, with Holocaust denial. These include writings by: the “classic” of European revisionism R. Garaudy (The Myth of Zionist Anti-Fascism, The Myth of the Holocaust, the Myth of Justice in Nuremberg); conspirologist Anthony Sutton (Geopolitics and Revisionism), Russian Orthodox scholar Yuri Vorobyevsky (Oswiecim: The Debate on the Crosses), “higher sociologist” and the nemesis of degenerate homosexual < 38 >

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Jews, Grigoriy Klimov (An Interview with a Certain Moscow Journalist); ultra-Leftist Israeli journalist Israel Shamir (Holocaust as a Lucky Gescheft); Editor-in-Chief of the Zavtra newspaper Alexander Prokhanov (Was There a Holocaust?), expert on secret societies and the author of the foreword to the Russian edition of J. Graf ’s book Oleg Platonov; Igor Shafarevich (The Creation of the State of Israel); Alexander Panarin (Genocide); Leader of the National-State Party of Russia Alexander Sevastianov (Not World War II, the Great Patriotic War); Editor-in-Chief of the Duel newspaper Yuriy Mukhin. In addition, the site offers materials on “conspirology” (e.g., Anthony Sutton’s How the Order Creates War and Revolution; Hannek Kardel’s Hitler, the Founder of Israel) and on “race-ology” (an article by the grand master of European racism Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, “The Russian People and the Defense of the White Race”). The site had this motto: “To preclude intellectual terrorism, falsehood, and prejudice, history, like any other science, requires continued “revision.” It can be either “revisionist” or “propaganda in disguise.” Naturally, the “revisionist” site itself needed continuous “revision” and “renewal.” That, however, was not happening, and at some unnamed point — sometime in 2006, from circumstantial evidence — the site ceased to exist. Greeting the disappointed surfer is this anonymous sign of the “Closed for Restocking” genre: In view of the various unresolved organizational issues, I have made the decision to discontinue all work on the further development of the Revisionist Project. < . . . > To facilitate a dialogue and an exchange of information among like-mided people visiting this site, I am opening an un-moderated (have no time for that) forum and chat room. I will take no part in any eventual discussions, nor will I answer any of your questions. If you have something important, contact me by e-mail. It’s quite possible I might reply. As I stated above, all work to develop this Project has now been stopped.

By way of self-justification in the eyes of the disappointed adepts, there are links to “mirror copies” of the erstwhile site provided, as well as some sorry-looking shreds of information, like this one: “It is important to know why Israel does not want to recognize the Armenian genocide, trying to deny it in every way. Who are the Young Turks and the Denme? What does the genocide of Russians have in common with the genocide of Armenians? A little known but very important event happened in Moscow on February 20, 2005, the first scientific conference on The Genocide of the Russian < 39 >

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People in the 20th and 21st Centuries, which took place in the main hall of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences and was organized by the National-State Party of Russia. It is a sad fact that Runet’s only active translator of revisionist materials happens to be P. Hedruk, a Russophobe of rare intensity. I don’t know why and what for, but Hedruk thinks it necessary and quite appropriate to confuse the revision of the Holocaust with his own private view and vision of Russia’s political future. What prods Hedruk (a non-Russian by blood, views, and religion, living outside Russia) to plunge into the whirlpool of virtual political struggle in our country is unbeknownst to me. < . . . > However, it should be recognized that Hedruk’s translation activity holds significant value for the development of Holocaust revisionism on the Runet.”119 There is one more specialized Internet site, Revisionisty (www. revisionists.com),whose only content is a snapshot of a group of deniers accompanied by their biographies, plus a chat room “The Mythical Holocaust” (http://holokost.chat.ru). In one form or another, denier ideas are embraced the Russkiy Vestnik newspaper, The Palestine Information Center, Radio Islam, the Russkaya Linia Information Agency of the Russian Orthodox Church, neo-Pagan (!), Satanist (!!) resources, the Levaya Rossiya site (counting among its authors the above-mentioned I. Shamir, the Russian Orthodox site Russkoye Nebo, the Black Fire Pandemonium site belonging to the country’s “chief ” Satanist “Warrax,” the Russian NS-Portal Brangolf, as well as the “Little Fuhrer: Fascism for Kids!” (www.kleine-fuhrer.lenin.ru). Notably, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism have brought together ultra-Orthodox believers, ultra-Paganists, and ultra-Islamists — forces that normally do not blend too well. Another feature specific to Russia and directly linked to impunity is the exceptional, “foaming-at-the-moth” aggressiveness and purposefulness of the anti-Semites in general and deniers in particular, in furthering their views. One gets the impression that their opponents, who believe that such marginalized types are better ignored, are really beginning to lose the fight for the truth to them. Life has put to an interesting test the fighting spirit of both the deniers and the deniers of the deniers. I am talking about the Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, including parties with a vested interest in the nature of the resultant entry. The very appearance of one called “Holocaust denial” was unexpected enough. An analysis of the corresponding definition and the rest of the text, both being work in progress, leads one to an interesting conclusion, to wit: the deniers have < 40 >

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gained here practically everything they have been striving for in many long years — a respectful tone, the status of a scholarly theory (albeit, a non-dominant one) and even the recognition of the alternative name “revisionism” as deniers’ self-designation, and even that in order to avoid unnecessary ambiguity, equivocation. The presentation of the deniers’ theses is calm and objective, while professional historians’ negative view of them appears to be merely due to the deniers’ tendency to neglect investigative principles generally accepted by the science of history. Besides, “they are frequently motivated” — Oh, naughty, naughty! — “by political, rather than scholarly, considerations.” Even if deniers themselves had nothing to do with that writing (though one does get the impression they did), the way they are characterized by the Wikipedia certainly amounts to a great success for them. The next logical step would be for the Wikipedia to carry an entry titled “Exterminationists”! 4 The deniers’ most cherished dream is to be recognized and renamed “revisionists,” to enter into a dialogue with mainstream science, to be recognized by it and by a community of people more numerous than themselves. Hence the noticeable tendency in their ranks to mimic science and scientific integrity. It was no accident that J. Graf, speaking at a conference in 2002, insisted that “revisionism is not an ideology, but a scientific method.” Apart from revisionists masquerading as historians, there are revisionists who pose as ethnographers and anthropologists — the so-called “raceologists.”120 For them, Holocaust denial is a pretty peripheral issue. They are much more concerned with other perils threatening Russia and racial purity, associated with, inter alia, Jews: for instance, too many nonRussians in Russia and the intermarriage catastrophe. They willingly offer their services in the matter of “diagnosing the quality of human material” and determining “biological prerequisites” of any type of activity in general — the painfully familiar theories of racial superiority and the “lebensraum.” And though they define themselves as neo-Pagans, it would not be a mistake to call them neo-Nazis as well. Raceology sections or individual materials are offered by various neoPagan and Satanist sites: “Velesova Sloboda” (particularly abundant), “Svetorusiye” (featuring works by the “classic” of race-ology Hans Günther (The Raceology of the German People, An Addendum to the Raceology of < 41 >

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the German People, A Concise Raceology of Europe)), “Rusograd,” and “Slavianskoye Naslediye,” “Black Fire Pandemonium,” the Satanist site by “Warrax” (for instance, the article “Raceology against Russophobia,” on the site belonging to the Russian Orthodox researcher V. Makhnach, as well as on the neo-Nazi Russian NS-Portal “Brangolf.” The main print medium for raceological writings is provided by the Atenei (Atheneum) Journal. In one of his interviews, the Journal’s founder and publisher Pavel Tulayev defined his objective as “progress towards a new type of Slavic-Aryan Vedic civilization.” The Journal’s Editorial Board includes, besides Tulayev, essayist Vladimir Avdeyev and poets S. Yashin and M. Khotulev. Russia’s two leading raceology authors are the above-mentioned V. Avdeyev, who coined the term itself and is the ideological leader of Russian neo-Paganism, and Andrey Savelyev (writing under the pen name of A. Kolyev) who has sat in the State Duma of The RF as a member of the Rodina faction121. They have contributed much effort to the publication by the Beliye Alvy publishing house of the “Library of Racial Thought” series which was started in 2002 to offer works by “unjustly forgotten classics of raceologist thought who have nothing in common with ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racial discrimination.’” In actuality, it featured “works” by the founder of “racial education” F. Crick, the Nazi anthropologist H. Günther, as well as K. Stratz (The Racial Beauty of Women). Included among the classics is Avdeyev himself who published, as part of the series, a voluminous tome entitled Raceology which lays claim to being a teaching aid. He also compiled and published two collections of works under the general title Russian Racial Theory before 1917 which insistently propounded the idea that Czarist Russia, revered by many as an ideal state and a model to imitate, was, in fact, a racial state. In an interview he gave the Stringer Literary Agency when one of these collections appeared in print, Avdeyev compared non-White races with cockroaches and rats adding, in a quite friendly manner: I don’t call for these people to be put away in concentration camps, but I do call for these people not to breed and not to bid for political power. Not to sit in Parliament, not to presume to teach the entire country. I simply urge that myself and normal society be protected from government by degenerates.

V. Avdeyev and A. Savelyev have also edited two issues of the collection The Racial Meaning of the Russian Idea, which included articles by German “raceologist” authors of the Nazi period and their ideological precursors < 42 >

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whose works, for understandable reasons, had not been published in the West for a long time. In his article, “Genetic Socialism,” appearing in the first issue of the collection, Avdeyev expounds the principles of a eugenicsbased state: The right to reproduce shall be granted only to healthy individuals, while gifted people shall be given the exclusive right to be perpetuated in human material an unlimited number of times. Conversely, genetic undesirables, whose very existence negatively affects the life force of a race, shall be deprived, through medical intervention, of the right to reproduce.

In 2003, the “Velesova Sloboda” site presented a xenophobic book by A. Savelyev, The Last Century of the White World, in which he writes about an alleged world conspiracy hatched by an “anti-nation” and aimed at destroying “the world of White Man,” about ”the aggression of the swarthy natives of the Caucasus against White Man.” He contends that the situation in Russia has come to a head — “It’s either us or them!” As a solution to these problems he proposes “founding a different state and a different form of government,” “preventive destruction of the enemies,” using “pre-emptive strikes by the most advanced weapons.” Raceologists are not averse to engaging in real world Duma politics either. In December 2004 A. Savelyev wrote an article “Who Is Trying to Label Rodina with a Swastika?” to defend the Rodina Party from friendly fire. “If decent people stop turning their noses away from Rodina only because they are not being invited to head up some Party activity here, its cadre will be strengthened, and we will defeat this carrion-stinking ”anti-Fascist” alliance of fools and scoundrels.” Less titled racelogists than V. Avdeyev, P. Tulayev, or A. Savelyev are much more frank in their writings. A certain B. Protasov, for example says this in his article “On Interracial Marriages”: Human races are not equal — not only in terms of anthropomorphic characteristics, but also in terms of the place they occupy on the scale of socio-political evolution. The purity of a race is a paramount condition for its development toward perfection, for its preservation in the face of life’s trials and tribulations . . . Intermingling of races leads to their degeneration . . . Half-breeds often exhibit decreased faculties of selfcriticism and morality, exaggerated self-valuation, all-permissiveness and egoism become a norm in their behavior . . . It is beyond dispute that humanity owes its greatest achievements in science, technology, literature, art, philosophy, and establishment of the laws of morality < 43 >

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first and foremost to the white race. Special prominence among Whites belongs to the ARYANS that are comprised, first of all, of Russians (Great Russians, Malorussians, and Byelorussians), Central European Slavs, Germans, Scandinavians, and the Irish (the Mediterranean branch has been mongrelized to a large extent).

Relying on the “research” conducted by J. Streicher, the erstwhile editor of the Der Stürmer newspaper, Protasov undertakes to prove the scientific veracity of the so-called telegony — a theory postulating the hereditary dominance of the first mate of a woman who is able to transmit his hereditary traits to the woman’s offspring by subsequent mates. The distinguished doctor is particularly enraged by marriages between Russians and Jews which he deems totally unacceptable. He writes about “deleterious consequences the activity of White-Jewish hybrids is fraught with for humankind” and about the animal hatred that Jews allegedly harbor for Whites. He brands Jews a “cunning and ignoble tribe” and faults them with genetically inherited greed, cowardice, mendacity, malice, perfidy, blood-thirstiness, immorality, and dishonesty. “For the Jew, purposeful seduction of Aryan women is also strategically important: it contaminates Aryan blood, turns the offspring into a bunch of mongrels, inherently kinless and rootless, and ultimately facilitates the capture of power in such a country.” There is also the accusation of Jews of yet another conspiracy — this time, one aimed at destroying the White race through intermarriage. Given as proof thereof is a fake quote from a speech by the Anti-Defamation League President A. Foxman. V. Avdeyev and other “raceologists” are striving to rid “raceology” of the well-deserved stigma of pseudoscience and accusations of racism and collaboration with the Nazi regime. As regards the use of “raceology” in the Nazi Germany, V. Avdeyev, for one, says that in the Third Reich the ideals of the race theory were distorted by a powerful surge of PanGermanism” and, generally speaking, “the pure racial idea fell into the hands of racially impure mongrels who, because of their genetic inferiority, took a revenge on its ideals by compromising and distorting it down to the very foundation.

Such statements, though, do not prevent the same Avdeyev from making extensive use of the findings of the then racist “raceologists,” making just one change in them (admittedly, a pretty radical one) which concerns the place of the Russian people in the racial hierarchy. If the Nazis attributed the < 44 >

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Russians and Slavs in general to inferior races, for home-grown raceologists they naturally belong to the master race. With the same goal in mind — whitewashing “raceology” — V. Avdeyev and his “colleagues” use quotations from well-known Soviet and Russian anthropologists to demonstrate the latter’s assumed acceptance of racist theories. These attempts drew a response in the form of a letter of protest published in 2003 and signed by a number of prominent Russian anthropologists who spurned that kind of unsolicited “support.” A. Savelyev’s election to the State Duma opened up certain new opportunities for the Russian “raceologists.” For instance, A. Avdeyev spoke at the Round Table on “Repatriation to the Russian Federation” held by the Duma Committee for CIS Affairs. His speech contained a litany of xenophobic stereotypes, like the allegedly high “ethnic criminality” and denounced assertions of Russia’s multinational character as “provocative.” A. Savelyev urged a toughening of Russia’s immigration policies and an introduction of immigration restrictions based on such criteria as increased socioeconomic tensions caused by “immigrants’ dominance in certain types of economic activity and competition with the native population” or enacting them for members of an ethnic group whose presence “may lead to ethnopolitical destabilization.” The last phrase sanctions the principle of collective responsibility of ethnic groups for the doings of their individual members and violates Russian citizen’s freedom of movement. Basically, Russian deniers showed little interest in the demography of the Shoa; they were quite content with the “findings” of their Western colleagues. About the only exception is writer Vadim Kozhinov (1930– 2001), an intellectual anti-Semite and a specialist in Russian literature’s skin diseases.122 He does not deny the Holocaust per se, but disputes its dimensions and puts it on par with the losses of the Russian people. In his essay “The War and the Jews” (included in the book Russia. The 20th Century.1939-1964,123 Kozhinov says that he has caught out two Jewish historians (L. Poliakoff and I. Wul),124 as well as other Jewish statisticians, in numbers manipulation. Kozhinov maintains that the two historians counted two million victims twice while the statisticians exaggerated the natural increase of the Jewish population in order to conceal the true scale of Jewish emigration from Europe to America and Palestine. In other words, what we have here is a typical Jewish scam that adds two million souls to the number of victims and then scatters them around the globe to make the whole thing look more convincing. Moreover, Kozhinov’s insight easily uncovers the fact that the “six million number” is informed with a profound < 45 >

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“symbolic” meaning for Jews, closely linked to the sacral six points of the Star of David.125 Generally speaking, Russian deniers’ contribution to the movement’s world-wide piggy bank of ideas is minimal, if not negligible. One does get the impression that the pupil/reader mentality is predominant here and the most to be expected from Russian deniers is a foreword to yet another translation of a “classical work” and a stream of obscenities in the blogs. If you ask me, the pinnacle of their independent effort has been reached in the snide send-up of the word “Holocaust” coined by one of them: “The Holotoast.” 5 The study and understanding of World War II in the Ukraine had a number of specific aspects. On the one hand, disputing the Shoa in the Ukraine would be especially incongruous and, on the other, the well-known role played by the Ukrainian nationalists in the destruction of Jews kind of “compels” their today’s followers to active resistance and preemptive action. It is no accident, therefore, that it was the Ukrainian diaspora (mostly but not exclusively, Canadian) that became the most powerful vehicle for the dissemination of “revisionist” ideas in the Ukraine, absorbing, as it did, a large number of Nazi collaborators after the war. The first claims that the sufferings and the number of Holocaust victims were exaggerated came from such diasporans as Miron Kuropas, Pyotr Mirchuk, Oleg Fedik, Yuri Borets, Marian Kots and others.126 One such publication titled “There Were No Gas Chambers or Crematoria in Oswiecim!” appeared in the Lvov newspaper Za Vilnu Ukrainu (For a Free Ukraine) and was based on a testimony by a supposed former prisoner of the camp, N. Stefanishin. V. Katelnitsky of the Vecherniy Kiev newspaper asserted that in Kiev “not without help from the rabbis, plans were made for the killing by the Fascists of several thousands of Jews at the Lukyanovskoe Cemetery near Baby Yar in late September, 1941.” Another publication trying to deny the Holocaust in Kiev was “Pravda o Babyem Yare” (“The Truth about Baby Yar”) by Tatiana Tur, who maintained that it had not been Jews shot by the Nazis there, but Ukrainians shot by NKVD squads. She was echoed by the Chairman of the Union of the Friends of Ukraine under the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” Miroslav Dragan. Responding to those claims, the Kiev newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli (The Weekly Mirror) wrote on May 25, 1996: < 46 >

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. . . some “sensational” articles recently appeared in The Vecherni Kiev and other newspapers, drew shudders from even the most seasoned connoisseurs of the devious workings of today’s journalism. Yet another outrage has been committed on the most fragile and defenseless thing — human memories and remembrances of that terrible war < . . . >, of the events that shook Kiev in the fall of 1941.

In 2001, E. Khodos published “An Open Letter to Steven Spielberg” in which he claimed “You will find NO EYEWITNESS to the annihilation of six million Jews. You will find NO WITNESS to the gas chambers standing next to the crematoria and destroying a thousand or even two thousand people at once . . . As for the cries and sniveling over the Holocaust today, half a century after the war, all that can call forth nothing but disgust.”127 The above-mentioned Lvov newspaper carried a series of articles under the general title “The Myth of the Holocaust” which later became part of the collection of articles “Whom Does God Choose?” compiled by the paper’s former editor B. Vovk and dedicated to the 10th Anniversary of Ukrainian Independence. That nationalistic and chauvinistic book, which was also publicized in Vasily Yaremenko’s brochure Jews in Ukraine: Reality without the Myths, caused little reaction either in Lvov or in Kiev, while the protest by the 50 Righteous Men of the Peoples of the World all these publications128 was left without a response from the Ukraine’s authorities. Naturally, that kind of publications and the fact that they went unpunished were inciting some of the readers to acts of vandalism against the Memorial Stone unveiled by the President of Israel in Baby Yar near the Menorah Monument and against other Holocaust memorials across the Ukraine. Another act of outrage was committed by V. Yaremenko, who published an article in the Silski Visti (The Countryside News) which claimed that “400,000-strong horde of Jewish SS-men” invaded the Ukraine with the German army. During the hearing of a lawsuit against the Vecherniy Kiev newspaper at a Kiev district court, the paper’s columnists maintained that Hitler himself and his entourage were Jews. In 2002 The Vecherny Lugansk newspaper published several articles which said that “Holocaust was a product of military propaganda. They did not kill Jews in the concentration camps and even looked after their health.”129 At the same time, the International Management Academy (IMA), which had made anti-Semitism its trademark, sharply increased its accusations of Jews of all sins imaginable. The Academy published Jürgen Graf ’s book The < 47 >

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Great Lie of the 20th Century, and its President, G. Shchekin, in one of “his” publications, repeated another battered thesis of the revisionists: “In 1933, the World Jewish Congress declared war on Nazi Germany, thus making millions of defenseless Jews in practically all European countries a “warring party” and effectively provoking their subsequent mass destruction.”130 Tatiana Tur’s outrageous article was reprinted by the Personal Plus newspaper.131 An interesting feature in the activity of this academy is its propagandist use of the newspapers that had been published on the Ukraine’s occupied territories during the war. The same G. Shchekin quotes the Pereyaslavski Visti newspaper of May 1, 1943 which describes the coming of some “avenger who will destroy Europe to avenge the centuries-long defilement of Jewry . . . All Ukrainian women will be raped before they are killed.”132 Based on a similar source, The Ridna Niva newspaper of March 27 1943 in the town of Piryatin, was the statement by its representative V. Kapelnikov in the Pechorsky district court in Kiev who called the Anti-Defamation League a branch of the B’nai Brith organization which had been designed to fight all those who resisted Zionist dominance. “Thus the tragedy of the Nazi genocide,” notes A. Naiman, “is repeated today as an IMA farce.”133 After the Stockholm Conference of 2000, the teaching of the history of Holocaust was included in Ukraine’s school syllabuses. That brought about the ire of Ukrainian national-chauvinists who took that innovation “As an unheard-of zombification of the Ukrainian youth, making them into soul-less creatures with no historical memory to be used as labor force on our national black-earth lands.”134 For the Academy all, those things have gone and continue to go unpunished: after all, it can hardly be considered a reprisal that the then President Victor Yushchenko condemned the Academy’s policies and publications that could be regarded as anti-Semitic. He even rejected the honorary doctorate offered him by the anti-Semitic academy. However, no other sanctions have ever followed. On March 23, 2007 V. Yushchenko submitted a bill to the Supreme Rada proposing to make a public denial of the Holocaust and of the 1932-33 Golodomor in the Ukraine a criminal offense. The bill provided for a penalty of a fine equal to between 100 and 300 tax-free minimal wages or a two-year prison term. The same offense committed repeatedly or by a public official would carry a sentence of four years in prison. The bill was declined by the Ukrainian Parliament.

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THE ANTISEMITES INTERNATIONAL: THE HOLOCAUST DENIERS’ CONFERENCE IN TEHRAN AND ITS WORLDWIDE ECHO 1 Anti-Semitism as a private matter is not a pleasant or attractive thing, but at least it is understandable: it has been centuries in the making and represents a peculiar expression of frustration with one’s personal tragedies and failures which is eased by blaming them on somebody else, in this particular case, the Yids. That sort of anti-Semitism is no trifle either, but the threat it poses is nothing compared to state-sponsored anti-Semitism. The names of the two countries that had chosen it as their ideological weapon, Germany — Third Reich and Russia — USSR speak for themselves. The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the death of the Soviet-style state anti-Semitism and for a while it seemed that there was no country left on this Earth that upheld anti-Semitism as part of its national heritage. But that status-quo had not lasted long. The election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, a former Islamic Revolution Guard, as President of Iran ushered in a change in the situation and heralded the appearance of a new anti-Semitic country called Iran. Ahmadinejad’s public statements do not only call for the destruction of the state of Israel but have repeatedly questioned the scale of the Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II. Referring to the Holocaust as a bunch of “tall tales,” “legends,” or a “myths” he advised the countries that felt the guilt for the destruction of Jews to carve out part of their territory for the transfer of Israel there, thus resolving the Palestinian problem. In January 2006, the Iranian government announced its intention to hold an international conference devoted to the Holocaust. Almost at the same time, in February 2006, The Iranian House of Cartoons and the newspaper Hamshahri announced an international Holocaust Cartoon Contest as a kind of response to the publication of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in the Danish media.135 The Conference took place on December 11 and 12, 2006 in Tehran and was attended by 67 foreign participants from 30 countries. Its motto was: “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.” Ahmadinejad had repeatedly promised that the Tehran conference would bring together renowned university professors and independent historians who were being gagged or even thrown in jail in their own countries. But the Conference was designed < 49 >

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by Ahmadinejad not to discredit history and historical truth, but to discredit Israel. It was an even for which discredit was not an end in itself, but just one of the links in a long chain of events. The other links in that policy were provoking the international community to oppose Israel and, ultimately, what Ahmadinejad called “wiping off Israel from the world map.” It was hardly surprising that the Conference agenda was permeated with denialist and anti-Israel themes. The panel topics were like this: “Gas Chambers: a Lie or a Confirmation?” “The Holocaust — the Western Mass Media and the Propaganda,” “The Holocaust and the Blood Bath for the Palestinians,” “Anti-Semitism, Nazism, and Zionism,” “Nazism and Zionism: Collaboration or Cooperation?” The Conference was opened by Iran’s Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki. He started off by criticizing such terms as “World War I,” “World War II” and the like, as well as formalistic Western history in general, saying that those colonialists who criticize Nazism today have themselves as many victims on their conscience as the Nazis. Whereas the centuries-long history of Iran, both pre-Islamic and Islamic, he contended, is free of racism, antiSemitism being a purely Western invention which was unknown to Iran and the East. Islam which is based on humanism and common sense is against Nazism and racism, something that cannot be said for Zionism. The Holocaust, he said, has ultimately led to the emergence of a country without a people (Israel) and a people without a country (Palestine). Iran, according to Mottaki, is very much interested not in the denial or acceptance of the Holocaust, but in establishing the truth and in arriving at the real, as opposed to mythical, number of victims. In this endeavor, Iran is not pursuing any other goals but the finding of the historic truth.136 The Conference set up a Fact-Finding Commission,137 which is slated to work for years. The Conference participants agreed to form an international committee for the study of the Holocaust comprised of representatives of France, Iran, Bahrain, Austria, Canada, USA, Syria, and Switzerland. In 2007, the conference proceedings were published in Farsi and English, and the same year they were translated into Russian and published in 5,000 copies with a foreword by the same O. Platonov.138 Ahmadinejead himself, who had often called Holocaust a bunch of “tall tales,” did not take part in the conference, but did receive the attendees in his residence at the very end of the event, on December 12, and willingly obliged his guests, especially the rabbis, with photo ops. Ahmadinejad once again emphasized his main point: “Just like the Soviet Union was swept off the face of the earth and is no longer in existence, the Zionist regime will < 50 >

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soon be destroyed. The collapse of Israel has God’s blessing, its days are numbered, and this meets the desire of the peoples of the world.” Lists of participants were never published for security considerations which made that gathering very much like the “Communist International” (or, to be exact, the Anti-Semites’ International). One of the presenters even published his report under an alias.139 However, enough information leaked into the press to make it possible to divide the attendees into several groups.140 The first one is pretty distinct and is composed of the well-known Holocaust deniers and right-wing radicals, including Australia’s Mohammed Hegazi, Richard Krege, and Frederick Toeben, Austria’s Wolfgang Frölich, Gerd Honsik,141 Hans Gramlich, and Dr. Herbert Schaller,142 Americans David Duke,143 Bradley R. Smith, and Michael Collins Piper, Britain’s Alexander Baron, and Michele Renouf, Hungary’s George Kadar, Malaysia’s Matthias Chang, Germany’s Benedikt Frings144 and Peter Töpfer,145 Christian Lindner, a German living in Denmark, France’s Robert Faurisson, Georges Thiel,146 and Serge Thion, Sweden’s Jan Bernhoff,147 Switzerland’s Bernhard Schaub,148 Japan’s Dr. Patrick McNalley. Reportedly, other participants included Germany’s Martin Hochmann and Ewald Stadler. Another six unnamed Germans from this group were given Iranian visas right at the Tehran airport. While G. Deckert, former Chairman of the German National party and Horst Mahler, a former leftist terrorist and an extreme right-winger today, fell on hard luck and were barred from spending a couple of days in the company of like-minded friends, because the German Government had invalidated their foreign passports. Yet others, it should be noted, were kept out by the Iranian side — for instance, Noach Flug, President of the International Auschwitz Committee and Head of the Israeli Holocaust Survivors’ Association, as well as Khaled Mahameed, an Arab lawyer from Nazareth, who had opened a small Holocaust museum there. The second group was rather fuzzy and was made up of political scientists, politicians, and journalists of uncertain political or scholarly persuasions. They mostly kept silent and out of limelight. Maybe the only one of them to have made it into the papers was the young Portuguese Anarchist Flavio Goncalves. Belonging in this group as well was Russia’s Victor Nadeyin-Rayevsky, a researcher with the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. As evidenced by the several interviews he later gave to the Izvestia newspaper, the Regnum news agency and other media, he went to that conference, which he for some reason had expected to be a scientific one, without really knowing where he would land in.149 < 51 >

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We, too, had a talk with him. The decision to send someone to the Conference was taken by the Institute’s leadership, with all travel costs to be borne by the Iranian side. He was put up at the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s residence with no telephone, Internet, or any other individual means of communication. There were flatfoots all around; the only sightseeing event was a car city tour in the company of the same flatfoots and with permission to take pictures only in the city park. It was all painfully reminiscent of the Soviet behind-the-Iron-Curtain realities of the 1960s.150 For two months following the Conference, he said, he had been plagued by dreams of gas chambers that allegedly had never existed. As for the conference itself, he described the forum as downright political which was organized, in his own words, by a “bunch of crazy guys” motivated by unmitigated and unbridled anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, but not anti-Judaism. The “bunch of crazy guys” had published discussion points for the Conference (about 50 pages in English, and the remaining and greater part in Farsi and Arabic), while he conference proceedings were expected to be published in 2008 and this time in Farsi only.151 Alternative viewpoints were not represented, and almost all of the Revisionists themselves, when viewed at close quarters, appeared to be mentally deranged, with the problem being caused exclusively by an antiSemitic mania. The only dissenting voice, according to Nadeyin-Rayevski, was his own. He delivered his paper at one of the panels on the second day of the conference. The report was generally devoted to an analysis of the philosophical transition from an inhuman ideology to an inhuman practice and concluded that at history’s turning points one should handle one’s ideas with care. He also said that denying the Holocaust was plain stupid and that even Nazis themselves did not make a secret of the Jewish destruction process, except for the specific techniques employed. Personally, he had no doubts about the Holocaust’s reality, but he found the term itself objectionable because, he believed, it had a “sacral meaning.” He was also perplexed by Israel’s non-recognition of the Armenian genocide.152 No historian of any note took part in the conference. The third group of attendees occupied the first row of seats in a body. Though not numerous, (four to eight people by different accounts), it was surely the most conspicuous and exotic-looking. These were the rabbis from several countries who represented various Judaic denominations which had only one thing in common with one another (and with Ahmadinejad) — antiZionism.153 They were all members of the Neturei Karta International organization (”Jews, Unite Against Zionism!”). These people view Israel < 52 >

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as an illegitimate secular state created by ungodly Zionists. In a most democratic manner, they sported Israeli flags crossed with a red streak throughout the Conference. All the rabbis, with one voice, categorically protested against Holocaust denial — in other words, they rejected the “cold appetizer” offered by Ahmadinejad, but willingly went straight to his “hot main course,” the condemnation of Israel and the Zionists who had founded that secular nationalist state. Their views were expressed by the ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Britain, Ahron Cohen, who was the only one of that group to speak at the Conference and, incidentally, the only speaker who opposed the organizers’ keystone tenet. He said that the Holocaust was sufficiently and convincingly documented. At the same time he said that God had given His blessing to the galut, i. e., Jews’ diasporal existence in exile and, therefore, the State of Israel should be liquidated and its lands given to the Palestinians. At least two of the rabbis came from the USA, Yisroel David Weiss and David Feldmann, whose grandfather and grandmother had died in the Shoa. His calling card carried the motto “Pray for a Prompt and Peaceful Disappearance of the State of Israel!” Austria’s Moishe Ayre Friedmann was perhaps the most offensive and the most media-favored conference attendee. He was the senior rabbi154 of the anti-Zionist Judaic community in Vienna which he himself had founded back in the 1990s and which was not recognized by the Vienna Jewish Community.155 Owing to Shabbat, anti-Israeli demonstrations he was organizing in Vienna he had long since become an urban legend and the talk of the town there. He was a known sympathizer of the right-wing radical parties in Austria, including the Austrian Free Party led by Jörg Heider. He had intervened on behalf of John Gudenus, a member of that party, who had been sentenced to a suspended one-year prison term for Holocaust denial. He even recruited his lawyers from the circles close to the party. While not denying the Holocaust per se, Friedmann does question its parameters and, consequently, its dimensions (citing some unidentified latest research according to which the number of Holocaust victims equals one million Jews rather than six.156 One should also bear in mind that Iran itself is not an ideological monolith, and the Tehran Conference, in the form it had been conceived of and organized, was not greeted with enthusiasm and euphoria by all Iranians. The opposition to the Conference was led by no less than Ahmadinejad’s predecessor in the presidential office, Mohammed Khatami, < 53 >

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who had established an organization for intercultural and interconfessional dialogue in Iran. While the Conference was in progress, he spoke to the effect that the killing of innocent people, mostly Jews, was one of the crimes committed by German National-socialism, and even if just a single Jew had died as the result, it still had to be condemned. At the same time, he added that Israel had been abusing that historical tragedy to oppress the Palestinian people.157 Literally on the very opening day of the Conference, Ahmadinejad came up against a stiff resistance to his policies in general on the part of the students of Tehran’s best universities. Sharp criticism was also leveled against the Conference by Iran’s only Jewish Parliamentarian Maurice Motamed who called the event an insult to the country’s and the world’s Jews.158 Mashallah Shamselvaezin, a prominent intellectual and the editor of the recently banned newspaper Jameh, was also a confirmed opponent of the conference. He criticized the organizers for their poor knowledge of the Koran which condemns any killing of a human being. Very indicative in this connection was the letter sent to Ahmadinejad by Mahmoud Al-Safadi, a condemned Palestinaian terrorist, who has spent 18 years in an Israeli jail. In prison, he had studied numerous articles and books that he could have hardly read while at large “because of our ideology and our social precepts” as he puts it. That reading caused him to change his views on many things, removing all his doubts as to the reality of the Holocaust. His letter to the Iranian President said, in part: How large was the number of victims, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, is not so important, it was a monstrous crime all the same. Any attempt to deny it, detracts from the human nature of the one who commits it, making him a servant of the criminals. < . . . > We are fighting for our existence and our rights and against the historical injustice that was visited on us in 1948. But we are not striving for an independence or a victory that would enable us to falsely disavow the genocide of the Jewish people, even if the forces that have overrun and taken away our lands are part of that people.159

2 The Holocaust is one of the best studied events of the 20th century. The Holocaust is a reality and, like any reality, it does not have to be proven to exist, but it can and should be researched. And yet the denial of the Holocaust, disguised as “doubts” concerning some of its details, keeps surfacing again and again. < 54 >

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Naturally, the Tehran Conference caused protests throughout the world. Most people agreed that it was not just an attempt to put some pseudoacademic gloss on an extremist idea, but a far more serious political action. Israel’s Foreign Ministry responded with a statement censuring Iran’s unworthy initiative in holding an international conference aimed at denying the events of the Holocaust and supporting the anti-Semitic policies of Ahmadinejad, who was making repeated calls to wipe the state of Israel from the face of the Earth. Those calls, said the statement, were running counter to the UN “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide “of December 9, 1948. “In denying the events of the Shoa, the President of Iran is seeking to legitimize the drive to destroy the State of Israel and to spread extremist policies which contradict the values of the free world. He draws parallels between the Oswiecim concentration camp and Israel and, in so doing, distorts the events of the past and threatens the future. The statements and actions of the Iranian President fly in the face of the universally recognized historical facts. The peoples of the world must unite to make the call “never again” a reality. Remembering the Holocaust is important not only for Israel and the Jews in the countries of the diaspora, it is important for the entire world community. Questioning or denying the events of the ultimate expression of genocide, the Holocaust, the Iranian President encroaches upon human rights, the concept of which has taken its final form following the Shoa.” This was said by Israel’s Ex-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The Israeli ExPrime Minister, I. Olmert, called Ahmadinejad the embodiment of the worst kind of anti-Semitism. Neither restraint, nor tolerance could be a remedy here. The only way to deal with such politicians was to stop them. The Tehran Conference was condemned by the United States and the European Union. Scholars from dozens of institutes and universities launched a boycott of the Conference’s official organizer, the Iranian Institute of Political and International Studies under the Foreign Ministry of Iran,160 cancelling all joint projects with it. Russia, too, joined in the censure, its Foreign Ministry calling the Conference “unnecessary and useless.” Mikhail Kamynin, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, said that “Russia shares the determination, expressed by the UN General Assembly, not to allow the denial of the Holocaust.” Moscow’s former Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, for example, wrathfully attacked Holocaust deniers in his speech at the ceremony of hanukiah lighting on < 55 >

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Manezhnaya Square in Moscow: “They claim that there was no killing of millions of Jews. That way one could come round to claiming that there was no Fascism either. And that Fascism and human hatred that sent people to their death could be looked upon more calmly. To forget and to ignore the past that should lead us to a peaceful future. Again to revive Fascism, hatred, and national enmity. People of all nationalities should defend our principles so that we are never taken back to the times of the Holocaust . . . ” In such a situation one could have expected that the international community would not confine itself to issuing censuring press releases, but rather, would respond to the Tehran provocation by implementing a system of drastic measures to stop the provocateurs from achieving their ends. However, the leading theme of international reactions was mostly a different one, expressed in the boycott and a squeamish reluctance to pick up dirt from dealing with the cheap provocateurs. A high-ranking official of the German Foreign ministry told this writer that the German Government viewed the event as a propaganda stunt and was consciously distancing itself from any discussion of the conference theme or even mentioning it, in order not to give it unnecessary publicity. Unfortunately, this kind of attitude is rather wide-spread. 3 Nevertheless, it would be remiss not to mention two important events the conferences that took place in Jerusalem and Berlin from December 11 through 14, 2006. On December 14, 2006, a symposium was held at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on “Holocaust Denial: A Road to a New Genocide.” Among the attendees were the Yad Vashem Director Avner Shalev, Director of the International Institute of Holocaust Studies David Bankier, the Academic Advisor of the memorial complex Yehuda Bauer, President of the Middle East Media Research Institute Yigal Carmon, Holocaust survivor Rita Weiss, as well as Ambassadors to Israel from over 40 countries.161 “Holocaust deniers supported by the radical Islamists,” said Yehuda Bauer, “are paving the way for a new genocide and new crimes against humanity.” The Symposium urged the international community to condemn the actions of the Iranian President Ahmadinejad in organizing an anti-Semitic forum of “doubters” who call into question the death of millions of Jews. Another response to the Tehran Conference was the opening of the Yad Vashem Internet site which contains a wealth of information on the Holocaust. < 56 >

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Yet the most important and representative action, defying the spirit of bury-your-head-in-the-sand policies and seeking to counter the Tehran Conference with cogent argumentation, was perhaps the international conference on “The Holocaust in Transnational Memory” that was focused on mechanisms employed by Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, their further intentions, and the search for counter-strategies. The Conference was organized by Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (FACE) in conjunction with the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism under the Technical University of Berlin and was demonstratively timed to open on the same day as the Tehran Conference, December 11, 2006.162 It brought together about 500 participants. In his opening remarks the President of the FACE, Thomas Krueger, said that the Conference objective was to reflect the current level of knowledge on the Holocaust and discussions devoted to this topic. These were the themes focused upon in the keynote reports by the American historian Raul Hilberg, the Nestor of Holocaust research as he was called, and the British scholar Peter Longerich. The latter stressed that the deniers would not be able to dictate their rules to the science of history and proposed holding annual conferences on the Holocaust in Berlin. Thomas Krueger also pointed out two important educational problems faced in this context. The first one is due to the fact that in the near future there will be no living Holocaust survivors and witnesses of that event left. Their role in presenting this subject has always been paramount and remains so today, they have left behind rich audiovisual materials that will be increasingly used in public lectures and the teaching process. The second problem lies in the fact Germany today is paying the price for stubbornly not perceiving itself, for a long time, as an immigration host country and, consequently, a country of immigrants. Most of the immigrants (including those with German citizenship) may have never heard of the Holocaust, and those who have, often have heard more lies than truth both about the Holocaust and the Jews in general, if they come from Muslim countries. As a result, Germany is facing new political and educational challenges associated with this closed community susceptible to anti-Semitism. And that requires a search for new ways and approaches.163 That this is not a far-fetched issue was also confirmed by Yves Camus, representing L’Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques in Paris. He said that in France the overwhelming majority of anti-Semitic manifestations stemmed from the North African Arab community, and such < 57 >

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manifestations are fueled not by Islam, but by the anti-Israeli propaganda coming from the TV screens. Wolfgang Benz, the director of the Center for Research on antiSemitism under Berlin Technical University, noted that manifestations of anti-Semitism were constantly on the rise both in Germany and throughout the world, with those messages being increasingly “finessed,” after the all too familiar Nazi fashion, to “encode” or “camouflage” their anti-Semitic thrust, thus making them harder to prosecute. On the other hand, there is a clearly defined tendency towards trivializing the Holocaust, with yet another evidence of that provided by the newly coined term “Bomben Holocaust” used in reference to the British bombing of Dresden. (We will add that this trend has taken on a more encompassing and dangerous form of late, expressed in the loose usage of the word “genocide” that can be applied to almost anything these days, with the resultant devaluation of its meaning!) What all that can and should be countered with was spoken on by Wolfgang Kraushaar of the Hamburg Institute of Social Studies and Bundestag deputies Gitta Connemann and Gert Weisskirchen. Many experts and students of Islam, including Katajun Amipur, Esther Shapira, Navid Kermani, David Menashri, and others devoted their reports to an analysis of the various aspects of anti-Semitism and their political significance in today’s Islamic world. Their general conclusion was that this danger was not to be underestimated and should be combated. The Conference was also attended by the famous balladeer and writer Wolf Biermann and the Israeli sociologist and political journalist Nathan Sznaider. The latter voiced his regret at the flagging awareness of the existing threats and blunted polemic responses. Harald Welzer from the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research in Essen said that things had gone so far that the Holocaust was now being widely used as a tool in criticizing Israel’s policy vis-à-vis Palestine. The participants in the Berlin Conference were unanimous in condemning the Conference in Tehran. The Iranian Embassy in Berlin responded to both conferences in a rather peculiar manner by inviting all wishers to a symposium devoted to the prophet Mohammed that it was holding December 16, 2006 at the Urania society in Berlin. The German Right-wing radicals naturally met the Tehran conference with complete understanding. H. Mahler, a German revisionist doing time in a German prison for Holocaust denial, sent his greetings to Tehran November 14, 2006, calling the Conference a historical event. Shortly before the German < 58 >

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National Party faction in Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania Landtag gave a local denier Bernd Rabehl the possibility to take part in a parliamentary hearing, providing an extended publicity op for his views. The Right-wing extremist strategy of masking anti-Semitism as anti-Americanism and criticism of Israel evolved a step further and gained a new impulse thanks to the Tehran Conference and the Iranian President’s statements. 4 The Holocaust deniers’ conference in Tehran was not a one-off event. It was yet another link in a long chain of provocations that Iran does not cease to amaze the world with. Let us recap them in brief: the prophet Mohammed cartoons scandal (notably, the “insult to Islam” from Danish cartoonists was not countered by cartoons of Jesus Christ, but by cartoons of the Holocaust!), the second Lebanese war, the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas, allegations of Israel’s illegitimacy, the game of nuclear hide-and-seek with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the capture and pardon of the British sea patrol . . . Yet to come is probably a new regional or global provocation. For the first time in many years, the world faces a state which embraces political anti-Semitism and whose leader, Ahmadinejad, is not averse to playing the anti-Jewish card (one that, he believes, cannot be trumped) in his bid to become the fuehrer of the Anti-Semites International. There is an obvious connection between the Holocaust of 1941-1945 and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Cutting out from under Israel its main moral foundation is by no means a secondary goal for Ahmadinejad who keeps holding forth on how Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Hence his courageous support and a brotherly hand insidiously extended to the learned men who never tire of researching the Holocaust with a view to its denial or, barring that, at least an understatement (reduction). He willingly speculates on the incompleteness of man’s knowledge of the world and says: look, there is much more research being done in the field of physics than in the field of the Holocaust, and yet it does not occur to anyone to declare the physicists’ work complete or ban it altogether. He knows full well that no deniers will ever be able to disprove the Holocaust. However, if Israel’s foundations are not to be demolished, one at least should try to drive a wedge in between those foundations and the ground they rest upon! < 59 >

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And he does try to play it subtle. Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth? Yes, that’s what he says, but he does not mean the entire planet, but just that part of it called Palestine. His favorite talking point in lectures or interviews is this: What right do the Jews have to Palestine or a part of it, if the Holocaust took place in Europe? So go to Europe, particularly, Germany and create a post-Holocaust homeland for the Jews there, but give our Arab lands back to the long-suffering Palestinian people, give it back the easy way, lest you are made to do so the hard way!164 The third goal that the deniers might well help achieve, what with their constant buzz and the ever-growing martyrs’ halo, is isolating Israel, scaring its friends away from it, and leaving it one-on-one with its Islamic surroundings. As rightly noted by Alfred Kokh,165 this could be accomplished just by influencing the electorate in the democratic countries of Europe and America, who have been traditionally supporting Israel, in such a way as to make them withdraw the mandate for such a support from their governments. Well-orchestrated and perfectly timed acts of terrorism can be a powerful political weapon, as evidenced by the experiences of Spain and Russia.

DENIERS PUNISHMENT AND HISTORY’S ARBITRATION Here two truths come into collision. The truth of liberal convictions which says that no man can be punished for voicing his thoughts. And the suprahuman truth that holds the freedom of speech, as understood by David Irving, to be a desecration of the memory millions of victims — children, old people, and women. Ilya Milshtein The persecuted one becomes a star, a celebrity whose works take on an aura of a forbidden fruit, while the arguments of his opponents are rejected out of hand, because they send club-wielding policemen to take their place on the debating stand. Anton Nosik

1 Legislating against Holocaust denial or, in other words, penalizing “lies about Auschwitz,” has been a hot debating topic in many countries of late. The history of the issue is a long one, especially in Germany, where it starts with the speech made on November 25 1949 in Kiel by Wolfgang < 60 >

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Hedler, a Bundestag deputy from the German Party. Among other things he said this: “Schumacher166 is making a lot of noise about Hitlerite barbarity towards the Jews. Whether suffocating them with gasses was or was not an appropriate means, people can differ on. There might have been other ways to take their lives . . . 167” Hedler was immediately sued, but got away unscathed, as the court gave him an acquittal on February 15, 1950 due to contradictions in witness testimonies. The same day (!) the SocialDemocratic faction in the Bundestag submitted a bill “On the Enemies of Democracy” which was bogged down and finally withered away in the parliamentary committees and subcommittees.168 Ten years later there was another public outbreak of anti-Semitism. In 1958, a certain Nieland, a timber trader from Hamburg, published a brochure entitled “How Many World or Money Wars the Peoples Have Yet to Lose.” The publication was purely anti-Semitic in nature, but did not touch on the subject of the Holocaust. Things began to change in the legislative domain in the early 1980s when, on the one hand, Germany was ruled by the “Red-and-Yellow” coalition of the Social-Democrats and the Liberals and, on the other, there was a sharp spike in the militancy of the Neo-Nazis. In September 1982, the Bundestag debated but failed to pass amendments to Para 140.II. of the Penal Code which provided for prison sentences of up to 3 years or a fine for any public expression of solidarity with, denial or whitewashing of the actions of the Nazi domination period which violates public peace.169 The “Black-and-Yellow” coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Liberals did not succeed either, running into resistance from the Christian-Democraticcontrolled Lands in the Bundesrat. The turning point came around in 1992-1994 following the “Günter Deckert affair.”170 Deckert’s openly provocative and anti-Semitic utterances at the closing of a conference in Weinheim proved too much to take for the German justice, and, November 11 1992, the Mannheim Land Court sentenced him to one year in jail and a fine of 100,000 Deutschmarks for fomenting national enmity, libel, desecration of dead people’s memory, and instigating racial hatred. In 1994, however, the Supreme Court of Germany ruled that instigation of racial hatred had not been convincingly proved and acquitted the radical, setting off a wave of protests both in and out of the country.171 As a result of that incident, they developed, debated, and passed, in October 1994, the so-called Law on Combating the Consequences of Crimes (Verbrechenbekämpfungsgesetz) which entered into force on December 1, 1944 and provided for a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison.172 < 61 >

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Starting in the 1980s, many countries made public Holocaust denial a prosecutable offense covered mostly by general penal code provisions. However, many countries, following Germany’s example, adopted special national laws prohibiting Holocaust denial.173 These are Austria, Belgium,174 Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Luxemburg,175 Poland,176 Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, France,178 the Czech Republic, Switzerland,178 etc. Penalties provided for in such laws usually represent some combination of fines and prison terms. The latter vary from up to 5 years in Germany and Israel179 to as much as 10 in Austria,180 Romania, and the Czech Republic. As a rule, penalties get stiffer if the offense is committed by a public official. A close look at the writings and backgrounds of Holocaust deniers leave little doubt as to what they are. These are not truth seekers but outspoken and enraptured anti-Semites, differing from each other in just minor details. Holocaust denial, writes journalist Ilya Milshtein, “is not only a desecration of the memory of the perished and an insult to the survivors. It is also an attempt to justify the devil.” It is anti-Semitism that is the driving force behind the deniers, often coupled with the resentment over the “downtrodden” Germany. And anti-Semitism spews forth the rest of it, including deficient historical professionalism or a penchant for pompous graphorrhea.181 Judophobia in the West, just like in Russia of late, has been a very private, almost intimate, affair. Though not unmanageable or irresponsible. The state, in tandem with civil society, watches over its blossoming and firmly insists on requisite decency being observed. But Holocaust denial in today’s post-Holocaust Western world is the height of indecency and therefore something socially risky, legally uncomfortable, and fraught with reprisals. And let’s make no mistake of it: deniers deserve no sympathy — after all, they are adults who know full well what they are doing.182 At many levels of social communication — personal, corporate, public — denial practitioners face obstacles, barriers, and even walls, including wellguarded prison ones. From newspaper reports, it appears that a pretty common punishment befalling the deniers and their sympathizers is family trouble. A very graphic case in point is the story of Rabbi Friedman from Vienna. After he had taken part in the deniers’ conference in Tehran his wife left him taking along their, fittingly, numerous children. For those in the education business, the most likely occupational hazard is getting the boot from their schools or universities, while academics may sometimes forfeit their scholarly degrees.183

< 62 >

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2 Robert Faurisson found himself at the receiving end of almost the entire spectrum of such reprisals: he was ostracized by his own students, kicked out of his university, and eventually convicted of history falsification by a French court that sentenced him to 3 months in prison and a fine of 21,000 francs. Another Frenchman, Jean Plantin, had to shell out twice as much for his “revisionism”: the Court of the city of Lyon fined him, on December 26, 2001, 43,600 francs ($5,880 at the then exchange rate). Switzerland was the scene of a series of similar trials. Jürgen Graf184 was the most notorious of the accused, but far from the only one. Another Swiss denier, Rene-Louis Berclaz, who had founded, in 1995, the nationalist society “Verite et Justice” (“Truth and Justice”) which had been closed by a court order in 2002, received two convictions: first, he was sentenced to 4 months in jail in 1998 (the same year as Graf ) and then he got another term of 8 months in 2002, both being suspended sentences. In 2004 he fled to Monte Negro, but in 2006 was arrested again in Romania. The superannuated Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, who was publishing a newspaper disseminating denialist views and disputing the “myth of six million,” was sentenced to one year in prison, commuted to three months on appeal. One of the most recent trials was held in Germany. In August 2007, Marcel Wöll, 24 and the Chairman of the local organization of the NationalDemocratic Party of Germany in Hessen, was found guilty of Holocaust denial by the administrative court of the Land of Hessen. During a legislative assembly session in the city of Butzbach in March 2007 he called upon the assembly members not to allocate funds for school trips to the sites of Nazi crimes. He said that tours of the places “of the so-called National-Socialist terror” were used to “brainwash” school students. Another recent trial took place in Greece. A Greek attorney Konstantinos Plevris, the author of the book Jews: The Whole Truth was tried both for Holocaust denial and appeals to repeat it, starting with deportations. But Plevris brazenly invoked the freedom of speech in his defense: “This is my opinion. Having an opinion is no crime.”185 At the same time Holocaust denial law enforcement has usually been rather lenient. Convictions on denial charges are few186 and maximum sentences are even rarer. These are meted out to the most inveterate of the deniers, such as Ernst Zündel, for example. Even so, deniers have typically been trying to evade any penalties by fleeing from justice. Jürgen Graf, for one, fled to Russia, Rene-Louis Berclaz went into hiding in Monte Negro and Romania, Germar Rudolf fled, < 63 >

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consecutively, to Spain, Britain, and USA, while Wolfgang Fröhlich applied for political asylum in the Iranian Embassy in Vienna. There has not been much delay in denier extradition from their countries of refuge to the countries where they are wanted for trial. Zündel, for one, was extradited from the US to Canada, and from there — to Germany. In august 2007, the Austrian journalist and writer Gerd Honsik was arrested in Malaga, Spain; he was wanted by the Austrian authorities after he had fled from justice back in 1992. He was sentenced by a court of law to 1.5 years in prison for neo-Nazi activities and dissemination of publications which not only denied the use of gas chambers by the Nazis, but openly defended and justified the Third Reich.187 There are countries that agree to extradite the wanted deniers even if denial is not punishable by their on national laws. On the other hand, there are countries that won’t even hear of extradition: Russia and Moscow, for instance, have become for Jürgen Graf what Switzerland and Zürich had once been for Lenin. There have been attempts to give an international dimension to laws and legislative initiatives of that nature. For instance, Germany, during its EU Presidency in the first half of 2007, proposed making Holocaust denial a criminal offense throughput the entire EU territory, but was supported by just 8 countries out of the 27, (albeit the largest and most significant ones). A number of recommending resolutions have been passed by the UN. On November 1, 2005 the General Assembly adopted the resolution on Holocaust Remembrance which stressed that the international community “Rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or in part.” Russia was among the signatories to the Resolution, thus signaling its recognition of the importance of resisting Holocaust denial and deniers. On January 26, 2007 the General Assembly adopted a resolution initiated by the US that condemned Holocaust denial or understatement.188 The adoption of that resolution a month after the Tehran Conference was clearly a response to the stance taken by the Iranian President Ahmadinejad who has repeatedly called the Holocaust a myth and urged the destruction of Israel in its present form. However, most countries follow their individual policies, and it is not so easy to draw a line between Holocaust denial and the freedom of expression. In some countries laws punishing Holocaust denial are yet in the process of being introduced, like in Italy or Ukraine where relevant bills were submitted to parliaments in 2007. True, the Italian bill authored by the Minister of Justice Clemente Mastella and penalizing the dissemination of racist ideas by 3 to 5 years in prison and by as much as 12 years for incitement, has not < 64 >

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made much headway. It met with opposition from not only the Right, but also Leftist intellectuals and even Jewish organizations. The opponents of the law contended that the State should not be in the business of enshrining historical truths, which was something for civil society to tackle, helping to generate the necessary “antibodies.” The State may assist civil society in this task, but should never supplant it.189 There are also countries, and they are in the majority, where penalties are not introduced on principle (in the FSU these include Russia,190 Latvia, and Estonia). On the other hand, Great Britain, too, is among the countries where Holocaust is not punishable by law. Spain, where the relevant law had been in effect since 1995, saw a drastic change in its legal situation. On November 7 2007 the country’s Constitutional Court declared punishment for Holocaust denial unconstitutional because the underlying corpus delicti encroaches on the freedom of speech. Holocaust denial per se is without legal substance (because the Holocaust did occur) and does not incite racial or religious hatred. There was an important caveat, however: the Court stipulated that legal penalties, including imprisonment, were constitutional when applied to people guilty not of Holocaust denial, but of justifying the Holocaust or any other instance of genocide.191 In other countries similar laws (bills) have a wider term of reference than the Holocaust. Italy, the birthplace of Fascism, criminalizes such transgressions as propaganda of racial superiority, acts of racial discrimination or incitement to such acts. Polish law does not use the concept of the Holocaust or genocide. Starting from 1998 fines or prison sentences of up to 3 years are imposed there on those who deny facts of both Nazi and Communist persecution. The Czech Republic differs from Poland only in the use of terms and punishes both Nazi and Communist genocide. However, people like David Irving have nothing to fear in Poland, because the Polish law for some reason is only applied to Polish citizens or ethnic Poles who are citizens of other countries. Ukraine had intended to put both the Holocaust and the Golodomor under one legal roof, although the Golodomor is a far less researched phenomenon than the Holocaust.192 In the Baltic States, calls are heard to pass a law punishing the denial of Stalinist crimes, or both that and Holocaust denial. Obviously, all these attempts to link other types of tragedies or reprisals to the Holocaust reflect those countries internal political situation, thus making legislation against Holocaust deniers dependent on the development of the situation as well as on other extraneous circumstances.193 < 65 >

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3 Nonetheless, from a legal standpoint, the subject of criminal punishment for Holocaust denial is not uncontroversial, and the legal framework and grounds for prosecuting deniers do allow of variant interpretations. There is a quite evident contradiction between such laws and the First Amendment to the US Constitution, as well as Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights both of which guarantee people the freedom of speech and expression. This inevitably leads to a conflict between national and international laws, between law and justice, etc. Hence such occurrences as Chomsky’s support of Faurisson or the revision of the anti-denial law by Spain’s Constitutional Court. Naturally, the German legislature was well aware of this set of issues linked to of the freedom speech. However, the Supreme Court of the Federal Republic of Germany resolved them in a different way back in 1979 by qualifying the destruction of Jews and half-Jews as an indisputable fact so thoroughly and convincingly documented that denying it cannot be recognized as an expression of opinion (sincerely held, though incorrect) or a scholarly viewpoint (erroneous as it may be), but can only be a deliberate defamation, as well as in insult to and discrimination of Holocaust survivors and all the other Jews living today. “It is impossible to deny any democracy’s sovereign right to fight the germs of the brown contagion in society without waiting for the torchbearing marches in the streets of its cities,” writes Anton Nosik. “However, a legal ban per se on the denial of the Holocaust appears rather flawed in terms of sense and logic.”194 After all, denial as such does not lend itself to clear-cut formalization, and therefore the relevant law enforcement, even in technical terms, can only be selective and, consequently, fraught with arbitrariness and double standard. Anti-Semites emerge out of this process in a way they could not otherwise even dream of: as persecuted dissidents, shakers of the foundations, martyrs for an idea, and almost victims of arbitrary rule. This dilemma, it seems, could be resolved by combining both principles. Yes, every person has a right to the freedom of speech, thought, and expression but, by the same token, one must bear responsibility for something one utters or pens. And if that something fans passions, breeds hatred, insults the memory of victims, etc., then it should be up to a court to rule whether it is so or not, who should be held responsible and to what extent. < 66 >

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Incidentally, the ruling of Spain’s Constitutional Court was by no means a victory for the deniers. To repeat, it has created an important legal precedent which establishes that punishment should be imposed not on Holocaust denial but on its justification (i. e., on those who express solidarity with the executioners) and on the propaganda of such justification. As for “pure denial,” this is an area that should be regulated by general constitutional provisions on the freedom of speech and thought and on banning the incitement of hatred. Latvia’s Prime Minister, Artis Pabriks, tried to couch the same argument in this way: “Only a fool can deny the Holocaust, but people cannot be thrown in jail merely for holding foolish views.”195 However, the Prime Minister is not just being facetious here, he is also evading the issue, because deniers are not so much fools as they are anti-Semites, i. e., people with principles and convictions. And a confirmed anti-Semite can hardly be reformed even in jail because it is a mania, a mental deformity which, experience shows, is practically untreatable. Hitler did not forget to mention Jews even in his death note, asking that somebody carry on his sacred cause of purging Germany of them. But outlawing deniers today might give them an aura of real victims and heroes, of unjustly persecuted outcasts and sympathyinspiring “sufferers.” In the US, notes A. Nosik, they believe in a healthy society’s ability to prevail over an absurd ideology in an open clash of opinions, without the aid of the police bludgeon. They understand that you cannot be somewhat pregnant. Either the legislature withdraws itself from regulating people’s thought processes and inculcation of ideologies, or it will have, step by step, to travel the path of mind control to the very end. It starts with a ban on an ideology, then on ideas, then on books containing those ideas, then on music, films, photographs, and next thing you see will be a cop posted to every blog on the Net to police the minds . . . 196

Chomsky is not the only one to come out against persecution for opinions and challenging universally accepted truths. He is joined by other intellectuals, such as, for example, Timothy Garton Ash, who addressed the subject in an article written for The Guardian. He believes that Holocaust denial should be combated in our schools, universities, and the media, not in police precincts and courts.197 As an alternative to legal prohibitions there are proposals to use political education in the form of national educational programs on the subject of the Holocaust.198 < 67 >

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In this context the experience of the Nizkor199 Internet project is very useful. The project was initiated in the early 1990s by Ken McVay and was devoted to open polemics with Holocaust deniers. The site accumulates texts and information both on the Holocaust and Holocaust denial and deniers. McVay is an active supporter of the freedom of speech, and in waging this debate he proceeds from the belief that it is more important to respond to deniers’ arguments and disseminate knowledge on the Internet rather than censoring it. In 1996 he made a speech in the Canadian Parliament, criticizing the country’s law to control hate speech on the Internet. In the late 1990s the Simon Wiesenthal Center even rebuked Nizkor for providing unwitting publicity to Holocaust denial. A possible way out of this predicament could lie in the establishment of an authoritative International Historical Arbitration after the fashion of the legal arbitration courts that exist today in The Hague and Strasbourg. Placed under the auspices of both the UN and the World History Association, it should have the wherewithal to mobilize, within a short period of time, groups of experts on various historical disciplines or problems.200 Parties that entertain serious doubts as to the veracity of certain universally recognized historic events should be prepared to thoroughly substantiate their viewpoints, pack it all up in legal briefs, clearly formulated and leaving no loopholes for multiple interpretations, and, finally, present all arguments and proof supporting their case and/or debunking that of their opponents. The International Historical Arbitration would then take such “complaints” or “disputed cases” under advisement and issue well-founded scholarly opinions on the state of affairs within the purview of the problem at issue. There is nothing unnatural in the concept of Historical Arbitration. History here does not try to supplant justice and, on the other hand, does not expect the latter to resolve its scientific problems. Not all people realize that history is as much of an applied science as physics or chemistry, only the area of its application is not space exploration or materials development, but the humanitarian sphere in the broadest sense of the word — from education to, unfortunately, ideology. It is well known how important historical conclusions and expert examinations were in the 1990s during the legal fight for victim compensation for forced labor under Nazi rule and in the process of receiving those compensations in the 2000s. Such an Arbitration body, of course, is not a court and its rulings will carry no legal force. However, if complaints or charges are then pressed in court, such rulings could well serve as a very solid basis for a court decision. < 68 >

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Maintaining such an organization would surely be a costly affair, but not prohibitively so, taking into account the damage and danger residing in a parallel and legally unchallenged existence of two different “truths.”201 In actual fact, there is only one truth, and that truth is defined by history. The history of the Holocaust can and should be studied and clarified continuously, based on new evidence and materials; however, it is not a novel that can be re-written anew, for better or for worse. One of the “two truths,” the Holocaust denial movement, which has been shown by its 60-year-long history to be persevering, aggressive, and not unsuccessful in distorting and falsifying very recent and still palpitating history, is not an innocent and socially harmless phenomenon. Its three root postulates — first, “there was no Holocaust and the fuehrer was not a butcher, Heil Hitler!”; second, “There was no Holocaust, but a Holotoast, and Jews are not victims, but global manipulators!”; and third, “There was no Holocaust, and therefore Israel is illegitimate, get it off the world map!” — are all meant to justify pogroms and wars. In reproducing and broadcasting these signals of hatred and falsehood and exuding the fumes of calumny and anti-Semitism, deniers subtly sense the absence or weakness of society’s immune system in the face of history distortion. They readily take advantage of the mechanisms of tolerance developed by democracy and are by no means seeking “the city that is to come” or trying to elaborate upon the historical picture of the world, but are attempting again to poison and demoralize the very society that provides them with such a comfortable existence. Translated by Sergeui Silichtchev

NOTES 1

2

3

4 5

6

“Обыкновенный ревизионизм.” Интервью Николая Караева с Юргеном Графом. 2002, 8 декабря. //www.svenlib.sandy.ru/pugovichki/vesti/graf.htm. Demant, Ebbo (Hg.), Auschwitz — “Direkt von der Rampe weg . . . , ” Kaduk, Erber, Klehr: Drei Täter geben zu Protokoll. Rowohlt, 1979. S. 44–45. Каценельсон Ицхак. Сказание об истребленном народе / Пер. Е.Г. Эткинда под редакцией Ш. Маркиша. М.: Языки русской культуры, 2000. С. 213–214. This is the reason why D. Lipstadt, for one, avoids using this term. From the English “exterminate.” Sometimes one also comes across names like “Holocaustians.” See: Felderer, Ditlieb, “Certain Impossibilities of the ‘Gerstein Statement’, ” IHR, 1980, № 1. < 69 >

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8

9

10 11

12

13 14 15 16

17

18

19 20

21

The more primitive the propaganda, the more effective it is. A late colleague of mine, who used to teach at Vienna University, once witnessed a demonstration by Palestinians in Vienna. They were protesting against yet another Israeli act of retaliation in response to yet another Palestinian act of terror and were chanting: “Ein, zwei, drei — Palästina frei!” Repeating that simple little chant without a pause they were able to drive themselves into a blood-boiling frenzy. Another such case I witnessed myself in Paris: several dozen dark-skinned people were demonstrating their solidarity with the vandals who had torched the city suburbs the day before. Taking turns at a loudspeaker, they were chanting to some kind of an ancient African beat just one word, stressing its every syllable “Solidarité! So-li-da-ri-té! So-li-da-ri-té! . . . ” It was sounding threatening and incendiary! Stern, Kenneth S., Holocaust Denial New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1994. P. 1–2. Bardèche, Maurice, Letter to Francois Mauriac. Paris, 1947; Bardèche, Maurice. Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise. Paris, 1948. As if concentration camps had a system of elections from bottom to top! For more detail, see: Lipstadt, Deborah E., Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York [u.a.], 1993. P. 83–89. Rassinier, Paul, Debunking the Genocide Myth: A Study of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Alleged Extermination of European Jewry. Torrance, 1978. The book was published in English by a Neo-Nazi publishing house — presumably, to commemorate the 10th anniversary since the death of Rassinier (he died in 1967) and as a response to the TV showing of the film “Holocaust.” Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. Zürich, 1994. P. 69–71. See below. Senator William Langer. For instance, Freda Utley, the author of the book The High Cost of Vengeance. (Chicago, 1949) or Professor Charles Tensill of Georgetown University who wrote the book Back Door to War in 1952. That imaginative idea was first voiced back in 1952 by an American anti-Semite W.D. Harrstrom. A good footing for the future deniers was provided by the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other anti-Semitic writings that invoked, directly or indirectly, the world Jewish conspiracy. None other but Henry Ford was a great admirer of that train of thought (See: Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 51–58). Hoggan, David L., Der erzwungene Krieg. Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag, 1964. App, Austin J., The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German people for Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses. Takoma Park, Md.: Boniface Press, 1974. A logical question — why then are Jews directing their slander against the Germans and not the Russians who had done them even greater wrong? — gets this “answer”: because all they cared for was money. And since they stood no chance of getting the Soviets to pay up, they concentrated all their lies on the guilt-ridden Germans who were ever ready to make amends. And when the Bolsheviks dropped out of that scheme due to their anti-Israeli policies, their place had to be taken by the US government that had been, naturally, bribed by the Jews. < 70 >

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24

25

26 27

28 29

30 31 32

33

34 35 36

37

38 39 40

41

App, A., “The ‘Holocaust’ Put in Perspective,” JHR, 1980. Nr. 1. Goettingen University, which conferred on him the Doctor of Jurisprudence degree in 1983, recalled it the same year. See an analysis of his effort in the Chapter “Victims’ Testimonies” in D. Zimmerman’s book. In the Russian translation (1999) the book, for some reason, was titled “Six Million — Lost and found.” He himself said: “Presently, at London University.” See: Suzman, Arthur, Diamond, Denis, “Der Mord an sechs Millionen Juden. Die Wahrheit ist unteilbar,” Aus der Politik und der Geschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament (Berlin). 1978. Nr. B 30/78. 29 Juli. S. 5. Demant, Ebbo (Hg.), Auschwitz — “Direkt von der Rampe weg . . . ” S. 44–45. For example, the Zyklon-B gas was first declared so harmless as to be incapable of killing anyone and then so powerful that airing the gas chambers would have taken as much as whole day, and at that rate there was no way millions of victims could have been destroyed. Facts of his biography even inspired a theater play. In 1977 it appeared in German as well. Taking into account the European screenings and the US re-run, the film was watched by over 220 million people, each viewing setting off numerous discussions. This turned out to be one of the many aliases of the Irish and British fascist William David McGalden. Other pen names he used included “Sondra Ross,” “David Berg,” “Julius Finkelstein,” and “David Stanford.” McGalden himself was an active contributor to the anti-Semitic New York magazine American Mercury (it became anti-Semitic in 1965 or 1966 when it was taken over by Willis Carto). For more detail, see below. Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 176. After reading the program (The Revisionist Convention) and the literature produced and disseminated by the IHR, the College President asked the deniers not to bother him again. See the report on the Conference and some of the papers presented (Particularly, A. App’s, with his typical use of the quote marks with the keyword Holocaust in the “‘Holocaust’” Put in Perspective”) in the first issue of the JHR (1980, No. 1). Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 157. Ibid. P. 31. That proved too much to take for the German justice and, on November 11 1992, the Mannheim Land Court sentenced him to one year in jail for fomenting national enmity, libel, desecration of dead people’s memory, and instigating racial hatred. He was born in 1944 in Oldenburg. In the 1950s, he emigrated to Australia with his family. He is the founder and director of the so-called Adelaide Institute which brings together the Australian Holocaust deniers (See: www.adelaideinstitute.org). He delivers reports on the falsehood of the Holocaust which he illustrates with a model of the Treblinka concentration camp. In 1999 Toeben was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Mannheim court. < 71 >

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See Butz’ paper and a report on the Conference in: JHR. 1998. No. 6. P. 2–10.

43

This conference was held in lieu of another one that had been scheduled for March, 2001 but did not take place.

44

For more detail, see below.

45

He was born in 1951.

46

The publishing of the Journal was suspended due to a lack of funds, with the promise that it would resume if funds became available. The Journal’s function as the revisionist mouthpiece was taken over by the web site www.ihr.org.

47

He was born in 1929.

48

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 33ff. N. Chomsky, who was defending an abstract freedom of speech for R. Faurisson without apparently knowing him personally, would have perhaps reconsidered his position, had he known more about his client. Would he have tried to defend him from charges of anti-Semitism, had he read Faurisson’s own account of an incident which had taken place in Paris at a Latin Quarter café in 1997 when he shouted to the face of professor Alain Finkelkraut: “They’re done for, your gas chambers!”? (Faurisson, R., “Paying Tribute to Jewish Power. ‘Ah, How Sweet it is to be Jewish . . .’ ,” JHR. 1998. No. 6. P. 11–12).

49

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 25–26. The University recalled Roques’ Doctorate.

50

Петренко, Василий. До и после Освенцима. М.: Фонд “Холокост”, 2000. С. 86.

51

The earliest of those dates back to 1933 (!), which is somewhat unexpected.

52

See the list of major articles published in it, as well as other important publications by deniers in: Stern, Kenneth S. Holocaust Denial. New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1994. P. 135–152. A consolidated list of 1980-1998 publications with subject and author indexes was published in: JHR. December 1998. P. 37–60 (compiled by Greg Raven). The internet version of the list covering the entire period of the Journal’s existence can be found at: http://www.ihr. org/journal/jhrarticles.shtml. One of the first attempts by a historian to make a corresponding bibliography was undertaken by Knoller, Rivkah, Denial of the Holocaust — A bibliography of literature, denying or distorting the Holocaust, and of literature about this phenomenon, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1989 (1992).

53

Announcing the “contest,” the IHR set tight deadlines for responses by likely contenders and when the deadlines expired, reserved the right to interpret their silence as evidence of their inability to prove their point and consequently as a demonstration of the IHR’s correctness (Lipstadt, Deborah E. Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 172).

54

Wiesenthal also received a “special offer” of a prize of $25,000 for proving the authenticity of the diaries of Anne Frank, which is disputed by the deniers.

55

He is of Austrian (possibly, Jewish-Austrian) origin and a citizen of Sweden. He edited an anti-Semitic newsletter The Jewish Information Bulletin which was published by The Jewish Information Society. In 1983 he was sent to jail for 10 months for mailing out to major Jewish communities envelopes containing < 72 >

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disintegrated human tissue and hair and a letter asking if these could be used to identify the destroyed Hungarian Jews. 56

As a result, the IHR’s position was presented in a series of materials published in the JHR (1982, No. 1), and the triumph of truth attained at such a great cost was pretty much dampened.

57

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 170–174.

58

The latter, in the meantime, immersed himself into the study of sources. In examining the death registry books (Sterbebücher) at Auschwitz he discovered that the painstakingly recorded deaths were those of both old and young people. Some of them were sent to the camp prior to the start of the selection and mass destruction, others arrived thereafter, and these were mostly Jews from Poland, France, Holland, and other countries (Weber, Marc, “Pages from the Auschwitz Death Registry Volumes. Long-hidden Death Certificates Discredit Extermination Claims,” JHR. 1992. No 3. P. 265–298.) Inconsistencies found by Weber have yet to be explained.

59

That was the last attempt because he died soon thereafter.

60

See lists of those in: Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 221.

61

Ibid. P. 221–252.

62

Ibid. P. 222.

63

He was born on April 24, 1939 in Kalmbach, Baden-Wurtemberg. The correct pronunciation of his name is “Tsoondel.”

64

It was published under an alias (See: Friedrich, Christophe, Eric Thompson, The Hitler We Loved and Why. Reedy, West Virginia, 1977).

65

The suer was the Canadian Government that joined the private lawsuit by Sabina Citron, a Holocaust survivor.

66

A Jewish political writer who sided with the deniers. The latter often used his name whenever they needed to fend off accusations of anti-Semitism. After his death the deniers established, in memory and honor of him, the J. Burg Society whose first Chairman was O. Remer.

67

Some states of the US (for example, Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Missouri) used, along with the electric chair and lethal injections, execution by gassing. It was finally relinquished only in the late 1980s.

68

The Leuchter Report and Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland.

69

With D. Irving’s Foreword and an altered title “Auschwitz: the End of the Line: The Leuchter Report — the First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz.”

70

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 199–202.

71

Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice.

72

Another denier, F. Toeben, was also tried there which he wrote about in one of his books (Toeben F., Where Truth Is Not Defense, I Want To Break Free. Washington: TBR Books, 2003)

73

The girlfriend of the well-known right-wing radical Horst Mahler. < 73 >

PAVEL POLIAN 74

www.zundelsite.org

75

He was born on August 15, 1951 in Basel, in an office worker’s family.

76

Graf, Jürgen, Der Holocaust-Schwindel. Vom Werden und Vergehen des Jahrhundertbetrugs. Basel, 1993. In 1996 the book was already translated into Russian and was published by the Russkiy Vestnik Publishers; its second and third impressions appeared in 1997 and 2000.

77

Out of that sum, Foerster was to return 45,000 francs, and Graf — 10,000 francs. In addition, Graf was required to pay 1,000 francs to a theology professor in Basel as a compensation for having sent him a copy of one of his books with an insulting inscription.

78

IHR. 1995. Vol. 15. Nr. 6. P. 36–37.

79

For 27.1.2002: http://www.rusk.ru/News/02/1/new27_01d.htm.

80

From Graf ’s interview with N. Karayev: http://www.svenlib.sandy.ru/pugovichki/ vesti/graf.htm (in Russian).

81

He took his wife’s name and calls himself Germar Scherer today. He was born in 1964.

82

The trial number is 17 KLs 83/94.

83

Zarusky, Jürgen. “Leugnung des Holocaust: die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz,” BPJS Aktuell. Jahrestagung der Bundesprüfstelle für jügendgefährdende Schriften “Von “Antisemitismus” bis “Xenofobia.” Rechtsextreme Medien in Deutschland”. Amtliches Mitteilunsblatt. Sonderausgabe, 1999. S. 9.

84

See our publications of Zalman Gradowski’s notes in: “Звезда,” Санкт-Петербург (2008. № 7–9).

85

See: http://3rd.оrg/fcarchive.html.

86

Zarusky, Jürgen, Leugnung des Holocaust: die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz. S. 8.

87

Nolte, Ernst, “Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus? Das Dritte Reich im Blickwinkel des Jahres 1980,” “Historikerstreit”. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der national-sozialistischen Judenvernichtung. München, 1987. S. 19, 24. He did not see any difference between the Jews “interned” in Germany and the Japanese interned in the US during the war.

88

Nolte, Ernst, “Die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ in der Sicht des radikalen Revisionismus,” Streitpunkte. Heutige und künftige Kontroversen um den Nationalsozialismus. Berlin u.a., 1993. S. 318 f.

89

He was born in March, 1938 in Essex.

90

Irving, David, Hitler’s War. London u.a., 1977.

91

See: Lipstadt, Deborah E., History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. New York [u.a.]: Harper Perennial, 2006. See the full record of the trial on the Nizkor site: www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/.

92

He could have gotten 10 years, but he suddenly admitted his guilt and declared that it was an honest mistake on his part, saying that there was no gas chambers at Auschwitz. This helped him have his prison term reduced to three years. < 74 >

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS 93

Zarusky, Jürgen, Leugnung des Holocaust: die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz. S. 8–9.

94

Interestingly, the Nazis finally realized that it was not only a matter of words and euphemisms or passing off the gas chambers for shower rooms. The cover-up required getting rid of the material evidence of the crime as well. So they proceeded to do just that, trying to obliterate the physical traces of it by exhuming human ashes from the anti-tank trenches and dumping them into the rivers and grinding down the unburnt bone fragments.

95

This will be covered in the next chapter.

96

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 19–20.

97

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory. P. 2.

98

Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 21–22.

99

See: Полян П., Поболь Н. (Сост.). Сталинские депортации. 1928–1953. Документы. М.: Материк — Фонд Демократия, 2005. С. 773–775.

100

For more detail, see: Полян Павел. Три метаморфозы сорок пятого года: Аушвиц — Освенцим, Биркенау — Бжезинка и евреи — мирные граждане // Полит.ру. 2008, 28 янв. http://www.polit.ru/analytics/2008/01/28/holokost.html; Полян Павел. Ответ на еврейский вопрос. Как Советы отменили Холокост в Освенциме // Новая газета. № 06. 28–30 янв. С. 15–16.

101

For more on this, see: Альтман И.А. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР, 1941–1945 гг. М.: Фонд “Ковчег,” 2002. In a balanced and consistent manner, the author dissects the Soviet ideological myths and false constructs that even today’s anti-Semitic enthusiasts do not want to part with. (Weaning them from official support and coordination, the State, however, does not crack down on them even when they break the law). See also: Мицель М. Запрет на увековечение памяти как способ замалчивания Холокоста: практика КПУ в отношении Бабьего Яра // Голокост и сучасность. Студії в Україні і світі, 2008. № 1. С. 9–30.

102

Альтман М.М. Отрицание Холокоста. История и современные тенденции. М.: Фонд “Холокост”, 2001. С. 51.

103

Ibid., pp. 63-65. That was what I. Altman spoke about during the said press conference on December 15, 2006.

104

Paradoxically, the Soviet “anti-Zionism” found a direct continuation in today’s “anti-Israelism” of many Western European states: in both cases it was and still is nothing else but slightly camouflaged anti-Semitism.

105

Горелик Вадим. Как товарищи Махмуд Аббас и Евгений Примаков Холокост отрицали // http://shoa.com.ua/php/content/view/74/9/.

106

See below. The deniers’ empirical contribution to the kind of Holocaust research also conducted by the “exterminationists” is negligible. Their wholesale rejection of Jewish and non-Jewish witness testimonies as untrustworthy does not prevent them from countering them with ego-documents of their own. Here is a quote from the memoirs of Z. D. Marenkov entitled “Holocaust-1945. There Were Many Jews . . . ” published on the Internet site of the National-Socialist (sic!) movement “The Slavic Union”: < 75 >

PAVEL POLIAN

Following the victory in the Great Patriotic War the officer corps, including myself, were demobilized from the South Army Group only in August 1946. Which means that from June 1945 through August 1946 we had much time and could freely travel across Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Austria. We were in constant contact with the local population, because we were quartered in private homes and (something that struck us as unusual at first) were meeting many Jews, especially in Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Bucharest. There were many merchants and shop owners among them, theater workers, and actors, i. e., people living at large, not ghetto fugitives. If I had an opportunity to ask the author a question, I would have asked him why on earth his encounters with Jews living in European capitals “struck him as unusual at first.” I would also ask him which branch of military service he was in that gave him such an unrestricted freedom of movement and living away from his barracks. Marenkov has even kept some photographs as a memory of his meetings with those Jews. And here is the conclusion he makes with a truly denialist sweep: “I cited the above facts and even posted a picture of Erzsy and myself of 53 years ago as a confirmation of what many people were saying at that time to the effect that the genocide of the Jewish people was not the total Holocaust of six million people that they try to make it appear to us today” (see: http://www.duel. ru/199806/?6_5_5). 107

Дугин, Александр. Американский миф об Иране // Профиль. 2007. № 38. 15 октября. С. 32–33.

108

Moscow Bureau for Human Rights has addressed the problem of Holocaust denial before. On May 5, 2005 it issued a special report relevant to this subject: “Revisionist and Raceologists in Russia.” See: Московское бюро по правам человека. Ревизионисты и “расологи” в России 5.5.2005 // http://shoa.com.ua/ php/content/view/312/9/. Similar materials were later published in: Альтман И., Чарный С. Отрицание Холокоста в России. Обзор Фонда “Холокост” и Московского Бюро по правам человека // Народ мой. 2006. № 3. 14 февраля. See: http://www.jew.spb.ru/ami/A367/A367>051.html.

109

One of the Report’s “protagonists” was the former Minister of the Press B. Mironov who has published in the last several years about a dozen books of extremist nature containing “hit lists” and calls to militant action.

110

As an example, Kroshner cites the conviction of one A. Koptsev for his attack on the Synagogue on Bronnaya St. in Moscow in 2006.

111

See: См.: Альтман И., Чарный С. Отрицание Холокоста в России.

112

See statements by Anatoly Lyskin, Chairman of the Council of the Federation Committee on Legal and Judiciary Matters; Leonid Bindar, Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Federation Committee on Constitutional Law; Oleg Panteleyev, Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Federation Committee for CIS Affairs; Victor Ilyukhin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma on Security; Alexander Kravets, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy; and Igor Barinov, Member of the State Duma Committee for International Affairs in the article “Russian Deputies View Holocaust Denial as an Ethical Problem” (in Russian). 4.5.2007 // http://shoa.com.ua/php/content/view/594/9/. < 76 >

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS 113

Who is also the author of “Катынский детектив” (“The Katyn Mystery”), (1995) and “Антироссийская подлость” (“Anti-Russian Slime”), (2003) — both devoted to a vindication of the Soviet version of the mass shooting of Polish officers. For more about him, see also: Альтман М.М. Отрицание Холокоста. С. 67–68.

114

The author deliberately de-capitalizes the word “Holocaust.”

115

“Русский вестник.” 1996. № 32–34. The site administration also took a delicious pleasure in correcting a “mistranslation” by substituting the word “yid” for the word “Jew” throughout the material.

116

He bills himself as a historian, writer, and economist. He has authored a number of books, including “Русский труд”, “Экономика русской цивилизации,” “1000 лет русского предпринимательства,” and “Русская цивилизация.” He regularly contributes to the Nash Sovremennik and Molodaya Gvardiya magazines, something that would say a lot to a reader who remembers the balance of forces in Soviet journalism in the 1970-1980s. But no less indicative is the fact that he himself defines his narrow speciality as an expert on the Western special services’ subversive activities against the USSR and Russia.

117

The Conference in Moscow was sponsored by the American Barnes Review magazine published by the kukluxklaner Willis Carto, hosted by the Encyclopedia of Russian Civilization Publishers (later renamed to the “Institute of Russian Civilization,” and accommodated at the Moscow Academy of the Humanities. For more detail on this event, see: Степанов А. Ревизионисты всех стран, объединяйтесь! К итогам конференции по глобальным проблемам всемирной истории // Русская линия. 27.1.2001 (www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=1000463).

118

The latter’s report at the conference was described as the ”culmination and symbol of the Conference.” It was interrupted by his heart attack which was perceived by the observers “as a graphic proof of how fierce was the revisionists’ fight for the historical truth.” The real proof of how patently anti-Semitic was that “symbol” is provided by these words of his: “Mr. Granata has wittily remarked that he cannot understand why the revisionists’ research meets with so much rejection on the part of the Jews. In point of fact, that research is a windfall for them, because now it has been found out that millions of Jews had not been killed, they have survived. But what revisionists hear is not words of gratitude but curses and threats.”

119

And then this: “I suggest that we expose the destructive side of Hedruk’s activities and those of his ideologue Mstislav, in the field of building “Russian racism”! At another point, the same Salamandrov writes this about the same Hedruk: “Given Hedruk’s worldview, he should not be posting in Russian, on a Russian site, and for a Russian audience. That, at least, would be honest of him; otherwise, it’s just no good when some kind of louse tries to pose as a “friend” of Russians (even if based on a shared interest in Holocaust revision).” This illustrates the atmosphere prevailing in the dingy little world of Russian deniers.

120

Most of them are the successors of Hans Günther, Ludwig Woltmann, Ludwig Wilser, Otto Ammon, Georges de Lapouge and many other fossilized “scientists” who tried to prove that, as society develops, the “noble,” lighter-skinned human elements rise to dominance, while the “dark-pigmented” ones sink to the bottom, which is why “White Man” should be protected from the deleterious miscegenation with the “South.” < 77 >

PAVEL POLIAN 121

According to unofficial sources, Dmitri Rogozin’s speech-writer.

122

He once called Eduard Bagritsky either a “pimple” or a “kike wart” (I am quoting from memory) on the clean body of Russian poetry, but contrasted him with another Jewish poet, Osip Mandelshtam for whom he really had a sincere admiration.

123

However, the 6 million number has, in fact, a “symbolic” meaning finding a visual expression, for instance, in the Paris Memorial with ”a tombstone placed on the symbolic grave of the six million martyrs and six floodlight beams cutting through the darkness over the hexogonal slab,” i. e., the Star of David. See: http://kozhinov. voskres.ru/hist2/vevr.htm.

124

In the 1990s, holding L. Poliakoff and I. Wul, of all people, to be the supreme Jewish authority on Holocaust demography is kind of strange. Kozhinov uses their book published 1955, but never references his source.

125

Kozhinov’s exercise in demography was reproduced in toto on the Internet site of a very peculiar organization called “Russian National Unity,” but without a reference to the source and under the title “Местечковая арифметика” (“The Shtetl Arithmetic”) See: http://www.rne.org/sfk/0509/0509>22.html.

126

Their materials were published by “Vecherniy Kiev” which at the time was edited by V. Karpenko. See: Найман Александр. Отрицатели Холокоста в Украине // Еврейский обозреватель(Киев). 2006. 24 января. Reprinted in: http://shoa.com. ua/php/content/view/155/9/).

127

Ходос Э. Еврейский синдром. Харьков, 2001. С. 87–88. The newly discovered literary form of “An Open Letter to Steven Spielberg” generated a lot of imitators.

128

Еврейские вести. (Харьков). 1996. № 5–6.

129

ВЕК. 2000. № 36. 24 сентября.

130

Персонал (Киев). 2002. № 3. С. 7–8.

131

Ibid. 2005. № 46. 16–22 ноября.

132

Ibid. 2002. № 3. С. 10.

133

Найман, Александр. Отрицатели Холокоста в Украине.

134

Патриот Украины. 2002. № 14. 10 апреля.

135

The winner was Abdallah Derqavi, a Moroccan, who was awarded a prize of $12,000.

136

Mottaki found a very nice-sounding name for the deniers: “critics of holocaust dramatization.”

137

The group was headed up by Professor Mohammed Ali Ramin and included M. Lenouf, C. Lindner, S. Thion, F. Toeben, and B. Schaub.

138

Исследование Холокоста. Глобальное видение // Материалы Международной Тегеранской конференции 11–12 декабря 2006 года. М.: Алгоритм, 2007. 271 с.

139

A certain “Friedrich Brukner,” who was unable to make it to the Conference (ИХГВ. С. 46–89).

140

cms/index.php?id=12603&type=0). < 78 >

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS 141

In 1992 he was sentenced to 18 months in jail by an Austrian court. Trying to evade the punishment, he moved to Spain. He wrote the book Freispruch für Hitler? (An Acquittal for Hitler?) in which he denies the existence of the gas chambers.

142

D. Irving’s defense counsel. Irving was recently convicted in Austria.

143

A former Ku-Klux-Klan functionary, he is a voice for White racism even today.

144

He presents himself as an ordinary psychiatrist from Cologne who traveled to Tehran with the only object of having a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak freely about the Holocaust, but omits to mention that he is a functionary in the Nationalist Party of Germany.

145

The former Chairman of the Nationalist Party of Germany G. Deckert was apprehended in the Frankfurt airport and never made it to the Conference.

146

G. Thiel is a writer. At the Tehran Conference he insisted that there were no gas chambers.

147

After his return from Tehran he was fired from his job.

148

The first chairman of the Alliance for the Rehabilitation of Persons Persecuted for Holocaust Denial (“Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen des Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten”) and one of the founders of the extreme Right “Party of the Nationally Oriented Swiss.” During the Tehran conference he commended the then Swiss Minister of Justice Blocher who was a critic of Switzerland’s 1995 Law on Anti-Racism under which one could be held responsible for Holocaust denial as well. In 2007 Schaub was sentenced to 80 days in jail for distributing a tract “The Way It Was with the Holocaust.”

149

Somewhat surprising for an expert on Iran of many years.

150

Compare that with the impressions of a Swiss denier “Firstly, Iran is anything but a police state. Entry into the country is not complicated. < . . . > When we visited, without prior notice, the Institute of Political and International Studies for preliminary orientation, we, people who had never been there before, were treated with utmost courtesy and were accompanied to the apartments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where we were allowed so easily as no German or Swiss citizen would have been in their own countries. Secondly, Iran is free of alcohol and pornography, the two narcotics that befuddle the minds and senses of so many Europeans and weaken their wills, including political wills, too! Although all Iranian women wear headscarfs, they feature most diverse fashions — severe, nun-like, classically dignified, or pretty colorful ones of the kind worn in big cities.”

151

As was noted, Conference materials were published in Russian as well, but it is symptomatic that the presentation by the only Russian participant, V. NadeyinRayevsky, never made it to the collection of materials selected and prepared by O. Platonov!

152

Лесков С. Холокост выдумали евреи из России? // Известия. 12.12.2006.

153

The Israeli writer Israel Shamir should probably be grouped with them as well. It is unclear whether he was physically present at the conference, but his presentation occupies an honorable third line in the Table of Contents of the Conference Proceedings. It says, in part: “Iranians came to the conclusion that there is no chance to come to agreement with this world-wide Jewish media syndicate. There is no way < 79 >

PAVEL POLIAN

to get to peace terms. One has to fight back, attacking the deepest sacral dogmas of their control. If this dogma were to collapse, the Jewish hold on discourse would be broken and the Jewish state would disappear just as the USSR did, said President Ahmadinejad. This comparison calls for exegesis: the USSR was ‘one state’, a state where various peoples lived together as equals; the Jewish state is essentially ‘two states’, a rich state of Jews controlling the poor state of natives. Its dissolution will create ‘one state’ in Palestine; it will reverse the trend started with the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Then Iran, and all of the East, will be able to dwell safely without fear of American and Israeli nukes. This is the reason why Iran hosted the conference.” 154

In Austria, the title of “rabbi” is not subject to any verification, licensing, or even registration.

155

The Vienna Community has vigorously distanced itself from M. Friedman saying that he in no way represents the Community.

156

Incidentally, he did suffer for his views. His wife left him, outraged by his behavior in Iran. Friedman learned about her desertion on his return to Vienna.

157

See: Tagesblatt St. Gallen, 13.12.2006.

158

They number 25,000 in Iran.

159

See: http://www.hagalil.com/01/de/Israel.php?itemid=329 (The original publication was in the French newspaper Le Monde of 4.12.2006).

160

Institute for Political & International Studies.

161

Cameroun’s Ambassador to Israel Henri Etoundi Essomba spoke on their behalf.

162

“Der Holocaust im transnationalen Gedächtnis. Mechanismen und Intentionen von Holocaustleugnung und Antisemitismus — eine internationale Konferenz zu Befunden und Gegenstrategien”. For more detail, see the Internet site of the Center for Political Education: www.bpb.de/presse.

163

http://www.bpb.de/presse/84LZ32,0,0,Er%F6ffnungsrede_zur_Konferenz_Der_ Holocaust_ im_transnationalen_Ged%E4chtnis.html

164

The connection between Holocaust denial and the legitimacy of Israel’s creation is all too obvious to the Palestinians as well (Lipstadt, Deborah E., Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. P. 31).

165

See his Foreword to this book.

166

Kurt Schumacher was the leader of Germany’s postwar Social Democracy.

167

Quoted from: Leukert, Matthias, “Die strafrechtliche Erfassung des Auschwitzleugnens,” Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Jüristischen Fakultät der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. [Stuttgart]: Wiesinger Media. de, 2005. S. 9.

168

Already at that time the idea was put forward that democracy should be protected not by legal codes but by education and democratic forms of social life.

169

Leukert, Matthias, “Die strafrechtliche Erfassung des Auschwitzleugnens.” S. 16–17.

170

See above.

171

After his release from jail, Deckert resumed his endeavors which resulted in his second arrest and conviction in 1995 — this time to five years in prison. When he < 80 >

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS GEOPOLITICS

regained freedom in 2000, he carried on his favorite cause and continued his career in the German National Party, becoming one of its leaders. But soon he drifted so far Right of his Rightist party that he was expelled from it in March, 2007. 172

Leukert, Matthias, “Die strafrechtliche Erfassung des Auschwitzleugnens.” S. 28–38. In addition, Article 130 of Germany’s Penal Code is “operative” as well.

173

See a relevant, though incomplete, review in: Leukert, Matthias. “Die strafrechtliche Erfassung des Auschwitzleugnens.” S. 276–286.

174

Took effect as of March 30, 1995.

175

Took effect as of July 19, 1997.

176

Since 1998.

177

The Gassot Law banning the contest of the Nuremberg Tribunal’s conclusions took effect on July 13, 1990. In January, 2007 Bruno Gollnicsh, an EU Parliamentarian and Chairman of the People’s Front, was sentenced to three months in jail (suspended) and a fine of 5,000 Euros for trying to initiate a broad discussion of the gas chambers question.

178

It was adopted on September 25, 1994 and entered into force as January 1, 1995.

179

However, surprising as it may seem, Israel has no penalty for Nazi propaganda, and the Israeli justice system was taken aback when a case of such propaganda involving repatriate youngsters occurred in Petah-Tikva in the summer of 2007.

180

Since 1992.

181

After all, Reitlinger is an art historian and Hilberg is a lawyer and political scientist.

182

On the other hand, they are unable to create their own universities or at least new permanent jobs through the efforts of their following.

183

It appears that the first such case took place at Göttingen University which recalled, in 1983, the doctorate conferred on B. Staeglich back in the 1950s. Other deniers, like G. Rudolf, for example, are just denied the right to defend their theses.

184

For more about them, see above.

185

Р.Н. 400 страниц антисемитизма. В Греции судят писателя, призвавшего депортировать евреев // Еврейская газета (Берлин). 2008. Январь. С. 2.

186

Of course, the deniers would readily deny that as well. But many of those whom they chalk up as people prosecuted for denial make up a classical case of upward distortions. Like G. Deckert, for example, who was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 1990. However, the anti-denial law he would have been in violation of, was only passed in 1994. The numerous National-Socialist propagandists, often old people themselves, are not necessarily deniers either.

187

Gazeta.ru. 23.08.2007.

188

The document was supported without voting by 103 out of the 192 members of the General Assembly. The only “no” vote was Iran’s.

189

“Lügen nach Azschwitz. Wie unsere eropäischen Nachbarländer mit der Leugnung der Schoa umgehen,” Jüdische Allgemeine. 2008. 17 Januar. S. 3.

190

See above. < 81 >

PAVEL POLIAN 191

The debate on that issue started in 1996 during the trial of Pedro Valera, the owner of a Barcelona book store that sold neo-Nazi materials (MIGnews.com. 10.11.2007). The Alliance of the Jewish Communities of Spain protests against the ruling.

192

As an event whose history and geography are claimed to be confined to the Ukraine only or even exclusively to ethnic Ukrainians, Golodomor remains both disputable and disputed. The corresponding bill was voted down by the Rada.

193

Incidentally, this concerns Israel as well. Given its near-allied relationship with Turkey, official Israel prefers not to make any statements regarding the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Turkey is extremely sensitive to any criticism on that score, both internally (attempts to call into question the assertion that there was no genocide are tracked down and penalized), and externally (Turkey reacted with extreme resentment to the parliamentary resolutions passed in France and the US which unequivocally condemned the Armenian Genocide).

194

Носик Антон. Отрицание Холокоста: неисполнимый закон // Мнения. 28.1.2007. See: http://mnenia.zahav.ru/ArticlePage.aspx?articleID=1649.

195

According to a report by the RIA Novosti information agency of 19.01.2007

196

Носик Антон. Отрицание Холокоста: неисполнимый закон. http://dolboeb. livejournal.com/871534.html

197

Quoted from the Russian translation in: Полный запрет отрицания Холокоста был бы большой ошибкой // Еврейское слово. М., 31.1.–6.2.2007. С. 4.

198

D. Lipstadt is of the same opinion.

199

From the Hebrew for “We will remember.”

200

A similar arbitration body exists for problems of natural sciences. It was set up under the Editorial Board of the Nature magazine and enjoys universal recognition. No such body exists for problems of history, and since history is an extremely politicized field, none can be expected.

201

Today’s courtroom discourse regarding Holocaust deniers is built on an entirely different principle of historical analysis, with courts basing their decisions on opinions and testimonies by independent experts whose validity do not extend beyond the purview of the trial in question. In addition, court trial is a personalized process, and the part played in it by the problem as such is of an ancillary and subordinate nature.

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THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

Sergio Della Pergola

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY Global and Local Contexts

Jews in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) have usually been investigated from the specialized perspective of regional studies, mainly in the historical and political disciplines. The scientific study of Soviet Jewry was long constrained by the secrecy that was typical of Soviet affairs in general. The limited, selective and sometimes manipulative circulation and use of statistical data concerning demographic and other aspects of Soviet society made the effort to compare Jews in the USSR and in other countries highly speculative. The prevailing documentary situation generated an enduring and at times spirited debate about the reliability of demographic data emanating from official Soviet sources and on the size and characteristics of Soviet Jewry. This is the background that prompted researchers such as Mordechai Altshuler to try to throw new light on ongoing trends through a systematic and painstaking work of compilation of main national sources together with minor pieces of information sometimes gathered from very obscure local sources.1 Altshuler’s patient excavation into such sources during the 1960s and 1970s made his work really more similar to archaeology than to the social sciences. He ended up by building an impressive, coherent, in many respects surprising, but nonetheless very real picture of the main demographic characteristics and trends of Jews in the FSU. And it was Altshuler, together with his colleague Uziel Schmelz,2 who helped transfer the social history and demography of Soviet Jews from myth to reality.

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BASIC POPULATION TRENDS There is a long, steady debate about the numbers of Jews in the former Soviet Union. How do we understand the enormous gaps that appear between figures periodically circulated by different people and organizations? Are we counting different people as one group? Are the data generally reliable or unreliable? The answer to these queries is primarily one of definitions, and is clearly a matter of agreeing on certain basic principles.3 In fact, when we look at official census data of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, we mostly refer to the concept of “Core Jewish Population.” This reflects only those people who declare themselves Jewish in visible sources. In Soviet/post-Soviet censuses, people are defined by ethnic groups (natsionalnost’), whereas in other countries, the definition of Jews has been by religion. The publicly self-declared Jews are the visible portion of the Jewish population. Around that, there are two more circles. One includes all other members in the households which comprise at least one person who is Jewish either by document of by self-declaration. The other includes those other non-Jewish direct descendants and spouses of Jews who are eligible for the Israeli Law of Return (Hok HaShvut). The Law of Return provides for very extensive framework inclusion: Jews, children of Jews, grandchildren of Jews, and the respective spouses. We may, therefore, estimate that around the core Jewish population one may find as many non-Jewish members of Jewish nuclear households, and as many members of households of Jewish origin without any current core Jew. In other words, it is not inconceivable that the “core” Jewish population may generate an “enlarged” population at a ratio of 2 to 1, and a “Law of Return” population at a ratio of 3 to 1. If we say that today there are very roughly in the whole of the FSU fifteen republics about four hundred thousand “core Jews,” the size of the enlarged probably stands in the range of 750,000 to 800,000.4 But this is yet not the whole number of eligible individuals for the Law of Return, which may include maybe another half a million. Here, we are on more difficult ground, because we do not have relevant data. We simply have to infer the numbers based on indirect evidence and speculation. What has been generally missing in public discourse and yet is highly recommended is that people make efforts to always specify the population definition they are talking about. Sometimes, people who deny validity to the official statistical sources tend to mention their own sources. These should be submitted to stringent scrutiny. Most often, we are really “comparing < 86 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

apples and oranges.” Much of the sensitivity about the “pessimist” and the “optimist” school, and about the “good” demographers of the “Jerusalem school” versus the “better” ones that exist elsewhere is mostly based on equivocal reading of the same materials. The short term trends are clear. Because of the inescapable rules of demography, the longer term appears quite clear, too. Low birth rates and high frequencies of out-marriage, most of which end with the upbringing of children who are not Jewish, unavoidably lead to population aging. In turn, a population whose age composition includes few young and many elderly people is one that experiences fewer births than deaths, and therefore unavoidably tends to shrink. This also becomes the continuing prospective scenario of population projections that extend over the next several decades.5 But the fate of a population is determined not only by demographic growth and shrinkage. The social context also plays a fundamental role. This chapter aims to place recent changes in the FSU’s Jewish population size and geographical distribution in the broader context of Jewish population changes globally and of contextual differences within the FSU. Our rather macro-social discussion relates to major social trends in the respective countries and does not address individual histories which fulfill an important role in the overall interpretation of history and society. A comparative approach — external and internal — to the study of FSU Jewry seems appropriate as a background to other more specialized investigations and may provide additional insights into the unique history and characteristics of this population, its socio-demographic commonalities with other Jewish communities, and its changing position within world Jewry. EARLY CONTEXTUAL EXPLORATIONS One question which intrigued me several years ago concerned the extent to which the FSU’s political framework affected local Jewish population trends in unique ways — given the powerful interference of the Soviet regime in the individual lives of single citizens. What might be the possible role in the FSU of general sociodemographic determinants whose impact had been long observed in Western countries, as opposed to those possibly unique to the Soviet system? From Altshuler’s work it was clear, for example, that certain important aspects of Jewish demography such as marriage and outmarriage patterns, or even urbanization, were not fundamentally dissimilar from the experience of other Diaspora communities. Without knowing < 87 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

very much about the USSR, I thought it would be interesting to study the correlation that might exist between Jewish population size and its pace of change in the light of the variable characteristics of the general environment within the USSR. Therefore, I decided to compare Jewish population distributions in 78 major urban areas according to the 1959 Soviet census and percentages of change between the 1959 and 1970 censuses, with the distribution of several local socio-economic indicators (Table 1).6 Table 1 Correlation Coefficients Between Jewish Population and Selected Socioeconomic Characteristics In 78 Citiesa — USSR, 1959-1970 Correlation coefficientsc with: Total population

Jewish Population

% Jewish out of total population

% change Jewish population

1959

1959

1959

1970-1959

– 0.55 0.27 -0.19

0.83 0.45 0.24 0.09

0.05 0.04 0.21 0.33

0.10 0.05 0.42 -0.21

Infras truct ure Scientific research Ports Railways Construction

0.30 0.25 0.22 0.15

0.22 0.21 0.27 0.24

-0.02 -0.11 0.15 0.27

0.31 -0.07 -0.13 0.12

Industry Paper, printing Chemical Energy sources Metallurgy Mechanical Confection

0.39 0.35 0.31 0.24 0.19 0.13

0.48 0.26 0.11 0.09 0.22 0.18

0.33 -0.11 -0.15 -0.12 -0.03 0.17

0.22 0.03 0.25 -0.29 -0.02 0.04

Characteristics of citiesb

General Total population, 1959 Economic heterogeneity Republic’s capital city Former Pale of Settlement

a b c

Cities with at least 1000 Jews in 1959. Based on dummy variables figuring presence or absence of given characteristic in each city. In bold: significant at .05 level. Source: Sergio Della Pergola, La trasformazione demografica della diaspora ebraica. Torino: Loescher, 1983. See also: Ivor I. Millman, “Data on Diaspora Jewish Populations from Official Censuses — U.S.S.R.”, in U.O. Schmelz. P. Glikson, and S.J. Gould (eds.), Studies in Jewish Demography — Survey for 1969-1971, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1975, 188-221; J.P. Cole, Geography of the U.S.S.R., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.

Indeed, some interesting general relationships emerged. The size of total population appeared to be especially correlated with the heterogeneity of economic activities within each city, i.e. the existence locally of a large < 88 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

number of diverse economic branches. This indicator is generally associated with urban populations of larger size, rather highly ranked in the national hierarchy of all urban places, and with well-developed and dynamic connections with other places. In turn, these features tend to characterize national and regional capital cities. Further proof is a significant correlation between a city’s total population size with paperwork and printing activities which tend to be generally associated with large and capital cities where there is substantial administration and paperwork. Other correlates of large urban populations pointed to heavy industry as demonstrated by prominent chemical enterprises and energy sources. Jewish urban population was highly correlated with total urban population size, as well as with economic heterogeneity and a strong local paper and printing industry, but there was no significant correlation of Jewish presence with heavy industry. Another interesting point was that the percentage of Jews out of total population in 1959 was still significantly correlated with living in the area that once was the Pale of Settlement. This was an indication that the traces of past history were only slowly disappearing from the profile of Soviet Jewry. Looking at the pace of Jewish population change between 1959 and 1970, the most significant correlation was with larger numbers in, and most likely internal migration to, the capital cities of Soviet Republics. Moving away from the old Jewish settlement areas was also clearly apparent but did not reach the limit of statistical significance. The conclusion of this early exploration was that the logic of Jewish population change under the Soviet regime was not inconsistent with rules of broader applicability in international comparisons. Notwithstanding the most likely pervasive interference of the Communist Party and Soviet government authorities in individual lives, there appeared to remain a sufficient margin for autonomous response on the side of Jewish population toward general market constraints and opportunities. While this was evidently true within the powerful idiosyncrasies of the Soviet economy, there also appeared to be sufficient space for bringing to fruition the unique structural assets of the Jews such as a much higher level of education than among the total population, or their unique constraints, such as a peculiar initial geographical distribution determined by much earlier historical circumstances. In other words, while the observed correlations were neither random nor extremely specific, there emerged a picture of statistically significant interaction between Jewish society and the general Soviet environment quite parallel to what could be found in what was then called the “free” world as well. < 89 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL JEWISH POPULATION TRENDS Turning now to the more recent period, we know that over the 30 years since the 1970s, very dramatic changes occurred in the worldwide distribution of the Jewish population. Comparing Jewish populations by major regions in the world in 1970 and in 2002, Jewish population globally experienced only a very minor rate of change — 2.3 percent between 1970 and 2002. Table 2 Estimated Core Jewish Population, by Continents and Major Regions, Ending 1970 and 2002 Region

World Diaspora Thereof: FSU Israel America Northa Central, South Europe West FSUb Other E. Eur, Balkansb Asia Israel FSUb Other Africa Northc Southd Oceaniae a b c d e

1970

2002

Percent

N.

%

N.

%

change

12,662,400 10,080,200 2,167,800 2,582,200 6,199,800 5,686,000 513,800 3,240,600 1,118,900 1,905,400 216,300 2,944,900 2,582,200 262,400 100,300 207,100 82,600 124,500 70,000

100.0 79.6 17.1 20.4 49.0 44.9 4.1 25.6 8.8 15.0 1.7 23.3 20.4 2.1 0.8 1.6 0.7 1.0 0.6

12,950,200 7,856,000 413,000 5,094,200 6,071,600 5,670,500 401,100 1,550,800 1,066,400 389,700 94,700 5,137,000 5,094,200 23,300 19,500 83,900 7,300 76,600 106,900

100.0 60.7 3.2 39.3 46.9 43.8 3.1 12.0 8.2 3.0 0.7 39.7 39.3 0.2 0.2 0.6 0.1 0.6 0.8

2.3 -22.1 -80.9 97.3 -2.1 -0.3 -21.9 -52.1 -4.7 -79.5 -56.2 74.4 97.3 -91.1 -80.6 -59.5 -91.2 -38.5 52.7

United States and Canada. Asian regions of Russia and Turkey are included in Europe. Including Tats. Including Ethiopia. South Africa, Zimbabwe, and other sub-Saharan countries. Australia, New Zealand. Source: Adapted from: Sergio Della Pergola, “The Global Context of Migration to Israel”, in Elazar Leshem and Judith Shuval, Immigration to Israel: Sociological Perspectives, New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998, 41-92; Sergio Della Pergola, “World Jewish Population 2003,” in American Jewish Year Book, 103, 2003, 588-612.

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The number of Jews in Israel nearly doubled, while the total size of Diaspora Jewry declined by over one fifth. The Jewish population of the total FSU diminished by over 80%; in the FSU European republics, decline was 79.5%, and in the FSU Asian republics, it was 91.1%. These data refer to a definition of Jews usually known as the Core Jewish Population. This corresponds to a minimum common denominator of self-identified persons usually reached through official censuses and other population surveys. It does not include the numerous non-Jewish people who live within nuclear households together with at least one Jewish person, nor the even broader concept of the people eligible for the Law of Return which incorporates Jews, their children and grandchildren, and the respective spouses whether Jewish or non-Jewish. Changes in population size reflect both international migration and the internal dynamics of Jewish communities in each country. These descriptive facts are better understood within an analytic framework. One such a framework is supplied by looking at Jewish population change in the context of changes intervening in the general societies of which Jews are a part. The expectation is that significant patterns may emerge by comparing Jewish population change with variations in the Index of Human Development (HDI). HDI is an index elaborated by the United Nations Development Program which attempts to assess the quality of life in each society. All countries in the world can be ranked from best to worst according to their respective societal characteristics. The HDI is based on a simple average of the following three variables: A long and healthy life Life expectancy at birth

1/3

Knowledge Adult literacy index

Gross enrollment ratio

1/3

A decent standard of living GDP per capita (PPP US$)

1/3

Source: United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World, New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

The HDI operationalizes health in terms of length of life, education in terms of two basic indicators of the educational system — adult literacy and current school enrollment, and standard of living in terms of Gross Domestic Product per capita corrected for purchasing power parity of the US Dollar. By computing the respective HDIs, it is possible to compare societies across time and space. It is interesting to follow the evolution of the HDI in several < 91 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

of the countries where the largest Jewish populations lived in the recent past and where they live today, including Russia and Ukraine — the main republics of the FSU (see Figure 1).

HDI in selected countries

950

Canada

Belgium

Australia

900 Human Development Index

United States

France

850 UK

Germany

800

Argentina

Hungary

750

Mexico

Russia

Brazil

700

Ukraine

650

South Africa

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Israel

Figure 1

Figure 1 portrays the evolution of the HDI between 1980 and 2000 for the fifteen countries that at the later date hosted the largest Jewish communities in the world. The question we are interested in exploring is whether changes in the environment in which Jews live have an impact on the development of Jewish population. In general, the HDI (as noted, a basket of health, education, and income indicators) improved in nearly each of the selected countries. Seven of the most developed societies appear at the top of the distribution: Canada, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, and Australia. The gaps between countries appear to have diminished through a general process of improvement of standards of living. Following these more developed societies, the country that had the best record of improvement < 92 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

between 1980 and 2000 was the State of Israel. Israel reduced the gap versus the leading countries and distanced itself from the next group of countries with somewhat lower HDI levels. The effects of the security events that started in the autumn of 2000 for Israel’s standing are yet to be evaluated, but it can be surely noted that Israeli society in the intervening period was absorbing a large amount of international migration and at the same time was becoming a much stronger and attractive society. The situation was evidently different in the FSU. In the Russian Federation and Ukraine (as well as in other republics not reported here), indicators of life quality after 1990 not only stopped their previous upward trend but actually declined. This was due predominantly to a visible worsening in life expectancy which reflected the sharp economic crisis toward the end of the Soviet era and during the transition period that followed. Interestingly, whereas in 1980 the overall HDI indicators for the Russian Federation and Israel were nearly identical, by 2000 there was a huge gap to Israel’s advantage. Russia’s HDI had fallen behind Mexico, and the Ukraine’s had fallen behind Brazil. Is there a correlation between these changes in general national patterns and the tendency of Jewish populations in the respective countries to stay, to grow, or to decline? In Figure 2 we ranked twenty-four countries with the largest Jewish communities according to two criteria: on the horizontal axis in terms of the country’s HDI in 1980 (ranked from 1 [lowest] on the lefthand side to 24 [highest] on the right-hand side); and on the vertical axis in terms of the prevalence of Jewish population growth, stagnation or decline between 1980 and 2000 (ranked from 1 [highest decline] on the bottom to 24 [highest increase] on the top). The underlying assumption is that a measure of each country’s quality of life should be a good predictor of the propensity of the respective Jewish populations to grow, remain stable, or decline. We note that all along the exponential average of the actual distribution, quite a good correlation prevails between the two dimensions. On the upper right corner we notice a cluster of the more developed western countries in which the Jewish population was growing or at least stable. Israel, which is somewhat less developed, had a very high rate of growth. Jewish populations in countries in the FSU (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan) and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Romania) appear all to be declining rather quickly, and this seems to be related to relatively poorer standards of living. Jewish populations in Latin America, whose HDI is quite similar to the one of Eastern European countries, did much better in terms of Jewish population resilience. < 93 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

25

Contextual incentives

Ger

Jewish population % change 1980-2000

Isr Aus Can

Mex

20

Bel Fra Ita

Bra

15

U.K.

Arg

Hun

Uru

SAf

10

U.S.

Rus Irn

Rom Aze

Blr

5 Ukr

Mol Uzb

Contextual constraints

Eth

0 0

5

*Ranks. N = 24

10

15

20

HDI 1980

25 (Exponential Fit)

Figure 2 Jewish Population Change, by Human Development Index in Selected Countries, 1980-2000*

These differences can be explained as reflecting contextual “constraints” and contextual “incentives” related to the actual position of Jews in society. Niches of higher standards of living as experienced in Mexico or Brazil tend to postpone the population decline that might otherwise be expected. On the other hand, Jewish populations in the FSU have been exposed to quite a few negative constraints, although it cannot be denied that in the more recent period a small elite of very wealthy individuals has emerged among the Jewish population. The fastest Jewish population decline occurred in what today remains of the Jews in Asia and Africa. All in all, there is quite a lot of consistency between general trends in life quality, and major trends in the size of a Jewish community. Patterns among Jews in the FSU seem to respond to the broader logic of the global system.

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THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

JEWISH MIGRATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE I now turn to international migration, beginning with some general trends (see Table 3). Quite a few Jews have moved internationally over the last thirty years. More than 2.8 million Jews have moved since 1969. The data includes migration from Israel to other countries. Eastern Europe generated about 55% of total Jewish migration. Eastern Europe was particularly dominant during the high wave of 1990 and 1991. Between 1969 and 2002, about 60% of total Jewish international migration went to Israel. Table 3 Jewish international migration by major areas of origin and destination: absolute numbers, percent distribution, yearly rates per 1000 Jewish population in countries of origin, 1969-2002 Areas of origin and destination

19691976

19771988

19891996

19972002

Total

Absolute numbers (thousands)

Grand total

451

589

1,240

535

2,815

Yearly average

56

49

155

89

83

Percent Grand total

100

100

100

100

100

From Eastern Europe

39

41

64

62

55

To Western countries

8

29

23

25

22

To Israela

32

12

41

36

33

From Asia-Africab

14

14

19

10

16

To Western countries

5

7

1

1

3

To Israela

9

8

18

9

13

From Israel to Western countries

20

24

11

17

16

From Western countries to Israela

27

20

5

12

13

To Western countries

33

60

35

43

41

To Israela

67

40

65

57

59

From Eastern Europe

80

71

64

59

60

From Asia-Africa

64

53

95

90

81

Regional subtotals

Percent to Israel

< 95 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA Areas of origin and destination

19691976

19771988

19891996

19972002

Total

7

6

Yearly emigration per 1000 Jews in country of origin

a b c

Grand total

4

4

12

From Eastern Europe

10

12

110

97

51

To Western countries

2

8

38

40

20

To Israela

8

3

72

57

31

From Asia-Africab

44

73

146

134

97

To Western countries

14

32

42

3

27

To Israelc

30

40

94

121

70

From Israel to Western countries

4

3

4

3

4

From Western countries to Israela

2

1

1

1

1

Since 1970 includes immigrant citizens (from West). Since 1990, Asian regions of FSU included in Asia-Africa. All emigration from Israel included here. Source: Adapted from Sergio Della Pergola, “The Global Context of Migration to Israel”, cit., 58. Based on data from Israel Central Bureau of Statistics; HIAS; and various other sources.

We may ask: how many of those who left went to Israel? And how many went to alternative destinations, mainly the U.S., Germany and a few other countries? We see that from Eastern Europe (which is mostly although not exclusively the FSU), about 60% came to Israel. The latter figure compares with 81% of all migrants from Asian and African countries whose actual numbers, though, were much smaller. Table 3 also indicates the relative incidence of emigration per 1,000 Jews remaining in the country of origin. Between the first and the second half of the 1990s, the frequency of emigration from the FSU did not change much, although the initial numbers were obviously far greater. The explanation is that the pool of potential emigrants significantly shrank, too. The tendency to move out has been quite stable, contrary to the assumption that migration is over. If we focus on aliyah especially, it is again interesting to compare the propensity to move to Israel from various countries including the FSU republics, and general indicators of the countries of origin (Figure 3). The rank of a country’s HDI is presented on the horizontal axis (from 1 [highest] on the left-hand side to 160 [lowest] on the right-hand side. Only 74 countries whose Jewish population is sufficiently large to allow for computing aliyah frequencies are plotted. Measures of the frequency of olim (immigrants to Israel) per 1,000 Jews in the respective countries of origin are presented on the vertical axis with a logarithm scale in order to show the differentials more efficiently. < 96 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

I disaggregated the 74 countries represented in the diagram by major regions and indeed very interesting clusters emerge. The small black triangles represent the republics of the FSU. They are all quite clustered, and all significantly above the world average aliyah propensity. In other words, the propensity to move to Israel shows definite regional peculiarities. Part of this over-representation of the FSU republics in aliyah propensities is due to definitions. The numerator — the number of olim — includes also the nonJewish components of aliyah which in recent years may be more than half of the total new immigrants. The denominator includes only the “core Jews.” Therefore, there is an overestimation in assessing Jewish aliyah from the FSU. However, even if we assume that 50% of the new immigrants are not “core” Jews, and so we divide the respective aliyah rates by two, the resulting numbers would keep a nearly identical position in the logarithm scale display — still much above average. Therefore, it is the actual regional terms of reference that stimulate higher than average propensities to move out from the FSU. 100000

Rate of olim per 1000 Jews

10000

1000

100

10

1 Israel yeridah

0 0

20

40 60 80 100 120 Country Rank: Human Development Index

AliyaR2001 (Exponential Fit)

AngloSax

WestEur

EastEur

FSU

AmLat

AsiaAfr

IsraelYerida

Figure 3 Frequency of aliyah, by human development index in country of origin, 2001 < 97 >

140

n = 74

160

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

The cluster of West European countries and the cluster of Englishspeaking countries (the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia) all stand well below the general aliyah average propensities. Interestingly, the rate of emigration from Israel stands exactly where you would expect to find a rate of immigration to Israel from a country with similar socioeconomic characteristics. All in all, pitted against the exponential average, there is a clearly negative correlation between propensities to go to Israel and the general indicators of quality of life in the country of origin. The better the situation, the least the tendency to move out. A more specific look at the FSU republic aliyah patterns appears in Figure 4. 1000 UZ KA

Rate of olim per 1000 Jews

GE

100

TU

KY MO

UK

ES

AZ

BE

LI

TA

RU LA

10

1

0 40

50

60 70 80 90 Country Rank: Human Development Index

100

110

Figure 4 Frequency of aliyah from the republics of the former Soviet Union, by human development index, 2001

The display shows the aliyah propensities in fourteen out of the fifteen former Soviet republics, since Armenia no longer has a measurable Jewish population. As noted, all republics send more aliyah than the average global trend. One notes three clusters of republics, with declining HDIs and < 98 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF POST-SOVIET JEWRY

growing aliyah rates: (a) the Baltic States, Russia and Belarus. I have some doubts about the accuracy of the Belarus indicators, but those are the data that are available. The highest standard of living is in Estonia, now part of the European Union together with Latvia and Lithuania; (b) the Caucasian republics and Ukraine; (c) Other Central Asian Republics and Moldova, which displays perhaps the poorest social indicators in Europe. Again, even within the FSU aliyah frequencies are quite clearly related to the quality of life of the country of origin. Finally, a further comparison derives from an observation of our colleague Mark Tolts on quality of life gaps within the FSU even within the major republics, and especially within Russia. When we disaggregate aliyah data by oblast (province or region) in the Russian republic, we find again a very significant negative correlation between the quality of life in the different provinces and the propensity to move to Israel from each (Figure 5).

Olim 1994-98 % of Enlarged J.Pop. 1994

70

60

Bir

50

40

30 Dag

20 Ros

10

Sve

Che NN MosO

0

Sam

MosC

St.P

0.650 0.670 0.690 0.710 0.730 0.750 0.770 0.790 0.810 0.660 0.680 0.700 0.720 0.740 0.760 0.780 0.800

Oblast Index of Human Development (Exponential Fit)

Figure 5 Emigration to israel, 1994-1998, as percent of enlarged jewish population in 1994, by index of human development in oblast of origin, 1997 < 99 >

SERGIO DELLA PERGOLA

Figure 5 displays actual Indexes of Human Development for Russian Oblasts, arranged on the horizontal axis from lower on the left-hand side to higher on the right-hand side. Birobijan, with a very low index of human development, shows a very high propensity of local Jews to move to Israel. Moscow City, with the best HDI among Russian oblasts — although a relatively poor one if compared to other European societies — has the lowest aliyah propensity. Other fairly developed areas such as Samara and St. Petersburg also have low aliyah frequencies, while higher frequencies can be found in Dagestan, Rostov, Sverdlovsk, and Cheliabinsk. LIVING CONDITIONS AND DEMOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT In conclusion, I do not pretend here to have painted a full picture of the contemporary Jewish experience in the FSU. Our discussion focused more on the relationship with Israel and on comparisons with other Diaspora communities and their societal contexts. The changing position in the general standing of FSU republics vis-àvis other countries since the 1980s — as exemplified by the Index of Human Development (HDI) — appears to have significantly affected changes in Jewish population size and trends in emigration. Unlike most other countries, several countries in the FSU or Eastern Europe (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Romania) experienced absolute declines in HDI between 1980 and 2000. Most of the time, the general conditions of human development in a society significantly impacted the demographic development of the respective Jewish communities. The main feature of recent Jewish population change in the republics of the FSU was mass emigration. Emigration indeed did not represent an even cross-section of the different regional realities, but drew heavily from people living in the more disadvantaged republics. The great differentiation in the quality of life and human development in the regions within the Russian Federation itself appears to be strongly related to variable aliyah levels. A strong negative association emerges between human development in the different regions of origin within the Russian Federation and the frequency of emigration to Israel. Of course, the impact of cultural and identificational determinants should be considered in detail along with socioeconomic determinants if we wish to obtain a more significant understanding of ongoing trends and implications.7 We also will not claim that the macro-social analytic approach < 100 >

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briefly illustrated here can come at the expense of a more fine-tuned analysis of variations of individual identities, constraints and opportunities. However, it should be noted that in the statistical terms of “variance explained” the simple juxtaposition of basic social indicators — such as the Index of Human Development — and Jewish population trends provides very high returns by normally accepted research standards. This calls for the need to pay a lot of attention to the general societal context of Jewish life in any efforts aimed at illustrating the complex unfolding of world Jewry, of the Jewish Diaspora in general, and of the FSU — with all of its unique history — in particular. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry Today: A Socio-Demographic Analysis. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1979; Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry since the Second World Wa: Population and Social Structure. New York/Westport/London, Greenwood Press, 1987; Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic Profile, Jerusalem, 1998. U.O. Schmelz, “Evaluation of Jewish Population Estimates”, American Jewish Year Book, 1969, pp. 273-288; U.O. Schmelz, “New Evidence on Basic Issues in the Demography of Soviet Jews”, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 16, 2, 1974, pp. 209-223. Sergio Della Pergola, “World Jewish Population, 2005”, American Jewish Year Book, 105, 2005, pp. 87-122. Mark Tolts, “The Post-Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and in the World”, Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1 (52), Summer 2004, pp. 37-63; and the same author’s chapter in the present volume. Sergio Della Pergola, Uzi Rebhun, Mark Tolts, “Prospecting the Jewish Future: Population Projections, 2000-2080”, American Jewish Year Book, 100, 2000, pp. 103-146. Sergio Della Pergola, La trasformazione demografica della diaspora ebraica. Torino, Loescher, 1983. See, in particular, the comparative work undertaken by Zvi Gitelman and his research associates on Jews in the FSU and on Jewish migrants from the FSU to the Unites States and to Israel: Zvi Gitelman, “From a Northern Country: Russian and Soviet Jewish Immigrants to America and to Israel in Historical Perspective”, in N. Lewin Epstein, Y. Ro’I, and P. Ritterband (eds.), Russian Jews on Three Continents, London: Cass, 1996, pp. 22-41; Zvi Gitelman, “Becoming Jewish in Russia and Ukraine”, in Z. Gitelman, B. Kosmin and A. Kovács (eds.), New Jewish Identities: Contemporary Europe and Beyond, Budapest, Central European University Press, 2003, pp. 105-137.

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Wolfgang Benz

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I The total number of Jewish victims has been under debate ever since the fall of the Nazi regime. In certain circles there is an inclination towards the apologist view, which expresses doubts concerning the dimension of the problem. The problems of documentation and methodology faced by any scholar attempting to establish exact figures with mathematical accuracy are frequently underestimated and serve as welcome evidence of an implied political agenda, or simply of the historians’ alleged incompetence. Therefore, this volume intends not only to present solid results delivered by recent research but also to demonstrate the problems which complicate the task of determining the final death toll of Jewish victims of National Socialism. The first voices to shed light on the numerical dimension of the genocide belonged to the perpetrators. The earliest evidence of its enormity comes from colleagues and comrades-in-arms of Adolf Eichmann, who headed the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the department responsible for organizing the deportations to the extermination camps. During the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals, Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl, the former SS Sturmbannführer and chief advisor on Southeastern Europe in Amt VI (foreign intelligence), gave testimony on a conversation he had had in Budapest in August 1944. As Hoettl told the International Tribunal in an affidavit sworn on November 26, 1945, Eichmann had come to the conclusion that Germany had lost the war and that he personally had no chance anymore. He said he knew that he < 102 >

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would be considered one of the major war criminals by the United Nations, since he had millions of Jewish lives on his conscience. I asked him how many, to which he answered that although the number was a great Reich secret, he would tell me since it would be of interest to me as a historian and since he would probably not return from his command in Romania in any case. He had just compiled a report for Himmler, who wanted to know exactly how many Jews had been killed. On the basis of the information available to him, he had come to the following results: About four million Jews had been killed in the various extermination camps, while another two million had died in other ways, the majority having been shot by Einsatzgruppen, death squads under the command of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), during the campaign against Russia. Himmler had not been satisfied with the report since in his opinion the number of murdered Jews had to be larger than six million.1 On January 3, 1946, the Tribunal questioned Dieter Wisliceny, a former member of Eichmann’s staff who had worked closely with him and had been responsible for the mass deportations of Jews from Slovakia, Greece, and Hungary. When asked how many Jews had been murdered, Wisliceny testified that “Eichmann personally always talked about at least 4,000,000 Jews. Sometimes he even mentioned 5,000,000.” When he last saw Eichmann in late February 1945 in Berlin, Eichmann had announced he would commit suicide after the war was lost. The officer who interrogated Wisliceny then asked whether Eichmann had said anything about the number of Jews who had been killed, to which Wisliceny replied, “Yes, he expressed this in a particularly cynical manner. He said he would leap laughing into his grave because the feeling that he had 5,000,000 people on his conscience would be, for him, a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”2 When confronted with these witness statements during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Eichmann himself had a lot to say about them. He reasoned and remonstrated about these witness statements orally and in writing, without ultimately denying either the content of those conversations or the numbers quoted.3 However, historians do not need to rely on the perpetrators’ confessions or corroborations alone. The endeavor to calculate and establish the dimension of the Nazi genocide is based on original sources which are incontestable. What does cause considerable difficulties is the fact that, for the most part, the organized killings took place behind smokescreens, camouflaged by the euphemistic official term “the final solution” as much as by the remoteness of the murder sites. Almost nothing was documented < 103 >

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in writing, and where incriminating records did exist, their destruction was one of the last actions of the Nazi regime. No matter how precise and diligent their research, historians will never arrive at an absolute number based on a head count of individual victims. What they certainly can do is determine the dimensions, expressed in minimum and maximum numbers which leave no room for speculation. A recently discovered document summarizing “The Jewish Question,” apparently drawn up in December 1940 as part of a presentation to the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, on issues concerning the colonization of the East, contains an early authenticated reference to the number of Jews to be dispatched to the “final solution.” What makes this document particularly valuable is that it also refers to the “initial solution,” which consists of “transferring the initiative from the Jewish political organizations to the Sicherheitspolizei and to the SD.” The second main item detailed in the document under the heading “The final solution to the Jewish question” reads: ‘By resettling the Jews from the European economic area of the German people to a territory yet to be determined. Around 5.8 million Jews to be considered for said project.’”4 Apart from the figure quoted in it, this document provides further evidence that the extermination of the European Jewry was the result of careful planning and deliberation rather than an accidental by-product of history,5 the consequence of crises and shortages caused by the war, or a result of the realization that the Eastern campaign, and the war itself, had become unwinnable for Nazi Germany after the Wehrmacht’s reversals of fortune in late 1941.6 Figures were also discussed at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 — and everyone involved knew how to interpret euphemisms such as “resettlement” or “final solution.” A report by Richard Korherr, the Supervisor of Statistics, according to which the Nazis’ Jewish policy had claimed more than 2.5 million victims by March 31, 1943, provides another important statistical source. Korherr prefaces his calculations concerning the “final solution to the Jewish question” with the observation that “Jewish stock figures are generally to be taken as minimum figures only, the margin of error increasing the lower the share of Jewish blood.” In general, he cautions that statistics on the Jewish population should be read “with reservations,” explaining that “partly as a stopgap measure, partly because to a large extent, there is a correspondence between Jewish race and Jewish faith, partly due to an 18th century denominational bias, until recently’ Jews had been recorded in statistics ‘not by their race but by their religion.”7 < 104 >

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Another remarkable piece of linguistic misdirection was conveyed to the statistician by Himmler’s aide, who informed Korherr that on his superior’s explicit instruction, “there must be no mention of ‘special treatment of the Jews’ anywhere.” The phrase he proposed instead was “transportation of Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian East: Passed through the camps in the Generalgouvernement . . . through the camps in the Warthegau . . . ” No other wording was to be permitted; in fact, a copy of the statistical report which had already been initialed by Himmler was handed back with orders to change the passage in question.8 The Korherr report contains data which can be used in calculating the Jewish death toll by statistical methods, as George Wellers has convincingly demonstrated. Like Reitlinger’s and Hilberg’s great works, Wellers’s study, which compiles the results of such calculations to arrive at a total figure, is one of the pioneering achievements in this field of research.9 The Korherr report is not the only original source to contain statistical information on the Holocaust which unequivocally refers to the murder of human beings. The same is true of Einsatzgruppen reports on the extermination of Jews especially in the Soviet Union. Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm have analyzed these sources in their groundbreaking study, the former investigating the special operations units (Einsatzgruppen) in general and their relationship to the Wehrmacht, and the latter producing a case study of Einsatzgruppe A, which is an invaluable resource for researchers, as well as attempting to calculate an overall total for all Jewish victims on Soviet territory.10 One hundred ninety-four (out of a total of one hundred ninety-five) “incident reports USSR” issued by the heads of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD between June 23, 1941, and April 24, 1942 have been preserved, as have 55 “reports from the occupied Eastern areas” covering the period from May 1, 1942, to May 21, 1943, presented by the head of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD command staff, and 11 “Activity and status reports by the Einsatzgruppen of the Sicherheitspolizei and the SD in the USSR,” which summarize their activities between June 22, 1941, and March 31, 1942. Taken together, these records document the murder of at least 535,000 Jewish individuals. Conservative estimates based on the available source material on other organized killings, pogroms, and massacres calculate “that within the first nine months of the National Socialist occupation, at least 700,000 to 750,000 Jews died on Soviet soil as a direct result of the measures of persecution they were subjected to.”11

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II The denial or whitewash of the persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime is a central tenet of the radical right. Apparently, no claim is too idiotic to be bandied about on a regular basis, be it the denial that concentration camps, Einsatzgruppen, and pogroms ever existed, or the statistical acrobatics and arithmetic trickery employed to downplay the number of Jewish victims. The so-called “6-million hoax” is targeted with particular persistence. The earliest “source” used to support these attacks is an official statement allegedly issued by the Red Cross, which puts the number of victims of persecution on racial, religious and political grounds at no higher than 300,000. In December 1950, the Swiss journal Der Turmwart reported that overall, fewer than 1.5 million Jews had been killed by the National Socialists and their stooges. The source cited for this claim was a report printed in the Basler Nachrichten on June 12, 1946, which operated with questionable statistics and dubious calculations and in turn referred to evidence in “Jewish statistics.” From January 1955, a paper of neo-Nazi persuasion which at the time was published in Bad Wörishofen under the title Die Anklage ran a series of articles devoted to the subject. Quoting the “expert” knowledge of an “internationally renowned North American,” the author put the number of Jewish victims as low as 300,000. This claim was backed by evidence from a seemingly reputable source, namely the aforementioned Red Cross statement: The Swiss Red Cross Headquarters has recently issued an official statement confirming the numbers cited by the American Warwick Hesters, which we published in our earlier article. The official statement by the Swiss Red Cross Headquarters asserts quite explicitly, ‘victims of persecution on political, racial, and religious grounds in prisons, concentration camps etc. from 1935 to 1945: 300,000 (three hundred thousand).’12

Several magazines which were above suspicion then used the same figures in articles on recent European history. In the lead-in to an article printed by a gossip and entertainment magazine called Das grüne Blatt in 1955, the author states: Since 1946, the Swiss Red Cross Headquarters has gathered official reports on the losses suffered by individual countries during the war. The figures which it has now released are a numerical record of the horrors of war, a dire warning to today’s politicians to do everything in their power to ensure that carnage of this magnitude will never happen again. < 106 >

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The article ran under the headline “57 million victims,” of which 300,000 were said to be Jewish.13 Having unwittingly laid itself open to accusations of neo-Nazi tendencies, the magazine resolutely distanced itself from the article’s claims in a letter to the director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, who had requested information on the sources these assertions were based on. The letter, which is dated February 6, 1956, contains revealing details on the journalistic and editorial practices leading to the article’s publication: Our feature on ‘57 million victims’ which you refer to was intended as a dire warning to those responsible for the impending re-armament. The article, which was supposed to be based on data published by the Swiss Red Cross, was sent to us by our permanent correspondent from Copenhagen, who also reports from Switzerland and Austria, and with whom we have never had any complaints. We had none with this article either except that one number mentioned in it — the death toll in the concentration camps — caused us a great deal of trouble. It has since become apparent that the number in question is wrong. We have already exchanged a number of letters on this subject with the Member of Parliament Kalbitzer because in Switzerland as well as in Germany, we — the Grüne Blatt — have been falsely accused of propagating a neo-fascist agenda, which initially we only found puzzling, and now feel very angry about. We pursued the whole question quite vigorously but unfortunately all our efforts came to nothing. The original source could not be determined. Our correspondent from Copenhagen, who lost many members of his own family in the camps and who is therefore wholly exempt from suspicion, had taken the article from the Wiener Wochenausgabe, with whom he has a mutual agreement on the exchange of material. The Wiener Wochenausgabe editor who had written it had borrowed the numbers from a Swiss paper, so he told us in a letter, but he was unable to remember whether they were from Die Tat or from another publication.14

So what is the real story behind the “official numbers” from the Red Cross? They never existed, as the head of the department of information of the Comité International de la Croix-Rouge clarifies in a letter dated August 17, 1955, to the director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte: We cannot provide statistical tables on casualties of military personnel and deportees since surveys of this kind do not fall within the remit of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The committee neither has the necessary means at its disposal, nor do the reports on arrests, transfers to different camps, releases, etc., which are compiled in the POW < 107 >

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headquarters index provide a comprehensive picture of the total number of POWs. Generating statistics on the base of these data would not only be an arduous and lengthy task but would also produce inexact results. Our data on the inmates of concentration camps in Germany at that time are even more incomplete. Even though we were able to offer help and support to inmates towards the end of the war, despite numerous attempts it proved impossible to organize relief operations on the same scale as we did for the POWs because the committee lacked the necessary legal basis. (The international convention on the protection of civilians was signed on August 12, 1949, the same day the diplomatic conference in Geneva ratified the 4 Geneva conventions on the protection of victims of war.) As will be apparent from these explanations, the numbers printed in the German weekly are not based on any data provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.15

This official disclaimer from Geneva did little to stop the dissemination of false numbers. After several similar incidents during the intervening years, in 1965 right-wing radicals once again cited the alleged Red Cross report in an open letter to Cardinal Döpfner, which was published in Deutsche Nachrichten, the organ of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Again, the Red Cross categorically denied any knowledge of these numbers in a letter dated October 11, 1965: We wish to affirm unequivocally that the International Committee of the Red Cross has nothing whatsoever to do with such claims. Statistics on war casualties and on victims of political, racist, or religious persecution are, and have always been, outside its remit. Even in the case of POWs (who have been protected by an international convention since 1929, and for whom the Red Cross runs a dedicated missing persons service, as you know), we do not dare make any pronouncements on numbers because we are well aware of the fact that we cannot not be in possession of all information concerning this group of victims. We are therefore under strict obligation to refrain from any guesswork concerning civilians, who at that time were not protected by any convention and were thus almost completely beyond the reach of the Red Cross.16

In January 1966, many daily newspapers, including several of regional distribution, carried articles on the letter from the Red Cross to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, from which this passage is quoted. To date, such disclaimers have had no impact at all on the right-wing propaganda apparatus. At the most, they inspire neo-Nazi pamphleteers to invent new “official” data. One of them, Heinz Roth, printed a brochure in which he asked, “Why are we < 108 >

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Germans being lied to?” Distributed in 1973, the pamphlet goes on to inform its readers, “Did you know that the losses sustained by the Jewish people, regrettable as they certainly are, amounted to two hundred thousand — this according to statements by the United Nations, which has no reason to single out any particular people for protection?”17 Responding to a query, the West-German representation to the United Nations informed the Institut für Zeitgeschichte on August 1, 1974, that the “number quoted, of 200,000 Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, is definitely not based on any statements by the United Nations.”18 The list of similar incidents could go on almost endlessly. Long after an alleged source has been exposed as a fiction whose origin can no longer be determined, those who have a vested interest in downplaying the death toll continue to repeat it. After all, the quoting of these assertions over and over again, until they appear to have been assimilated into the canon and will no longer be queried, is a tried and tested technique of right-wing propagandists.19 This is not the place to examine the various topoi used in neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist propaganda.20 Nor would there be any point in attempting to start a debate with apologists of the Nazi regime and those who deny the organized mass murder of the Jews. Authors of that ilk are only interested in perpetuating certain preconceived ideas such as the “international Jewish conspiracy” or the “international Jewry’s” alleged plans to destroy Germany, which are said to be documented in the ”Kaufman plan” under the (English) motto “Germany must perish.”21 The attempt to counterbalance the injustice done to the Germans against the crimes of the Nazi regime, which are in turn glossed over or denied, is another integral part of this revisionist approach to historiography.22 In a recent text, Saul Friedländer points to the challenge faced by historians and non-historians alike when trying to grasp the concept of the ”final solution” in its psychological and moral dimension as well as its historical causes and its logical implications. In support of his argument, Friedländer quotes the famous speech Himmler gave in Posen on October 4, 1943, in front of high-ranking SS officers. Holding forth on the subject of genocide, the “Reichsführer SS” emphasized the violation of a fundamental human taboo, the ultimate transgression. The singularity of the crime becomes evident in Himmler’s exhortation to silence, which proves that, then as now, no appeal to a “higher, generally comprehensible” end can justify these means: “Accordingly, the singularity of the Nazis’ project does not seem to be restricted to the crime itself, but is also evident in the perpetrators’ language, and in the manner in which they perceived themselves.”23 The < 109 >

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mere fact that Hitler’s apologists and epigones so fervently deny, or at least downplay, the genocide of the European Jewry instead of attempting to defend it is revealing in itself.24 A favorite method involves statistical calculations which purportedly prove that the Jewish death toll exceeds the number of Jews living in the area in question. Fabricating false evidence in order to “disprove” the death toll of five to six million victims is another one. Pseudo-rational arguments are used to substantiate the claim that genocide on that scale would have been impossible for scientific or technical reasons. One recent example of this school of thought, the “Leuchter report,” written by an American expert on various methods of execution, concludes that not a single victim could have been gassed to death with cyclone B in Auschwitz. An unmistakable product of neo-Nazi rationale, this amateurish piece of propaganda is celebrated as the latest compelling argument against the “Auschwitz hoax” in right-wing extremist literature.25 The authors and disseminators of such texts are of course immune even to the most scathing criticism of their efforts.26 Nor does it matter to them that their arguments have been refuted and their underlying intentions discredited by reputable scholars — after all, none of this has any impact on their preferred method of quoting the same “sources” again and again in order to disguise their dubious origins and to create an illusion of scientific rigor and accuracy. III Early investigations into the number of Jewish victims of National Socialism were conducted in response to the aforementioned data published in the Basler Nachrichten in 1946.27 The New York-based Institute of Jewish Affairs found that the Swiss paper had underestimated the number of Jews living in Europe (outside of the Soviet Union) in 1933 by about 1.4 million, and that the Jewish population of the Soviet Union (including the Baltic countries and the annexed Polish areas) had also been much larger than the 500,000 individuals stated in the article. Based on a comparison between the Jewish census statistics from 1939 (9.5 million) and 1945 (3.1 million), and taking into account the number of approximately 600,000 who emigrated, the Institute of Jewish Affairs calculated a total death toll in the vicinity of 5.8 million Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. In 1951, the demographer Jacob Lestschinsky published calculations28 based on a Jewish population of 9.5 million in 1939, of whom 2.75 million < 110 >

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remained in 1950, from which he concludes that over six million died in the Nazi genocide. Based on his own calculations, Léon Poliakov puts the death toll of Jewish victims at over 5.5 million.29 Poliakov borrowed Lestschinsky’s figure of 1.5 million victims of SS death squads, as well as 1.85 million who had been gassed in the extermination camps Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Chelmno as recorded in the findings of the Polish commission for the investigation of war crimes, and another 200,000 killed in Majdanek, but voiced doubts as to the accuracy of former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß’s testimony, which put the death toll of Jewish victims killed in the Auschwitz gas chambers at 2.5 million.30 Poliakov estimated that number at two million. Today, scholars and researchers have access to more reliable and comprehensive sources than those on which these early studies based their calculations of Jewish victims who died in extermination and concentration camps. This issue will need to be discussed at a later stage within the context of the information which came to light during numerous court trials over the following decades.31 In the earliest comprehensive survey of the genocide, Gerald Reitlinger investigated the fate of the Jewish population of all European countries and offered a summary of the ‘final solution’ in statistical terms.32 Starting with the total of 5,721,800 Jewish victims stated in the indictment of the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals in November 1945 and detailed in the “Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry regarding the problems of European Jewry and Palestine” (London, April 1946), Reitlinger critically examined the figures which had been published or calculated at that time. By not putting his trust in official National Socialist sources, and proceeding with the utmost precision and diligence, Reitlinger intended to establish a minimum number which was as incontestable as possible. He used neither the maximum of 2.5 million nor the subsequent minimum of 1.135 million, which Rudolf Höß testified to in court, but put the Auschwitz death toll at the extremely low figure of 750,000. Guided by the determination not to offer anti-Semitic circles even the slightest pretext “to dicredit the whole ghastly story and its lessons,”33 Reitlinger arrived at a lowest and a highest possible figure of between 4,194,200 and 4,581,200 victims. Reitlinger himself thought that the figure of approximately six million, which had been gaining currency ever since the Nuremberg Trials, was too high. To support his position, he quoted the wording of Justice Jackson’s opening statement for the prosecution on November 21, 1945: “5.7 million < 111 >

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Jews are missing from the countries in which they formerly lived, and over 4.5 million cannot be accounted for by the normal death rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among displaced persons.”34 The indictment itself said: “Of the 9,6000,00 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators. Only remnants of the Jewish population of Europe remain.”35 Reitlinger’s maximum estimate is higher than Justice Jackson’s minimum number. To account for the difference between the more common assumption of six million victims and his own estimate of 4.5 million, Reitlinger cites the “highly conjectural estimates of the losses in territory at present controlled by the Soviet Union, and in Rumania (sic), where figures have been adduced that have no relationship with the facts as known.”36 No other scholar has devoted more time and more vigor to the study of the destruction of the European Jewry than Raul Hilberg, who first began researching the subject in 1948. His ground-breaking work on the details and statistics of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews, the first edition of which was published in 1961, is a very impressive compendium that contains a wealth of factual information based on a sound and extensive knowledge of the source material. To this day, it continues to serve as an invaluable guideline for scholars and researchers.37 IV Although based on a unified plan and centrally organized by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt in Berlin (Reich Security Main Office, a government authority created in 1939 in order to fight all “enemies of the Reich” inside and outside German territory), the discrimination, deportation and destruction of the European Jewry was marked by numerous regional and chronological particularities. The decision to structure our enquiry into this subject in the form of a series of regional studies therefore seemed an obvious approach. Within the borders of the German Reich and the annexed territories — Austria, Sudetenland, Warthegau, Alsace-Lorraine, Memel etc. — the initial expulsion phase differed from the policies pursued in the Generalgouvernement, where full-scale ghettoization served as a preliminary stage to extermination. In the Soviet Union, organized mass murder was committed with little or no inhibitions. Massacres like the one in the Babi Jar gorge near Kiev, where the Sonderkommando 4 shot 33,771 Jewish victims in the neck on September 29 and 30, 1941, could not have happened in the < 112 >

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occupied territories in Western Europe such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France or Norway. However, Serbia was another matter; there, Jews already imprisoned in camps were shot as hostages in retaliation for attacks by partisans, a practice soon to be implemented on a larger scale. Pursuing the persecution and extermination of Jews within the territory of allied and satellite nations required rather more restraint. By applying political pressure, Berlin was able to impose anti-Semitic laws permitting the discrimination and social exclusion of Jewish citizens and the expropriation of their property. Nonetheless, both Vichy France and Mussolini’s fascist Italy refused to take the last step and support Hitler’s “final solution.” An all but ubiquitous, genuine anti-Semitism notwithstanding, reactionary or fascist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were reluctant to give up their Jewish populations to the Nazis’ apparatus of destruction. Especially in Romania, but also in Bulgaria and Hungary, local authorities attempted to subvert German efficiency by tried and tested means such as issuing draconian laws which were enforced somewhat laxly but made an impression on those in power in Berlin. While Romania was at war with the Soviet Union, horrific massacres and pogroms were being committed against the Jewish population of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Southern Russia. The government in Bucharest not only tolerated atrocities by the Romanian police and armed forces, but a year earlier it had decreed the deportation of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina across the river Dnjestr to what was then called Transnistria.38 The more than 200,000 unfortunate individuals who died during deportations and pogroms did not count as Romanian Jews for the Antonescu government, which treated those whom it did consider its own citizens more solicitously, attempting to save them from the worst. In Bulgaria, probably the Reich’s least willing ally, the situation was even more clear-cut.39 Jewish citizens living within the original Bulgarian borders were not handed over to the Germans for deportation (proving itself ever more inventive, the government in Sofia kept creating new difficulties and obstacles, culminating in financial demands). However, the Jewish population in the recently annexed territories was not deemed worthy of similar protection. Yet although many Jewish victims from Macedonia and Thrace were deported to German extermination camps further east, the Jewish population living in Bulgarian core territory was spared. Prior to German occupation in the spring of 1944, Hungary had managed to fob off her ally and had successfully prevented the deportation not only of Hungarian Jews but also of numerous refugees from Germany, Austria, < 113 >

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and the Czech Republic who swelled the ranks of the Jewish population in Hungary to approximately 875,000. Admiral Horthy in Hungary and Marshall Antonescu in Romania resisted the German requests, which were repeatedly conveyed to them by so-called Judenberater (advisors on Jewish affairs) in the employ of the German Foreign Office as well as directly by members of the government in Berlin, not so much for philanthropic, let alone philosemitic reasons. Rather, their refusal was guided by opportunistic considerations: By complying with Hitler’s plans for the “final solution of the Jewish question,” the authoritarian regimes in Southeastern Europe would have burnt their last remaining bridges to Western civilization and culture — a decision they might well come to regret if Germany were to lose the war. For all her submissiveness towards Berlin, Monsignore Josef Tiso’s Slovakia was still a Catholic country where religious scruples and the interventions of the Vatican had a certain weight and Slovakian Jews were able to improve their chances of survival by converting to Catholicism. Much to Hitler’s disgust, his closest ideological ally, Mussolini and his Fascist regime in Italy, had no sympathy for his anti-Semitic policy of extermination. Italy went even further than the Balkan countries in ensuring the protection of her Jewish population. Even Jews living in Italian-occupied parts of Greece, Southern France and the Balkans were comparatively safe. Because the Italian Fascists had “never completely cut the cord binding them to the traditions of European decorum and humanity, and had therefore never discarded the disdain which they had so openly expressed during the 1930s towards their Northern allies’ obsession with race,” “religious and moral scruples” still prevailed.40 Only when Italian territory was brought under direct German influence in September 1943 did genocide begin there as well. The largest and swiftest territorial operation towards the completion of the “final solution,” organized by Eichmann himself, took place in Hungary between May and July 1944, after the installation of German military rule. Pre-1944, Hungary may have been a comparatively safe haven, but it was a far cry from paradise. In 1938, anti-Semitic legislation had been introduced in order to expropriate Jewish property and to draft the majority of the Jewish population into a closed system of forced-labor battalions, many of which were sent to the Eastern front and suffered heavy losses. In August 1941, the Hungarian government handed over 12,000 Jewish refugees from Galicia to the German commandos operating in the Soviet Union. In January 1942, a massacre took place in Hungarian-annexed Yugoslav territory, where the Hungarian commanders of the city of Novi Sad ordered the shooting of thousands of Jews and Serbians. The Hungarian < 114 >

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general chief of staff Szombathely considered not only the incident itself but also the stay of court martial proceedings against the officers involved a national disgrace and tragedy. In order to avoid another investigation, the high-ranking members of the Hungarian military fled to the German Reich, where they were “received by the Geheime Staatspolizei as guests of the Reichsführer-SS.”41 Croatia, which had been created as a satellite state in April 1941, was probably the regime most willing to adopt the Nazis’ strategy of annihilation. As in all other parts of Europe under German power, the Jewish population of Croatia was first subjected to anti-Semitic legislation and subsequently interned in camps and drafted into forced labor in 1941. Towards the beginning of the new year, the Croatian government permitted the deportation of Jews of Croatian nationality living in the territory of the Reich, and between the fall of 1942 and April 1944, the “Jewish question in Croatia” was resolved by way of deportation. “The implementation as such was satisfactory,” Police Attaché Helm reported back to Berlin from Agram/ Zagreb on April 18, 1944, “so that except for several occupied areas Croatia could be considered that country in which the Jewish question must, on the whole, be considered solved.” Helm wrote this triumphant message in answer to an admonition from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, which requested that the “Jewish question” in Croatia be settled “forthwith.” However, he expressed his regret that some Jews still held important positions and had been declared indispensable by the regime.42 Finland was the only ally of Nazi Germany not to feel similar pressure to deport the 2,000 Jews living on her territory and thus abandoning them to certain death. Those among them who were Finnish citizens came through the war unscathed. Sweden took in 160 Jewish refugees from Finland who did not have Finnish citizenship, while 50 refugees from Austria and the Baltic countries were given up for deportation by the Finnish authorities. However, only one single transport was actually carried out: On October 6, 1942, Finnish police arrested nine Jewish individuals who were either stateless or citizens of countries other than Finland, who were then deported to Auschwitz via Estonia. One among them survived.43 V Due to the nature of the events themselves (e. g. no registration of victims who were gassed to death in extermination camps on Polish territory), and to the limited availability of sources, a definitive final death toll will < 115 >

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never be established. The intention was instead to use historiographical and statistical methods in order to research the overall dimension of the genocide perpetrated against the European Jewry, to discuss openly the difficulties inherent in this task, and to summarize the verifiable (minimum) figures. This summary is the result of seventeen individual regional studies, which are collected in this volume. Of equal importance is the representation of the issues confronting scholars and researchers, as well as the general problems which will continue to hamper any future attempts at recording the numbers of Jewish victims. For each individual region, the source material will be presented and discussed at some length in order to account for the inevitably heterogeneous nature of the final summary: For Austria, there is a wealth of source material available, for Albania almost none, to name but two examples. For countries such as Norway or Italy, there is a relatively minor margin of error concerning the documented figures, whereas for Poland and the Soviet Union, the number of unreported cases is likely to amount to several hundred thousand. Each regional study is framed by an account of the measures of persecution carried out by the German occupation (from forcing Jews to bear special marks of their religion to deportation to extermination). Attention has also been paid to the policies implemented by each respective government, whether they were oriented towards saving the Jewish population, as was the case in Denmark, or towards limited non-cooperation and subversion of German requests and intentions (e.g. in Romania and Bulgaria). For each area, the death toll has been documented by collating all available primary sources (deportation lists, Einsatzgruppen reports, etc.) Wherever there is sufficient source material, it is followed by a discussion of statistical issues and problems, and finally by a numerical summary comparing the verifiable minimum number of victims to the maximum estimate. As mentioned above, it would have been pointless for this project to aim at establishing an absolute total of all Jewish victims. Instead, the intention throughout has been to present specific methodological issues in the context of the historical events and their consequences. Any expectations of spectacular new findings as to the Jewish victims of National Socialism were always likely to be disappointed. Apart from highlighting methodological problems, the analysis of all accessible sources by experts on each individual region, who were supported and advised by numerous German and international authorities on the subject of the Holocaust, has rendered results which are commensurate with < 116 >

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the dimensions previously established by the academic community. With all due diligence, it should be stated that these statistics are as close to reality as humanly possible. The following table compares the Jewish casualties established by earlier research to the results of the more recent studies presented in this volume. Numerical overview

(Results of earlier research are listed for comparison) W = Wellers, Zahl der Opfer (1978) R = Reitlinger, Final Solution (19??) H = Hilberg, Destruction (19??) Y = Yad Vashem, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990) German Reich Minimum: 160,000 Maximum: 195,000 Realistic estimate: 165,000 R: 160,000 — 180,000 H: over 120,000 Y: 134,500 — 141,500 Austria: 65,459 R: 60,000 H: over 50,000 Y: 50,000 Luxemburg: 1,200 R: 3,000 H: under 1,000 Y: 1,950 France and Belgium total for France: 76,134 (including citizens of other countries) total for Belgium: 28,518 (including citizens of other countries) 32,200 (Jewish citizens of France or Belgium) France W: 75,721 R: 60,000 — 65,000 < 117 >

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H: 75,000 Y: 77,320 Belgium W: 25,437 R: 25,000 — 28,000 H: 24,000 Y: 28,900 Netherlands 102,000 W: 105,000 R: 104,000 H: over 100,000 Y: 100,000 Denmark 116 R: under 100 Y: 60 Norway Minimum: 758 H: under 1,000 Y: 762 Italy 6,513 R: 8,500 — 9,500 H: 9,000 Y: 7,680 Albania 591 deportees Greece 59,185 R: 57,200 H: 60,000 Y: 60,000 — 70,000 < 118 >

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Bulgaria 11,393 (deported from Bulgarian-occupied territories; all Bulgarian Jews were saved) Y: 0 Yugoslavia 60,000 — 65,000 R: at most 58,000 H: 60,000 Y: 56,200 — 63,300 Hungary 550,000 W: 429,028 R: 180,000 — 200,000 H: over 180,000 Y: 550,000 — 569,000 Czechoslovakia 143,000 (territory of the Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren and Slovakia) R: 233,000 — 243,000 H: 260,000 Y: 146,150 — 149,150 Romania 211,214 R: 200,000 — 220,000 H: 270,000 Y: 271,000 — 287,000 Poland 2,700,000 Maximum: 3,000,000 (Hilberg, Gilbert, Krakowski) R: 2,350,000 — 2,600,000 H: up to 3,000,000 Y: 2,900,000 — 3,000,000 Soviet Union 2,100,000 < 119 >

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W: 1,939,940 R: 700,000 — 750,000 H: 900,000 Y: 1,211,500 — 1,316,500 Added together, these numbers add up to a minimum of 5.29 million and a maximum of just over six million Jewish victims. In order to illustrate the dimension of the variations between these estimates, the following statistics list the Jewish victims who were killed in extermination camps on Polish territory or murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, mostly on Soviet territory, regardless of their nationality: In the first wave of mass executions (summer 1941 to spring 1942), the Einsatzgruppen killed 535,000 Jewish men, women and children. This number is based only on reports by the Einsatzgruppen themselves; it includes neither the 33,771 victims of the massacres in Babi Jar near Kiev, similarly well-documented, nor the victims of other atrocities.44 Almost three million Jews were gassed in the extermination camps on Polish territory: 152,000 in Chelmno (between late 1941 and May 1942 and between September 1942 and March 1943); 600,000 in Belzec (between March 1942 and early 1943); 250,000 in Sobibór (May/June 1942, between October and December 1942, and between March and August 1943); 1,000,000 in Auschwitz-Birkenau (September 1941, between January 1942 and November 1944); 900,000 in Treblinka (between July 1942 and August 1943); and 60,000 to 80,000 in Majdanek.45 These figures are the result of collaborations between historians and legal scholars; research into the crimes and their perpetrators conducted for the criminal trials held in Bonn (Chelmno), Düsseldorf (Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek), and Frankfurt (Auschwitz); official enquiries; and of the calculations of experts on the subject, first and foremost among them Wolfgang Scheffler, on whose work the established statistics for the extermination camps are based. VI In principle, there are two ways to determine the Jewish death toll: 1) By a direct estimate, which aims to arrive at a total by adding together the numbers of victims in concentration and extermination camps, of operations by Einsatzgruppen and others, and any other figures which are supported by documentary evidence; < 120 >

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2) By the indirect method of statistical comparison, which delivers limited results due to the lack of reliable statistics, especially in the countries of Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Census statistics from the Soviet Union, for example, are insufficiently structured by ethnic and religious categories. Moreover, due to the various border changes in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, it is impossible to draw comparisons between the various available statistics. In general, the regional studies collected in this volume combine both methods. In each case, the calculation of a verifiable total on the basis of deportation lists, transport reports, intake lists and registers of deaths kept by the camps, Einsatzgruppen reports and other sources is — in a second step — supplemented by a statistical approach. The mass migration of the Jewish population set in motion by the Nazi regime’s repressive measures causes specific problems, especially in the case of France and the Netherlands. Deportation lists and numbers of casualties quoted in literature tend to include Austrian and German Jews who had emigrated to France or the Netherlands. Frequently, these victims were counted twice since they were included in the death toll for the Reich and for France. Individual articles address this problem inasmuch as it concerns each respective area and the total for each country has been adjusted accordingly. For this reason, some of the numbers established in this volume deviate significantly from the results of earlier research. Especially in French Holocaust research, Jewish immigrants from Germany and other countries have always been counted as deportees from France. Territorial demarcation proves another problem, mostly, though not only, in the chapters on Poland and the Soviet Union. The Poland article deals with the territory of the Generalgouvernement (including the Distrikt Galicia) and the “incorporated territories” (Danzig, Wartheland, Regierungsbezirk Zichenau). The article on the Soviet Union includes the territory of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were annexed in 1940, the formerly Eastern Polish territory and “Transnistria” (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina), which belonged to different countries at different stages of the war and is also included in the chapter on Romania. Similar difficulties arise in the case of the border areas between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and even more so between Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The Thracian and Macedonian victims are mentioned in context in the articles on both Greece and Bulgaria, though they are only counted once in the total. For the purposes of this volume, the German Reich is defined on the basis of its borders of 1937, i.e. Austria is discussed in a separate chapter, < 121 >

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and so is Luxemburg, despite her de-facto annexation. The Sudetenland and the Memel area, which were annexed in 1938 and 1939 respectively, are similarly excluded from the article on the German Reich.The vast majority of the Jewish population of the Sudetenland had fled to other parts of Czechoslovakia (according to census data, out of 27,073 Jews registered in 1930, only 2,363 remained in the Reichsgau Sudetenland on May 17, 1939). Unless they had the opportunity to emigrate further, these men, women, and children shared the fate of their compatriots in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Jewish population of the Memel area, most of which fled to Lithuania when their homeland was integrated into the German Reich in March 1939, was no luckier. The majority of them were shot by execution commandos alongside the Lithuanian Jews in the summer of 1941. Because of their shared history of occupation, Belgium and France are discussed in the same article. A few examples may illustrate the difficulties inherent in the territorial approach. Above and beyond the issue of numerical scale, this project is intended as a comprehensive history of the Holocaust. Accordingly, it would have been inappropriate to split up geographical entities in a manner corresponding to administrative practice in the territories under German rule or influence at that time. For example, in investigating the fate of the Jewish population in the whole of Czechoslovakia, it would have been unsatisfactory to look at the Protektorat and Slovakia separately (as well as the Sudetengau, which was annexed to the German Reich, and the territories ceded to Hungary). A number of areas are included in more than one article (in the case of Czechoslovakia, there is an overlap with the chapters on Hungary and on the German Reich); this was a conscious decision. Some of the territories concerned are quite small, while others are fairly large, including the Pirot area in Eastern Serbia, which was temporarily under Bulgarian rule and is thus discussed in the chapters on Yugoslavia and on Bulgaria. With regard to Italy between 1943 and 1945, this caveat refers not only to the Adriatic coast, which was annexed by Germany and administered by the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Carinthia, and to the Alpenvorland, which was governed from Tyrol; there is also an overlap with Yugoslavia concerning the island of Rab and the area around Fiume/Rijeka. The complicated situation in the areas between Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia (Thrace and Macedonia) has already been referred to; as a consequence, these regions are included in more than one chapter. Yet another example is the deportation of the Jewish population of Rhodes and Kos. Because these people were Italian citizens, they are discussed in the article on Italy; < 122 >

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however, geographically, both islands are Greek territory. Therefore, these deportations are also touched upon in the chapter on Greece. Given these deeper historical connections, it would not have been possible to interrupt an account whenever the official borders were redrawn between, for example, Romania and the Soviet Union. It seemed far better to let individual chapters overlap to a certain extent. There are minor variations between data from Bulgarian and Yugoslav sources concerning Macedonia and between data from Italian and Greek sources concerning Kos and Rhodes. These contradictions are impossible to resolve. The same is true of the deportation of the Jewish population from Bulgarian-annexed Eastern Macedonia/Thrace, which was carried out via the Danubian port of Lom. Here, Bulgarian and Greek records deviate slightly. There was no way of overcoming these methodological difficulties. Even more problems arise with regard to the question of citizenship. What about the 1,060 Greek Jews who were arrested during raids in the French departement Seine on November 5 and November 7 1942 — should they be included in the statistics for Greece or for France? Out of a total of 76,134 Jewish victims on French territory, only a third were French citizens, among the remaining two thirds, 14,459 were Poles, 6,222 Germans, 2,217 Austrians, 3,000 Romanians etc. It is also impossible to determine how many Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the Netherlands were stateless, or former citizens of Germany. However, none of the problems outlined above are insurmountable obstacles to the project’s aims of illuminating the wider context, openly addressing the methodological difficulties concerning the available sources, and establishing the numerical dimension of the genocide across Europe. Considerable effort has been invested in ensuring that no victim was counted twice. Disturbing as it may seem from a moral point of view, the definition of the term “Jewish” had to be based on the National Socialist perception. For the purpose of this investigation, it was not of significance whether the men, women, and children concerned would have considered themselves Jewish or not (in the religious, ethnic, cultural or linguistic sense), but rather whether the Nazi regime classed, and persecuted, them as Jews. Reflections on the ethical implications of the Holocaust were outside the scope of these studies; nor was it the authors’ task to refute apologist and revisionist tendencies in right-wing extremist literature. Finally, it was certainly not the objective of this project to confirm any prescribed figures (“six million”) concerning the numerical dimension of the Holocaust. < 123 >

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VII A number of scholars specializing in Holocaust research have been consulted in the course of this project. In December 1989, the entire project was discussed with the Holocaust Research Group at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which contributed its own calculations to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Barring a few exceptions, all of which can be accounted for, Professor Israel Gutman, Professor Otto Dov Kulka, and the Director of the Archive, Dr. Shmuel Krakowski, by and large arrived at results similar to those presented in this volume. The authors would also like to thank Professor Yehuda Bauer (Hebrew University Jerusalem) for his contributions to the debate. Professor Christopher Browning (Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington) and Professor Czeslaw Madajcyk (Warsaw) have both taken the time and trouble to read the chapter on Poland and to offer their expert advice and criticism. The late Professor Helmut Krausnick has also given generously of his profound knowledge on the subject, sharing valuable insights and critical comments during the writing and editing process, as has Hermann Graml. Professor H.D. Loock (Free University Berlin) has cast his Nordic Studies scholar’s critical eye over the Norway chapter, while Professor Randolph L. Braham (City University New York) has done the same for the article on Hungary. Professor Wolfgang Scheffler (Technical University Berlin) has been so generous as to contribute information on the death toll in the extermination camps on Polish territory. The Director of the Central Office of the Federal States’ Judicial Authorities in Ludwigsburg deserves a special mention for his comments on the chapters on the Soviet Union and on Poland, and for the guidance offered to the authors. Last but not least, this project could not have been completed but for the staff of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, who transformed the texts and tables into fair copy: Sybille Benker, Reinhilde Staude and Tobias Wunschnik, as well as Angelika Schardt and Dr. Juliane Wetzel, on whose indefatigable support the editor relied throughout the editing process. Translated from German by Beate Brown

< 124 >

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NOTES 1 2

3

4

5

6

7

Nuremberg Document PS 2738. IMT, vol. IV, pp. 393-414; cf. also records of the Eichmann trial, Institut für Zeitgeschichte archive. Ibid.; cf. also Rudolf Aschenauer (ed.), Ich, Adolf Eichmann. Ein historischer Zeugenbericht, Leoni 1980, pp. 471 ff. Vortrag über Siedlung, December 1940, Bundesarchiv, NS 19/3979; I would like to express my gratitude to the Chief Archive Officer, Dr. Josef Henke, who found this previously undiscovered document. For an overview of the topic, cf. Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer (eds.), Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlussbildung und Verwirklichung, Stuttgart 1985, which presents the results of a conference in May 1984 where proponents of various views debated precisely when and why the ‘final solution’ was put into action. In part, this was a response to David Irving’s absurd claim that since there is no written order signed by Hitler, the extermination of the Jews must have happened without the Führer‘s knowledge. Martin Broszat, Hitler und die Genesis der ‘Endlösung’. Aus Anlass der Thesen von David Irving, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977), pp. 739-775, disproved the argument constructed by Irving. Subsequently, Christopher R. Browning argued against Broszat‘s conclusion, which argued that the ‘final solution’ had not been planned but had instead resulted from crises and material constraints: “Zur Genesis der ‘Endlösung’. Eine Antwort an Martin Broszat,” in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 29 (1981), pp. 97-109. Cf. also Christopher R. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office. A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940-43, New York 1978; and Christopher R. Browning, Fateful Months. Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, New York 1985. Hermann Graml also refutes Broszat’s claims: “Zur Genesis der ‘Endlösung’,” in: Ursula Büttner (ed.), Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, vol. 2, Hamburg 1986, pp. 2-18. Originally presented as an expert’s report during the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, Helmut Krausnick, Judenverfolgung, in: Buchheim, Broszat, Jacobsen and Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, vol. II, Olten and Freiburg 1965, pp. 283448, remains a seminal text on the subject. Gerald Fleming, who interprets the ‘final solution’ as an integral part of the Nazi regime, offers compelling arguments in favor of Hitler’s responsibility for its implementation: Hitler und die Endlösung. ‘Es ist des Führers Wunsch ...’, Wiesbaden 1982; cf. also Wolfgang Scheffler, “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der ‘Endlösung’,” in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, October 30, 1982, pp. 3-10. At the recent International Symposium on ‘The National Socialist war’ in Pforzheim in September 1989, Yehuda Bauer provided a survey which transcends the two opposing positions in a paper titled ‘anti-Semitismus und Krieg’. Cf. also Raul Hilberg, “Tendenzen in der Holocaust-Forschung,” in: Walter H. Pehle (ed.), Der historische Ort des Nationalsozialismus. Annäherungen, Frankfurt a. M. 1990. For this argument, cf. Arno J. Mayer, Der Krieg als Kreuzzug. Das Deutsche Reich, Hitlers Wehrmacht und die Endlösung, Reinbek 1989. Die Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage. Statistischer Bericht, Richard Korherr, Inspekteur für Statistik, Nuremberg Document NO 5193; supplementary sources in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte archive. < 125 >

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Nuremberg Document NO 5196.

9

George Wellers, “Die Zahl der Opfer der ‘Endlösung’ und der Korherr-Bericht,” in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, July 29, 1978, pp. 22-39.

10

Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938-1942, Stuttgart 1981.

11

Wilhelm, ibid., p. 620.

12

“Beweis aus der Schweiz: Was nun, Herr Staatsanwalt?” in: Die Anklage. Organ der Entrechteten Nachkriegsgeschädigten, April 1, 1955.

13

Das grüne Blatt, March 6, 1955.

14

Institut für Zeitgeschichte archive.

15

Ibid.

16

Ibid.

17

Heinz Roth, Warum werden wir Deutschen belogen? Witten, 1973; cf. also Emil Aretz, Hexeneinmaleins einer Lüge, Pähl, 1970; Thies Christophersen, Die Auschwitz-Lüge, Mohrkirch, 1972; the same data are quoted in Gert Suchholt (ed.), Antigermanismus. Eine Streitschrift zu Dachau und zum ‘Auschwitz-Gesetz’, Berg, 1986.

18

Ibid.

19

Cf. Martin Broszat’s preface to the article by Ino Arndt and Wolfgang Scheffler, “Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslagern. Ein Beitrag zur Richtigstellung apologetischer Literatur,” in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24 (1976), pp. 105-112.

20

On this subject, cf. Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik. Voraussetzungen, Zusammenhänge, Wirkungen, Frankfurt am Main 1989.

21

Cf. Wolfgang Benz, “Judenvernichtung aus Notwehr? Die Legenden um Theodore N. Kaufman,” in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 29 (1981), pp. 615-630; updated in: Benz, Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 169-188, which also contains information on the anti-Semitic legend bandied about in the late 1980’s regarding a close confidant of President Roosevelt’s, who allegedly wanted to exterminate the German people. This piece of propaganda is still being kept alive in the Deutsche National-Zeitung among others.

22

Cf. Rivkah Knoller, Denial of the Holocaust. A bibliography of literature denying or distorting the Holocaust, and of literature about this phenomenon. Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 1989.

23

Saul Friedländer, “Die ‘Endlösung’. Über das Unbehagen in der Geschichtsdeutung,” in: Pehle, Der historische Ort, pp. 81-94.

24

The neo-Nazi canon, whose texts continuously refer to each other in order to create the illusion of a sustained argument based on sound research, takes its cues from seminal works such as: Paul Rassinier, Zum Fall Eichmann. Was ist Wahrheit? Oder Die unbelehrbaren, Sieger. Leoni, 1962; Richard Harwood, Starben wirklich sechs Millionen? Endlich die Wahrheit, Richmond, 1975; Arthur R. Butz, Der JahrhundertBetrug, Vlotho, 1977; Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos. Legende oder Wirklichkeit? Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme, Tübingen, 1979. < 126 >

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26

27

28

29 30

31

32

33 34 35 36 37

38

39

40

Cf. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz. Technique and operation of the gas chambers, New York, 1989; Jean-Claude Pressac, “Les carences et incohérences du ‘Rapport Leuchter’,” in: Jour J, December 12, 1988. Cf. Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands (ed.), Das Lachout‘Dokument’. Anatomie einer Fälschung, Wien 1989, which analyzes a dubious document produced by one Emil Lachout which is used to “prove” that the Allies used torture to obtain confessions and information on gas chambers in some concentration camps. Both the Lachout ‘document’ and the Leuchter report were fabricated at the time of the trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto. Helmut Krausnick, “Zur Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus,” in: Dokumentation zur Massenvergasung, Bonn 1962, pp. 16-20. The Decline of European Jewry, Congress Weekly, New York, September 24, 1951; cf. Hans Lamm, “Um die Zahl der ermordeten Juden,” in: Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, May 8, 1953. Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la Haine. Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs, Paris 1951. Rudolf Höß was commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp between May 1940 and November 1943, and from May 1944 onwards organized the extermination of Hungarian Jews there. During the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals (April 5, 1946; Document PS 3868, and main hearing, April 15, 1946, International Military Tribunal, vol. XI, p. 458), he testified that 2.5 million Jews had been gassed in Auschwitz. Höß later cited a lower figure in his memoirs. Cf. Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiografische Aufzeichnungen von Rudolf Höß, with an introduction and comments by Martin Broszat, Stuttgart 1958, pp. 161-163. Cf. Adalbert Rückerl, “Vergangenheitsbewältigung mit den Mitteln der Justiz,” in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, October 30, 1982; Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, München 1977; Rückerl, NS, Verbrechen vor Gericht — Versuch einer Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Heidelberg 1982; Alfred Streim, “Konzentrationslager auf dem Gebiet der Sowjetunion,” in: Dachauer Hefte 5 (1989), pp. 174-187. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe (1939-1945), London 1953; subsequently published in German as Die Endlösung. Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939-1945, Berlin 1956. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 2nd revised and augmented edition, London 1961, p. 533. International Military Tribunal, vol. II, p. 140. Ibid., p. 47. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 534. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, London 1961. Published in German as Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. Die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocaust, Berlin 1982. Cf. Wolf Rosenstock, Die Chronik von Dschurin. “Aufzeichnungen aus einem rumänisch-deutschen Lager,” in: Dachauer Hefte 5 (1989), pp. 40-86. Cf. Hans-Joachim Hoppe, Bulgarien — Hitlers eigenwilliger Verbündeter. Eine Fallstudie zur nationalsozialistischen Südosteuropapolitik, Stuttgart 1979. Hermann Graml, Reichskristallnacht. Anti-Semitismus und Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich, Munich 1988, p. 244. < 127 >

WOLFGANG BENZ 41

42

43 44 45

Note from the German Foreign Office dated January 21, 1944, in: Peter Longerich (ed.), Die Ermordung der Europäischen Juden. Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945, Munich 1989, pp. 292-293. Report Helm, ‘Überblick über die Judenfrage in Kroatien’, April 18, 1944, Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik, Series E, vol. 7, Göttingen 1979, pp. 658ff.; Longerich, Die Ermordung, pp. 305ff. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. Wilhelm, in: Die Truppen des Weltanschauungskrieges, pp. 618-619. Cf. Arndt/Scheffler, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24 (1976), pp. 105-135.

< 128 >

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Dieter Pohl

JUST HOW MANY? On the death toll of Jewish victims of Nazi crimes1

Why do historians, demographers, and scholars from other fields invest so much energy in establishing exactly how many Jews were murdered by the Nazis? After all, such statistical calculations clearly have little or no bearing on the moral verdict on these crimes. Nonetheless, three different considerations do seem pertinent here: • First of all, the dimensions of this crime against humanity need to be clarified. Never before or since has a section of the population across Europe been singled out for persecution and murder with comparable intensity and a similarly high death toll. The ruthless murder of so many children in particular is a crime without historical precedent. • Moreover, a quantitative account of the Nazi persecution broken down by areas and towns facilitates research into the fate of individual Jewish communities, allowing scholars to pinpoint the impact of the Shoa on discrete entities within the European Jewry, i.e. the exact locations to which Jews from each community were deported to, and where they died. • Finally, a precise quantitative breakdown of these crimes may help discredit right-wing revisions of recent European history, which tend to focus on this field of research with particular ardor. Unfortunately, even authors generally considered “beyond suspicion” occasionally engage in speculations of this kind. Any final count of the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution must include not only those who died before 1945 but also the many others who survived under inhuman conditions only to remain physically and psychologically < 129 >

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scarred for life. After the war was over, many of them would die as a direct consequence of their persecution. Though numerous, these survivors account for a minority of all Shoa victims. Any attempt to arrive at a final count of all victims of the Nazi persecution of Jews must confront a number of general questions, the first and foremost of which concerns the scope of the enquiry. The term “victims of the murder of European Jews” is usually taken to mean anyone who was regarded as a Jew by those who committed these crimes, regardless of whether the victims considered themselves Jewish or not. This included converts to Christianity as well as culturally assimilated or secular Jews. In the occupied areas, anyone of even remotely Jewish descent — including, in some places, gentile spouses of Jewish Shoa victims — was also classified as Jewish. Far from being a clear-cut and stable definition, its meaning varied from one area to another, or even changed during the course of the war. The victims of the “final solution” also include Jewish members of the Polish, the Yugoslav, and especially the Soviet army who were captured by the Germans alongside their gentile fellow soldiers but were treated far worse or murdered outright because of their Jewish descent. Others died during the Shoa, though of “natural causes.” How can the natural mortality rate of the Jewish population between 1933 and 1945 be taken into account? This is a question of calculating, and highlighting the significance of, the disproportionately high mortality after 1933, or rather after the beginning of the occupation. Finally, what about those Jews who died while fleeing the German expansion across Europe without directly or indirectly falling prey to the Axis powers? Almost a million Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union fled or were evacuated prior to the German invasion, many of whom died on the run. Due to the loss of vital areas of agricultural production, the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union were ravaged by acute food shortages. However, those who perished through famine or died in the war itself — be they soldiers or casualties of bombings or sieges, which claimed a high death toll, especially in Leningrad — are not usually counted among the victims of the Shoa. Problems of methodology further complicate the issue. In particular, this includes the need to define a cut-off date before breaking the numbers down by country since, especially in Southeastern Europe, borders and demarcation lines were constantly changing between 1938 and 1945. In order to arrive at an exact number, calculations for each country ought to be based on the same principle, i.e. place of origin, place of deportation, or < 130 >

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place of death. Some victims were able to escape persecution initially only to be recaptured later. Immediately after the war, demographers used available statistics to try and calculate the difference between the number of Jews living in Europe in 1939 and those who remained in 1945. Taking into account the minority which had been saved by emigration, Jewish organizations arrived at an estimated death toll of 5.7 million.2 Ever since then, various attempts have been made to gather detailed data on each individual victim by questioning surviving relatives and acquaintances. Although numbering several million, the biographical entries collected by this method are far from complete since they can neither account for each and every victim nor document the whole story of a victim’s persecution in each case. Filling these gaps necessitates extensive research into the local and regional environments in which the crimes occurred. The sources and documents available to the historian vary in scope and quality between different countries, as do the methodological challenges they pose. The vast majority of documents referring to the murders themselves, such as written orders and reports, were burned by the perpetrators before the end of the war. Nevertheless, the German files concerning the persecution of Jews which have been preserved fill many miles of shelf space. For most European countries, demographic data are fairly welldocumented, which means that the number of victims can be determined quite precisely. While it is thus possible to establish the identity of most victims from within the Reich, the Czech territories, Western and Northern Europe and Italy, only some of the persecuted Jews from Southeastern Europe can be identified by name. However, statistics on deportations from these areas are available. Determining how many of those living in Poland, the Soviet Union, and the Baltic countries were killed proves far more difficult. The only way to do this is by collating the statistics for each individual city, town, and village, an extremely time-consuming method. Statistical projections based on the most recent census data prior to the German invasion as well as population registries kept by the occupation, by the so-called Judenräte (administrative bodies that the Nazis required Jews to form in the German-occupied territory of Poland, and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union) or by Jewish welfare organizations need to be consulted in order to establish the number of Jews living in each place. Even today, nobody knows exactly how many Jews were living in Poland at the time of the German invasion. < 131 >

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Whereas around 10 percent of Polish Jews were able to escape capture by the Germans — some temporarily, some permanently — , in the Soviet Union and the Baltic countries that number rose to 30 to 40 percent, and was higher in eastern than in western regions. Soviet documents which have recently become available to researchers contain data on the numbers of those who fled, were evacuated, or were forcibly deported under Soviet rule, including data on the eastern part of Poland, which was annexed by the Soviet Union. The most important data are those on the organized killings themselves. The perpetrators left detailed reports on mass killings committed during the first eight months of German rule in the Soviet territories. Subsequent data are incomplete, as are those available on the Polish territories. Frequently, isolated data compiled by the German administration of the occupied territories, by local authorities, or by German companies working in the occupied territories can fill these gaps. The Polish underground movement, which monitored and reported on the mass killings, also provides valuable sources. However, the complete scale of the organized killings — mass executions as well as mass deportations to extermination camps — can only be established by gathering thousands of eyewitness accounts. In the immediate aftermath of the war, many Jewish survivors documented what they remembered of their experiences. Further information emerged from the 1960s onwards, with German defendants and witnesses having to testify in court trials. Scant attention has been paid to the testimony of eyewitnesses reporting on the fate of their Jewish neighbors. Their statements contain information on the numbers of the victims of organized killings which are either based on memory (typically of documents or conversations) or on rough estimates by eye witnesses of deportations. Especially in the latter case, the numbers given are guesstimates and tend to be slightly too high. However, this effect is counterbalanced by the fact that in all probability, no documented evidence whatsoever remains of other killings. In post-war Poland, two systematic surveys were carried out in which all municipal authorities were required to provide exact data on mass killings which took place in their districts. Finally, data can be gathered from the extensive exhumation of mass graves which the Soviets in particular ordered from 1943 onwards. However, bodies were only counted at smaller sites, whereas figures for the victims of mass executions are usually estimates based on spatial dimensions and are generally considered to be too high. Given that in many places, the perpetrators had erased all evidence of their crimes by ordering that mass < 132 >

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graves be opened and bodies burned prior to their retreat, the resulting figures should only be used in conjunction with other sources. By combining these various figures for each individual place, a coherent picture emerges for the whole of the administrative district. Proceeding from the local to the regional level and finally to the level of vast territorial units of occupation such as the Generalgouvernement Poland or the Reichskommissariat Ukraine by using the same method of aggregation of various sources, reliable statistics on the number of victims can be established. Recent research undertaken by the Munich-based Institut für Zeitgeschichte,3 which summarized and complemented earlier studies, puts the total number of European Jews murdered during World War II between 5.3 and just over 6 million. Based on documents previously unavailable to researchers, more precise figures can now be established, especially with regard to Poland and the Soviet territories under German occupation. For all other areas with the exception of Poland, the Soviet Union (including the Baltic countries), and Romania, reasonably solid statistics have been available for some time, in most cases supported by lists of victims’ names. The total death toll in those areas amounts to just under 1.1 million.4 However, given that borders were constantly redrawn, it may be worth re-examining the statistics for Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well. POLAND The exact number of individuals of Jewish descent living in Poland at the time of the German invasion in September 1939 is impossible to determine. According to the most recent census data available, the Jewish community in Poland numbered 3.11 million in 1931. Based on projections, Polish statisticians estimate that number to have risen to 3.35 million by the beginning of the war.5 However, the number of potential victims of persecution by the Nazis needs to be calculated even higher in order to include Polish Christians of Jewish descent. Of all of these, between 2 and 2.1 million were captured by the Germans, another 1.3 million by the Soviets. Approximately 250,000 to 300,000 individuals managed to flee from the German-occupied to the Soviet-occupied zone or into Romania and Hungary, a minority of whom later returned. Of the rest, about 65,000 were deported to the interior of the Soviet Union by the NKVD, at least 23,000 were arrested on the spot,6 and < 133 >

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an unknown number were forced into labor in Soviet factories or drafted into the Red Army. On June 22, 1941, about 65,000 Jewish refugees were still living in Eastern Poland.7 Accordingly, around 1.8 million individuals of Jewish descent were living in German-occupied Poland in 1940. Once “Operation Barbarossa” began, the Jews of Eastern Poland were also brought under German rule; of these, at most 100,000 were able to flee or were evacuated in June/July 1941. Altogether it must be assumed that between 3.1 and 3.2 million Polish inhabitants of Jewish descent were brought under German rule by 1941. According to projections by Polish statisticians, approximately 641,000 Jews had been living within the territories “integrated” into the Reich, a small minority of whom were able to flee to the Soviet-occupied zone, a larger number to the Generalgouvernement. Altogether, around 80,000 to 140,000 individuals made it to the Generalgouvernement (GG) in 1939/40.8 The entire Jewish population of the Gau Danzig-West Prussia, numbering approximately 20,000 individuals, was driven from the area and murdered in organized killings in other parts of Poland. Of the approximately 430,000 Jews originally living in the Warthegau, around 80,000 were driven out to areas further east. Those remaining who did not die from the inhuman living conditions in the Jewish ghettos from 1940 onwards were murdered systematically starting in September 1941. In the Lodz ghetto alone, more than 26,000 of its inhabitants died before October 1942.9 More died in other ghettos and forced-labor camps. According to official figures, 264,000 Jews remained in the Warthegau in early 1942, of whom around 130,000 were deported to the extermination camp Kulmhof, another 65,000 to Auschwitz. Others died in mass executions, e. g. of Jewish patients in institutions. Altogether, at least 260,000 Jews from the Warthegau were killed either there or in Auschwitz. The majority of those deported to the GG were killed there in concerted operations to exterminate the Polish Jews.10 A further 40,000 Jews were living in the Regierungsbezirk Zichenau, which was incorporated into East Prussia for administrative purposes. Approximately 35,000 were killed, most of them in the extermination camp Treblinka.11 In late 1939, around 100,000 to 120,000 Jews were living in the Polish part of Upper Silesia. From the summer of 1942 onwards, most of them died either in Auschwitz or in forced labor in the surrounding area.12 The largest number of Polish Jews died in the mass killings within the GG. At the time of the German invasion, about 1.4 million Jews were living within the borders of the original GG (before August 1, 1941), of whom < 134 >

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150,000 to 200,000 fled in 1939/40. Another 100,000 fled or were deported to the GG from the integrated territories. In 1941, Eastern Galicia with its Jewish population of approximately 540,000 was incorporated to become the GG’s fifth district. By early 1942, after mass killings had already started in Eastern Galicia, estimates put the number of Jews living in the GG at approximately 1.77 million.13 According to SS statistics, only 297,000 were left by the end of the year; by late 1943, it is estimated that 100,000 Jews were living in labor camps and tens of thousands in the Jewish underground. The largest number of Jews were living in the Distrikt Warsaw. Counting those who had fled or been deported there from Western regions, the Jewish population numbered almost 600,000 individuals. Even before the “Grosse Aktion” started in July 1942, 70,000 individuals had died in the Warsaw ghetto alone from the horrendous conditions in which they were forced to live. Between July and September of 1942, a minimum of 254,000, possibly more than 300,000 Jews14 were deported from the city of Warsaw to the extermination camp Treblinka. Another 90,000 individuals were deported to Treblinka from municipalities in the Eastern region of the Distrikt. Others were shot or deported to Treblinka in January 1943 and during the uprising.15 The majority of Jews who had survived in forced labor were deported to the Distrikt Lublin, where they were murdered in November 1943. In Warsaw, a relatively large number of Jews managed to survive in the underground. According to official statistics, 375,000 Jews were living in the Distrikt Radom in early 1942. In the course of six weeks in August/September of the same year, the majority of them, numbering around 335,000, were taken to Treblinka, where they were murdered.16 Official statistics put the number of Jews remaining in the Distrikt Lublin in early 1942 at around 260,000, or possibly 320,000.17 During 1942, they were joined by tens of thousands from the Reich, from Slovakia, and from the Protektorat; in 1943, still more came from Warsaw. About 98 percent of those living in the Distrikt Lublin from early 1941 onwards were murdered, at least 87,000 of them in Belzec, 75,000 in Sobibor, 43,000 in Treblinka.18 In 1940, approximately 220,000 Jews were living in the Distrikt Cracow, around 120,000 of whom were deported to the extermination camp Belzec in 1942. In 1943/44, more were deported to Auschwitz.19 Of the approximately 540,000 Jews in the Distrikt Galicia, around 205,000 died in Belzec. Almost all of those who remained were shot in mass executions or died in forced-labor camps (in Lemberg-Janowska alone, the death toll is estimated at 50,000).20 < 135 >

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Occupied by the Red Army in 1939 and subsequently divided between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1944, the Bezirk Bialystok, where approximately 200,000 Jews were living in 1939, should be considered a special case. Following killings by SS and police units in June/July 1944, this area was virtually incorporated into the Reich and governed by the administration of East Prussia. Starting in November 1943, local Jews were deported mainly to Auschwitz and Treblinka. Estimates put the number of victims at around 200,000.21 In 1939, approximately 210,000 Jews were living in the formerly Polish Wojewodschaft Nowogrodek and Wojewodschaft Polesia, which are today part of Belarus. Both regions were ravaged by death squads (Einsatzgruppen) in 1941 and integrated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland (Ukraine) in the same year. Around five to ten percent of the Jewish population were able to flee or were evacuated. With few exceptions, those who remained were murdered before the end of 1942.22 The Jewish population of the Vilna area, which had been annexed by Poland in 1921, numbered approximately 110,000 in 1939, the majority of whom lived in Vilnius, the area’s major city. In rural communities, Jewish residents were murdered as early as 1941. Those living in the Vilna ghetto were killed in 1943 or before.23 The Jewish population of Western Volhynia (formerly Wojewodschaft Volhynia, in what is today Ukrainian territory) numbered around 210,000 in 1939, to which a substantial number of refugees has to be added. From the fall of 1941 to the fall of 1942, the majority of them were shot in mass executions. The death toll is estimated at 210,000 individuals or more.24 By collating these statistics, the following approximate death toll can be established for each individual region of Poland within the borders of 1938: Wartheland Regierungsbezirk Zichenau Eastern Upper Silesia * Warsaw * Radom * Lublin * Cracow -> original GG Eastern Galcia Western Volhynia Bezirk Bialystok Nowogrodek/Polesie Vilna area Prisoners of war

260,000 35,000 100,000 550,000 360,000 250,000-300,000 190,000 1,350,000-1,400,000 530,000 210,000 200,000 ca. 200,000 70,000 25,000 ca. 3,000,000 < 136 >

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Broken down by place of death, the total numbers are fairly similar, although it has so far proven impossible to establish reliable statistics for those who died in the various ghettos, in forced-labor camps, or in the course of the evacuations during 1944/45. Murdered Polish Jews listed by place of death:25 Kulmhof

130,000

Belzec

410,00026

Sobibor

75,000

Majdanek

30,000

Auschwitz

280,00027

Treblinka Mass executions in Eastern Poland, mostly by units of the Sicherheitspolizei Ghettos

750,000-800,000 approx. 750,000

Forced-labor camps

100,000-150,000

“Aktion Erntefest” (Operation “Harvest Festival”) Executions in Western Bug (except for townships, Lublin, Cracow, Warsaw ghetto uprising) POW camps

43,000 50,000

Final stage

approx. 50,000

200,000-300,000

25,00028

2.9-3.1 mio.

These numbers can be confirmed by consulting the statistics on survivors, according to which between 300,000 and 350,000 Polish citizens of Jewish descent were still alive by the end of WW II. The majority of them survived in the interior of the Soviet Union, others in German camps or in hiding within Poland. The number of survivors on Polish territory is estimated at 50,000 to 70,000, while another 20,000 to 40,000 were liberated from concentration camps in Germany.29

BALTIC COUNTRIES Of the Jewish population of the Baltic countries, only a comparatively small number were able to flee. However, thousands had been deported by the NKVD under Soviet rule. < 137 >

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In Estonia, the vast majority of Jews brought under German rule, estimated at around 1,000 individuals, were murdered before the end of 1941.30 The entire Jewish population of most Latvian towns was murdered in 1941, as were many Jewish residents of larger cities, bringing the death toll to a total of around 69,000 to 70,000 victims.31 The majority of the Jewish population of Lithuania, including the formerly Polish Vilna area, died in organized killings as early as 1941. The death toll is estimated at around 145,000 for the territory of independent Lithuania and at around 70,000 for the Vilna area, which is here counted as part of Poland.32 In the Memel area, which was annexed by Germany in 1939, the Jewish population numbered around 2,000. SOVIET UNION IN THE BORDERS OF 1938 In late 1939, the Jewish population of the Soviet Union (in its original borders) numbered three million; in June 1941, the number is estimated at 3.11 million for the same territory. At the time of the German invasion, 2.17 million of them were living in the area subsequently occupied by the Wehrmacht.33 However, a considerable percentage of those living within the original Soviet territory were either able to flee or were evacuated, while a large percentage of young men were drafted into the Red Army. Although the available data are fairly sketchy, it is estimated that east of the river Dnepr, no more than a third of the Jewish population remained at their homes by the time the Wehrmacht arrived. According to estimates, 900,000 Jews were evacuated from the original Soviet territory before midOctober 1941.34 However, solid figures can only be obtained by aggregating the available data on organized killings. Within the original Soviet territory, the largest number of Jews were killed in the Ukraine, whose Jewish population numbered 1.5 million in 1939. According to estimates, between 730,000 and 800,000 of them were evacuated;35 others were drafted into the Red Army. In Romanian-occupied Transnistria, between 115,000 and 130,000 local Jews were murdered in the course of mass killings jointly organized by German and Romanian troops.36 Another 500,000 were murdered under German occupation. Before March 1942, these killings took place mainly in the Kiev area and other cities in the Eastern part of the Ukraine; from spring 1942 onwards, the areas of Podolia and (Eastern) Volhynia, comprising the Generalbezirk Shitomir, were hit the hardest.37 < 138 >

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Of the 385,000 Jews living in the former Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in June 1941, probably 140,000 were evacuated.38 A comparatively large number survived in the partisan movement. Around 230,000 individuals were murdered, mainly in the larger cities and in Eastern Polesia.39 The Jewish population of the Russian Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR) numbered a total of approximately 210,000 individuals. Most of those whose hometowns were occupied by the Wehrmacht were able to flee, as were most of those who had fled or been evacuated there from further west. Reliable data are only available for the Crimean, which was then part of the RSFSR and today belongs to the Ukraine, and for the Northern Caucasus region. For those two areas, the death toll is estimated at 25,000 and 12,000 respectively.40 The information available on other larger cities such as Smolensk or Rostov etc. is either sketchy or very difficult to verify. The total death toll in the RSFSR is likely to fall within the range of 70,000 to 100,000.41 The murder of Jewish POWs was part of the Nazis’ racist murder campaign as well. According to statistical projections, between 80,000 and 100,000 Jewish soldiers of the Red Army were captured by the Wehrmacht, of whom at least 55,000 were murdered.42 For reasons of simplicity, these statistics includes those among them who came from areas annexed during 1940/41. The total death toll for the territory of the Soviet Union in pre-1939 borders 43 breaks down as follows: German-occupied (Eastern) Ukraine Romanian-occupied Ukraine: local victims (Eastern) Belarus RSFSR Prisoners of war

500,000 115,000-130,000 ca. 230,000 70,000-100,000 ca. 50,000-70,000 ca. 1,000,000

ROMANIA For Romania, there is a distinction to be made between the original Romanian territory (Regat), where the death toll was slightly lower, and the areas annexed during 1918/19. In the former, Romanian police and members of the Iron Guard organized pogroms which killed several thousand Jews in 1940/41, most notably in the Moldavian city of Iassy, where approximately 14,000 Jews died in June 1941.44 Around 12,000 Jews from the district of Dorohoi were deported to Transnistria in 1941, where about half of them died. < 139 >

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The number of Jews brought under Romanian-German rule in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, both of which were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and retaken by Romania in 1941, is subject to an ongoing debate. Radu Ioanid claims that 40 per cent of the Jewish population fled or were deported, leaving a total of less than 190,000 individuals, while Jean Ancel puts that number at just under 300,000.45 Since detailed figures are available only for the forcible deportations of local Jews to Transnistria (125,000 to 145,000 victims according to Ioanid, 150,000 victims according to Ancel), the number of those who died in German-Romanian mass killings or in transit camps in Bessarabia and Bukovina between June and August 1941 can only be calculated by subtraction. At the end of the war, the Jewish population in the area was virtually nonexistent. Ioanid puts the death toll at approximately 60,000, whereas Ancel arrives at a death toll of 160,000. Judging from what isolated data are available on the killings, Ioanid’s estimate would appear to be more realistic.46 The majority of those who were forcibly evacuated either died on the marches or were subsequently murdered in Transnistria, leaving no more than 50,000 survivors.47 Northern Transylvania was ceded to Hungary in accordance with the Second Viennese Award in 1940. Between April and June 1944, German and Hungarian authorities deported 131,000 local Jews to Auschwitz, of whom approximately 110,000 were murdered. Another 10,000 Jewish men from Northern Transylvania died in the Hungarian army’s labor battalions, most of them on Soviet territory.48 The total death toll for the Jewish population of pre-war Romania can thus be calculated at up to 300,000 victims. For reasons elucidated above, Jean Ancel’s figures are far higher, estimating a death toll of up to 420,000.49 Regat Bessarabia/Bukovina Northern Transylvania

20,000 135,000-155,000 120,000 275,000-295,000

HUNGARY Any attempt to determine the death toll for Hungary is complicated by the necessity to isolate the numbers for post-Trianon Hungary from the established total. According to Randolph Braham’s seminal study, 490,000 individuals of Jewish descent were living on the territory of post-Trianon Hungary in 1941, another 335,000 in the annexed territories. Braham puts < 140 >

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the death toll at 297,000 and 266,000 respectively.50 However, Braham’s data contain inconsistencies: Breaking down the numbers of deportees by district,51 he calculates that 289,000 individuals were deported to Auschwitz from Zone I (Carpathian Ukraine and Southern Slovakia/CSR) and Zone II (Northern Transylvania/Romania), and another 148,000 from other parts of Hungary, which does not tally with the rest of his numbers. Most likely, Zone I (Gendarmeriebezirk VIII) includes parts of post-Trianon Hungary, notably the areas around Nyiregyhaza, with at least 15,000 Jewish deportees (another 7,000 came from Kisvarda) and Satoraljajhely (approximately 12,000 Jewish deportees).52 Including deportees from adjacent rural areas, the total amounts to 40,000 to 50,000 victims from post-Trianon Hungary, which means that altogether, up to 195,000 Jews were deported from postTrianon Hungary to Auschwitz, and another 105,000 to the Reich. Out of all of them, 65,000 survived,53 putting the death toll at approximately 235,000. Another 25,000 Hungarian Jews died in the army’s labor battalions and 9,000 were killed during the Arrow Cross Party’s reign of terror in Budapest in 1944/45.54 The total death toll for post-Trianon Hungary can be calculated at 270,000. CZECHOSLOVAKIA After the German annexation of the Sudetenland, the local Jewish population of approximately 28,000 was forcibly removed to Bohemian territory. Those unable to emigrate subsequently fell victim to persecution by the Nazis in the Protektorat. The majority of deportees from the Protektorat of Bohemia and Moravia were taken to extermination camps via Theresienstadt. Approximately 3,500 of them survived; more than 6,000 died in Theresienstadt itself. The total death toll for the Protektorat amounts to around 78,000 Jewish casualties.55 Around 57,000 Jewish residents of Slovakia died during the 1942 deportations, another 3,500 were murdered in the aftermath of the Slovakian National Uprising in 1944/45. Another 30,000 victims came from Southern Slovakia, which was annexed by Hungary in 1938. The majority of them were killed during the 1944 deportations from Hungary.56 Of the Jewish population of Carpathian Ukraine (local residents and refugees), which was brought under Hungarian rule by annexation in 1938/39,57 approximately 16,000 were removed to the military zone and subsequently shot during the campaign against Russia; another 62,000 died during deportations from Greater Hungary in 1944.58 < 141 >

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Up to 7,000 men from the formerly Czech territories annexed by Hungary died in the Hungarian army’s labor battalions.59 Death toll for Czechoslovakia (in the borders of 1937): Bohemia/Marovia

78,000

Slovakia (incl. Félvidék)

90,000

Carpathian Ukraine

78,000

Hungarian labor battalions

7,000 253,000

SUMMARY Adding the death toll of the various killing sites renders the following results: Between 2.5 and 2.6 million Jews were murdered in concentration and extermination camps (approximately 900,000 in Auschwitz,60 800,000 to 850,000 in Treblinka,61 435,000 in Belzec, 160,000 in Sobibor, 160,000 in Kulmhof, 59,000 in Majdanek). The concentration camps at Auschwitz and Lublin-Majdanek were under the command of the Inspektion in Oranienburg. The “Aktion Reinhard” extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported to the Higher SS and Police Leader in Lublin, the one at Kulmhof (Chelmno) to the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Warthegau. Some of these victims died on the way to the camps, some were selected for forced labor in Auschwitz or Majdanek and died later in the camps. The vast majority, about 80 to 90 per cent of all Jewish men, women and children deported to these camps, were gassed to death shortly after their arrival. Another 100,000 to 200,000 Jewish inmates were murdered during the final stage, especially in Bergen-Belsen, and during the so-called death marches, which started in late 1944.62 These numbers do not include inmates of forced-labor camps which were subsequently turned into concentration camps (Cracow-Plaszow, Riga-Kaiserwald, Vaivara etc.). The total number of Jewish victims who were shot dead can be established only by researching individual cases and incidents, and probably amounts to between 2 and 2.2 million individuals. More than 100,000 Jewish victims were suffocated in mobile gas chambers called Gaswagen (not including Kulmhof ). A further 600,000 to 700,000 victims died of the < 142 >

JUST HOW MANY?

horrendous conditions, or were murdered individually, in the ghettos and forced-labor camps. Using the borders of 1937 as a frame of reference, the total death toll can be broken down geographically as follows:63 Poland Estonia Latvia Lithuania Sovjet Union Romania Hungary Czechoslovakia Holland Belgium France Italy Yugoslavia Greece Germany Austria Albania Denmark Luxemburg Norway Northern Africa

ca. 3,000,000 1,000 69,000 145,000 ca. 1,000,000 ca. 285,000 270,000 253,000 102,000 25,000 75,000 7,000 65,000 59,000 165,00064 65,000 100 116 1,200 758 ca. 200 ca. 5,6 mio.

Taking into account a margin of error of about 5 per cent in either direction for the figures for Poland and the Soviet Union, the death toll for all Jewish victims of the Shoa amounts to 5.4 to 5.8 million. This estimate confirms demographic calculations recorded by reputable sources as early as 1945/46. However, in a number of cases borders have been changed since then. In order to arrive at more precise statistics, it would be necessary to consolidate demographic data and to compile and collate all available information on organized killings especially in Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Sources to be consulted include census statistics, records kept by those who committed the crimes, as well as by their victims (Judenräte, welfare organizations, private journals etc.), eyewitness testimony, and the results of official enquiries. In Eastern European and elsewhere, local historians have recently developed an interest in the fate of the European Jewry. These local and regional experts continue to uncover new details, mapping the blank spots < 143 >

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in the geography of mass murder. Given the limited availability of sources, and certain methodological irregularities, there is nonetheless some scope for debate among scholars of Historiography — within the boundaries outlined above — as to individual statistics for whole areas and killing sites central to the history of the Shoa. What is beyond debate is the magnitude of the crimes. In the interest of scientific integrity, it thus has to be stated that an exact death toll cannot be determined on the basis of current research, although the available sources and statistics do deliver a verifiable range between the highest and lowest possible number of victims. Further research, which continues to bring to light new source material, will eventually narrow that range. However, arriving at precise statistics is only one issue among many for scholars studying this singular crime in the history of mankind. Even more importantly, they are concerned with the question of “Why?” This question primarily involves the study of the perpetrators’ actions and politics, alongside the reconstruction of what the victims went through. Their focus, then, is once again on the individual, and more particularly on those victims who were unable to give testimony after 1945. Translated from German by Beate Brown

NOTES 1

2 3 4 5

6

7

8

9 10

The first part of this article was published in German as “Menschenleben und Statistik: Zur Errechnung der Zahl der Opfer,” in: Materialien zum Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin 2005, pp. 70-75. Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords, Munich 1991, p. 9. Dimension des Völkermords, loc. cit. For details see Dimension des Völkermords. Maly rocznik statystyczny Polski, czerwiec 1939 — czerwiec 1941, London 1941, repr. Warszaw 1990, pp. 8-9. A. E. Gurianov (ed.), Repressii protiv poljakov i pol’skich grazdan, Moscow 1997, pp. 88-89 (not including the Wilna area). A number of those arrested either died or were deported to the interior of the Soviet Union. Mordechai Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Edge of the Holocaust. A Social and Demographic Profile, Jerusalem 1998, pp. 9, 325. Frank Golczewski, “Polen,” in: Dimension des Völkermords, p. 430, bases his calculations on lower numbers, D. Dabrowska: “Zaglada skupisk zydowskich w ‘Kraju Warty’ w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej,” in: Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, issue13/14, 1955, pp. 122-184 [126], believes they must have been higher. Gustavo Corni, Hitler’s Ghettos, London 2002, p. 205. Michael Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945, Stuttgart 2006. < 144 >

JUST HOW MANY? 11 12

13 14

15

16

17

18 19 20

21

22 23

24

25

Michal Grynberg, Zydzi w rejencji ciechanowskiej 1939-1942, Warszaw 1984. Sybille Steinbacher, ‘Musterstadt’ Auschwitz. Germanisierung und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien, Munich 2000, p. 75. Gloczewski, “Polen,” p. 457. Presumably, the lower number is closer to reality: prior to the large-scale deportation, between 355,000 and 370,000 individuals were living in the ghetto (Ruta Sakowska, Menschen im Ghetto. Die jüdische Bevölkerung im besetzten Warschau 1939-1943, Osnabrück 1999, p. 37); around 10,000 individuals were shot during the evacuation of the ghetto, another 11,500 were taken to labor camps, while 8,000 fled to the “Aryan side.” By the end of 1942, the remaining ghetto population is estimated at around 55,000 (Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943. Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Bloomington 1982, p. 213). Expert’s report by Wolfgang Scheffler on the number of Jews murdered in extermination camps in the course of “Aktion Reinhard,” “Die Zahl der in den Vernichtungslagern der ‘Aktion Reinhard’ ermordeten Juden,” in: Helge Grabitz (ed.), Täter und Gehilfen des Endlösungswahns, Hamburg 1999, pp. 215-241 [240-241]. Jacek Andrzej Mlynarczyk, Judenmord in Zentralpolen. Der Distrikt Radom des Generalgouvernements 1939-1945, Paderborn 2007. Bogdan Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung im Generalgouvernement. Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939-1944, Stuttgart 1999, p. 102, estimates the number at 320,000. However, this number does not tally with the total count and might include more than 80,000 Jews from other countries who came to the Distrikt in 1942. Expert’s report by Scheffler, pp. 240-241. Ibid. Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944. Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, Munich 1996, p. 385. Cf. Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941-1944, Hamburg 1999, pp. 723 ff., on the section which is today part of Belarus. On the total death toll, Szymon Datner: “Eksterminacja ludnosci zydowskiej w okregu bialostockim,” in: Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego issue 60, 1966, pp. 3-50, is still the best source; cf. also Golczewski, “Polen,” pp. 448-449. However, Datner’s total of between 226,000 and 254,000 victims (p. 28) is based on a large number of unreported cases in summer 1941. Cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp. 706, 722. Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames. The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust, Jerusalem 1980, p. 470, puts the death toll in Vilna at 54,000. А.И. Круглов. Энциклопедия Холокоста. Киев, 2000, с. 203 (Oblasti Volyn, Rovno, and to a lesser extent Oblast Ternopol); Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews 1941-1944, Jerusalem 1990, pp. 11, 357, puts the number of Jewish residents at 250,000 on June 22, 1941, of whom between 12,000 and 13,000 managed to flee, while around 3,000 survived. Accordingly, the death toll can be estimated at around 235,000. On the extermination camps involved in ‘Aktion Reinhard’, cf. expert’s report by Scheffler, pp. 240-241. < 145 >

DIETER POHL 26

27 28

29

30

31

32

33 34

35 36

37

38 39

Cf. most recently Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas, “A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhard’1942,” in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 (2001), pp. 468-486. Franciszek Piper, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz, Oswiecim 1993, p. 127. Shmuel Krakowski, “The Fate of the Jewish POWs of the Soviet and Polish Armies,” in: Asher Cohen et al. (eds.), The Shoah and the War, New York 1992, pp. 217-231. It is possible that this number is too high. Teresa Prekerowa, “Wojna i okupacja,” in: Jerzy Tomaszewski (ed.), Najnowsze dzieje Zydów w Polsce w zarysie (do 1950 roku), Warszaw 1993, pp. 273-384 [384]. Dov Levin, “Estland,” in: Israel Gutman et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York 1990, vol. 2, pp. 448-450. Some of the information in other chapters of the encyclopedia is outdated. “Holokausta izepetes problemas Latvija. Starptautiskas konferences referati un petijumi par holokaustu Latvija, 2000. gada 16.-17. oktobris, Riga.” The Issues of the Holocaust Research in Latvia. Report of an International Conference and the Holocaust Research in Latvia, Riga 2001, pp. 50, 142; Andrew Ezergailis, The Holocaust in Latvia, Washington/Riga 1996, p. XIX, has lower numbers (61,000 killed, others evacuated to the West), while Ilja Al’tman (Жертвы Ненависти. Холокост в СССР 1941-1945. Москва, 2002, с. 240) puts the death toll at 77,000. Dov Levin, Lithuania, in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, pp. 895-899; Альтман, Жертвы Ненависти, с. 237. Information obtained by the author from Dr. Christoph Dieckmann, Frankfurt, who is about to publish an extensive study of the German occupation of Lithuania. Altshuler, Soviet Jewry, p. 16. Wadim Dubson, “On the Problem of Evacuation of the Soviet Jews in 1941 (New Archival Sources),” in: Jews in Eastern Europe 40 (1999), issue 3, pp. 37-55. Ibid., pp. 51-52. Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania. The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, Chicago 2000, S. 193; for a detailed account cf.: Круглов, Энциклопедия Холокоста. С. 20, 123, 134; Dalia Ofer, “The Holocaust in Transnistria,” in: Lucjan Dobroszycki / Jeffrey Gurock (ed.), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, Armonk, NY 1993, pp. 133-154 [13-138], estimates the death toll at 170,000 without breaking the total down by area. Jean Ancel, “The Romanian Campaigns of Mass Murder in Trans-Nistria, 1941-1942,” in: Randolph L. Braham (ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Antonescu Era, New York 1997, pp. 87-134; Ancel, “Transnistria,” in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1473 estimates a death toll of 180,000. Dieter Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine: Der Massenmord an den Juden im Militärverwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat 1941-1943,” in: Norbert Frei, Sybille Steinbacher, Bernd C. Wagner (eds.), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit. Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik. München 2000, pp. 135-173 [169-170]. For more details cf.: Круглов, Энциклопедия Холокоста, c. 203 and passim. The total death toll for what is today Ukrainian territory is estimated at 1.5 million; however this includes the areas of Eastern Poland, Carpathian Ukraine, Northern Bukovina and the Crimean. Dubson, “On the Problem,” pp. 51-52. Cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp. 683 ff., 1158. < 146 >

JUST HOW MANY? 40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943, Hamburg 2003, pp. 339 ff., 613 ff.; Norbert Kunz, Die Krim unter deutscher Herrschaft 1941-1944. Germanisierungsutopie und Besatzungsrealität, Darmstadt 2005. Al’tman (Жертвы ненависти. С. 286) estimates the death toll in the RSFSR at between 120,000 and 140,000 Jewish individuals (not including the Crimean!), which is largely based on data published by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the German-fascist crimes in 1946, and now widely considered exaggerated. Cf. Александр И. Круглов, Уничтожение евреев Смоленщины и Брянщины в в1941-1943 годах// Вестник Еврейского Университета в Москве, № 3 (7), 1994, С. 193-220. On Soviet statistics, cf.: Yigal Zafoni, “Bibliography of the Holocaust for those Regions of the Soviet Union Occupied by German Forces From June 1941,” in: Journal of the Academic Proceedings of Soviet Jewry 1 (1986), pp. 82-103. According to Altshuler, Soviet Jewry, p. 20, 2.1 per cent of Red Army troops were of Jewish descent. Presumably then, up to two per cent or 114,000 of all Soviet POWs, which numbered a total of 5.7 million, were Jewish. Given that Jewish members of the Red Army would have become increasingly aware of the danger, they probably tried harder than others to avoid capture. Krakowski, “Fate of the Jewish POWs,” p. 229, estimates that approximately 85,000 Jewish members of the Red Army were murdered. In 1945, the Soviet Repatriation Commission recorded at least 4,457 Jews among the returning POWs: Россия и СССР в войнах ХХ века. Статистическое исследование. Москва 2001. С. 463. Others returned from Romanian and Finnish POW camps. Al’tman (Жертвы ненависти, с. 300) puts the death toll at 55,000 to 85,000. Based on recent research, Yitzhak Arad, Toledot Ha-Shoa. Berit ham-Moasot we-has-setahim ha-mesuppahim. 2 vols. Yerushalayim 2004, pp. 649 ff., 1014, has lower figures (between 55,000 and 70,000). For the whole of the Soviet Union in post-1945 borders, the death toll is estimated at around 2.6 million. Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania. The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, Chicago 2000, pp. 37 ff., esp. p. 86; Radu Florian, “The Jassy Massacre of June 29-30,” in: Randolph R. Braham (ed.), The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, New York 1997, pp. 63-85 [75]. Jean Ancel, “Romania,” in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, pp. 1,292-1,300, by the same author cf. “The Romanian Way of Solving the ‘Jewish Problem’ in Bessarabia and Bukovina, June-July 1941,” in: Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988), pp. 187-232. The author has not been able to establish whether Ancel’s most recent work Toledot Ha-Shoa: Rumeniya, Jerusalem 2002 (also published as: Contributii la istoria Romaniei. Problema evreiasca 1933-1944, Bucuresti 2001/3) has different figures. Al’tman, (Жертвы ненависти, с. 300 — on Moldavia) puts the death toll still higher. According to Altshuler, Soviet Jewry, p. 9, 282,000 Jews with Romanian citizenship were living in the Soviet Union prior to the German invasion. Dubson, “On the Problem,” p. 51, estimates that about a third of the Jewish population was evacuated from areas which were not occupied by the Germans until mid-1941, which would include large sections of Bessarabia. Raul Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 826, has even lower figures. Ioanid, Holocaust, p. 170 ff.; Круглов, “Энциклопедия Холокоста”. С. 20, 80-81, 123, 134, confirms Ioanid’s data. < 147 >

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49 50

51 52 53

54

55

56 57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

Randolph L. Braham, “Transylvania, Northern,” in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 4, pp. 1,476-1,478, the foremost expert on the history of deportations from Greater Hungary, puts the number of deportees at 131,000; Ancel, Rumänien, ibid., S. 1258, at 155,000. Cf. also Bela Vago, “The Destruction of the Jews of Transylvania,” in: Hungarian Jewish Studies 1(1966), pp. 171-221 [182, 209], who estimates the Jewish population at 154,000, and the death toll at 121,000. Ancel, “Romania,” in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, pp. 1,292-1,300. Randolph R. Braham, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary, 2nd revised edition, Boulder 1994, p. 1,298. Ibid. p. 674. Cf. the places of origin of most deportees, ibid. pp. 1403-1405. Christian Gerlach/Götz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel. Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden, Stuttgart 2001, p. 413. Braham, Politics of Genocide, p. 1298; some members of the labor battalions died in combat or in Soviet captivity. Dimension des Völkermords, p. 368; Miroslav Karny, ‘Konecné resení’. Genocida ceských zidu v nemecké protektorátní politice, Prague 1991, pp. 155 ff., 176. Yeshayahu Jelinek, Slovakia, in: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 4, p. 1,365-1,370. In 1930, the Jewish population numbered 102.000, Dimension des Völkermords, p. 355. The lower figure of 78,000 Jews in early 1941, which is cited by most authors, is probably the result of an administrative restructuring in favor of Southern Slovakia (Félvidék); added together, the Jewish population of both areas numbered around 145,000. Круглов, “Энциклопедия Холокоста”. С. 65-66; Dimension des Völkermords, pp. 376-377. About 85,000 Jews were removed to ghettos, of whom at least 78,000 were later deported; Braham, Politics of Genocide, pp. 590 ff., 1403-1404. Cf. also the detailed report in the Exchange Telegraph from June 30, 1944, in: Vádirat a nácizmus ellen. Dokumentumok a magyarországi zsidóüldözés történetéhez, Vol. 2. Budapest 1960, pp. 258-266. Calculations based on Braham, Politics of Genocide, p. 1298. Cf. László Varga, “The Losses of Hungarian Jewry,” in: Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Studies on the Holocaust in Hungary, Boulder 1990, pp. 256-265. The death toll in Piper, Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz, is probably slightly too high, since approximately 105,000 of the Jewish victims who were deported to Auschwitz from Greater Hungary were not killed straight away but the majority of them were transported to other camps. Cf. Gerlach/Aly, Das letzte Kapitel, pp. 409 ff. Witte/Tyas, ‘A New Document’, implies that the Treblinka death toll of 926,000 calculated by Wolfgang Scheffler is probably too high. Daniel Blatman, “‘Die Todesmärsche — Entscheidungsträger’, Mörder und Opfer,” in: Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Entwicklung und Struktur, Göttingen 1998, pp. 1063-1092. The numbers for all countries except for the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary are taken from Dimension des Völkermords, pp. 15-16. This number includes 21,000 victims deported from other countries, ibid. p. 64.

< 148 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

Mark Kupovetsky

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II WITHIN THE PREWAR (SEPTEMBER 1939) AND POSTWAR BORDERS OF THE USSR1

In Loving Memory of my grandmother’s sister, Sofia Sirota, and her husband Yakov, shot by the Nazis in Dnepropetrovsk, as well as their son Yudel, my grandfather Markus Timashpolsky, and my uncle Kalman Kupovetsky, killed in action during World War II.

In 1994, the journal Jews in Eastern Еurоре, published by the Center for East European Jewish studies and documentation under the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, carried my research paper entitled “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR during World War II”2. Since that time new archival materials have been identified and yet another meticulous analysis undertaken of the entire body of published sources and literature. As a result, certain corrections have been made in some of the source data, and analytical methodology has been improved, leading to enhanced research outcomes. All of the above, coupled with the desire to introduce my fellow countrymen to the work performed, has led me to present this revised and expanded version of the study in Russian. The problem of estimating Jewish human losses during World War II is among the most complex and the least researched problems in the history of Soviet Jewry. The difficulties encountered are of an objective nature, stemming primarily from the relative scarcity of the relevant information. It is for this reason that the bulk of investigative effort has been concentrated, on the one hand, on the search for additional items of the rather incomplete Nazi statistical reporting, or obtaining information on the number of Jews killed in the German-occupied territories from the records compiled by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commissions for the Discovery and Investigation of War Crimes committed by the Nazi German invaders and < 149 >

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their accomplices; or, on the other hand, on trying to compare the numbers of the USSR’s Jewish population as recorded by the last prewar (1939) and the first postwar (1959) Soviet censuses. Occasionally, the estimates also took into account Jewish population losses in the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940 (West Ukraine, West Byelorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, North Bukovina, and Bessarabia), as well as the losses of ethnic Jews from among Soviet servicemen and partisans3. However, Jewish population losses in the Transcarpatian region, which became part of the USSR in 1944, were nearly always disregarded. Naturally, the results obtained by such methods showed fairly wide variations and were often impossible to compare. It appears that any significant progress in this area would be problematic without expanding the body of sources used, archival above all, and using improved analytical methodology4. EXPANDING THE DATA BASE The present study’s distinguishing feature is the introduction into scientific circulation of archival materials, most of which were formerly inaccessible. These are comprised of Soviet current demographic records dating back to the late 1930s and the late 1950s, as well as previously unpublished data from the Soviet 1959, 1979, and 1989 Censuses. INNOVATIVE ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGY This study creatively utilizes methodological techniques for demographic balance calculations designed to assess the total population losses of the USSR during World War II and developed by the Moscow-based demographers E.M. Andreyev, L.E. Darsky, and T.L. Kharkova5. In this case, population losses are understood to comprise the entire number of casualties among servicemen and civilians resulting not only from the direct impact warfare or its immediate effects (soldiers and partisans killed in action or dying in captivity, civilian fatalities in the frontline areas, enemy-occupied territories and in the hinterland, including deaths from starvation and disease), but also victims of mass reprisals by the Stalinist regime (people executed by firing squads, dying in confinement, exile, “labor armies”, or during the mass deportations of 1940-1941). It was assumed that the demographic balance could only be established on the basis of the last prewar USSR census (1939) and the first postwar Soviet census (1959) and that the differences in the numbers of the Jewish < 150 >

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population resulted not only from the toll taken by World War II and the Stalinist repressions, but also from active migration, assimilation and other demographic processes of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the redrawing of the USSR borders in 1939-1944. Unfortunately, we did not have at our disposal the complete information required for generating a precise ethno-demographic balance. This caused us, in a number of instances, to make use of specialized demographic models and expert estimates allowing for a certain degree of variability in the results obtained. In such cases we utilized the most probable values for the requisite elements. ANALYSIS OF STATISTICAL SOURCE DATA Determining the reliability of statistical source data on the numbers, natural movement, and migrations of the Jewish population in the USSR was one of the most difficult aspects of the study. There is, for instance, the well-known view held by many researches who distrust the 1939 and 1959 Soviet censuses’ data on the numbers of Jews in the USSR. Yakov Leshchinsky, for one, puts the number of the Jewish population in the USSR at 3,270,000 to 3,320,000 at the start of 1939, an estimate diverging from the 3,020,000 figure appearing in the first official results published in 19406. Another researcher, Benjamin Pincus, called into question the official results of the 1959 Census that counted 2,268,000 Jews in the USSR, estimating their actual number at the time at 2,645,0007. According to the final published results of the 1939 Census the USSR’s Jewish population numbered 3,028,538 persons8. However, recent years have seen the majority of researchers arriving at a consensus view that, while being processed, all the numerical results of the Census were augmented by 1 to 1.8% under direct pressure from Stalin and his entourage. Naturally, the question arises whether such manipulations affected the data on the number of ethnic Jews as well. The census materials offer no indications as to how the corrections made to the country’s real population numbers were distributed across the different ethnic groups. This gives us reason to believe that the corrections made to the ethnic group numbers were not of a selective nature. If that is the case, the true number of Jews counted during the Census should have been smaller by at least 1% or 30,000 persons than the figure (3,028, 538) provided in the final official results of the 1939 Census. In other words, the real number of the USSR’s Jewish population at the time should not have exceeded 2,998,5009. < 151 >

MARK KUPOVETSKY

As for the above-mentioned viewpoints held by Yakov Leshchinsky and Benjamin Pincus, as well as many similar assessments by Western and Israeli researchers, an argument from the contrary makes the most sense. Thus, one could hypothetically offer at least four other criteria for determining the number of Jewish population in the USSR, apart from the one applied by the Soviet censuses which used a person’s own declaration of his or her ethnic identity as the basis for ethnic attribution. However, none of those criteria (Jewish as per one’s passport, one’s mother tongue, according to Halacha, or to Israel’s current law “On Repatriation”) permits even a minimally correct estimation of Jewish population losses on either the prewar or postwar territory of the USSR during World War II, due to the absence of reasonably reliable statistical information or because of incomparability of the source data analyzed. Incidentally, the Nazis, in pursuit of their inhuman policies aimed at “the final solution of the Jewish question”, were exterminating people in the occupied territories based on the German race laws which covered not only those who identified themselves as Jews during censuses, but also relatively numerous assimilated marginal groups, along with persons of mixed ethnicity. Hence, the number of the Holocaust victims would doubtless exceed an estimate that could be arrived at using our methodology of determining Jewish population losses in the occupied territories of the USSR, because the overwhelming majority of people in the latter groups indicated a different ethnic affiliation in the census questionnaires. This situation was characteristic of the prewar period, too10. Meanwhile, the demographic records of the 1920s and 1930s show that in the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the western regions of the RSFSR alone there were between 120 and 150 thousand persons born in mixed marriages where one of the spouses was Jewish. Many of those people later found themselves in the occupied territories and were destroyed by the Nazis as Jews. Determining the number of the prewar Jewish population in the territories that became part of the USSR in 1939-1944 presents another complicated problem. Our study published in 1994, which was based on the calculations of Western and Israeli researchers, estimated the number of Jews in West Ukraine, West Byelorussia and the Vilna region to be 1,160,000 in 193111. However, our own analysis of the materials from the 1931 Polish census yielded a somewhat different result. According to the Polish census data, the Jewish population of West Ukraine (without the Przemysl region which went to Poland after the war), West Byelorussia (without the Bialystok and Lomza regions which became part of Poland after the war) and the Vilna region amounted to less than 1,135,000. < 152 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

Table 1 Jewish Population of Territories Incorporated into USSR in 1939-1944, as per Census Records12 Region

Jewish Population

Census Year

Fo r m e r Te r r i t o r i e s o f: Poland*

1,135,000

1931

Romania

277,900

1930

Czechoslovakia

102,300

1930

Lithuania

155,100

1923

Latvia

93,500

1935

Estonia

4,400

1934

* Note: without Bialystok, Lomza, and Przemysl regions joined to Poland after the war.

Regrettably, there are serious doubts as to the accuracy of the statistical information (with the exception of Latvia and Estonia) on the natural movements and migrations of the Jewish population in the 1930s. For example, one could cite the U.S. researcher Joseph Marcus, whose analysis of the under-recording of the natural movement of Poland’s Jewish population in the ‘30s led him to the conclusion that the natural population growth for the Polish Jews amounted to 13.2% in 1931-35, and 12.9% in 1936-193813. The situation would have hardly been different in the Polish territories annexed by the USSR, which means that the Jewish population’s natural increase there might be estimated at about 105,000 in the period from 1932 through 1938. It is more difficult to assess the degree of accuracy of the Polish statistics of the 1930s on the number of Jewish emigrants. According to that data, slightly less than a half of all Polish Jews emigrated in 1932-1937 from the territories annexed by the USSR in 193914. During that period (1932-1938), about 45,000 Polish Jews emigrated from that region. Beyond any doubt, the 1930s did see Jewish migration from the Eastern parts of the country to the more developed central regions. However, given the all-too-probable under-reporting of the Jewish population in the 1931 Census15, the decrease in their numbers due too internal migration in 1932-1938 could be disregarded. The resulting estimate will put the number of the Jewish population in the territories annexed by the USSR after the start of World War II (excluding the Bialystok, Lomza, and Przemysl regions returned to Poland after the war) at 1,196,000 persons at the beginning of 1939. This basically agrees with the Polish government’s official estimate of 1,309,000 Jews in the annexed territories (including the Bialystok, Lomza, and Przemysl regions) as of September 193916. < 153 >

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In June of 1940, the USSR annexed Bessarabia and North Bukovina with 278,000 permanent Jewish residents as estimated by Romania’s Jewish community statistics17. In other words, the number of Jews in Bessarabia and North Bukovina showed no increase throughout the 1930s, which raises serious doubts, because this estimate is based on Romania’s official statistical records of the natural movement and emigration of the regional Jews, and those records would hardly have been more reliable than Poland’s. Similar doubts exist regarding the official data on the natural movement and external migrations of Jews in the 1920s and ‘30s in Lithuania, which states that theJewish population amounted to 150,000 in 193918. It was precisely these considerations that were behind our previous assessment of the number of Jews in 1939 as equaling 282,000 in Bessarabia and North Bukovina and 156,000 in Lithuania19. However, since these assessments are extremely difficult to support with any convincing calculations, it would make sense to return to the published Romanian and Lithuanian data. The available data on the natural movement and external migrations of the Jewish populations in Latvia, Estonia, and Transcarpatia in the 1930s should be viewed as far more reliable. Based on those data, the number of Jews in Latvia and Estonia in 1939 was estimated by us at 92,000 and 4,400 respectively (see above)20. In contrast to other East European regions, the natural growth rate for the Transcarpatian Jews, far from declining in the 1930s, showed a certain increase in 1935 (14.3‰) as compared to 1931-1933 (11.2‰)21. Between 1931 and 1938, 1,200 Jews emigrated from Transcarpatia22, a relatively small number, migrating to the more economically developed Czechoslovakia. Accordingly, the number of Jews in Transcarpatia could be estimated at 110,00023 at the start of 1939. Table 2 Jewish Population in the Territories Incorporated into the USSR in 1939-1944 (as of the start of 1939) Region

Fo r m e r Te r r i t o r i e s o f: Poland* Romania Czechoslovakia Lithuania Latvia Estonia Total:

1,196,000 278,000 110,000 150,000 92,000 4,300 1,830,300

* Note: without Bialystok, Lomza, and Przemysl regions

< 154 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

To asses Jewish population losses in the USSR one should also give consideration to the number of refugees settling in the USSR in 1939-1940. According to the available estimates, 5,000 Jews fled to the Soviet Union from Czechoslovakia (March, 1939) between 230,000 to 500,000 Jews fled from the Nazi-occupied part of Poland (September and October, 1939), and 45,000 to 130,000 Jews fledfrom Romania (June, 1940)24. All told, between 280,000 and 635,000 Jewish refugees had settled in the USSR by the time of the German invasion. Many of them did not accept Soviet citizenship and were deported by the NKVD to the Asian part of the USSR in 1940-1941, escaping the Holocaust as a result25. In the latter part of the 1940s and 1950s, most of these refugees repatriated to Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. But some of them, about 10,000 by the lowest estimate, stayed on in the USSR after the war for different reasons and were counted during the first postwar census of 1959. In the period from the 1960s through the1980s, many of them emigrated from the USSR or died, but even that notwithstanding, the National Census of 1989 counted, in the RSFSR, Ukraine, and Byelorussia alone, 11,444 Jews who were born outside the USSR. One could assume with a high degree of probability that most of them were the refugees of the 1939-1940 period. In the 1940s and 1950s, between 320 and 350 thousand Jews were repatriated to Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, with refugees making up over two thirds of that number26. It is pretty difficult to assess what proportion of the repatriates were those who used to live in the territories incorporated into the USSR in 1939-1944 (the so-called “Westerners”). Most likely, there were no more than 90,000 who had Polish, Romanian, or Czechoslovakian citizenships before the war27. Emigrating from the USSR in the 1940s and ‘50s were also people with Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and Soviet prewar citizenships. In 1944-46, the overwhelming majority were emigrating illegally (going to Palestine under the illegal “Brihah” repatriation program, or the Habad emigration movement of the Hasids)28. Thus, 19451949 alone saw some 10,000 Soviet Jews and Polish and Romanian repatriates leaving the USSR for Palestine and continuing to Israel. Another 3,000 Soviet Jews left the USSR in 1956-1958 as family members of the repatriated Polish Jews29. About two or three thousand who had been citizens of the Baltic states before the war managed to survive in concentration camps in Europe (mostly in Poland) and later emigrated, as displaced persons to the West or to Palestine. Another 1,200-2,000 Baltic Jews repatriated to Palestine using the illegal Brihah program30. Baltic Jews also made up the greater part of the 1,000 Jews who received official permissions to emigrate to Israel in 1953-195831. Overall, the number of the Jews with prewar Soviet or Baltic < 155 >

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citizenships who left the USSR one way or another could be estimated at 15,000 and 8,000 respectively. The first Soviet postwar census of 1959 counted 2,268,000 Jews in the USSR, with 270,500 living in the regions incorporated into the USSR in 1939-1944. Analysis of the numerous studies concerned with the Holocaust, the above-cited estimates of the “Westerners” postwar migrations, and other data (including this author’s field materials collected during a series of trips to the Western regions of the former Soviet Union in the late 1970s and the early ‘80s), as well as the data on the residence areas and native languages of the Jewish population of West Ukraine, West Byelorussia, the Baltics, and Moldavia provided by the 1959 Census, lead to the conclusion that in 1959 the “Westerners” numbered only 165,000, or 61% of the Jewish population in the above-mentioned regions. Apart from that, no less than 20,000 “Westerners” may have resided in 1959 on the territories which were part of the USSR before 1939. These were mostly represented by people who had not returned to their native parts after the mass deportations of 1940-1941 and wartime evacuations, or had migrated from the western to the eastern parts of the USSR in the late 1940s and 1950s (see Table 3). Table 3 Estimated Numbers of “Westerners” in 1959 Region

Territories Annexed in 1939-1944 Including:

Number

Percentage of Total Jewish Population

165,000

61

Romania

120,000

84

Poland

15,000

30

Baltics

22,000

33

Transcarpatia

8,000

66

USSR territory within pre-September 1939 borders

20,000

...

Total in the USSR

185,000

...

Hence, in 1959 the total census-recorded number of the Jewish population, 2,268,000 persons, included 185,000 or 8.1% “Westerners”, while the “Easterners” (the Jewish population of the USSR within the pre-September 1939 borders) equaled 2,073,000 or 91.4%. There was also an additional 10,000 comprised of the 1939-1940 refugees who stayed on in the USSR. < 156 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

THE ETHNODEMOGRAPHIC BALANCE OF THE JEWISH POPULATION IN THE PREWAR AND POSTWAR TERRITORIES OF THE USSR IN 19411945 Modeling the ethno-demographic balance presupposes, in this case, several sequential stages. 1. Determining the Number of Jews in the Prewar and Postwar Territories of the USSR in Mid-1941 Unfortunately, no current demographic statistics on the natural movement of the Jewish population in the USSR in 1940 and 1941 have been preserved. However, we have such materials covering the years 1936 and 1939 for the regions where most of the Soviet Jews were concentrated. Table 4 General Co-Efficients of Natural Movement of USSR’s Jewish Population in 1936 and 1939 (‰)32

Natural Increase

Birth Rate

Mortality Rate

Natural Increase

1939

Mortality Rate

1936

Birth Rate

Region

RSFSR*

15.8

8.7

7.1

19.1

9.6

9.5

Ukraine

19.5

9.7

9.8

20.8

9.6

11.2

Byelorussia

23.7

11.6

12.1

25.6

10.7

14.8

Uzbekistan

...

...

...

35.2

10.7

25.5

Azerbaijan

...

...

...

28.5

14.2

14.3

* Note: data for Moscow, Moscow Region, Leningrad, and the Crimean SSR.

Based on the above data, one can assume with a sufficient degree of certainty that in the period from the start of 1939 to mid-1941 Jewish population of the USSR within the pre-September 1939 borders had increased by 82,000 and could have reached about 3,080,000 by June, 1941. < 157 >

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The recording of the natural population movement on the annexed territories in 1940-1941 was extremely minimal. This leads one to assume that the natural increase of the local Jewish population remained approximately at the 1930s level, i.e., no less than 12%.33 If that was the case, the number of the Jewish population by the start of the Great Patriotic War in June, 1941 could be estimated at 1,885,000, including 114,000 Transcarpatian Jews (not counting the “Westerners” deported to the eastern parts of the USSR by the NKVD in 1940-41 and the refugees that remained here). Hence, the total number of the Jewish population within the USSR’s postwar borders (without the refugees) could have amounted to 4,965,000 and included 3,080,000 “Easterners” and 1,885,000 “Westerners”. 2. The Number of Jews in the USSR at the Start of 1946 Due to the lack of current demographic records on the natural movement and migrations of the USSR’s Jewish population up to 1958, the 1959 National Census serves as the main starting point for determining the number of Soviet Jews after the end of World War II. Regrettably, the Census materials lack complete data on the age distribution of the population required for a scientifically correct estimate of Soviet Jews in 1946.34 Moreover, there is no information on those Jewish population groups in the USSR (Georgian Mountain Jews, Bukhara Jews in Uzbekistan, Ashkenazi Jews in the Central Asian Soviet republics, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Armenia) whose ethnodemographic behavior differs notably from that of the Ashkenazi Jews living the European part of the country (see Tables 6 and 7). However, we were able to find data on the age composition of the Jewish population in the 1959 Census materials in several republics of the former Soviet Union. Such information was available for the Georgian Jews, Dagestan’s Mountain Jews, and Ukraine’s Krymchaks. That made it possible to calculate that, out of the 2,268,000 Jews recorded by the 1959 Census, about 377,000 were born in 1946-1958, and 58,000 in 1942-1945. Based on the reconstructed data of the 1959 National Census on the age composition of the Jewish population, and using the reverse age shift, as well as death rate tables for the entire USSR population for 1958-1959, correcting those based on the current demographic records of the natural movement of the USSR’s Jewish population in 1958, and taking into account the 1979 Census data on the number of children born by Jewish women in mono-ethnic marriages in the late 1940s and the 1950s, we can infer that the natural increase of the Jewish population in 1946-1958 could be estimated at 143,000 (taking into < 158 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

account the losses from the overwhelming majority of the children born by Jewish women in mixed marriages being listed as having the non-Jewish father’s ethnicity).35 Table 5 Number of Children Born by Jewish Women in Monoethnic Marriages Based on 5% Sampling from 1979 National Census Materials36 Women’s Birth Years

Women’s Age in 1959

Average Number of Children in 1979

1919–1928

30–39

1.81

1929–1933

25–29

1.73

1934–1938

20–24

1.67

Table 6 Percentage of Children Born by Jewish Women in Mixed Marriages in 1958, according to Current Demographic Records37 Percentage of Children with Non-Jewish Fathers

Region

USSR I n c l u d i n g:

19,2

RSFSR

27,4

Ukraine

17,4

Byelorussia

13,8

Moldavia

7,0

Lithuania

11,9

Latvia

14,2

Estonia

33,9

Georgia

8,6

Azerbaijan

19,6

Armenia

27,3

Uzbekistan

10,5

Kazakhstan

34,9

Tajikistan

13,5

Kirghizia

15,7

Turkmenia

37,3

< 159 >

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Table 7 General Co-Efficients of Natural Increase of USSR’s Jewish Population in 1958-1959 (‰)38 Region

Birth Rate

Death Rate

Natural Increase

“Effective” Natural Increase

12.3

9.3

3.0

0.6

RSFSR

10.2

10.2

0.0

-2.8

Ukraine

11.3

9.4

1.9

-0.1

USSR I n c l u d i n g:

Byelorussia

15.5

7.4

8.1

5.9

Moldavia

13.2

6.0

7.2

6.3

Lithuania

11.2

5.0

6.2

3.8

Latvia

11.9

6.9

5.0

3.1

Estonia

9.9

8.5

1.4

-0.1

Georgia

23.4

9.2

14.2

12.1

Azerbaijan

22.4

9.6

12.8

9.0

Armenia

12.2

4.9

7.3

2.0

Uzbekistan

22.4

8.6

13.8

11.4

Kazakhstan

15.4

7.9

7.5

1.7

Tajikistan

23.8

6.1

17.7

13.9

Kirghizia

14.3

8.3

6.0

3.2

Table 8 Percentage of Jewish Women Living in Interethnic Marriages, according to 5% Sampling from 1979 USSR Census Materials39 Percentage Living in Interethnic Marriages

Women’s Birth Years

Women’s Age in 1959

1919–1928

30–39

21.2

1929–1933 1934–1938

25–29

23.1

20–24

27.7

The 1940s and 1950s were characterized by a fairly intensive process of both real and declared assimilation of the Jews. Unfortunately, there is no concrete data on its scope and scale. In our view, the only possible way to quantify the Jewish assimilation of the 1940s and 1950s, albeit indirectly, is by drawing an analogy with the situation prevailing in the 1960s. According to our estimates arrived at by modeling the ethno-demographic balance of the Jewish population of the USSR in 1959-1969, around 24,000 persons, who < 160 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

had listed themselves as Jews during the 1959 Census, identified themselves with other ethnicities in the next 1970 Census.40 Assuming that the rate of either real or declared assimilation did not change substantially between the 1940-50s and the 1960s, we get about 30,000 people listing themselves as non-Jewish in the 1959 Census who hypothetically might have included themselves among the Jews in 1946. To determine the number of the USSR’s Jewish population at the start of 1946, one needs to take into account the losses from external migration in the late 1940s and 1950s. To simplify our subsequent calculations, let us assume the war period migrations to took place after 1945. Let us also make allowance for the Jewish refugees of 1939-1940 from Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia who were repatriated in 1942-1958. Speaking of the refugees, in this specific case it should be taken into account how many of them did not repatriate, adopted Soviet citizenship and, consequently, were counted during the 1959 Census. As earlier indicated, these numbered no more than 10,000. Obtained above, were also estimates of the number of the “Westerners” (98,000) and the “Easterners” (15,000) that emigrated or repatriated from the USSR in 1942-1958. The above puts the overall number of losses from external migration at 103,000 (98,000 + 15,000 — 10,000). This allows us to estimate the number of the Jewish population in the postwar borders of the USSR (not counting the 1939-1940 refugees, who repatriated from the USSR): 2,228,000 (the 1959 Census number) — 143,000 (the “effective” natural increase for 1946-1958) + 30,000 (losses from assimilation in 19461958) + 103,000 (losses from external migration in 1946-1958) = 2,258,000. Due to a relatively higher birth rate among the Jews of Moldavia, which had the highest concentration of the “Westerners” in the first postwar decades (see Table 7), their natural increase must have been somewhat greater than that of the “Easterners”. Accordingly, the “effective” natural increase of the “Westerners” could be estimated at 20,000 and that of the “Easterners” at 123,000 (143,000 — 20,000). As for the losses from real or declared assimilation in 1946-1958, there could have hardly been any material difference between the “Easterners” and the “Westerners”. Consequently, out of the total of about 30,000 assimilation losses for the entire Jewish population in the period under review, 28,000 fall to the “Easterners” and 2,000 to the “Westerners”. This leads to the conclusion that the number of the “Westerners” 1946 might have amounted to 265,000, calculated as follows: 185,000 (number of the “Westerners” in 1959) — 20,000 (the “effective” natural increase in 19461958) + 2,000 (assimilation losses) + 98,000 (external migration losses). Since < 161 >

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the total number of the Jewish population in the USSR in 1946 (without the refugees) was estimated at 2,258,000, then the number of the “Easterners” in 1946 will equal 1,993,000 (2,258,000 — 265,000). 3. Human Losses in World War II Based on our reconstruction of the 1959 Census data, the number of the Jews who were born from mid-1941 through the end of 1945 and lived through early 1946 could be estimated at 67,000. Then the number of people in the prewar generations of the Soviet Jews was 2,191,000 (2,258,000 — 67,000). Hence, the total loss of life among the prewar generations could be calculated as follows: 4,965,000 (the number of permanent Jewish population in the USSR’s postwar borders as of mid 1941) — 2,191,000 (the number of war survivors) = 2,774,000. Assuming that the birth rate for the “Easterners” and the “Westerners” was roughly equal, we can estimate the number of children born in mid1941-1945 both to the “Easterners” (62,000) and to the “Westerners” (5,000). Consequently, the 1946 number of the “Easterners” born before the war can be estimated at 1,931,000 (1,985,000 — 62,000), and “Westerners” at 260,000 (265,000 — 5,000). Earlier, the number of the “Easterners” in mid-1941 was estimated at 3,080,000 and that of the “Westerners” at 1,885,000. Hence, the number of war losses among the prewar “Easterners” is 1,149,000 (3,080,000 — 1,931,000) and those of the “Westerners” is 1,625,000 (1,885,000 — 260,000). Based on the methodology for estimating the USSR’s total wartime human losses, proposed by E.M. Andreyev, L.E. Darsky, and T.L. Kharkova, natural mortality during that period should also be taken into account. In our specific case, this poses a very complicated problem. As is known, the great majority of old people, infants, and people with serious health problems, i.e. those population groups that are the chief contributors to natural mortality, failed to evacuate and were destroyed by the Nazis and their accomplices during the occupation. In other words, they did not die a natural death. Since the greater part of the Jews in the occupied territories were killed in the first year of the war, and many as early as the first months, there are reasons to count the hypothetical decrease in their numbers due to natural mortality as human losses from war. According to the 1939 Census, there were about 2,144,000 Jews, or 70.8% of the total Jewish population, living within the USSR’s pre-September 1939 territories that were occupied by the Nazis in 1941-1942.41 Taking into < 162 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

consideration the above-proposed corrections to the 1939 Census results and the estimates of the natural population increase in 1939-1941, it can be concluded that there were some 2,180,000 “Easterners” living in that territory. Based on the estimate given above, the Jewish population living in the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939-1944 and fully occupied by the Nazis in 1941-1942 numbered about 1,885,000 (excluding the refugees). This means that by the time of Germany’s attack on the USSR, there were around 4,065,000 Jews (not counting the refugees) living in the territories that were occupied in 1941-1942. That number amounted to 82% of the entire Jewish population within the USSR’s postwar borders (i.e., including the Jewish population of Transcarpatia). Accordingly, the territories that were not occupied by the Nazis contained, in June 1941, approximately 900,000 Jews (again, not counting the refugees and the “Westerners” deported by the NKVD in 1940-1941), or 18% of the total Jewish population within the USSR’s postwar borders and approximately 29.2% within the USSR’s borders before September 1939. Taking into account the above-mentioned reasons for applying the term “natural mortality” only to the natural mortality of the Jewish population living outside of the occupied territories during the war, and relying on the 1939 current demographic statistics on Jewish mortality in the USSR, wartime natural decrease of the Jewish population in the USSR’s postwar borders could be estimated at 47,000 (including 42,000 among the “Easterners” and 5,000 among the “Westerners”). Thus, direct wartime human losses among the prewar generation in the postwar borders of the USSR can be assessed at 2,727,000: 2,774,000 (total losses among the prewar generations) — 47,000 (hypothetical decrease from wartime natural mortality among the prewar generations). This estimation is based on the “Easterners” losses of 1,107,000 people (1,149,000 — 42,000) and the “Westerners”’ losses of 1,620,000 people (1,625,000 — 5,000). Estimates offered in specialized literature indicate that between 8 and 9% of all children born in the USSR during the war died due to extremely harsh living conditions.42 That indicator could hardly have been lower for the Jews during the war, despite the fact that child mortality rate for the Jews is generally lower. Assuming the above rate, there were about 6,000 Jewish children who were born during the war and died in 1941-1945. Out of that number, there were an estimated 5,000 “Easterners” and 1,000 “Westerners”. The final total of the wartime Jewish population losses within the postwar territory of the USSR, as estimated by the ethno-demographic balance method, equals 2,733,000: 2,727,000 (human losses among the < 163 >

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prewar generations) + 6,000 (higher mortality among children born during the war). That number includes 1,112,000 “Easterners” (1,107,000 + 5,000) and 1,621,000 “Westerners” (1,620,000 + 1,000). Table 9 Jewish Population Losses in Postwar Borders of USSR in 1941-1945 Population in June 1941

Human Losses

%

Population at Start of 1946

Total

4,965,000

2,733,000

55.0

2,258.000

“Easterners”

3,080,000

1,112,000

36.1

1,993,000

“Westerners”

1,885,000

1,621,000

86.0

265,000

Thus, Jewish population losses account for over 10% of the total population losses in the USSR’s postwar borders during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), which are estimated at 26.6 million people.43 Moreover, one should bear in mind that before the war Jews made up only 2.5 % of the total population within the USSR’s postwar borders. The ethno-demographic methodology for the analysis of Jewish population losses in 1941-45 does not allow for an estimation of human losses by different categories (Holocaust victims, irretrievable demographic losses among military personnel, home defense formations, partisans, underground operatives, civilian casualties in front-line areas, excess mortality among evacuees, refugees, permanent population in the hinterland, or the GULAG prisoners). In tackling that task, one has to analyze departmental statistics, official data, calculations, estimates, or expert assessments. For instance, according to the USSR Ministry of Defense data, which are apparently far from complete, the effective irretrievable losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-45 equaled 9,168,400. Out of that number 8,668,400 were roster personnel of military units. Among the latter category there were 138,700 Jews, or 1.6% of roster personnel44. It seems, however, that these data are clearly incomplete, because they are most likely based on the 1939 Census data on the number of Jews in the Red Army (1.64%)45. Meanwhile, following the mobilization of draft-age Jews from the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940, their proportion in the Red Army should have reached at least 1.7% in 1941. Accordingly, the number of wartime casualties among Jewish roster personnel would have increased to at least 147,400. Assuming that the 500,000 casualties among the non-roster personnel comprised the same 1.7% of Jews (8,500) means that irretrievable losses among Jewish servicemen < 164 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

might have equaled as many as 156,000. But even that estimate would surely be far from complete. For instance, the proportion of Jews in the home defense formations was obviously larger than in the Red Army as a whole, if only because the cities, where the most numerous home defense forces were formed, had very considerable Jewish communities (according to the 1939 National Census, Jews made up 33% of the population in Odessa, 26.5% in Kiev, 6.3% in Leningrad, and 6.0% in Moscow).46 The mortality rate among Jewish POWs was also higher than the average for all Soviet POWs. Thus, only 5,000 Jewish POWS were repatriated to the USSR after the war, which constituted less than 0.3% the total former POWs repatriated. Therefore, Jews may have amounted to no less than 1.8% of the Armed Forces’ irretrievable losses or 165,000. Counting also the casualties among Jewish members of partisan formations and the underground Resistance in the occupied territories, the total number of wartime combat losses among Soviet Jews could have reached as much as 170,000.47 It is just as difficult to estimate losses among Jewish civilians in the frontline areas. In the blockaded Leningrad alone, from 690,000 to 1,000,000 people died from artillery and aerial bombardments, and, above all, from starvation.48 Since Jews constituted 6.3% of the city population according to the 1939 Census, about 50,000 of them might have died there, even if a much higher evacuation rate is assumed for this population group. There were heavy losses among Jewish civilians in a number of other Soviet cities that saw fierce fighting in 1941 (first of all, Odessa, Minsk, Kharkov, Smolensk, Tula, Kerch, Novorossiysk, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, and Voronezh). Accordingly, an overall estimate of Jewish civilian losses should be no less than 60,000 (including refugees and evacuees intercepted on their way to the Soviet hinterland by the advancing German ground forces and aviation. There were also considerable losses resulting from excessive mortality in the Soviet hinterland. This goes, above all, for the refugees and evacuees whose overall number is assessed at around 17,000,000. There were at least 1,100,000 Jews among them, as well as no less than 250,000-300,000 Jews from Moscow and Leningrad. An analysis of mortality in the hinterland regions of the USSR shows its sharp increase due to a catastrophic deterioration of the quality of life caused by the exigencies of war and overexertion at work. The most characteristic causes of mortality were related to emaciation, avitaminosis, dystrophy, poisonings, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. In 1943-45 the hierarchy of mortality causes showed increased prominence of cardio-vascular diseases and tuberculosis resulting from prolonged stress. The most vulnerable population groups in the Soviet hinterland were < 165 >

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refugees and evacuees who amounted to slightly less than three-fourths of the Jewish population that had escaped occupation. Because in 1942 the general mortality co-efficient for the USSR’s city population shot up by 74% as compared to 1940, it is safe to say that that this indicator was even higher for the refugees and evacuees from the occupied territories. Consequently, excess mortality for the Jewish population in the Soviet hinterland during the war can be estimated at approximately 50,000. Living conditions were even harder for the various categories of GULAG inmates. By the start of the war there were 46,000-49,000 Jews held in the GULAG system or 1.5-1.6% of the total prison population49. Consequently, among the 1,000,000 GULAG inmates who died in 1941-45, there were at least 15,000 Jews, Based on the above, the number of direct victims of the Holocaust on the occupied territories within the USSR’s postwar borders can be estimated as follows: 2,733,000 (Jewish population losses in the USSR’s prewar borders) — 170,000 (effective irretrievable losses of Jews from among military personnel, home defense fighters, partisans, and members of the underground resistance) — 60,000 (Jewish civilian losses in the front-line areas) — 50,000 (excess mortality among the Jewish population in the Soviet hinterland) — 15,000 (mortality among the Jewish inmates of the GULAG) = 2,438,000 persons. Table 10 Estimate of Jewish Population Losses in USSR’s Postwar Borders in 1941-1945 (by Type of Loss) Types of Losses

Civilian victims of Holocaust in occupied territories Irretrievable military demographic losses Civilian casualties in front-line areas Excess civilian mortality in hinterland Excess mortality among GULAG inmates Total:

Quantity

%

2,438,000 170,000 60,000 50,000 15,000 2,733,000

89.2 5.2 2.2 1.8 0.6 100.0

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that in reality, the scale and scope of the Holocaust in the territory of USSR were doubtless greater than it follows from the above ethno-demographic analysis. For instance, tens of thousands of Soviet POWs who were killed by the Nazis only because they were Jewish can also be counted as direct victims of the Holocaust. The same is true of further tens of thousands people who, though not identified < 166 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

as Jews in the Soviet statistics, were destroyed as such by the Nazis in accordance with the Nuremberg Race Laws. Consequently, a minimum estimate of the holocaust victims in the USSR’s postwar borders might reach approximately 2,500,000 people, including 900,000 “Easterners” and 1,600,000 “Westerners”. Translated by Sergeui Silichtchev

NOTES 1

2

For the original version of the article, see: Вестник Еврейского Университета в Москве No.2 (9), 1995. pp. 135–155. The article was revised and expanded for the present publication. Kupovetsky M. “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR during World War II,” Jews in Eastern Europe,1994, No. 2(24), pp. 25–35.

3

The subject’s historiography is quite extensive. For an analysis of the works published through the mid-1970s, see: Orbach W. “The Destruction of Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR,” Soviet Jewish Affairs, 1976, No. 2, pp. 14–51.For the results of the 1970-1980s research, see: Arad Y. “The Holocaust of Soviet Jewry in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union,” Yad Vashem Studies, 1991, Vol. 21, pp. 1–47; and the concise Russian translation of that paper: Aрад И. Xoлокост. Kaтастрофа европейского еврейства (1933–1945). Иерусалим, 1990. С. 56–91; for an overview of the 1990s, see: Альтман И. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР. 1941–1945 годы. М., 2002, С. 8–19; Spector Sh., Wigoder G. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, New York, 2001. Vol. 1–3. For research approaching the problem through an analysis of the Soviet censuses, see: Kantor Y. “Einike bamerkungen un oysfirn tsu di farefntlekhte sakhhaklen fun folkstseylung in ratnfarband dem 15th yanuar 1959,” Bleter far geshikhte, B. 15, 1962–1963, pp. 142–154; Nove A., Newth Y., “The Jewish Population: Demographic Trends and Occupational Patterns,” The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917, London, 1972, pp. 138–143; Maksudov S., “The Jewish Population Losses of the USSR from the Holocaust: A Demographic Approach,” The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945, New York, 1993, pp. 207–213.

4

The first such attempt was undertaken in: Kupovetsky M. “Population Losses of Soviet Jews during World War II,” paper presented at the First Canada — USSR Academic Dialogue on Jewish Themes. Toronto, December 17–18, 1990. In the late 1990s an entire complex of archival sources on the demography of Soviet Jewry in the 1930s was introduced into scientific circulation. See: [Куповецкий М.] Советский Союз. Этническая демография советского еврейства // Краткая еврейская энциклопедия, 1996, Иерусалим. Т. 8. С. 293–305; Altshuler M. Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust. A Social and Demographic Profile, Jerusalem, 1998. Aндреев E.M., Дарский Л.Е., Xapькoвa T.Л. Oцeнкa людских потерь в период Beликой Oтeчественной вoйны // Becтник статистики. 1990. N° 10. C. 26–28.

5

< 167 >

MARK KUPOVETSKY 6

7 8 9

10 11 12

13

14 15

16

17 18

19 20

21

22

23

Leshinsky I., “Yidn in Sovietn-farband,” Yidisher Kemfer, 1946, № 669, p. 95. Also see the same author’s earlier estimate of 3,300,000 persons (Leshinsky I., Dos Sovetishe Yidntum, New York, 1941, p. 366). Pinkus B., The Jews of the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 1988, p. 261. Bcecoюзная nepeпиcь населения 1939 гoда: Ocновные итоги. M., 1992. C. 57. Aндреев E.M., Дарский Л.Е., Xaрькова T.Л. Haceление Coветского Coюза. 1922–1991. M., 1993. C. 33; Toльц M. Penpeccированнaя nepeпись // Poдина. 1989. № 11. C. 60; Жеромская B.Б. Bcecoюзная пepeпись населения 1939 года: История пpоведения, oценка доcтоверности // Bcecoюзная nepeпись населения 1939 годa: Ocновные итоги. C. 8. However, M. Altshuler prefers to base his analysis on the official data of the 1939 National Census. See: Altshuler M. Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust… Р. 2. Зингep Л. Eвpeйское нaceлeние в CCCP. M., 1932. C. 6. Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…,” p. 27. Assessment based on: Statystyka Polski, Ser. C. Drugi powszechny spis Ludnosci z dnia 9, XII 1931. T. 58, 64, 70, 78, 87, 88; Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 4, p. 807; Vol. 11, p. 468; Congresul Mondial Evreesc. Sectuinca din Romania. Population Evreeasca in cifre. Memento Statistik, Bucharest, 1945, p. 28; Statistisches über die Juden in Karpathorussland, Prague, 1932, S. 20; Lietuvos Statistikos Metrastiљ, 1939, Vilnius, 1940, p. 15; Andri M., “Yidn in Latvie (historish>statistishe sakhaklen),” Oifboi, Riga, 1940, # 1, S. 68; Gurin S., Di statistik fun yidisher bafelkerung in Estonie, Tallinn, 1936, S. 21. Markus J., Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland. 1919–1939, New York, 1983, pp. 166–171. Tartakower A., Emigracja Zydowska z Polski, Warszawa, 1939, S. 22, 45. Markus J., Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, p. 173. Concise Statistical Yearbook of Poland: September 1939 — June 1941, London, Glasgow, 1941, p. 10. According to M. Altshuler, 1,296,000. See: Altshuler M., Op. cit., p. 324. Congresul Mondial Evreesc…, p. 28. Lestshinsky I., Crisis, Catastrophy, and Survival. A Jewish Balance Sheet, 1914– 1948, New York, 1948, p. 60. See also: Lietuvos Statistikos Metrastis (1924–1939); Hersch L., “Zu der demografie fun der yidisher bafelkerung in Kovner Lite erb der zvaiter veltmelhome,” YIVO Bleter, 1950, Band 34, S. 274–275. Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…,” p. 28. Kyповецкий M.C. Еврейское нaceление Лaтвии и Эстонии в XVI — пepвой пoловине XX вeков // Maлые и этнодисперсные этнические группы в Европейской части CCCP. M., 1985. C. 79, 20. Calculated as per: Blau B., “Bafelkerungbavegung bei yidn in Chehoslovakei,” Yidishe Economic, 1939, N° 4–6, S. 185; Statistika rocenka Republiky Ceskoslovenske, Praha, 1937, S. 28. Linder M., “Yidishe Emigracie tun Chehoslovakei,” Yidishe Economik, 1939, # 1–3, S. 99. The estimated number of Transcarpatian Jews of 114-115,000 in 1939 which appears in most papers on the Holocaust in Transcarpatia does not agree with the < 168 >

JEWISH POPULATION LOSSES DURING WORLD WAR II

24

25

26

27

28

29

30 31

32

33

34 35

36 37

available statistics of their natural movement and migrations in the 1930s. See also: Stark T., “Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust and after Liberation,” Papers in Jewish Demography. In Memory of U.O. Schmelz, Jerusalem, 1997, p. 140. Estimated as per: Kulka E., “The Plight of Jews-refugees from Czechoslovakia in theUSSR,” Yad Vashem Studies, 1976, Vol. 11, Jerusalem, p. 298; Altshuler M. Soviet Jewry onthe Eve of the Holocaust, p. 326.; Litvak Y., Pelitim Yehudim mi Polin be Brit Hamoasot,1939–1946, Jerusalem, 1988, p. 354; Litvak Y., “Jewish Refugees from Poland in the USSR,1939–1946,” Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, Bloonington, 1997, p. 147; Lorimer Y., The Population of the Soviet Union, Geneva, 1946, p. 194; Pinkas hakehilot, Romania, Jerusalem, 1980, Vol. 2, p. 300. It should be borne in mind that many of them died from the extreme hardships caused by deportation and evacuation. Estimated as per: Litvak Y., Pelitim Yehudim mi-Polin be-Brit Hamoasot, p. 358; Sulvian N., Romania, Jews in the Soviet Satellites, Westport, 1971, p. 554; Rotman L., “The Communist Era until 1965,” The History of the Jews in Romania, Tel-Aviv, 2005, Vol. IV, pp. 52–55; Bauer Y., Flight and Rescue: Brichah, New York, 1970, pp. 31, 152, 181. Among them there were 26,000 Transcarpatian Jews, including both those who had or had not returned to Transcarpatia after the liberation from the Nazi camps. See: Stark T., Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust and after Liberation…, pp. 144-145. This estimate is based on the following reasoning: Since the total number of the Jews repatriated from the USSR in the 1940s and 1950s was 320-350,000 that included 215-235,000 of the 1939-40 refugees (See: Levin D. Tkufa besograim: 1939–1941. Tel-Aviv, 1989. P. 322, 393; Sulvian N. Romania… P. 554), as well as about 15,000 “Easterners” (See Note 29), we arrive at: (320–350,000) – (215–235,000) – 15,000.= 90,000. Bauer Y., Flight and Rescue: Brichah…, pp. 32, 228; Гершуни A.-Э. Борьба xaсидов Xaбaд за выезд из Coвeтскoгo Coюза // Boзрождение. Иepycaлим, 1986. № 9. C. 87. Mapгoлин K. Pyccко-eвpeйская эмиграция в Израиль // Kнига о pyccком еврействе. 1917–1967. Hью-Йopк, 1968. C. 418; Ro’i Y., The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration 1948–1967, Cambridge, 1991, p. 258. Levin D., Baltic Jews Under the Soviets 1940–1946, Jerusalem, 1994, pp. 318, 335. Alexander Z., “Immigration to Israel from the USSR,” Israel YearBook on Human Rights, Tel-Aviv, 1977, Vol. 7, p. 319. PГАЭ. Ф. 1562. Оп. 20. Д. 151. Л. 3, 67, 90, 118; Д. 60. Л. 10, 20, 22, 73, 133, 172, 179, 189. Markus J., Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland…, pp. 166–171; Hersch L., “Zu der demografie fun der yidisher bafelkerung in Kovner Lite…,” pp. 274– 276; Kyповецкий M.C. Eврейское нaceление Лaтвии и Эстонии… C. 78, 79. Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…,” p. 36. In our 1994 study an unfortunate error has crept into the methodology of calculating the “effective” natural iincrease, resulting in its understatement by 68,000 (see: Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…”). Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…,” p. 37. РГАЭ. Ф. 1562. Оп. 27. Д. 488. Л. 3–149. < 169 >

MARK KUPOVETSKY 38

39 40

41

42 43

44

45

46

47

48

49

Материалы к серии “Народы Советского Союза”. Перепись 1939 года. Документальные источники ЦГАНХ СССР. М., 1990. Ч. 10. С. 1873–1876. Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR…,” p. 37. Kyповецкий M.C. Этнодемографический баланс еврейского населения СССР вo второй половине XX в. // Paper presented at the Third Canada — CIS Academic Dialogue on Jewish Themes, Jerusalem, December 22–25, 1992. Calculated as per: Distribution of the Jewish Population on the USSR 1939, Jerusalem, 1993, pp. 9–12. Андреев E.M., Дарский Л.E., Xapькова T.Л. Oцeнкa людских потерь… C. 27. Aндpeeв E.M., Дapcкий Л.E., Xapькова T.Л. Haceлeние Coвeтского Coюзa. 1922–1991. C. 78. Кривошеев Г.Ф. Об итогах статистических исследований потерь Вооруженных Сил СССР в Великой Отечественной войне // Людские потери СССР в Великой Отечественной войне. СПб., 1995. С. 76. Материалы к серии “Народы Советского Союза”. Перепись 1939 года. Документальные источники ЦГАНХ СССР. М., 1990. Ч. 10. С. 1873–1876. The total number of Home Defense fighters who took part in the battles of Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev, and Byelorussia amounted to 413,000, most of them were killed in action. There are much higher estimates as well. For instance, Aron Shneer, with general reference to the data of the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry, but giving no specific archival references, cites 198,000 as the number of Soviet Jews-servicemen who were killed in action, died from wounds, or were reported missing in action. See: Шнеер М. Плен. Советские военнопленные в Германии, 1941–1945. М.; Иерусалим, 2005. С. 341. Исупов В.А. Демографические катастрофы и кризисы в России в первой половине XX века. Новосибирск, 2000. С. 171. Altshuler M. Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust, p. 27.

< 170 >

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

Alexander Avraham

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

The need to document the circumstances of the Jewish tragedy during WWII and to preserve the memory of the victims was felt as early as 1944, when the results of the Nazi “final solution” became increasingly clearer. In 1953, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, legislated the establishment of “Yad Vashem” (the Hebrew for “a Monument and a Name), which was to become both a memorial and a research institute. One of its first important activities, beginning in 1954, was the registration of Holocaust victims’ names on the so-called “Daf Ed” or “Pages of Testimony” (see the illustration on the next page). These represent specialized forms containing personal information on Jews who died in the Shoah. The forms were completed by the victims’ relatives or friends or even total strangers. Ever since that time the completed forms were accumulated and kept at a special Department of the Yad Vashem called the Hall of Names. Representing symbolic yet individualized tombstones, the Pages of Testimony served to enhance the value of the Yad Vashem as both a memorial and a symbolic necropolis. During all these years, Yad Vashem has been working very hard to accomplish the momentous mission of gathering, cataloguing and preserving the maximum possible number of victim names and whatever bits of information on the perished that it could obtain. As time wore on, it developed into the vastest and very unique repository of material related to the Shoah. Unfortunately, vast as our holdings may be, they are far from complete in terms of the victims’ names. < 171 >

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM

A Page of Testimony (the English language version of the form used by Yad Vashem in building the Hall of Names data base) < 172 >

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

The driving force behind the creation of this unique repository for the victims’ names was not scholarly interest but the most basic and simple human need for the commemoration of one’s lost relatives. It was the expression of the urge to enshrine and preserve the victims’ names based not so much on lists, which were almost nonexistent for Eastern Europe and at best incomplete or inaccurate for Central and Western Europe, but rather on declarations by survivors and family members: people who saw or knew how their relatives had perished came forward and registered the names on Pages of Testimony to give them everlasting memory at Yad Vashem. The Pages of Testimony commemorate the names and biographic details of individual victims. The martyred dead are remembered not as cold, anonymous numbers, but as individual and unique human beings. The Pages of Testimony are an attempt to restore their personal identity, as well as their dignity, which the Nazis and their accomplices tried so hard to obliterate. The first campaign of collecting Pages of Testimony took place in Israel between 1955-1957, when some 800,000 names were gathered. Concentration camp survivors and family members were called upon to come to registration centers and fill out Pages of Testimony with the names of their near and dear lost in the Holocaust. By the end of 1956, a house-to-house call approach was adopted in order to make sure all or most of those concerned were advised of the need and importance of recording the names. After this first successful collection campaign which had involved massive resources and numerous staff, a sole registration center continued its activity at Yad Vashem’s offices in Jerusalem. The work went on and thousands of new Pages of Testimony in different languages continued to arrive at Yad Vashem every year from Israel and abroad. By the end of 1983, some 1,040,000 Pages of Testimony had been stored in special “Yizkor files” at the Hall of Names. At the time, the Pages of Testimony were catalogued according to the Hebrew alphabet by last names and then by first names. This method was problematic enough when it came to searching for a specific name, given a multitude of possible spellings and variants in different languages, and was totally unsuited for handling geographical names or dates. In 1984, a special project was started to transfer the Pages of Testimony to microfilm that would serve as a back-up copy in case of damage to the physical collection and also as a day-to-day work tool that would facilitate and speed up the name search across the Pages. It took two years, 198485, to prepare the Pages for microfilming, to actually film them, and to do quality checks on the reels. < 173 >

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM

Throughout the 1980s, the average number of new Pages of Testimony received was around 14-15,000 a year. With the opening of the Eastern block in 1989 and during the 1990’s, the yearly average went up to about 30,000. Most of the new pages were in Russian, filled out either by recent immigrants to Israel or by Soviet Jews who remained in their countries but now had the possibility to send the names to Jerusalem. All these pages came to fill to some extent the very great gap of missing names of Holocaust victims from the territories of the former USSR. In 1992, a new project was initiated to computerize the names and personal biographic details registered on the Pages of Testimony to provide a better and faster access to the huge amount of information and to enable better retrieval through searches by places, dates and keywords in addition to first and last names. The number of staff members at the Hall of Names was then tripled to cope with the growing number of incoming pages and their computerization. By then, the declared purpose had already become to extend the computerization project to all published and unpublished resources at Yad Vashem, including the Archives and the Library, and other holdings. This helped cover all lists of deported Jews, camp ghetto inmates, police registration or property confiscation lists, as well as memorial books and community Yizkor monographs. This was to be a long and painstaking effort that would eventually result in a central computerized databank documenting and commemorating each and all Holocaust victims’ names. By the end of 1998, the Hall of Names was able to computerize more than 470,000 Pages of Testimony. Data entry was done in reverse order, that is, the last incoming pages were computerized first on a current basis and the backlog was dealt with within the staff and funding limitations. In addition, around 500,000 names from major deportation lists in existence at the Hall of Names were also digitized, mainly through the OCR technology, and were waiting for further processing. At the beginning of 1999, following an agreement with the International Commission of Eminent Persons (known as the Volcker Commission) entrusted with the handling of the Swiss dormant bank accounts, Yad Vashem embarked on a huge and ambitious project of speedy computerization of names of Holocaust victims together with two external partners, Tadiran Systems Ltd. and Manpower Israel. All of the Pages of Testimony and additional sources of names in the Hall of Names were to be digitized and standardized between February and May of 1999 within the budget provided. < 174 >

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

By mid-February, the large scale production began. One thousand data entry persons, mostly students, were recruited and divided into work teams of fifteen. Three workplace locations were prepared, one for scanning at Yad Vashem and the other two for data entry at Giv’at Shaul in Jerusalem and in Be’er Sheva, each with 500 workers divided into two shifts from 8 AM to 10 PM. Specially trained team leaders were accompanied by Yad Vashem professional staffers. Technical crews insured seamless computer communication and solved problems on the spot. At the end of May 1999, the project was successfully completed and more than two million name records of Holocaust victims were forwarded to the Volcker Commission, which then used the names to match, according to an algorithm of their choice, against a list of Swiss account owners. A list of 22,000 Jewish account holders was eventually published in the media and on the Internet, while about 30,000 other potential names are still being cleared by the commission. Almost in parallel, beginning in April 1999, Yad Vashem undertook vigorous efforts to publicize its latest campaign of collecting Pages of Testimony both in Israel and abroad. More than 1.3 million Pages of Testimony forms were distributed with local newspapers in Israel alone. Special ads were published in dozens of newspapers in different languages, and were aired on radio and television channels. Pages of Testimony were also handed out in schools, and students were encouraged to take them to senior citizens’ homes and absorption centers. At Yad Vashem a special call center was set up, manned by 90 staffers working in two shifts. They handled the calls, entered data into computers, mailed blank Pages of Testimony and information kits, received and acknowledged completed pages, and scanned them in preparation for computerization. The public response to this outreach effort by Yad Vashem was unprecedented. Between the start of the campaign in April 1999 and the end of 2000 some 70,000 phone calls were answered, 700,000 blank forms were sent out and more than 400,000 Pages of Testimony with about 50,000 photographs attached were received and acknowledged. This total represents a revolutionary number when compared with the annual average of 30,000 forms during the 1990’s. It is interesting to note that out of the 400,000 new forms, about 88% were filled out by people residing in Israel. Of the other 12%, one fourth came from the USA and around one fifth from the former USSR countries. 2000 was the crucial year when the results of the Volcker Commission project and those of the renewed Pages of Testimony collection campaign < 175 >

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM

were centralized into a huge unique database supported by a modern and sophisticated cataloguing and retrieval system. Intensive efforts have since been dedicated, besides the entry of additional data, to streamlining and standardizing the data as well as to cleaning up and enhancing internal tools developed all through the computerization work. These indexes of first and last names, of places and persecution sites as well as professions, titles and family ties were incorporated into the very basis of the systems retrieval capacities enabling searches and results in Latin, Hebrew and later also Cyrillic characters, in a vast variety of possible spellings and semantic variants in two dozens of languages. During the year 2004, a great deal of effort was made to prepare this huge names database for opening on the Internet to public access and scrutiny. Data and index entries were proofread and corrected, names and places were translated from Hebrew into English, and a sophisticated technical infrastructure was created in order to satisfy the probable demand. On November 22, 2004 at noon, the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names was launched on the Internet, totaling 278,085 visits by the end of the day. Between November 21 and 28, a record-setting 1,989,258 visits were registered (notice that people began accessing the system a day before already!). In 2005, the Names Database was transliterated into Cyrillic characters in order to enable Russian speaking Internet users access it in their language — open to the public since May 2006. At the same time, in May 2006, a new Pages of Testimony collection campaign was initiated that focused particularly on the Russian-speaking Jews residing in the FSU countries, Israel, USA and Germany. The express purpose of this campaign is to enhance awareness of the fact that most of the names of Holocaust victims from the territories of the former USSR, perhaps up to 70% of them, are still not documented nor commemorated in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. This latest campaign is yielding encouraging results — some 50,000 new Pages of Testimony by September 2007, and about 70,000 additional names on different lists and memorial books. However, many more names of Holocaust victims, most of them from Eastern Europe are still missing and the national mission to document and remember them is still ongoing. As of this writing, the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names accessible on the Internet at www.yadvashem.org includes the names of about 3.2 million Holocaust victims — some of them documented on more than one source records. The Pages of Testimony Collection still provides half of the names in the database. The other half comes, as said before, from < 176 >

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

archive materials such as lists of transports or deportation, camp and ghetto inmates, police registration or property confiscation, as well as memorial books and community Yizkor monographs. These sources for the names are constantly growing, as we are now embarked on an intensive effort to computerize as much and as fast as possible name lists contained in our Archives and Library. A team of about 50 staff members is currently toiling on this project, in parallel to our ongoing activities. Our purpose is to complete the computerization of most of the name occurrences in documents now in our possession and then to cross-reference and collate them into personal files of individual victims containing all the relevant data. In this way, hopefully, most of the victims — five million or perhaps even more — will be given a proper individual memorial within the larger collective tragedy of the Holocaust. The Names Database as a whole is still very much work in progress: on one hand, we are working intensively extracting hundreds of thousands of victims’ names from all available documentary sources, digitizing them, and adding them constantly to the existing database. On the other hand, we are revising and enhancing the internal tools that will help us to speed up and complete the cross-referencing and collation of the records in the database so as to establish a unique individual file for each victim. Since the cross-referencing is done at a slow pace and the database is not yet consolidated, it is very difficult to present a statistical analysis of the data at this stage. Yet we will attempt to do this based solely on the Pages of Testimony collection that documents more than two million victims. It has to be clear, however, that all these figures are incomplete and reflect only a stage in a long-term project that is still far from conclusion. The breakdown by country of the absolute number of victims, as documented by Pages of Testimony, is as follows (%): POLAND ROMANIA UKRAINE CZECHOSLOVAKIA HUNGARY GERMANY LITHUANIA BELORUSSIA YUGOSLAVIA

52.54

8.65 7.97 6.70 4.74 4.08 2.42 2.33 1.68 < 177 >

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM

1.62 1.54 1.27 1.23 1.17 0.91 0.48 0.37 0.05 0.03

RUSSIA LATVIA GREECE FRANCE AUSTRIA NETHERLANDS BELGIUM ITALY DANZIG ESTONIA

Aggregating the data for the countries, which used to be part of the former Soviet Union during the war and up until its collapse in 1991, yields a total of 15.91%. Comparing the number of victims for each of the countries registered in the Pages of Testimony with the total number of perished in the Shoah (according to the data provided in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust compiled by A. Gutman) we can obtain the following completeness ratios for the collection database (%): Italy Denmark Germany Czechoslovakia Yougoslavia Latvia Romania Austria Greece Poland Lithuania Belgium Estonia Hungary France Ukraine Russia Netherlands Byelorussia Luxemburg Norway

93.11 75 56.16 49.69 44.15 41.99 40.81 37.97 37 34.15 33.02 32.57 32.25 31.88 30.94 25.91 19.14 17.71 15.16 10.67 10.63 < 178 >

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES

One can see that the number of Polish Jews in the data base is just slightly more than 1/3 (while the corresponding value for Ukraine is just nearing 26% and is below 20% for Russia). However, it is precisely Polish Jews that account for over a half of the Shoah victims. Corroboration with name records from documentary sources already in the Names Database could dramatically change these figures — but the process of cross-reference is still far from completion, as stated before. As a case in point, let us consider the data for the town of Tarnopol. Pages of Testimony commemorate 5,171 residents of the town who died in the Shoah. Out of that number, the date of birth is only available for 3,983 and the date of death — for 2,645. By combining the age data supplied by the Pages of Testimony with those derived from the comparison of the dates (1,446 and 2,276 records respectively) we can establish the age structure of a group of 2,972 people. Out of the 5,171 Shoah victims identified in Tarnopol, 2,601 are women and 2,525 are men, with exact ages known for only 1,531 women and 1,411 men Based on the above, the source data for the Tarnopol victims’ sex and age is as follows: Age

Women

Men

Total

1 2 3 4 5 1—5 6 7 8 9 10 6 — 10 11 12 13 14 15 11 — 15 16

4 2 6 3 9 24 1 8 8 6 15 38 5 15 6 8 9 43 15

5 3 7 3 10 28 8 7 7 5 13 40 7 7 8 12 19 53 12

9 5 13 6 19 52 9 15 15 11 28 78 12 22 14 20 28 96 27

17

25

15

40

< 179 >

%

1.8

2.7

3.3

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM Age

Women

Men

Total

18 19 20 16 — 20 21 22 23 24 25 21 — 25 26 27 28 29 30 26 — 30 31 32 33 34 35 31 — 35 36 37 38 39 40 36 — 40 41 42 43 44 45 41 — 45 46 47 48 49 50 46 — 50

30 34 26 130 20 30 18 21 27 116 33 28 33 16 48 158 18 35 43 35 49 180 28 28 44 32 48 180 26 47 30 25 31 159 16 14 22 14 47 113

36 30 25 118 14 21 13 17 20 85 15 10 24 23 43 105 24 34 23 25 35 141 20 38 29 27 53 157 21 49 22 24 26 142 20 32 28 17 36 133

66 64 51 248 34 51 31 38 47 201 48 38 57 39 91 263 42 69 66 60 84 321 48 56 73 59 101 337 47 96 52 49 57 301 36 46 48 31 83 246

< 180 >

%

8.4

6.8

8.9

10.9

11.5

10.2

8.4

THE HALL OF NAMES AND THE CENTRAL DATA BASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS’ NAMES Age

Women

Men

Total

51 52 53 54 55 51 — 55 56 57 58 59 60 56-60 61 62 63 64 65 61-65 66 67 68 69 70 66-70 71 72 73 74 75 71-75 76 77 78 79 80 76-80 81 82 83 84 85

10 32 30 17 26 115 19 20 11 12 35 97 13 30 16 9 15 83 7 15 9 3 13 47 5 9 3 0 4 21 4 1 1 1 7 14 2 6 1 0 2

13 38 17 18 32 108 18 23 26 16 30 113 16 30 14 11 21 92 15 11 12 4 12 54 6 8 5 2 5 26 4 3 0 0 2 9 1 1 3 0 0

23 60 47 35 58 223 37 43 37 28 65 210 29 60 30 20 36 175 22 26 21 7 25 101 11 17 8 2 9 47 8 4 1 1 9 23 3 7 4 0 2

< 181 >

%

7.8

7.1

6

3.4

1.6

0.8

ALEXANDER AVRAHAM Age

Women

Men

Total

%

81-85 86 87 88 89 90 86-90 91 92 91-92 Total

11 0 1 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 1531

5 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1411

16 0 1 2 0 0 3 0 1 1 2942

0.5

0.1

0 100

Breakdown by the year of death for the Tarnopol victims is as follows: Year

Women

Men

Total

%

1941

125

159

284

11

1942

799

709

1508

58.6

1943

378

315

693

26.9

1944

37

49

86

3.4

1945

3

1

4

0.1

Total

1342

1233

2577

100

Understandably, the data is not representative enough at this stage, but as the cross-referencing system becomes operational we will obtain a more reliable basis for statistical analysis in developing Shoah-related topics at both collective and individual levels. Translated by Sergeui Silichtchev

< 182 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

Aron Shneer

THE HOLOCAUST IN LATVIA ACCORDING TO THE MATERIALS OF THE “HALL OF NAMES” YAD VASHEM “Pages of Testimony” as a Source for the Research of the Holocaust in Latvia

Notati lahem beveiti ubehomotai yad vashem asher lo iharet — ”And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name that shall not be cut off.” These are the words of the Prophet Isaiah. Yad Vashem (Memory and Name) is the name of the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. That name epitomizes the mission of its personnel. One of the departments of the Memorial where I work, The Hall of Names, is dedicated to collecting, processing, and preserving the personal records of the perished.1 The “Daf Ed”, or “Pages of Testomony”, help us to gain knowledge and understanding of the world of Latvian Jews apart from well-known and unofficial sources. Personal records of the perished have made it possible to observe the different aspects of the life and death of both individual Jews and entire Jewish communities in a given place or area. Quite often, the “Pages of Testimony” not only serve as an important complement to the existing archival documents, but also provide the sole and unique account of a certain person or event. Another important source of information is offered by the various attachments to the “Pages of Testimony” containing documents and photographs. However, this is not a separate photo archive, but an integral part of the Pages. All of the attachments are categorized as either official or unofficial and are subject to further classification within those two divisions. Documents may represent birth and death certificates, school graduation certificates and university diplomas, different forms of identification, < 183 >

ARON SHNEER

decoration and promotion certificates, food vouchers, service records, certificates issued by military units and archives, killed-in-action notices, relatives’ inquiries and replies to them, newspaper clippings and articles, etc. Photographs depict the everyday existence of the victims: country life, cities, schools, culture, festive events, marriages, holidays, work places, adults and children. These photographs help us form an idea of the wardrobes and fashions of the times gone by: civilian clothes — holiday and workaday, occupational apparel, and uniforms. For instance, the Testimony Page for Raphael Pitel is supplemented by a photo of a Hebrew language school in Riga.2 It is not specified which school it is, but it may well be the only remaining picture of the perished classmates. Today the electronic database of the “Hall of Names” contains over 3,000,000 names of the perished Jews. Out of those, a little more than 40,000 are Latvian Jews. The corresponding “Pages of Testimony” are written in five languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, English, and German. The available materials in the “Hall of Names” offer a vast field for research work. They are especially valuable in analyzing two periods — the prewar period and the wartime period (with distinction made between factors pertaining to warfare, occupation, and evacuation of the population). In this connection, the following aspects appear to be of primary importance: Prewar Life

War Period

1. Genealogical and linguistic

1. Geography of residence

2. Statistical and demographic

2. Geography of places of death

3. Social and political

3. Problem of death dates for both individual Jews and entire Jewish communities or groups

4. Geography of Jewish residence

4. Specific circumstances of death under occupation, in evacuation, or at the front 5. Relationships between Jews and Non-Jews in occupied territories 6. Circumstances of evacuation 7. Information on mobilization, places of military draft, service records

In analyzing selected materials for Latvia, I will naturally touch on only some of the possible aspects. For example, genealogy information, which includes a victim’s personal data — his or her last and first names < 184 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

as well as the names of the parents (including maiden names). This kind of evidence helps gain a more precise knowledge of Jewish names and surnames and their derivatives and root-changing transformations in the Hebrew language, thus providing material for sophisticated linguistic research. Take, for instance, such typical name combinations as Grigoriy — Gersh — Tsvi,3 Vladimir — Volf — Zeev,4 Mikhail — Ber — Dov,5 Polina — Perl — Pnina.6 Or take the examples of same-root versions of one name like Abram — Abrasha — Avraam — Avrum — Avrom;7 Isaak — Isak — ltskhak — Isya — Isai;8 Roza — Reize — Reizel.9 The “Daf Ed” can help establish how popular a name was in different countries or regions, depending on a person’s birth year, birth place, residence, and social status. One can study the extent of Jewish names’ popularity and its dependence on the time period, place of residence, migration processes, and political and cultural factors and processes. For example, biblical names (Abraham, Izhak, Jacob, David, Simon, Sara, Rachel, Leah, etc.), or Yidisch names (Mendel, Boruch, Meyer, Faibush, Leiba, Noson, Zuska, Toiba, Pesia), West European names (Friedrich, Bernhard, Karl, Zoltan, Siegmund, Theodor, Thaddeus, Tom, Harry, Susanna, Anna, Betty, Jenny, Margarita) and East European or Slavic (Boris, Grisha, Sasha, Tania, Lyuba, Vera). Moreover, name analysis leads to the conclusion that the fate of Latvian Jews after the 1917 Revolution and Latvia’s independence in 1918 was radically different from that of the Soviet Union’s Jews. For instance, Jews born before the Revolution and up to the early 1920s within the borders of the Russian Empire would typically have distinctly Jewish names like Gersh, Isaac, Izrail, Haya, Dvora, and Gisya.However, in the Soviet Union, starting in the 1920s, many Russified names appear [within Jewish communities] (frequently, it’s Pyotr, Alexandr-Sasha, Vladimir; Alexey is more rare; one even comes across Ivan, a typically Russian name, its Hebrew origins notwithstanding).10 This proves that assimilation processes were taking place with maximum encouragement from the State. That phenomenon was especially characteristic of Jews born in large cities in the late 1920s and the 1930s. In small towns and villages the process was less obvious, but the tendency was there as well. Such names as Marlen11 and Vilen12, they reflect certain cultural processes, such as the loss of Jewish self-identification and the desire to relate to the times and prevailing realities. At the same time, there is evidence of European or, to be exact, German influences among Latvian Jews living in the western regions of the country. The name “Herman”, for instance, appears 55 times, including 28 times in < 185 >

ARON SHNEER

the “Pages” of the perished Riga residents, and 6 times for Liepaja Jews, including those born in 1941.13 Nine Adolphs out 15,14 4 Arnolds out of 5,15 and 4 Kurts out 416 are Riga residents. Also recorded are such names as Heinrich17 (four times) and Karl, August, Fritz, and Janka (once each).18 It is worth noting that the Jewish parents of people with non-Jewish names, both in Russia and the USSR and in independent Latvia, usually had traditional Jewish names. However, in the first Latvian Republic, which granted ethnic and cultural autonomy to the Jews, the latter were still barely assimilated, with the majority retaining their traditional names up until their destruction in 1941. In the postwar period, Jews who had survived the war most often gave their children the Jewish names of their perished relatives. ANALYZING PREWAR LIFE Demographic information on Jewish families. The data specify the victim’s gender, exact or approximate age, and the number of family members. “Pages” are completed for each family member, regardless of age. Occupational information. As is known, there are some prewar statistical records available; for instance, the Latvian Census of 193519 gives a general picture of Jewish life in Latvia. However, information contained in the “Pages” provides more specific information on a person’s occupation, political affiliation, and social and religious activities. The materials studied point to the fact that, apart from the names, the everyday life and activities of Latvia’s Jews also showed a greater degree of conformity with Jewish traditions and patriarchality than in the USSR. Conducive to such a situation was also Latvia’s internal policy which tended to restrain not only Jewish economic activity but also, to a much greater extent, their social and political pursuits. Jews were practically deprived of the right to hold positions in public administration. This became only too obvious after May 14, 1934. The Latvian state deliberately locked Jews within the sphere of ethnocentric political activities, thereby encouraging their Zionist yearnings and directing their interests and efforts into the world outside Latvia’s confines. Jewish emigration from the country fully conformed with Latvia’s internal policy course towards a “soft” solution of the Jewish question. The social and material status of the majority of Latvian Jews did not favor their mass access to higher education and modern professional < 186 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

training. I have analyzed 21,948 “Pages of Testimony” containing information on 11,429 female persons and 10,519 male persons, including 4,742 children aged 1 to 14. Entries in the “occupation” box list 752 school students and 204 university students among them. Consequently, in counting the number of the gainfully employed among the Jewish population we considered 17,206 people in the group under review. However, no occupation is specified for many of them. The materials studied suggest that most of the Latvian Jews were practicing typical prerevolutionary Jewish “professions”. One of those was commerce. Among the perished, 1,802 men and 261 women are listed as “merchants”.20 That number does not include store owners who make up a separate category comprised of 214 men and 101 women.21 Petty shop owners number 316.22 The occupation of “salesperson”, too, forms a separate group of 129 people.23 Butchers constitute another separate category, some of them probably meat shop owners as well, totaling 68 persons.24 Adding up the above groups, there were 2,891 persons directly engaged in commerce. However, these do not include certain types of goods producers and craftsmen who sold their own products, such as bakers, confectioners, hatters (33 persons), coopers, joiners (35), and tailors. In other words, the number of people involved in commerce was even higher. Unexpectedly, the next most numerous group turned out to be that of clerical workers with no specialities specified. They totaled 348 persons: 246 men and 102 women. These may have also included Jewish office workers who, after 1940, were allowed to serve not only at private firms but at government institutions as well. Bearing evidence to the high level of education among Jews is the number of professionals and specialists. Teachers, for example, numbered 275: 120 men and 155 women.25 Next come the medics: 267 doctors with different specializations,26 including 11 dentists (3 men, 8 women), 2 medical attendants,27 20 nurses,28 and 10 obstetricians.29 A related occupational group is comprised of 147 pharmacists — 79 men and 68 women.30 Trades and crafts have always been traditional Jewish occupations. Tailoring figures prominently among such occupations. The “Pages” identify 426 tailors, 233 men and 193 women.31 There are also 86 barbers.32 Another 23 persons are listed as craftsmen with no speciality given.33 Noted among the craftsmen for their high qualifications are the jewelers, another traditional Jewish occupation (30 persons).34 Next come the metal-working trades: locksmiths (29)35 and blacksmiths (20),36 followed by tanners (18),37 shoemakers (11),38 furriers and fur-dressers (10),39 and < 187 >

ARON SHNEER

bookbinders (5).40 Often these are hereditary family trades, and successions like grandfather — father — son are observed.41 As for specialists in modern-day technical fields, there were 6 engineers,42 19 mechanics,43 15 electricians,44 15 photographers (3 women and 12 men), 45 4 drivers,46 and 2 typists.47 The 21,948 victims also included many people in liberal arts and the humanities: 20 professional musicians (13 men, 7 women),48 17 journalists,49 17 lawyers (defense counsel and notaries public),50 and one opera singer, Riga Opera’s baritone Yakov Yoffe51 Latvian Jews were not subjected to atheist propaganda and the Latvian State did not interfere with religious beliefs. Therefore, there was a considerable number of people among Latvian Jews whose occupations were associated with the practice of Judaism. “Pages of Testimony” cover 75 rabbis,52 3 heads of yeshivas,53 5 melameds (Torah teachers),54 17 Hazans,55 1 gabbai (Synagogue attendant),56 6 shameses (Synagogue assistants),57 and 43 reznik-shoihets.58 Among those killed in the Shoah we can also see representatives of the “exploiter class” whom the Soviets must have failed to round up in time for the deportation of June 14-15, 1941. These people included 33 owners of unspecified enterprises,59 4 print shop owners,60 1 sawmill owner,61 etc. It is interesting to note that the “Pages” make it possible to track changes in Jews’ social status after 1940. For instance, one Wulf Roze from Liepaja had owned a store prior to June 17, 1940, but later became a locksmith.62 In comparing the occupational makeup of Soviet Jews with that of Latvian Jews it certainly becomes evident that the former had far wider occupational and professional choices and better opportunities for self-realization. The older generation of Soviet Jews had retained their traditional trades and occupations such as carriers, porters, hatters, cobblers, bookbinders, etc., though merchants had practically disappeared. However, young Soviet Jews born after 1905 and especially after 1910, i.e., those who were between 10 and 15 years of age in the early 1920s, experienced an explosive growth of education. They start acquiring new professions along with the traditional ones, and these new occupations become prevalent among them — occupations which had been previously off-limits to Latvian Jews due to ethnic, professional, and political discrimination, as well as their material status. Let us highlight such professions as military officers of all ranks and specialities, from a lieutenant to a four-star general; there were also numerous university professors, police officers, members of security services and prosecutor’s offices; leaders of the < 188 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

economy of different levels, from plant and research institute directors to cabinet ministers; Communist Party and Komsomol leaders, from pioneer and Komsomol team leaders to Secretaries of regional committees and the Central Committee. Of course, all of this came at a high price: assimilation. Still, the fact remains that the period from the 1920s through 1940s saw very good opportunities for education and professional growth for Jews in Soviet Russia and, starting in 1922, the Soviet Union. The proportion of university students among Jews became one of the highest in the USSR. On the other hand, the “Pages of Testimony” from the Soviet Union point to a massive decline in the numbers of active bearers, teachers and servants of the Jewish religious tradition. Occupations like rabbis, melameds, gabbais, hazans, shameses, and rezniks become extremely rare. The absolute majority of older generation women both among Latvian and Soviet Jews are housewives. This is also true of the 2,138 women who perished during the war. However, while young Soviet Jewish women show a sharp rise in educational level and growing inroads into modern professions, their counterparts in Latvia continue to be mostly engaged in homemaking. The “Pages of Testimony” also contain evidence of certain persons’ Zionist activities. For instance, Zalman Brilovich, who later was killed in Liepaja, was a member of Ashomer Azair.63 The geography of prewar Jewish settlement is quite interesting, and we are talking not only about large cities or stetls, but villages and hamlets as well. People’s exact addresses given in the “Pages of Testimony” make it possible to pinpoint areas of compact Jewish settlement, as well as establish with greater accuracy the confines of the various ghettos or, conversely, find out that some Jews were living outside of the ghettos. This means that by using the “Pages of Testimony” and supplementary documents (photographs, letters, etc.), one can perform a generalized sociological analysis and, in a first approximation, draw a socio-economic portrait not only of an individual or a family, but also of a separate community or shtetl, including demographic, occupational, social, and other aspects.

< 189 >

ARON SHNEER

ANALYZING THE WAR PERIOD One of the most important wartime dimensions in the existence of the Jewish civilian population is evacuation and refugeedom with the entire complex of associated circumstances, including geography, pre-evacuation residence, relocation, and residence in evacuation. The “Pages of Testimony” contains indications as to the causes of death either in transit or at evacuation destinations: bombardments, diseases (often specified as typhus, pneumonia, nervous exhaustion, etc., starvation, or the psychological effects of grief caused by the death of close relatives — children or parents), hard work, weather conditions, or accidents ( for instance, people eaten by wolves, or dying from a horse kick, electrocution at work on a defense construction site, or freezing to death while en route). In the case of refugees, difficulties associated with crossing the front-line or the USSR’s former border in the East are noted. Thus, one Ester Tabak, her husband, and her 6-year-old daughter, all met their death from aerial bombing while fleeing from Abrene in early July, 1941,64 while Haya Shafir, who was fleeing from Rezekne in July 1941, was apprehended on the former border and shot.65 The “Pages” offer extensive information on evacuation destinations and residences. They include Uzbekistan (Tashkent, Vabkent), Kazakhstan (Dzhambul, numerous villages and collective farms), Kirov and Gorky Regions (Gorky, Buturlino, Smagino, Kstovo), Siberia (the town of Yurga in Kemerovo Region) and dozens of other places in republics and regions of the former USSR. Living conditions were harsh everywhere. Starvation and diseases pursued refugees and evacuees wherever they went. Motel Teitelman, who had once lived in Riga, at 16 Avotu St., evacuated first to Yaroslavl, then went to Gorky, continued to Dzhambul from there, and finally died of starvation in December, 1941 in Dzhambul. Velvl Galzband, 56, factory worker, and his wife Heina, fleeing from Krustpils, ended up at the Klara Zetkin collective farm in the Frolovsky district of Stalingrad Region where they died from disease and starvation in 1943 and 1944,66 respectively. Iosif and Dobra Tabak, escaping from Riga, starved to death in Tashkent in 1943.67 In Tashkent in 1944, the same fate befell Haya-Etel Stolbova, a refugee from Ludza.68 Former Riga resident Moisey Shperling died in Vabkent in 1944, also from malnutrition.69 Dora Ioffe70 and Liepaja resident Ida Blekhman71 died in Gorky in January, 1942. Sara Maizel, who had lived in Riga on Baznicas St. died from starvation in 1942 in Kstovo, Gorky Region.72 The “Pages of < 190 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

Testimony” indicate that 10 Jews escaping from Latvia died in Gorky Region. Borya Silin, 9, from Rezekne, died from tuberculosis in Yurga, Kemerovo Region.73 Azriel Melamed, 11, from Ludza, died on November 28, 1941, in the village of Kibya in Udmurtia.74 Israel Has from Riga died from starvation in Krasnoyarsk in the fall of 1941.75 The “Pages of Testimony” contains Information on the Occupation, the geographical distribution of the places, and the specific circumstances of death in the occupied territories that serves to supplement archival materials and other sources which often lack precision in the localization and designation of places of death (streets, buildings, forests, rivers, ravines, etc.) or may even not have such references altogether. The “Pages” tell us, for instance, that fabric trader Pinhus Naglya along with his wife and two children were shot in the Adamovo Estate located near Pskov Highway, several kilometers from Rezekne76. Naftali Gasul, 77, and his wife Sara, 75, were both killed by local policemen in the town of Nerze, Ludza District, in August 1941; Iosel Fonaryov, 82, Faivush Fonaryov, 79, and Idel Fonaryov, 36, were also killed.77 On the other hand, the “Pages of Testimony” cannot always serve as a reliable indication of a death place. For example, many of the “Pages” name the town of Ludza as the place of death for many Jews, although in actual fact they were shot at the army firing range near the village of Cirma some five kilometers from Ludza.78 The “Pages” contain many other specific details (references to the manner of death, killers’ ethnicity, their names, ranks, and positions, affiliation with the aizsargi or perkonkrust,79 etc.). For instance, Photographer Yakov Naglya was bludgeoned to death in Rezekne.80 Barukh Izraelit was hanged in Dagde,81 and Folka Borts82 was hanged near Rezekne. There are 44 documented cases of people who were burned alive, most of them in the synagogues. For instance, the Krasnik family — Dvora, Miryam, Hene, and Feiga — was burned alive in the synagogue on Stabu St. in Riga in July, 1941.83 Mordekhai Ilyam was burned alive in the synagogue at 31 Peldu St., surrounded by many other Jews.84 And among the hundreds of Jews who died in flames at the synagogue on Gogol St. was Yudif Skorokhod with her two children85 and six-month-old Shmuel Shofer.86 Doctor Emmanuel Bag, together with 27 women and children, was burned alive in the prayer house of the old Jewish cemetery on August 21, 1941.87 Riga was not the only place where people were burned alive. Shimon and Brenele Heimans were burned in Vainode.88 Feiga Segal was burned in Nakhman’s synagogue.89 Masha Kogan was burned in a synagogue at Kuldiga, < 191 >

ARON SHNEER

probably with other Jews.90 Ella and Lipman Friedman,91 Nisan, Izrail, and Avraam Beren,92 Sara-Beile and Avraam Katzenelboim93 were burned in a new synagogue at Dankere on August 1941. Motele Wasserman was brutally tortured and burned in a barn at Viesite in August 1941.94 Miryam, 10, and her mother, Fanya (by the maiden name of Tabak), were buried alive in the courtyard of their home in Ogre.95 Among those who died there were 19 suicides (a peculiar form of desperation, resistance, and protest). In Livan, Rachel Levinstam and Mina Treisohn96 and the Kushak family, Roza, Malka, and Leon, took their own lives.97 The Gasul family — Moisey, Izrail, and Asya — shared their fate in Rezekne.98 Meyer Samuelson took his life on December 14, 1941 in Liepaja.99 On December 15, 1941, the night before the mass shooting in Liepaja, seven members of Wulf Roze’s family took sleeping pills, lay down on the floor, and turned on the gas in the kitchen of their home at 8 Tiklu Street.100 The “Page of Testimony” for Sasha Grushko, completed by his wife Ingeborg from Sidney in 1984, tells us that Sasha lived in the Riga Ghetto from February 17, 1942 to August 15, 1943 and then escaped and remained in hiding until November 2, 1943. When they came to arrest him, he shot a policeman and then himself.101 Nahum Smorgo was killed while trying to break free from the Liepaja Ghetto.102 Iehizkiel Rafalovich together with his Zionist friends escaped from the Riga Ghetto in 1942; they were all killed while trying to make it to the partisans.103 Feifesh Harmach, 7, snuck out of the Daugavpils Ghetto to find food for his younger brothers, but was killed by a German patrol.104 Yankel Friedman, who resided at 5 Zaibes St. in Riga, was killed by members of the Perkonkrust on August 1, 1941.105 Little Abram Minkin, 4, was killed with his sister and mother at the Perkonkrust Headquarters at 19 Voldemar St. in Riga106. Pesia Kirsh was shot dead by the Latvians on the doorstep of her home.107 Davidka Zalgaler, who had escaped from Riga to his relatives in Akniste was subjected, to “especially cruel torture” before being shot by local murderers: “they first cut off his nose, and then his ears.”108 An extremely important aspect is the relationship between the Jews and the local population in the occupied territory. The Holocaust divided the local people into murderers and those who helped and saved the Jews. Girsh Borts was hiding in a village near Rezekne, but was betrayed by an acquaintance of his named Agapov, and was shot by the police.109 Hava Fainman-Ginzburg, 85, had spent several months in hiding at the home < 192 >

THE HOLOCAUST IN LAT VIA . . .

of her daughter-in-law, Countess Buturlina, in Priedaine. However, their neighbors betrayed Hava, and she was shot.110 Dmitriy Fainman, who was also in hiding, was recognized in the street and was betrayed by one of his university classmates in 1942.111 Miryam Ioffe, 8, was being concealed by a Latvian family in Smiltene, but we do not know the names of those good people. However, the girl was betrayed by the family’s neighbors and killed by Latvian fascists.112 The “Pages of Testimony” provides yet another rebuttal of the myth deliberately propounded by certain historians who claim that killings of Latvian Jews were perpetrated solely by those locals who were members of the Arajs Kommando. Regrettably, that is not true. Local policemen and the aizsargi also took direct part in the mass shootings. When filling out “Pages of Testimony” for 11 of his relatives killed in Akniste, Shmuel Komras attached a letter dated December 5, 1944, which was written by a soldier from a Latvian division who had learned about the killing of the Akniste Jews from local residents. The letter describes the details of the tragedy. All the Jews living in Akniste, about 175 people, were shot by a group of local policemen. The initiative was taken by a teacher named Valdman and a tailor called Roozitis (incidentally, a former social democrat). In Akniste, like elsewhere, local residents took part in the looting and misappropriation of the murdered Jews’ property. Specific mention is made of a certain Buikis who took a horse and other property at gunpoint from Shneika Shneer who was later shot.113 One of the “Pages of Testimony” provides some information on the fate of Bernhard Goldberg. Once a fighter for Latvian independence (19181920), he had been walking the streets of Riga wearing the Jewish star up until October, 1944, but then disappeared.114 The fact is interesting in itself as it seems to suggest that former fighters for Latvia’s independence who were Jewish enjoyed certain privileges, albeit temporary. Some of the Latvian Jews who were killed during the war were not victims of the Holocaust. Among those there are victims of the Stalinist repressions.115 as well as people who fought at the front and were killed in action.116 The “Hall of Names” documents 1,289 such cases. The circumstances of the soldiers’ deaths are also described in the “Pages of Testimony” (many were completed by the eyewitnesses). They often indicate the servicemen’s ranks and specialities, places of the draft, and military service. Not infrequently, the “Pages” are supplemented by family correspondence, letters from friends and comrades-in-arms, postcards, soldiers’ letters folded into triangles for free military mailing, envelopes, stamps, and photographs from the front. < 193 >

ARON SHNEER

CONCLUSION It should be noted that, for all practical intents and purposes, the “Pages of Testimony” have not yet entered into scientific circulation. My research project on the Ludza Jews that used 130 “Pages of Testimony” — all of the information on that Jewish community available in the “Hall of Names” at the time — may have been the first study based on these particular materials. They helped expand the 700-person list of the Ludza Jews shot in 1941 that I had compiled previously.117 All of the above leads to the conclusion that the “Pages of Testimony”, along with the attached documents and photographs, given a critical approach to the information they present, provides an exceptionally interesting research source and offers new possibilities for studying the various aspects of the Latvian Jews’ history. Translated by Sergeui Silichtchev

NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

For more details, see the article by A. Abraham, Head of the Department. — Editor. “Hall of Names” Daf Ed № 36300 (incoming) “Hall of Names” Daf Ed № 5557127, 560949, 62974. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5577123, 557471, 6688140, 528565. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.2530202, 6886123, 4341242. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5102188, 6417187, 417891. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.688642, 3171286, 7392262, 5766295, 5189121. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5634251, 6402169, 4653153, 571968, 5686180. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.6574220, 4142164, 6822132. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.680576. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5711306. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5711307. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1050604, 1696292, 1009427. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.591532, 024733. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.072245, 1385188. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5736174.5578216. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.03581109, 112684. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1017126, 099550, 597189, 5666123. < 194 >

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Ceturta tautas skaitisana Latvija (1935 gada). Riga, 1937. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1390144. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.681844, 2457269. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.666859. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.540321. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.6937127. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5766287, 5178211. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.162835. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5899183. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.412597. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0170311. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5766287, 5178211. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.125011, 6535209. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.6640144. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.434710. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.3013134. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.445621. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.54462. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0929367. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.7441150. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.440047. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1237232. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0939270. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.728281. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.534951 “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.165133. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.231295. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5807999. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.629482. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.003734. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0584142. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0369208. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1680132. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.162842. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0914305. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.129271. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.7234242. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.6966165. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5429172. < 195 >

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79

80 81 82 83 84 85

“Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0075112. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5034128. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4410149. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0186409. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5278318. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1005196. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5837146. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1185741. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.545795, 545796. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5834318, 665785. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.14053. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.539825. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.173880. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4195218. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5686162. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5460202. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.693170. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.0989315. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.2128906, 2128908, 2128909, 2128910. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.736436, 128017, 128018. Aizsargi (from the Latvian “aizsargs” — defender). The paramilitary nationalist organization in Latvia, founded in March, 1919 to fight the Bolsheviks and comprised mostly of peasants. By June 1940 it numbered 32,000 members; its total strength, including auxiliary women’s and youth formations, amounted to 68,000. The organization was the mainstay of the authoritarian Ulmanis regime in 19341940. In 1940 it was disarmed and liquidated by the Soviet authorities, with many of its members subjected to reprisals. During the German occupation of Latvia the aizsargi made up the bulk of the collaborationist contingent. Perkonkrust (from the Latvian “perkonkrusts” — thunder cross). The Fascist political organization which was created on the basis of the “Latvian National Circle” and drew its membership primarily from student youth. It borrowed its program and trappings from the Italian and German Fascists and was openly anti-Semitic. In 1934 it was banned by the Latvian government, and some of its militant members were arrested. With the start of the German occupation in 1941 it resumed its operation, providing voluntary and most active participants in the mass killings of Jews and Soviet activists. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.2128907. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.01682259. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5807198. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.589515, 589516, 589517, 589518. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.2277805. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.458199. < 196 >

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88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

“Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.580414. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4122199. The date indicated in the “Page” may be inaccurate. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4335146, 4335143. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4572194, 4572204. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1408008. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5524155, 5524157. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.7392258. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5524172, 5524170. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.718839. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.58114129, 5837145. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5774212, 551931. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5766287, 5766288, 5766286. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5102177, 5102183, 5102186. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5663205. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5278318, 5278323, 5278328 (as testified by his son, Leo Roze). “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4280261. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1736211. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1397347. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1777988. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.4656201. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1503286. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5197191. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5050213. Daf Ed Attachment. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5807199. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5055146. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5055144. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.536357. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.5050213 Daf Ed Attachment. “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem. Daf Ed No.1708821. “Pages of Testimony” with such data are registered and preserved only in those cases where they contain other, more relevant information, but the corresponding persons do not make it to the database. For instance, Izrail Tsal, a merchant from Riga, arrested on June 15, 1941, “was transported by the chekists to the Solikamsk prison camp in Sverdlovsk Region. He died of pneumonia on Kislev 24 in the care of a Riga physician and a well-known Zionist, Dr. Wasserman (“Hall of Names” Daf Ed No.466419. Noson Altauzen from Ludza was executed by shooting in the Yenisseisk prison on March 13, 1942. The leader of the Beitar of Latgalia, Kalman Entin, died in the Tyumen prison in March, 1943. They failed to capture him during the mass arrests, and when the war broke out he joined the fight against the Germans on < 197 >

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the banks of the Daugava. He left the city with the retreating Red Army, however he was not keen to live in the USSR. When he reached Ashkhabad in Turkmenia together with a Rezekne resident Izrail Tsemakh, he tried to cross the border into Iran in order, as the investigation records put it, “to fight the German troops in the ranks of a Jewish legion”. He was sentenced to 10 years in a prison labor camp ((“Hall of Names” Daf Ed No.12500-incoming). The book Латвийские евреи-воины, погибшие в борьбе с нацизмом, 1941–1945: Книга памяти (Сост. С. Аролович. Рига, 1997) (Latvia’s Jewish Warriors Fallen in the Fight against Nazism, 1941-1945: A Book of Remembrance, Compiled by S. Arolovich, Riga, 1997) contains 2,166 names. See chapters from the book Лудза — моя Память и боль (Ludza, My Memory and Agony) published in the weekly supplement Еврейский камертон to the Tel Aviv newspaper Новости недели, issues of July 24, August 7, 14, and 28, September 5 and 11, October 9, 16, 23, and 30, November 6 and 13, 1998.

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Pavel Polyan

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST

I was writing this while in the Sonderkommando . . . I wanted to leave this, along with many other notes, as a memory for the future peaceful world, for it to know what was going on here. I buried this in an ashfilled pit as the most reliable place where it would likely be found by those digging to find the remains of the millions of people who had perished here. But they have started covering their tracks of late . . . Zalman Gradowski, “A Letter to Posterity”1 . . . In 1942, in August or September, I don’t quite remember, the Führer issued the order that serving at Auschwitz was to be equated with serving at the front That means, in other words, that those serving here cannot ask for a transfer to another place. No soldier can ask to be transferred from the front . . . From an interview with Joseph Erber, Chief of the women’s camp at the Birkenau concentration camp2 . . . It would take another Dante to describe all the atrocities I have seen at Auschwitz. From the report of March 22, 1945 by Hungarian physician Gyuala Gal3

VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST  WHO ARE THEY? . . . First of all, forget about that Jewish identity debate. Yes, that little dispute “between us, Yids,” forget also about Halacha, the “yiddishe mama,” the Giur — the killers wouldn’t bother about any of that stuff. A Jewish father is just as bad as a Jewish mother. To hell with either one, just kill’em dead! “Mixed marriages, you say, the mischlings? Think before you marry, folks. Alright, you can live for the time being, while we are sorting things out, we just need some thinking time . . . That’s it, we’re done thinking, time to start killing!” < 201 >

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“You’re a non-believer, you say? A secularist? An atheist? Never been to the synagogue? Who cares?! You are still a Jew, donner wetter, ‘cause it’s a race, not a confession! Kill him. To the oven!” “A convert, huh? A renegade? An orthodox believer? A Catholic nun? A future saint? Be you even the Archbishop of Paris or the Pope himself, you are all Yids no matter what! One can smell your stink from a mile away! Off with you! To the crematorium!” “Hey you, Slavic slut!! You’ve lived your entire life with a kike, just look at all those brats you’ve borne him! And you still look kind of defiant, can’t see any gratitude in your eyes. Seems like you don’t want to live, do you?. Where is your gratitude, bitch? Come on, show some friendliness! Oh, you don’t want to? You damn fool! Shoot her!” “And you, darkie, who would you be? An army political officer? A Jew maybe? Come on, say ‘corn’ and, yes, that’s right — show us your dick! Oh well, looks like he ain’t a kike. Wait now, I know what I’ll do, I’ll ask your neighbor, Mykola, he is a local, he knows your kind, he just can smell you guys! See? He is nodding. So you are a kike after all. Pop the bastard! No, the Nazis never bothered about trifles when defining the circle of their Jewish victims. The Jews are a race, a nation and there is no place for halachic hair-splitting, nor is there any time to waste, for death hates to idle. To note: the Holocaust took a toll of not only civilians, but soldiers as well — not those who fell on the battlefield, but those who were taken prisoner by the enemy and were shot by firing squads under inhuman orders from Heydrich. Escaping the Holocaust were those who, “sensing the imminent destruction” or having already suffered from the scourge of racist oppression, fled from the Nazis to Princeton, USA, like German Jews, or evacuated to the Urals, like Soviet Jews. Nor would those Jews who died in the besieged Leningrad be counted as Holocaust victims, because the Finnish-German stranglehold was not targeting Jews specifically but was meant to suffocate all those trapped inside the city. But targeted they sure were at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nobody would have gone to the trouble of building all those gas chambers and crematoria if it hadn’t been for the pressing need for a final solution to just one, but still unsolved, question! Well, the executioners have forced us to use a different conception of the Jews, our own conception and our own notions of who was or was not to be victimized. Yes, they have thrust it upon us, and there is no getting away from that! < 202 >

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THE DEMOGRAPHIC BALANCE OF THE JEWISH POPULATION OF THE AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION CAMP 1 The sweep of the Holocaust follows exactly the contours of the World War II zone on the European theater. The German and Romanian military authorities and punitive organs, not without help from volunteering enthusiasts in the occupied territories, were capturing and killing Jews on the vast expanse of land from Lapland to Crete and from Amsterdam to Nalchik in the North Caucasus. The very center of that unmapped cannibalistic empire, its capital of sorts, or the “residence” of death4 was in Auschwitz (today, Oswiecim5). Here, using the executioners’ favorite word Lebensentziehung,6 every sixth victim of the Shoa was “withdrawn from life.” Therefore, before turning to the demography of the Holocaust as a whole, let us look into the edifying history and dynamics of the estimates of the victims of this place — perhaps the most sinister one on Earth. An overview of the relevant sources is given in numerous studies published in all languages and in all parts of the world. Very detailed primary information can be drawn from non-periodical analytical-documentary compendiums Auschwitz Notebooks and other publications issued by the Research Department of the Oswiecim Memorial Museum. A concise but comprehensive description of such sources is presented in the monograph “The Number of the Auschwitz Victims Based on the Sources and the Results of the Research Conducted in 1945-1990” by Francieszek Piper, the current head of the Research Department.7 The Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the troops of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front, and a number of Soviet state commissions came to investigate the site. Before evacuating the camp, the Germans had destroyed the camps’ archives. Nonetheless, a considerable body of archival materials fell into the hands of the liberators.8 On March 26, 1945, those materials were sent to the Main Archives Department of the NKVD of the USSR, where they were put in order, systematized, and partially examined. The portion of the archives that had ended up in the Soviet Union was eventually divided between three depositories: The State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF, Russian: ГАРФ), The Russian State Military Archive (RSMA, Russian: РГВА), and The Central Military Medical Museum (CMMM, Russian: ЦВММ) in St. Petersburg. < 203 >

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The greater part of the documents belonged to the Central Construction Department of the SS Troops and the Security Police in Auschwitz. These materials were sent for analysis, cataloging, and operational utilization to the Special Archive of the NKVD of the USSR which was tasked with accumulating captured enemy archives and eventually became part of the RSMA. The remaining, smaller, portion of the documents was part of the archive of the Auschwitz Commandant’s Office. The originals were transferred to the CMMM for the investigation of the medical aspects of life and death at the concentration camp. Added to those later on was one of the central documents on the history of the Holocaust, a Yiddish manuscript written by Zalman Gradowski, a Polish Jew from near Grodno, who was a member of the camp’s sonderkommando and who led its uprising on October 7, 1944.9 He described the terrible fate of his family and the extermination technology used at the camp in a notebook which he put in a soldier’s canteen and buried it in a pit filled with human ashes near one of the crematoria.10 Finally, SARF’s ESC (Russian: ЧГК) division11 contains mostly the records and findings of the various Soviet and Soviet-Polish commissions that have worked in the Oswiecim concentration camp investigating Nazi war crimes. Since all those commissions, in preparing their reports, utilized archival materials found on the site, SARF had accumulated many copies of those documents that eventually ended up in the RSMA and the CMMM. Some of those materials are directly related to the demographic estimations of the Holocaust, including the very first attempts to quantify the victims of Auschwitz, dating as far back as March 16, 1945.12 The inmate registry system at that camp was of fundamental importance and went down in history under the name “SELECTION.” The Auschwitz connotations of that seemingly peaceful and positive term, which prewar minds normally associated with agronomy and plant crossing, would henceforth smother all of its former meanings. Some of the new arrivals, suitable for forced labor, medical experiments, and other employments that could only be conjured up in the sick Nazi minds, were put on the one side of the ramp, and others who were old, sick, disabled or underage — on the other. True, nobody was really admiring or complimenting the physical fitness of the first group. They were just registered and sent to the quarantine, and eventually — yet another Auschwitz know-how — were given personal ID numbers, which were tattooed on their wrists. It was like saying to them: “Alright, we still need you, so we will even be feeding you. You just be a good boy, and we’ll let you live for the time being.” < 204 >

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The German canteen which held the notes of Zalman Gradowski, one of the chroniclers of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando and a leader of the October 7, 1944 uprising. The canteen was unearthed near Crematorium IV in March, 1945 (photographed in 1945)

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The other group, usually a far more numerous one, was given a different signal. “Why should we register all of you guys? You were not meant for this camp, you’ll be going to a different one, and it’s a nice labor camp in the East. But you need to take a good shower and be disinfected before you go on your way, so you just go on to the locker room, do as you are told and make no fuss. Surely, it’s a shame you won’t be staying with us, but there is nothing we can do about it — that’s ‘special treatment.’” In a sense, there was a grain of truth in all those lies. If you fail the selection, you have no place in those sumptuous weatherized barracks, on those delightfully soft and comfortable bunks! You will be going to a quite different camp instead, which, however, is just steps away from here. (Evil tongues will later use disparaging names like “extermination camp,” “death factory,” etc. Лto describe that wonderful place). While in its own way it was a perfectly organized enterprise — innovative, geared to mass production — in short, a worthy ideological and engineering product of the best Nazi minds. Everything here is carefully thought through, down to the smallest technical detail. Take, for instance, the air-heaters in the gas chambers that caused the prussic acid contained in the granules of a certain special disinfectant to evaporate faster and bring death earlier; or those grooves to quicken the flow of smelted human fat; or the sieves for separating un-burnt bone parts from the ash; or the Red Cross-marked “ambulance” trucks carrying cans filled with those same granules; and finally, the enterprise’s selfless employees in gas masks who heroically risked their lives every day in the name of the lofty and purifying goal, the deJewification of Europe.13 The Auschwitz concentration camp, initially just one of the many such camps in the SS-run network, became, along with Lublin-Majdanek,14 almost the only one of them that tried to identify itself with a specialized, albeit officially undeclared, mission, which was in essence its primary one — the mission of withdrawing Jews from life. No, it was not overly ashamed of itself, nor was it too secretive, that camp within a camp! Yes, it was its gas chambers whose dragon bellies were sucking in long lines of humans, still moving and breathing; it was its pyres and crematoria stacks that day and night were spewing smoke or casting around fiery lights, and the small grove skirting the far end of the huge camp could not hide from view that lurid glow or stop the nauseatingly sweet smell of burnt human flesh. Everybody had to pass the rites of selection — both those who were to live, and the others. And when the lucky able-bodied ones in the real < 206 >

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concentration camp, now wearing prison stripes and personal numbers tattooed on their arms, finally realized how all those events were connected with each other, they just stopped wondering what fate befell their near and dear with whom they had parted ways forever on that selection ramp . . . 2 The overall population of that second, invisible camp numbered 880,000, according to F. Piper. The overwhelming majority, 98%, were Jews; the other 2% were comprised of part Soviet POWs, Poles, and unidentified inmates from other camps who were transferred here for the same humane purpose of budget-conscious destruction — or a destruction of the experimental sort. As a matter of fact, gassing itself started as an experiment — one conducted on some 2,000 Soviet POWs. They were brought to Auschwitz in early September, 1941 (the first several hundred may have arrived even earlier, in August, and were used as an advance group of guinea pigs). The POWS were brought in from the nearby stalags, where they, too, had recently undergone the selection process and been successfully unmasked and exposed either as army political officers or as Jews. It was not allowed to shoot them in the stalags on the German territory, so they were sent, under “combat orders” from the RSHA Chief Reinhard Heydrich, on their last journey to the specially allocated killing places. We can always shoot them, it was decided, but wouldn’t it be better to sacrifice them in the name of science, a science which was definitely central to the Reich’s existence — that of killing people? And so that group of Soviet POWS, intended for an experimental suffocation with gases, was destined to give rise to the three fundamental Auschwitz practices that sealed the fate of Jews: the practice of selection, the practice of non-registration, and the practice of killing in gas chambers.15 These were also used for the disinformation and concealment of the executioners’ true purpose: designating the entire camp at Birkenau (Auschwitz-2) as a POW camp for 125-200,000 inmates was probably meant to serve as an excuse for the building of the giant anti-louse disinfection chambers and the monstrous-looking crematoria.16 Unmasking that attempt was also the fact that the crematoria were not managed by the Birkenau Commandant’s Office or the camp’s hygiene service, but by its political department!17

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3 However, the absence of the registration and the card index does not mean that there were no other documents. For instance, there are numerous documents related to inmate transportation (train passenger lists, lists of arriving trains, etc.). There are documents of that type pertaining to the deportation of 437,402 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.18 Besides those, there were reports to the higher-ups on the results of the selections. The camp’s political department was sending them to the RSHA in Berlin, while the department of work force utilization was directing theirs to the D II Section of the Main Department of the Concentration Camps of the SS and the Security Police. None of the selection reports have survived, but there are at least three reports of the second type available. One of those, dated February 20, 1943, refers to the arrival of three trains from Theresienstadt on January 21, 24, and 27, 1943. They brought a total of 5,022 Jews. Out of that number, 930, including 614 men and 316 women, were selected for work employment; the remaining 4,092, including 1,422 men and 2,670 women, were selected for “special accommodation” (Sonderunterbringung).19 However, there also were other terms that were more widely used to describe such arrangements: “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) and “special measures” (Sondermaßnahmen).20 However, the true meaning of these words was always the same — “liquidation,” “killing.” The first reports of the mass killings at Auschwitz began leaking to the outside as early as 1942. For instance, there was a kasiba21 from the Polish underground received by the International Red Cross representatives who reported the existence of two gas chambers with a capacity to kill 1,200 people a day and informed of the destruction of 300,000 people by that time. Another report of February 24, 1943 gave an updated death toll of 640,000 people killed since the commissioning of the camp and up to December 15, 1942, including 520,00 Jews. The kasiba of September 22, 1943 reports the destruction of 468,000 Jews since September, 1942.22 Several reports dated 1944 detail the fate of the Hungarian Jews, with the numbers of victims being close to reality for the first time: the camp was receiving several (up to 13) trains every day with four gas chambers destroying up to 10,000 people daily. In 1944, the Hungarian intelligence intercepted coded messages from the ambassadors of the USA and Great Britain in Switzerland reporting the extermination of 1.5 million Jews at Auschwitz.23 But even without those reports, the German goings-on at Auschwitz were no secret for the Allies. Great Britain and the USA learned of the gas chambers no later than December, 1942, from a memorandum reporting < 208 >

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the death of two million Jews to date which was handed to Roosevelt and Churchill by Jewish community leaders. That was followed by the publication, on December 18, 1942, of a joint declaration of the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Greece, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, USA, USSR, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee, on the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population being perpetrated by the German authorities — in other words, the Holocaust.24 The English, who had cracked the SS radio communications code, learned (or could have learned) that even earlier.25 The aerial photographs of the area were made by the US Air Force as early as April 4, 1944. But their operational interest centered on the IG Farbenindustrie chemical plant in Monowiz rather than the Birkenau crematoria.26 The Soviets were not unaware of what was going on, either. The earliest information on Auschwitz obtained from Soviet nationals was provided by A.S.Pyatko and B.Y.Pegov, whot escaped from the camp in November, 1943.27 Later on, on March 16, 1944 a German line-crosser named Heinrich Anis who, after having served at Auschwitz just three weeks, was sent to the front where he surrendered to the soldiers of the Soviet 50th Army and gave a detailed account of everything he knew about the monstrous extermination camp, down to the horrible smell of the burning human bodies28. Fairly complete and reliable information on the German concentration camps in general and nearly every one of them in particular was obtained after the liberation of Majdanek on July 3, 1944, as well as after the liberation of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. The documents captured and the testimonies of the members of the camp administrations provided the Soviet authorities with the necessary data on the German concentration camps, their purpose, operational procedures, and the technologies employed. Based on that information and intelligence gathered by the partisans, the NKVD of the Ukraine prepared, in August, 1944, a consolidated report on the Auschwitz concentration camp.29 On September 29, 1944, Sergey Kruglov, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, State Security Commissar 2nd Grade, wrote to the Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky: With regard to the German concentration camp at Oswiecim and the mass destruction of prisoners there, we have found and interrogated prisoners of war who know about the existence of that camp . . . The camp can accommodate up to 40,000 persons, and the Germans systematically replace the exterminated inmates with new prisoners who are brought there by special trains. The testimonies given by the prisoners of war about the < 209 >

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mass destruction of inmates by the Germans, use of torture, beatings, etc. characterizes the Oswiecim camp in the same way as “Majdanek.”. Up until 1943, the Germans were incinerating the corpses in 2 specially equipped ovens. In 1943, they already had 8 ovens. This means that the extermination of people in the camp took on a mass character. Based on accounts by their friends and relatives, the prisoners of war characterize the camp regime as similar to the one that had existed at “Majdanek.”. According to the POWs, the Germans have already destroyed several hundred thousand inmates at that camp . . . 30

Thus, reports on the camp itself, its temporary inhabitants and their permanent tragedy, which day after day was unfolding at Auschwitz in such a routine, matter-of-fact manner, did reach the Allies’ headquarters, but were pigeon-holed and until a certain time just refused to make it to the press. The first leaks happened no earlier than mid-1944.31 On June 15, 1944, the BBC ran a report on 4,000 Czechoslovakian Jews deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt and killed in the gas chambers on March 7. The perpetrators of that murder, said the report, were all known by name and would soon get their deserts32. The Committee on War Refugee Affairs under the US Government made public a report on the destruction in Auschwitz of 1.5 million Jews as of November, 1943. Alfred Wetzler and Walter Rosenberg, a.k.a. Rudolf Vrba, two Jews escaped from Auschwitz-1 on April 7, 1944 gave an even greater number — 1,765,000 Jews as of April, 1944.33 That was the highest figure ever to emerge from all the reports sent by the Auschwitz underground. Broken down by country, that total equaled: Poland — 900,000; European Jews from other countries previously deported to Poland — 300,000; France — 150,000; Holland — 100,000; Germany — 60,000; Belgium — 50,000; Yugoslavia, Italy, and Norway — 50,000, Greece — 45,000, Lithuania — 30,000, Czechia, Moravia, and Austria — 30,000; Slovakia — 30,000.34 Taking into account victims of other ethnicities, the overall number of people killed at Auschwitz was estimated at 2,000,000 by the Underground. Although many estimates were substantially exaggerated compared to verifiable realities, it is still amazing how much attention was being paid by the leaders of the Underground to such estimates and calculations and how painstakingly new information was gathered and processed. Similar figures were circulating at the other center of underground resistance at Auschwitz, the Jewish activists of the Sonderkommando. Both Zalman Gradowski and Zalmen Lewental mentioned in their heart-wrenching reports “millions” of Jews virtually passing through their hands.35 Other < 210 >

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members of the Sonderkommando from among the less than a hundred men who have miraculously survived provided the following estimates: Stanislaw Jankowski, a.k.a. Alter Feinsilber — 2 million; Yakov Kaminski — 3.5 million (as of August 1943 and as related by Yakov Gordon); Henryk Tauber and Schlomo Dragon — 4 million; Henryk Mandelbaum — 4.5 million.36 Estimates of Jewish victims by non-Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz are on the same order of magnitude. Kaziemierz Smolen, a Pole, who worked as a clerk at the political department’s registration office, said that no less than 300,000 people from among the registered inmates were killed at the camp, while the number of unregistered victims amounted, according to his estimate, to 2.5 million, which makes a total of 2.8 million. Stanislawa Rachwalowa, who worked at the same department, said that she heard that the number of victims was between 4 and 5 million. Witold Kula put the number at 4-4.5 million, while Kazimierz Czizsewski believed it to be between 4 and 5 million. Hans Roth, a German, spoke of 4 million, adding that it was “common knowledge.” Bernard Chardybon, a Frenchman (?), who was the capo of the Kanada-1 Kommando at the main camp Auschwitz-1, cited the highest figure among such estimates, from 5 to 5.5 million people.37 Similar estimates were given by two Hungarian witnesses: Bela Fabian, who spoke of 5.1 million people (April 11, 1945),38 and doctor Gyula Gal, who said a total of 5 million people were killed, out of which number 3.5 million were Jews and 1.5 million were Poles and Russians (March 22, 1945).39 Strange as it may seem, most representatives of the “executioner” side offer similar numbers: Perry Broad and Friedrich Entress — 2-2.5 million; Maximilian Grabner, head of the camp’s Political Department — at least 3 million; Wilhelm Borger — no less than 4 million; Wlodziemierz Bilan — 5-5.5 million40. Confessions by the most well-informed of the witnesses, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp, Rudolf Höss, are of special interest. In his testimony at the Nuremberg Trial he cited the figure of 2.5 million as the total number of Jews killed at Auschwitz, citing information from Adolf Eichmann. Höss himself found that estimate too high: “Even Auschwitz’s capacity for destruction was not limitless.” When trying to recall the number of Jewish victims by country he gave the following series of figures, adding up to 1.13 million: Upper Silesia and the General Government — 250,000; Germany and Theresienstadt — 100,000; Holland — 95,000; Belgium — 20,000; France — 110,000; Greece — 65,000; Hungary — 400,000; Slovakia — 90,000.41 As for Adolf Eichmann, who was tried in Jerusalem, he refused to confirm or refute any specific number of his victims at Auschwitz.42 < 211 >

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4 The initial stage in determining the number of victims at Auschwitz was directly connected with the results arrived at by the Extraordinary State Commission (ESC) which was set up by the Soviet Authorities and became active immediately after the camp’s liberation. An Expert Technical Commission was also created,43 which questioned about 200 former inmates and former camp employees. The individuals who were actively cooperating included the three former Sonderkommando members — Henryk Tauber, Shlomo Dragon, and Henryk Mandelbaum — who voluntarily returned to the former camp site.44 The Commission also made a thorough study of the drawings and technical documentation for the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria and gas chambers, as well as their remains on the site. The press (for instance, the Soviet Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda [on the day before the last day of the war!45]) published only the final findings of the ESC on the subject of our interest. Very indicative is the fact that in the ESC Report on Oswiecim, Jews are not mentioned at all! On the other hand, it does mention (and without good reason) Romanian and Bulgarian citizens, who were not characteristic of the Auschwitz inmate contingent (although some Romanian Jews from Transylvania did end up at Auschwitz — together with Hungarian Jews). The Commission’s conclusions are based exclusively on technical parameters of the extermination equipment and contain a number of small and large inaccuracies. These are borne out by a comparison of the Commission’s findings with intermediate data and results which we were the first to consolidate and present for review (Annex 2). For instance, in the first of its estimates entitled “Calculations to determine the number of people destroyed by the Germans in the Oswiecim camp” (Annex 2.6), the Commission divides the death camp’s activities into stages and, by summing up the data from each of the stages, concludes that the number of people killed in the Auschwitz gas chambers and burnt in the crematoria is 4,058,000. However, the experts made several errors in the process, including arithmetic ones. They apparently based their calculations not so much on the technical parameters of the installations as on the evidence of the Sonderkommando members, which led them to assume an overrated daily throughput for the crematoria (and very considerably overrated, too — by a factor of 1.5 on average). But the main thing is that the uneven character of the crematoria’s operation, though taking into account through the application of corrective coefficients, was < 212 >

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still greatly underestimated. After all, peak capacity modes characteristic of the “Hungarian operation” never occurred before or after it.46 The data on the number of months the crematoria were in operation are not quite accurate either (the margins of error range from 1-3 to 11 months!). The final “Act” of the Commission (Annex 2.7 and 2.8) presents a summation of 5,121,000 victims which, even with no account taken of the pyres near gas chamber No. 2,47 by far exceeds the 4,058,000 figure. This discrepancy has yet to be sorted out, but hypothetically it could be surmised that the 5,112,000 number was arrived at without applying the corrective coefficients from the first estimation, which took into account the actual crematorium loads at different times. It is hard to understand why it was necessary to cite a much higher figure, given the fact that the official final result was still stated to equal at least 4 million persons, just as in the previous calculation. Basically, such inconsistencies are quite understandable and excusable for such an early stage in the investigation of the camp that took place just several weeks after the liberation. It is unfortunate, however, that this raw estimate of 4 million, erroneous even then, was ideologically sanctioned and immediately accepted as the ultimate truth and eventually enshrined wherever possible: the Auschwitz Museum, museum guides, and even cut in the granite of the memorial plaques at the entrance . . . The inscription on the Monument to all Auschwitz victims in 22 languages reads: “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about four million men, women and children mainly Jews from various countries of Europe. Auschwitz-Birkenau 1940-1945.”48 And it could not be otherwise. For there were practically no divergences between the official Soviet and the official Polish statistics on the number of victims! Immediately after the close of the Soviet Commission’s activities, a Polish Commission got down to work, set up within the general framework of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. At this point it could already draw on a number of materials that were not available in the winter and early spring of 1945, including Rudolf Höss’ testimony. Nevertheless, the Polish Commission, too, took the number of at least 4 million victims as the basis. The same number was re-confirmed at the main trial of Nazi criminals in Nuremberg.49 So it is not surprising that the same figure was cut on the memorial plaques that confront the visitors to the Birkenau Museum on their arrival to the ramp. < 213 >

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Diverging from the four million figure, albeit slightly, were the numbers cited by the Supreme People’s Court of Poland which sentenced Rudolf Höss to death as a person responsible for the murder of 300,000 registered Auschwitz prisoners, an unverifiable number of unregistered prisoners (but no less than 2.5 million), mostly Jews, and 12,000 Soviet POWs. It is interesting to note that the range of numbers of victims cited in support of the sentence was no less than 3 and no more than 4 million. As for those figures, the Court requested two expert opinions — one from professor R. Davidowski, whom we already know (and whose opinion differed little from his earlier collective calculations) and the other from Nachman Blumental. The latter applied a totally different approach proceeding from the overall number of Polish Jews killed in the Shoa. In Poland that number was assumed to equal 3 million. Having analyzed the data on the numbers of Polish Jews killed in the other five death camps as well as the number of Jews deported to Auschwitz from other European countries, Blumental arrived at the conclusion that between 1.3 and 1.5 million Jews were destroyed at Auschwitz, including 1 million from Europe, including 450,000 from Hungary.50 The figures cited above and their substantiations were, in essence, a product of official demography (findings by international and national organizations and courts). For a long time to come — up until the 1980s, if not the 1990s — they would be exerting a strong pressure not only on the memorial work of the museums, but the science of history itself, especially in the East European countries.51 Western researchers were much less influenced by this kind of hypnosis, hence a far wider scattering of estimates, from 770,000 (Gerald Reitlinger) to 2.5 million (Aharon Weiss and Yehuda Bauer). It seems that Eugen Kohon with his estimate of 3.5 to 4.5 million was the only one among them who could be inscribed within the system of Soviet-Polish demographic views.52 Reitlinger’s estimate appears in the first edition of his classic book, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, published in 1953.53 Later, Reitlinger revised his results slightly higher: of the 800-900.000 Jews arriving at Auschwitz, 790-840,000 were killed.54 Researchers like Raul Hilberg, Wolfgang Scheffler, and Edward Crankshaw proceed from 1 million Jewish victims at Auschwitz,55 Georges Wellers postulates 1,352,000,56 Martin Gilber — 1.5 million,57, the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust — 1.6 million,58 Leon Poliakoff, Lucy Dawidowicz, and Joseph Billig — 2 million,59 Yehuda Bauer — 2.5 million,60 Aharon Weiss — between 1 and 2.5 million.61 < 214 >

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However, amazing as it may sound, more often than not all these publications are not based on the authors’ own research but, rather, on a certain attitude — a corrective coefficient of sorts — to the very same official demography. Billing, for one, obtains his 2,000,000 figure by averaging Höss’ and Eichmann’s numbers and adding to the result the 230,000 registered Jewish dead. On the other hand, Georges Wellrs’ study is a truly original one. In a way, he trod in the methodological footsteps of Reitlinger and undertook a fresh analysis of the prisoner streams arriving at Auschwitz from individual countries. Proceeding from the now more accurate empirical material he calculated the number of those deported to Auschwitz to equal 1,613,000 (see Table 1).62 Table 1 Number of people deported to Auschwitz in 1940-1945 and those killed or dying in Auschwitz (according to Georges Wellers) Categories

Number Deported

Killed or Died

% of Perished

1,613,455

1,471,595

91.2

1,433,405

1,352,980

94.4

146,605

86,675

59.1

Gypsies

21,665

20,255

93.5

Russians

11,780

11,685

99.2

Total Including: Jews Poles and others

Source: Piper, Franciszek. Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz aufgrund der Quellen und der Erträge der Forschung 1945 bis 1990. Oşwiecim: Verlag Staatliches Museum in Oşwiecim, 1993. S. 178.

Raul Hilberg was probably the only researcher to have adopted a different approach. Like Henryk Blumenthal, he assumed that the total number of Jews perished in the six concentration camps on the territory of today’s Poland was 3,000,000, out of which number over 1,000,000 died at Auschwitz, 750,000 in Treblinka, 600,000 in Belzec, 200,000 in Sobibor, 150,000 in Chelmno, and 50,000 in Majdanek. Both Wellers’ and Hilberg’s results were challenged by Franciszek Piper, one of the Polish researchers who once was a staunch adherent to the demographic canons of the 1945-1946. However, this did not prevent him much later, in the 1990s, from analyzing all relevant literature and having the daring to critically revise it and offer his own estimate (see Table 2)63. < 215 >

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Table 2 Number of people deported to Auschwitz in 1940-1945 and those killed or died at Auschwitz (according to F. Piper) Categories

Total

Unregistered

Registered

Total

1,305,000

905,000

400,000

Including those who were killed or died

1,082,000

880,000

202,000

Jews

1,095,000

890,000

205,000

Including those who were killed or died

960,000

865,000

95,000

Poles

147,000

10,000

137,000

Including those who were killed or died

74,000

10,000

64,000

Gypsies

23,000

2,000

21,000

Including those who were killed or died

21,000

2,000

19,000

Soviet POWs

15,000

3,000

12,000

Including those who were killed or died

15,000

3,000

12,000

25,000

—

25,000

12,000

—

12,000

Others (Czechs, Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Yugoslavs, Germans, Austrians, etc. Including those who were killed or died

According to: Piper, Franciszek. Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz aufgrund der Quellen und der Erträge der Forschung 1945 bis 1990. Oşwiecim: Verlag Staatliches Museum in Oşwiecim, 1993. S. 200, 202. Table 29, 31.

While correcting Reitlinger’s and Wellers’ inaccuracies (regrettably, with no detailed explanation of those given), Piper offers his own estimate of the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz — from 960,000 to 1,000,000. However, the latest findings by Christian Gerlach and Aly Goetz have demonstrated that about 105,000 of Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz were not killed, but were transferred to other camps.64 < 216 >

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Therefore, the corresponding correction should be made to the overall number of Jewish victims at the camp: Dieter Paul puts it at around 900,000.65 Yet another attempt at launching a statistical “revolution” was made by Fritjof Meyer, a journalist working for Der Spiegel, who tried to cut the number of Jewish victims at Auschwitz by half.66 He drew his arguments from the documents already aired at the trial of D. Irwing vs. D. Lipstadt, whichtook place in London in 2000. Though previously published,67 the value of those documents, he claimed, was greatly underestimated. He made his first investigative “discovery” by exposing a contradiction in the correspondence between the Topf and Sons companyand the SS concerning the construction of the crematoria at Auschwitz: if the data on the crematoria’s throughput are assumed to be true and universally applicable, then the statistics will have to be revised. Meyer does not analyze the contradiction itself while turning a blind eye to all the circumstances that support different figures or, which is most important, document a different practice. His second “discovery” was made by taking a fresh view of that part of Rudolf Höss’ testimony where he says that the crematoria could not be operated continuously and had to be stopped every 8-10 hours.68 The conclusion: Crematoria 2 and 3 during the 971 days in operation could not have incinerated more than 262,170 bodies; and Crematoria 4 and 5 with 359 days in operation could not have handled more than 51,696, bringing the combined total to 313,866. Another 107,000 bodies were burnt in the fire pits near Bunkers 1 and 2.69 Adding the 12,000 corpses which were, according to Meyer, burnt in the old Crematorium 1, yields him the soughtafter result: the total number of bodies burnt at Auschwitz was 433,000. In point of fact, the hypothesis postulating the repeated cool-down and warm-up cycles for the Auschwitz crematoria as well as the claim of many-week idle periods of Crematoria 4 and 5 run counter to the dozens of testimonies, including the first-hand ones given by the Sonderkommando members and the SS guards, and the daily records of work team assignment at the camp.70 The “bugaboo” that F. Meyer strives to debunk is the latest victim estimate provided in the works by historians from Oswiecim, Francizsek Piper, in particular. The figures that Piper has arrived at are shown in Table 2: Out of the 1,305,000 people sent to Auschwitz, 1,095,000 were Jews. Out of that number, 205,000 were registered, and 895,000 were not. Of the 960,000 Jews who perished at Auschwitz, 865,000 were registered and 95,000 were unregistered. Interestingly, Meyer hardly ever tries to attack Piper himself, limiting himself to a token criticism regarding the latter’s failure to obtain a more precise number of Hungarian Jews or saying that 300,000 people as < 217 >

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the estimate of those deported from Poland is too large a figure.71 Instead, he chooses for a whipping-girl Danuta Czech, the compiler of the fundamental Auschwitz Kalendarium which painstakingly chronicles practically all the events that took place at Auschwitz, including the listing of all prisoner shipments of which she has information.72 According to Meyer, she estimates the total number of people deported to Auschwitz at 735,000, excluding Hungarian Jews. Deducting from that number 400-405,000 unregistered prisoners,73 as well as 15,000 Soviet POWs (the latter, for a second time, incidentally), he arrives at the figure of 315,000 inmates left without registration. Then he proceeds to add up those who did not perish at Auschwitz: 225,000 persons transferred to other camps,74 59,000 who were evacuated in January, 1945, and another 8,500 who stayed at Auschwitz and its subsidiaries. All the rest, i.e., 428,500 persons (a number extremely close to the amount of burnt corpses calculated by Meyer) are the victims of Auschwitz! Don’t think, however, that he ignored or forgot the Hungarian Jews. No, he even uses Danuta Czech’s numbers here (60 transports, a total of 180,000 people, and 29,000 of them registered). But, while doing that, he omits to mention that these data are incomplete, but, on the other hand, does not miss the chance to point out, giving reference to Christian Gerlach and Aly Goetz, that 110,000 out of that number were redirected to other camps.75 This means that there just 40,000 Hungarian Jews left for the gas chambers! It remains a mystery then, what the entire 800-strong Sonderkommando could have been busy with from May through October 1944 — so very busy that they had to be moved to living quarters closer to the work?! Adding this 40,000 to the already obtained number of 430,000 or so and throwing in another 30,00076 to allow for methods of Lebensentziehung other than the gas chambers (shootings, lethal injections, medical experiments, etc.) F. Meyer arrives at an unexpectedly round number of half a million of Auschwitz victims (at the very end he will pitch in another 10,000). Quite unexpectedly again, he will also claim that only 356,000 of them perished in the gas chambers77. If up until that point all his steps were based on at least a modicum of argumentation, this time around he did not bother with any props to support this radical change in the makeup of the tools of destruction. At the same time F. Meyer has the impudence to make a sneering observation to the effect that there exists no documentary proof of the fact that those who were screened off during the selection as unfit to work were then sent to the oven. This kind of argument is so disgustingly familiar that it makes the difference between the Holocaust deniers of the years past and the “neorevisionist” Mr. Meyer almost indiscernible. His “denial” leanings < 218 >

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are also made obvious by the scornful and arrogant attitude to the victims whom he treats as mere units of measure. Furthermore, according to Meyer, the last word (before his own) in assessing the results of the SS-men’s main type of gainful employment at Auschwitz-Birkenau belongs not to Franciszek Piper, but to Jean-Claude Pressac,78 who estimated the number of killed at no less than 631,000 and no more than 711,000; of that number from 470,000 to 550,000 were unregistered Jews killed in the gas chambers. As for his own findings, Meyer sets them forth as follows: 510,000 people were eliminated; 356,000 of those were killed by gas. And he concludes his article with this beautiful phrase: “This result does not relativize barbarity, but makes its dimensions more precise, while serving a stark warning against a new civilization catastrophe.” That sentence epitomizes the entire methodology underlying the article, aimed at confusing and bemusing the reader with its bogus sensationalism, as well as the refurbished ideology of denial camouflaging as the classical science of history and assuming a new, reductionalist guise: no, we will no longer deny the Holocaust as a fact or the existence of the gas chambers; instead, we will minimize its scale as far as possible, cutting, if nothing else, the ground from under the “myth of the six million.”

THE DEMOGRAPHIC BALANCE OF EUROPEAN AND WORLD JEWRY 1 Let us now take a look at the demography and statistics of the Holocaust in an all-European dimension. It is interesting to note that as early as 1940, i.e. in the pre-cannibalistic phase of the Jewish deportations by Germany, when it still was a matter of a physical or, to be more precise, geographical transfer of the members of this undesirable tribe “by resettling the Jews from the European economical space to a different, yet unallocated, territory. The scope of this project will involve 5.8 million Jews.”79 In other words, the number of the recipients of that resettlement was estimated at nearly six million!80 By late 1941 the project’s conception had changed, so that at the Wannsee Conference, moved from December 1941 to January 1942, all the participants already knew or understood what was implied by terms like “resettlement,” ‘final solution,” “special treatment,” etc. They were also made aware of the scale of the future task or, to be exact, work in progress. < 219 >

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Below is the table which, no doubt, was distributed among the attendees and was included in the Conference proceedings (see Table 3). Table 3 Number of European Jewry (as of late 1941, estimated) Country

Jewish Population

A Reich (old territories) Ostmark East Territories General Government Bialystok District Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Belgium Denmark France (occupied territory) France (non-occupied territory) Greece The Netherlands Norway B Bulgaria Great Britain Finland Ireland Italy, including Sardinia Albania Croatia Portugal Romania, including Bessarabia Sweden Switzerland Serbia Slovakia Spain Turkey (European Part) Hungary

131,800 43,700 420,000 2,284,000 400,000 74,200 Judenfrei 3,500 34,000 43,000 5,600 165,000 700,000 69,600 160,800 1,300 48,000 330,000 2,300 4,000 58,000 200 40,000 3,000 342,000 8,000 18,000 10,000 88,000 6,000 55,500 742,800 < 220 >

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Table 3 (the end) Country

Jewish Population

USSR Ukraine Byelorussia, without Bialystok Total:

5,000,000 2,994,684 446,484 11,000,000

Source: A Table from the Proceedings of the Wannsee Conference, 1.20.1942, as presented in: Piper, Franciszek. Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz aufgrund der Quellen und der Erträge der Forschung 1945 bis 1990. Oşwiecim: Verlag Staatliches Museum in Oşwiecim, 1993. S. 175–176. Note: “A” countries are occupied or dependent territories, “B” countries are non-occupied and independent.

It should be noted that the Table is rather inaccurate and substantially overstates the numbers of European Jewry. Which is, of course, understandable: after all, the Conference was not concerned with petty regional arithmetic, but was considering matters of principle, such as the Jewish question, its final solution, and the very nature of that finality. The spring and summer of 1943 saw the commissioning of a series of “production lines” at the Auschwitz death factory: gas chambers 2, 3, 4, and 5 with the attached crematoria. They had been built double-quick and, if it had not been for some technical errors, their ovens would have come aflame even earlier. The facilities’ production capacity was opening up new horizons, and it was important for Himmler to know exactly how many European Jews had already been annihilated by that time. So it was at that point (presumably in April 1943) that his aide-decamp delivered his order for the SS statistics inspector Richard Korherr to prepare a progress report on the subject, reflecting the 31 March 1943 status quo. Korherr’s report read in part: “The European balance of Jewry. The reduction of Jewish populations in Europe must be by no less than 4 million heads. Considerable masses of Jews exist on the European continent (4 million besides Russia) and in Hungary (750,000), Romania (302,000) and, perhaps, France. < . . . > It was expected that, starting in 1933, in other words, in the first decade of National-Socialist power, the European Jewry would be reduced by a half overall. However, one half of that half, in other words, one quarter of Europe’s total Jewish population as of 1932 has fled to other parts of the Earth.”81 To be sure, the SS statistician was in possession of a wealth of numerical data, the very data that was so painstakingly destroyed later on. As a matter of fact, there are two Korherr reports, not one, (and there were certainly others as well). < 221 >

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Information from Korherr’s report may have leaked to the SS milieu. In any case, it is a known fact that, as early as 1943, some of the SSmen mentioned the number of 4-4.5 million of killed Jews in private conversations. Their friends certainly did not believe them, thinking the figure to be boastfully exaggerated.82 Table 4 Number of Liquidated (“evacuated”) Jews (based on the Korherr reports) Countries and Regions (with dates of their establishment)

As of 12.31.1942

Old Reich (1.30.1933), including the Sudetenland (9.29.1938)

100,516

Ostmark (3.13.1938)

47,555

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (3.16.1938)

69,677

From 1.1.1943 to 3.31.1943

113,015

East Territories (September, 1939) with Bialystok (June, 1941)

222,177

General Government (September, 1939) with Lemberg (June, 1941)

1,274,166

France (11.10.1942)

41,911

7,995

The Netherlands

38,571

13,832

Belgium

16,886

1,616

Norway

532

158

Greece

—

13,435

Slovakia

56,691

854

Croatia

4,927

—

Bulgaria

—

11,364

Russian territories, including former Baltic countries (June, 1941)

633,300

TOTAL:

1,873,539

162,269

2,506,849

2,669,118

Source: Wellers, Georges, “Die Zahl der Opfer der Endlösung und der Korherr-Bericht,” Aus der Politik und der Geschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung “Das Parlament” (Berlin). 1978. Nr. B 30/78. 29 Juli. S. 27.

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On May 13, 1944 the Danziger Vorposten, the newspaper of the Danzig District Committee of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party, splashed an article intriguingly titled “Judas Facing His End.”. Its author, Parteigenosse Wilhelm Loebsack, wrote: “In different parts of Europe, Jewry has been dealt some heavy blows. Their concentration hotbeds that used to be vital to Jewish strength, such as we once saw in Poland, in Warsaw or Lublin, have already been neutralized, and the same is happening today to the settlements of 1.5 million Jews in Hungary. Thus, in these two countries alone 5 million Jews have been neutralized. By the same token, the laws against Jewry, long adopted in other European countries, are being applied more and more stringently. It was these Jews that world Jewry pinned their plans and hopes on. ‘They are our Trojan Horse in the enemy fortress. Thousands of Jews living in Europe are the main factor for the destruction of our enemy. On them we rely for priceless assistance in achieving our victory,’ said Haim Weizman, President of the World Zionist Organization in his speech of December 28, 1942 before the delegates to its World Congress in New York. These words are all the more significant given the fact that Hungary was our ally at the time, and yet Weizman was quite confident of his Jewish friends there . . . ”83. Of course, that paper was no statistical source, but just a propaganda rag. And let’s not forget when that blood-thirsty article was written. For instance, on November 26, 1945, Wilhelm Noetl, a former SS major and South-Eastern Europe Desk officer with Department VI of the RSHA’s Foreign Military Intelligence, told the Nuremberg Tribunal about his conversation with Adolf Eichmann that had taken place late August, 1944 in Budapest. Shortly before, Eichmann had prepared a report for Himmler and he shared some of his achievements with Noetl. He said that approximately 4 million Jews had been eliminated in the death camps and about two million more had been shot by the einsatzkommandos during the assault on Russia. Himmler, who presumed that the number of destroyed Jews exceeded 6 million, was left dissatisfied.84 One and a half months later, on January 3, 1946, also at the Nuremberg Trials, Dieter Wislizeni, who was a close collaborator of Eichmann, responsible for the mass deportations of Jews from Slovakia, Greece, and Hungary, said that Eichmann always talked about at least 4 million and “sometimes even mentioned the figure of 5 million.” Wislizeni testified that Eichmann spoke about the number of Jews killed with a kind of cynical pride: “He said he would jump into the grave with a smile, because he enjoyed the feeling of having 5 million human deaths on his conscience.85”. At another trial, this time his own in 1961 in Jerusalem, < 223 >

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Eichmann did his damndest to disavow those statements, but nonetheless he basically did not deny either those words or the alleged scale of the Holocaust.86 At an interrogation in Jerusalem on July 6, 1960, he said this regarding the statistics of his victims: “If we want to talk about numbers in general, then whether it was a million or four million or one hundred persons doesn’t really make any difference in principle. < . . . > At the end of the war I was talking to my officers about five million — that was the number I vaguely imagined at the time. In the doomsday language — or what else can one call it? — I didn’t need those precise figures at all.87”. According to Eichmann, that number, five million, included also emigration statistics and natural mortality. In the Nuremberg Trial Indictment of the main war criminals, Justice Jackson cites the number of perished Jews equaling 5,721,800. At that point he explained: “5,700,000 Jews are missing from the countries in which they formerly lived and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for by the normal death-rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among the displaced persons.”88 The Indictment itself read as follows: “Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators.”89 Working for Himmler and Heydrich were not only executioners, but also statisticians. However, in times of victories, a special effort was made to use Aesopian language and to leave no paper trail and, as the final defeat approached, to cover the tracks and destroy whatever evidence was left. Naturally, the Holocaust victims did not have a statistical service of their own. But they, too, as far as they could, were evaluating and documenting events and made copies, when they had the chance, of their persecutors’ documents and were doing everything in their power to preserve the evidence of crime. Unfortunately, their chances were minimal. As a result, the demography of the Holocaust, like no other of its various aspects, turned out to have the weakest documentary support. Which makes the documents that did survive by a miracle all the more valuable, such as, for instance, activity reports of the einsatzkommandos operating in the East.90 Out of the 195 “Reports on the Events in the USSR” by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, 194 have survived (covering the period from June 23 1941 to April 24, 1942), along with 55 “Reports from the Occupied East Regions” by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (covering the period from May 1, 1942 to May 21, 1943), and 11 consolidated “Reports on the Activities and Situation of Task Groups of the Security < 224 >

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Police and the SD in the USSR” (for the period from June 22, 1941 to May 31, 1942). These papers document the killing of at least 535,000 Jews. This gave Heinz-Heinrich Wilhelm grounds to state, albeit cautiously, that already in the first three months of the war, no less than 700-750,000 Soviet Jews were eliminated.91 A. Kruglov, one of the best informed researchers of the Holocaust in the occupied territories of the USSR, believes that the total number of Jews destroyed by the einsatzgruppen should be estimated at 670,000.92 2 The first summations of the European Jewry’s losses date back to before the Nuremberg Tribunal. For instance, in 1945, the American statistician and demographer Jacob Lestschinsky performed an estimate putting the number of Jewish victims at 5,978,000. His computations were published in 1946. Later on, he analyzed the balance of the Jewish population in Europe, confirming the number of 9.5 million Jews living in Europe as of 1939 and determining their number for the year 1950 as equaling 2.7 million. In that case, the total number of the genocide victims amounts to 6 million.93 In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry for European and Palestine Jewry affairs arrived at the conclusion that the Nazis had exterminated 5,721,500 Jews.94 One of the first summations of the Jewish wartime losses was made by Eugen Kulicsher in 1947. The figure he came up with was 5.5 million.95 Another estimation of 5.5 million people, based on the May 1946 data and corrected to account for emigration, was made in 1946 by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Commettee. During the war, the number of European Jewry decreased from 9,740,000 to 3,642,000.96 In 1947, Leon Shapiro and Boris Sapir, statisticians with the research department of the Joint, made a certain correction to that figure.97 Of the 9,7399,200 Jews who lived in Europe98 at the end of 1939, there were just 3,779,300 left by 1948, not counting those who had succeeded in emigrating to the USA, South America, or Palestine. This suggests the number of Holocaust victims is 5.8 million, which equals three fifths of European and over one third of World Jewry. But the authors make a frank warning that their calculations are based on data and estimates of widely varied accuracy and reliability. In the late 1940s, the New-York based Institute of Jewish Affairs made another comparative estimate of Europe’s Jewish population before and after the war, showing that it was 9.6, not 9.5 million in 1939, and equaled < 225 >

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3.1 million in 1945.99 Taking into account some 600,000 Jews who emigrated from Europe after the war (mostly to Palestine, USA, and South America), we arrive at a difference of 5.8 million people, a difference that can only be interpreted as the total number of the Holocaust victims. In his study, Leon Poliakoff took Lestschinsky’s number of those destroyed by the SS einsatzgruppen, equal to 1.5 million, and used the data of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland on the total number of Jews gassed to death in the extermination camps of Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Chelmno, equaling 1.85 million. He also accepted the number of killed at Majdanek as being 200,000, but questioned the 2.5 million100 of those gassed at Auschwitz — the figure initially cited by the Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss. According to Poliakoff ’s computations, that number was 2 million, while the total number of Jewish victims stood at 5.5 million.101 Along with the books by Lestchinsky and Poliakoff, 1951 saw the publication of a study by Gregory Frumkin, who was the only researcher that undertook to analyze the dynamics of Europe’s entire population in the 1939-1947 interval, including (but not limited to) the Jews. The USSR, though frequently mentioned throughout the book, was excluded from the consolidated Table setting forth the main results of the analysis due to a lack of same-type data that would meet Frumkin’s requirements.102 According to him, the number of Jewish victims, excluding the USSR, was 4,371,000. For the USSR, Frumkin only provides a rough estimate in the range of 700,000 to 1,100,000. Consequently, his total number is also a “range”: 5.1 to 5.5 million victims. The World Almanac 1952 published by the Institute of Jewish Affairs in New York estimated Jewish population losses in Europe at 71% of its prewar number, with 5.7 million exterminated and 200,000 killed on the battlefield. An analysis of the many balance-based estimates of the number of Holocaust victims103 which use the method of subtracting what was left from what was before, with the various corrections to allow for direct war losses and emigration, lead to the following observations and generalizations. All such calculations are based on data sources and estimates whose degree of reliability (or, rather, unreliability) and accuracy varies within a very wide range — something that calls for a certain amount of speculative conjecture and rough approximations.104 And though the scattering of the results is not all that great (between a minimum of 5.5 million and a maximum of 6 million), all those are, nonetheless, pretty vulnerable to a critical perusal, < 226 >

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including a denial-inspired analysis which often finds and strikes at the weak points in this or that estimate. On the other hand, a critical review does not necessarily aim at compromising your results, but may provide an incentive to remove the exposed weaknesses and improve the estimate. However, the most important thing lies elsewhere. The point is that all balance-based estimates were mostly built on Jewish confessional statistics, whereas the Holocaust was setting its sights on a far broader — racialethnic — Jewish identity. It is there that we find the demographic reservoir that pushes the real number of victims higher. Gerald Reitlinger became the first researcher who sought to establish not just an authentic number of victims, but the minimal authentic number that would rule out any suspicion of attempted exaggeration.105 This is why he rejected both estimates of Jewish victims at Auschwitz given by the camp Commandant Rudolf Höss (one being 2.5 million and the other 1,135 million) and used his own — 750,000 — which has now been proven to be a substantially understated value. As the result, he arrived at a “range” estimate of 4,194,200 to 4,581,200106 victims. At the same time, he admitted that his estimates might have to be revised higher, because the data available for the USSR and Romania appeared to him to be too much of an approximation.107 The American scholar Raul Hilberg, the author of the fundamental work The Destruction of the European Jews,108 has, perhaps, devoted more effort than anyone else to the study of the history and, consequently, demography associated with that subject. Starting his work in 1948, he published his groundbreaking results in 1961, blazing a trail to be followed by Holocaust researchers for a long time to come: the final victim count he arrived at was 5.1 million, out of which number 3 million perished in the camps, 1.3 million were shot, and 0.8 million were killed in the ghettos.109 Yet given the incompleteness of the available documentary data (those, primarily, that cover the territory of the former USSR) he considered his work to be just nearing, but not quite reaching, the final goal.110 Reitlinger’s and Hilberg’s research is regarded as classical in the historiography of the Holocaust. All subsequent studies relied, to a large extent, on their methodology and results or used those as a starting point. In 1975, Lucy Dawidowicz came up with a new estimate of Jewish victims, 5,993,600;111 in 1982, Yehuda Bauer offered another computation, one of 5,820,960 persons.112 George Feldman arrived at a very similar result of 5,820,250 victims.113 At the same time, the feeling that a Holocaust demography was desiderata was taking hold of the researchers’ minds. That perception was < 227 >

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being reinforced by the escalating onslaught of the Holocaust deniers whose aggressive argumentation often centered on demographic aspects. 3 One of the first “demographers” in the denier camp was Paul Racinier, who claimed (without any documentary support) that the Holocaust took a toll of 1.5 million Jews, while another 4.5 million emigrated from Europe between 1931 and 1945. Arthur Butz, in his The Hoax of the Twentieth Century even discovers those emigrants’ destination — the Soviet Union, where they all fell victim to Stalin’s despotic regime! In The Myth of Auschwitz, Wilhelm Steglich spared no effort in debunking the arguments of those thickheads among historians who still cling to the stupid tales of the Holocaust. However, he never volunteered his own version of the events. From the point of view of scientific demography, all those people were largely amateurs. However, their stratagems were not forgotten by the real professionals who followed in their footsteps starting in the early 1980s. The first professional to join in the denier chorus was the well-known American sociologist and demographer Frank Hankins,114 the author of the article “How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? A Preliminary Survey of the Question,” which was published in 1958. That writing was inspired by Hankins’ long-time friend and Smith College colleague from back in the 1920s, Professor Harry Elmer Barns, whose name is one of the most respected in the annals of Holocaust deniers115. However, as noted in Keith Stimely’s foreword to the posthumous publication of the article, Hankins himself had long been questioning what he called “the six million thesis.” If that was indeed the case, it appears something of a mystery why he himself failed to publish the work while still alive; after all, he could have easily done so! Stimely has a ready answer to that one, explaining it away by the “character of the times” in which the book was written: “ . . . he could not, because of this approach, affix in all wisdom his name to his study, and that it has remained unpublished — circulating only in photocopied manuscript form among a limited number of interested students.”116 The explanation is extremely unconvincing in view of the fact that in those times the deniers did not risk any persecution. Most probably, Hankins was simply afraid to publicize his intellectual anti-Semitism,117 which would have definitely run counter to his image of a serious liberal scholar. But since the work was published and even laid the foundation of the denier demography, let us make a scrutiny of is argumentation. < 228 >

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The first point Hankins makes refers to is insufficient, problematic and basically inconsistent supporting statistical data. He writes: The most obvious and troublesome difficulty is the scarcity of census materials. In some areas, the last prewar census was made in 1930, 1931, or 1933. For areas of special Jewish concentration there were: for Poland, a census, 9 December 1931 and an “official estimate,” 1 January 1939; for Russia, a census in 1926, and January 1939 (but neither included a question as to religion)118, for Rumania, a census of December 1930 and an “official estimate” of December 1938; also a “census” in April 1941; and for Hungary, a census of 31 December 1930 and an “official estimate” of December 1938. To these may be added the immediate postwar census of Poland of February, 1946 which, like most of the other population countings of the immediate postwar years, was largely only a sampling and an estimate computation. This was made inevitable by the vast movements of population still going on to the end of 1946, and even later. The result is that one finds very considerable differences among the estimates of the numbers of Jews in various areas in the critical year 1939. It should be recalled that, from 1939 on, there was an unprecedented upheaval of populations, both Jewish and Gentile, throughout central Europe, first ahead of the German armies as they swept eastward after September 1939, and especially after 22 June 1941, and then behind the Russian forces as they swept westward, beginning in 1943. As the Germans went east, large numbers followed, especially from Germany; as the Russians went west, large numbers sought to return to former homesteads. In these moving hordes of all nationalities, including Jews, large numbers died from the hardships of war; other millions of several nationalities, including Jews, were deported; still other millions throughout the area were killed in civilian bombings, or died in the armed forces. During this whole period, the records of births and deaths were incomplete and otherwise defective.119

This is not to be disputed. One has to work with the data one can get. Hankins’ second point, and essentially the main one, is that any attempt to determine the precise number of victims is based on conjecture and even guesswork: It should be obvious that this situation makes all estimates of the numbers, both of total populations and especially of the numbers of Jews, at the best only informed guesses. It opens the way for tendentious calculations. A perusal of the literature shows that the large unknowns led to much carelessness in the use of figures. The same author, in a number of cases, gives different figures for the same item on different pages, as though a variation by some thousands could not add anything to the errors already < 229 >

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involved. Every calculation has to have what the U.S. Bureau of the Census workers call a “residual” item, or a figure to strike a reasonable balance between the very probable numbers with which you start. For example, in 1939, the probable changes due to “normal” births and deaths, the probable number dying from various abnormal causes, and the probable number still surviving. This residual figure opens the way for all sorts of manipulations. Thus, the Bureau of the Census120 says, after noting that it is impossible to strike a true balance for the Polish changes, 1939–1945: ‘(Even after July, 1945) millions of displaced persons milled about . . . Across these currents of voluntary migration moved other millions permanently expelled from their homes etc.’ and ‘War losses could have been anywhere from 2 million to 7 million persons. Either of the extreme figures seems unlikely, but the exact war losses cannot be determined precisely.121 These are some of the problems which face even the most honest and competent persons who seek to obtain reliable figures about the number of the Jews in Europe in 1939, the number who perished in some way during the war, how they perished, how many that remain unaccounted for really perished, and how many may now be living behind the Iron Curtain,122 in Israel, in the United States, and elsewhere. It is obvious that all these uncertainties which confront honest and objective students of the subject also provide almost unlimited opportunities for those who wish to juggle the figures, whether they seek to minimize or exaggerate the number of Jews who perished during the war.123

Well, this, too, is beyond dispute –all the more so since one does not have to go far to find examples of tendentiousness. Let us only note that this point is equally “destructive” for Holocaust demographers as it is selfdestructive for Holocaust deniers. After all, no one can abolish the criteria of scientific truth and objectivity, and therefore an author’s Jewish nationality cannot be taken as proof of his complicity in the world Jewish demographic conspiracy or as proof that such a conspiracy exists at all. As for the guarantees of objectivity, these can only be provided by professionalism and scientific integrity — that is, if the search for the truth is not viewed as yet another dangerous tendency. Hankins devoted a separate chapter to methods that theoretically could have been used by the Jews to save themselves. According to his enlightened judgment, there were three such avenues of escape: a) going underground, b) forging documents, and c) turning renegade (converting to Christianity). He held conversion to have been the most wide-spread statistically and was somewhat inclined to include ethnic assimilation in that category as well. < 230 >

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In census taking the individual classifies himself as of a certain nationality. This somewhat ambiguous term covers such alternatives as race, country of birth, country of residence, and country of citizenship. Jews could thus classify themselves as of Jewish or of some other nationality,according to their background, physical traits or language proficiency. Those born in Poland, but speaking German fluently and living in Germany, could classify themselves as Jewish, Polish or German, the latter on occasion requiring a new set of identification papers. A Jew born in Germany, living in Poland, and speaking Polish, had similar choices. This old method of escaping the harsher aspects of anti-Semitism seems to have been widely practiced by Jews under the pressure of the Nazis and the intense hostility in Poland and elsewhere, especially after 1933.124 Some illustrations: The U.S. Census Bureau report on Poland, with reference to an additional 900,000 Poles unaccounted for in their calculations, says that “these may have been non-Poles re-classed as Poles and thus lost to their previous category.”125. There is no way of knowing how many of these were Jews, but they certainly had the strongest motivation to use this avenue of escape, and it is difficult to conceive of any other racial or nationality group that would thus shift their classification on a large scale. This same authority, in its study of Czechoslovakia,126 says that the last prewar census of 1930 reported 354,000 Jews by religion but only 110,000 by nationality. Jacoby127 gives comparable figures but with a larger difference. In this case, the small number classed as Jews by nationality was due to the large number classing themselves as German by nationality. Jews in the Soviet Satellites states128 that “thousands of Jews in Poland went through the occupation masquerading as Poles;” at the war’s end some 20,000 Jews were estimated still to possess forged identification papers. The number of Jews reported as Jews by religion is rather uniformly greater than the number so reported by nationality. This is partly due to the Jewish custom of reporting as Jews all members of the Jewish community, regardless of their religious orthodoxy. It is partly due to the associated fact that Hebraism is not a universal type of religion but is closely identified with the Jews as a racial or genetically related group. However, special wartime conditions made conversion to some branch of Christianity a logical avenue of escape from surrounding hostilities. For example: The Hungarian Statistical Review for 1944 estimated that the number of Christians of Jewish origin in Greater Hungary was about 100,000.129 Kulischer notes130 that the number of Jews in Austria declined from 222,000 in 1923 to 180,000 in 1938, and adds that this was due in part to change of religion. These avenues of escape may account for a considerable part of the reduction in the number of Jews reported as still in Europe. Official Jewish statistics, which are almost the only ones now available for < 231 >

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postwar calculations, are likely to reflect the numbers living in organized communities or congregations. Many of these, as stable groups, were disorganized by various causes, and the members scattered more or less widely. If they have adopted a protective coloring (classification), they may not reappear until another day.131

When Hankins writes about avenues by which Jews could have escaped destruction, he basically implies factors that could have led to statistical concealment of Jewry. But those three “methods” put together could have hardly accounted for more than tens or low hundreds of thousands, while Hankins was trying write off millions! Besides, none of those methods were simple, or at least reliable. Indeed, the Catholic Church did try to act as a shield for its Jewish converts, but proved unable to do so. Hence, the reports of about 100,000 “Hungarianized” Jewish Catholics,132 the greater part of whom was easily destroyed despite all the protests from the cardinals. (As for the Pope himself, his remonstrations were normally confined to his sumptuous breakfast room, the only audience being his servants. At all other times he just kept mum.) Hankins holds forth on the Jews’ “general practice” of concealing or even altering their risky ethnic identity. All of which, he claims, affects statistical accuracy: for instance, if a Jews changed his ethnic identity and, becoming a Pole, a Czech, or even a German, escaped destruction, he moved to another statistical ethnic category, while slipping from the Jewish one or, rather, remaining there as a “missing person” of sorts. In other words, the author points out the phenomenon of nominal statistical mimicry, with the Jews forced to be “fugitives” from themselves. However, that factor could not have been in any way statistically important, keeping in mind the practical difficulties such a method was fraught with.133 Nor could it have been an effective avenue of escape, because there would have always been someone among the neighbors or co-workers who would be only too willing to betray the true identity of such a “Pole” or “Czech,” be it for the proverbial “30 pieces of silver” or, more often than not, just for the sheer fun of it. Therefore, an affluent Jew would have been much better off making an investment in some kind of an exotic citizenship, like Honduran or Salvadorian, while nobody (even if he or she wanted to) and nothing could have possibly rescued a poorer one. In other words, when Hankins claims that the avenues of escape he describes “may account for a considerable part of the reduction in the number of Jews reported as still in Europe,” he completely ignores the < 232 >

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practical obstacles that would have confronted those Jews who would be willing to try those avenues. And it is those very obstacles that bring down the real importance of his “100 ways to save oneself ” to a statistically negligible value.134 It is clearly felt that the paper in question was written at the height of the Cold War. With obvious pleasure (and without any critical attitude to the sources), he takes on trust any figures that discredit everything “behind the Iron Curtain” as he puts it — that is, the USSR: “ . . . some 250,000 to 300,000 Jews were sent by the Russians to forced labor camps and settlements in northern and Asiatic Russia in the early 1940’s.”135 If what he culls from his colleague’s writings is deemed insufficient, he generously adds something of his own. Thus, if E. Kulischer estimates the total number of evacuees in the USSR at 12 million, 1.2 million of them Jews, Hankins goes ahead and openhandedly adds another 40%, or 800,000 souls: Since these were thus moved “to save them from German atrocities,” it would not seem unreasonable to consider at least 2 million of them to have been Jews.”136 And that after petty haggling over thousands or tens of thousands of concealed Jews.137 Then, in complete harmony with his own fears of abusive tendentiousness, he continues: “An additional million Jews behind the Iron Curtain alters the picture for all Europe.”138

He then proceeds to consider the phenomenon of increasing mortality and decreasing birth rate among Jews who were in the process of undergoing the German solution of their — Jewish, not somebody else’s — question! To start with, Hankins rebukes G. Frumkin for listing total Jewish losses as “killed” instead of “missing,”139 It probably would have been more correct to phrase it differently: “died and killed.” But this is not the point: his righteous anger and indignation is caused by the fact that the martyrology includes the indiscriminate results of the “excess mortality” as he calls it, which the Jews “ . . . shared on an enlarged scale with other civilians”140 and which, therefore, cannot be chalked up to the Nazis. He does not even rule out that those dying due to “excess mortality” outnumbered the victims with “pure” Nazi causation. In the camps, too, “excess mortality” was a legitimate factor, and those dying from it there, the scholar maintains, might have also outnumbered the victims of “deliberate extermination.” After a brief reflection, he announces what he believes is a realistic supermortality coefficient: 10%, or 0.1. That’s a good 350,000 souls off Hitler’s conscience, who destroyed 3.5 million Jews in Poland (Hankins himself does not dispute that number!). < 233 >

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Hankins believes that “ . . . [t]he Jewish population, because it was so largely concentrated in the heart of the eastern war zone would, along with the rest of the population there, have suffered its proportionate diminution of numbers even if they had been treated exactly like all others.”141 Bravo, Professor! The trouble is, the methodological banality which he invokes there was providently abolished by Hitler, for there was no way it could remain in effect while the final solution of the Jewish question was being implemented. The Jewish population in the German-occupied territories was never given the same treatment as all others! If a 70-year-old woman, who would have probably died within the next 6 months anyway, is sent to the gas chamber, or a pregnant Jewish woman with a nursling in her arms (and that infant could well contract scarlet fever a week later and die, while the unborn one, like the mother herself, could easily die during labor) is shot in front of an anti-tank trench; if a young Jew, who was lucky to have passed the selection and who was an able-bodied man just the day before, is humiliated, beaten, starved, and forced into backbreaking labor, what would all that be called? Still “excess mortality” caused by wartime hardships or already genocide? The answer is obvious, so please return the 350,000 souls without delay! Hankins’ work with the sources is, alas, just as “exemplary.” His favorite trick is to take an irrelevant source, declare it relevant and then brilliantly debunk it.142 Sometimes he also pretends not to understand the meaning of the figures he cites himself: Secondly: the vast upheaval, with its migrations, deportations and evacuations, made some duplication in the count of those “lost” or ‘killed’ quite easy. The evacuees behind the Iron Curtain, e.g., are considered among the latter, unless they returned, at least in large part. Those sent to the camps of Poland by the Germans could easily be counted as among the “losses” of the countries from which deported and charged again among those killed in Poland. That this is done in some instances seems indicated by the fact that out of the estimated original Polish Jewish population of 3.1 million in 1939, somewhat more than that are usually estimated to have been killed there.143

But there is nothing there to be wondering about if one takes into account the role of the Polish extermination camps in the destruction of not only Polish Jewry, but European Jewry at large. True, the danger of double count does exist, but it can well be counteracted.144 Hankins quite correctly notes that the answer to the question “How many Jews were there in Europe in 1939?” is the keystone of Holocaust < 234 >

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demography. His own path to that answer lies through discrediting the “answers” of his opponents. Among other things, he provides tables consolidating all the estimates of Europe’s and the world’s Jewish populations contained in the American Jewish Yearbooks published by the American Jewish Committee. Given below are his “European” Table and his comments to it:145 Year of Publication

Year of Statistics

Numbers according to ethnicity

Numbers given under World Religions

1939

1933

9,494,363

9,494,363

1941

1939

8,939,608

not given

1945

1939?

9,372,666

8,939,608

1949

1939

9,739,200

not given

1949

1947

3,920,100

not given

One is bound to wonder at the reduction of nearly 555,000 between 1933 and 1939. Even more striking is the increase for the year 1939 in comparing the World Almanac issues of 1941 and 1949. This amounts to almost 800,000 (8,939,608 in the 1941 issue, and 9,739,200 in the 1949 issue). It is easy to see that this makes the loss much greater than if the numbers given in 1941 for the year 1939 were used as the basis of computation.

Out of the four columns in this tiny table, there is not a single correct one! The “Yearbooks” publish data, repeating it decade after decade, on the Jewish populations of individual countries (census-based or estimated) pertaining to various years.146 Given such an approach, there simply cannot be any single all-European date for the statistical records in its issues (column 2). But the most important point is that the systematically published “Yearbooks” lay no claim whatsoever to being a source of statistical data perfect in all respects or, least of all, suitable to be used as a tool for manipulation. But that is precisely the impression one might derive from reading Frank Hankins’ notes, which conjure up visions of hundreds of “Yearbook” emissaries on all continents compiling statistical records of Jewish deaths and births, their arrivals in and departures from every single country of the world, with the data collected flowing to a half-secret office in Manhattan to be readily manipulated and falsified by a dozen sidelock-wearing statisticians. < 235 >

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Had Hankins so wished (and I do not suspect him of a lack of inquisitiveness), he would have immediately noticed that the decline in Europe’s Jewish population that caused him so much excitement was entirely on Germany’s “conscience.” There, the 1939 Census registered a much-coveted diminution of the Jewish question — from 691,000 to 240,000 persons. Incidentally, the difference between the two figures is 450,000, not 550,000 as Hankins, who overlooked an error in his own notes from the “Yearbook” which estimated Europe’s Jewish population in 1939 at 9,394,363, not 9,494,363, says. Hankins proceeds to cite a multitude of estimated numbers of Jewish victims, both separate for Poland and totals for Europe, thereby exposing their unacceptably chaotic nature, discrepancies, and inner contradictions, and also stressing the exclusive Jewishness of their authors. He is obviously not concerned with analyzing the soundness of each of those estimates or finding ways of improving their accuracy. While at one point dismissing the figures given by S. Schwarz as “pure conjecture,” Hankins seems to forget that he has just used that “fib” to dispute and debunk the estimates offered by Kulischer. No less indicative is his characterization of “Jewish” statistics as patently deceitful, although he himself admits that any other data sources are practically absent. Thus it appears that Hankins was, in essence, the first denier demographer. He was one of the first to point out the underwater reefs of this complex subject — both those that are close to the surface (the absence or, to be precise, the impossibility of unequivocally correct statistics and the blurring identity of the object of the study), as well as the less obvious ones (“excess mortality,” the risk of the double count, etc.). It was he again, who was one of the first if not the first one to realize how “promising” for the denier community were certain themes related to Holocaust logistics (the insurmountable narrowness of some of its resources or bandwidths) and the Jewish emigration during and after the war, themes that Sanning will eventually be building upon. He believes, for instance, that merely stating that the infrastructure needed to destroy the Jews was not in place before November, 1943 is enough to kick the stool from under the “traditionalists.” This is absolutely wrong, because the Nazis were never idle in such an important enterprise as the liquidation of Jews . While the stationary gas chambers and crematoria were being constructed, they learned to make do with improvised equipment like gas bunkers, gas vans, and gigantic pyres. As a matter of fact, Hankins cannot even be called a denier. Rather, he is a “relativist” who recognized the real atrocities of the Second World War to < 236 >

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be, in a way, a materialization of the fictitious atrocities of the First.147 At the same time, he is a “reductionist” (i.e. a “belittler”) who was made happy by the mere fact that he was able to find in the works of one of his really strong and outspoken opponents, Gerald Reitlinger, the figure of 500,000 Jewish victims, a figure that even he, Hankins, was prepared to sanction. Only it is not clear where he got that number from, because it is not to be found in Reitlinger’s The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945, which Hankins references. In the Chapter entitled “Concentration Camps: Destruction by Work” we find a different one — 1.1 million prisoners of various kinds as the future contingent of all German concentration camps (the starting date for the count was early August,1944 when the camp population already numbered 524,000), 363,000 as the number of inmates registered at Auschwitz; while in the Chapter “Death Camps: Euthanasia” provides a rounded number and one quite different also: 4 million Jews (excluding the USSR) that Europe came up short of, half of it being death camp prisoners.148 And no other estimate could have possibly come from Reitlinger, for 1953 (the English edition) and 1956 (the German translation) saw the publication of his opus magnum, The Final Solution. That book spells out in black and white the result Reitlinger arrived at investigating the subject of interest to both him and Hankins, namely, the number of Jewish victims (and one excluding the USSR) which was stated to be no less than 4,194,200 and no more than 4,851,200.149 At the very end of Hankins’ article there is a peculiar observation on the possible parallels between the “myths” of the First and the Second World Wars: It is quite possible that more thorough studies of population statistics, more evidence from actual witnesses, historical study of the origins and dissemination of the extermination charges, checking of the charges with what is actually known, and demonstration of deliberate fakery and falsehood, in other words, such techniques as Lord Ponsonby150 and J.M. Read applied to the atrocity myths of the First World War, may reduce the allegation of massive Nazi extermination of Jews to the same level of morbid imagination and irresponsible, if deliberate, mendacity that the alleged Belgian atrocities were reduced to in the years following 1918. Surely, the authenticity of the Nazi extermination program has never been vouched for by any person of the prestige and reputation for integrity enjoyed by James Bryce in 1915.151 Of course, no realistic and informed student of the Second World War doubts the actuality of incredibly inhumane atrocities during the conflict, atrocities on both sides carried out against Jews and Gentiles alike, especially in the guerrilla and partisan < 237 >

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warfare behind the lines of battle. As one competent authority has well described the situation, the fictitious atrocities of the First World War became the actual atrocities of the Second.152

Reducing the argumentation against the “existence of the Holocaust” to the absence among its present-day “supporters” of a figure, similar in nature and stature to the half-forgotten James Bryce, is basically what Hankins the Reductionist’s refined denialism boils down to. 4 Almost coincidental with the publication of F. Hankins’ article, the Grabert publishing house in Tubingen brought to the world, in June, 1983, the book Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums by Walter Sanning153 (its English translation was published in 1985 by the Institute of Historical Review154). Walter Sanning is actually a pseudonym belonging to Wilhelm Niederreiter, an American scholar and businessman of German descent who was born in 1936 in Bessarabia and moved to Wendlingenon the Neckar during the war. In 1957, he relocated to the United States where, after receiving a degree in political science, he spent several years teaching economics at Seattle University but then moved back to Germany in 1970.155 John Zimmerman has branded his book “most sophisticated piece of denial ever written.”156 The book contains no direct references to the Shoa, or any conspiracy theories, or even the Nazis. It does not mention Auschwitz and offers a vast body of scientific references, including dozens of “Jewish” sources! Keith Stimely, who had written the foreword to Hankins’ article, showered the book with praise: Sanning’s book is the result of years of intensive study utilizing the latest in technological research methods. It was actually written, its figures compiled and cross-checked, on a computer. It will be, in a word, the definitive study of the demographics of the Jewish population of Europe during World War Two, rendering all other studies of the particular question “Whatever happened to the ‘Six Million’?” obsolete or superfluous. Its conclusions will not comfort the “Holocaust” Establishment. It is fitting that the publication of what promises to be the “final word” for years to come on this subject from the revisionist point of view should be immediately preceded by the publication at last of Frank Hankins’s first foreshadowing of that word. 157 < 238 >

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He is echoed by Arthur Butz, who penned the foreword to Sanning’s book itself. In a way, Sanning and Butz divide their roles. Sanning, as well as Hankins, for that matter, makes every effort to appear to the reader as a non-Partisan or even supra-Partisan scholar, in no way connected with the denier pack — so much so that he never even mentions the word “Holocaust“ in his book.158 As for Butz, he emphasizes that both the Nazis and the Zionists had a common goal — mass resettlement/extraction of Jews from Europe — so the “final solution” for the Nazis was essentially the same thing as “repatriation” for the Zionists.159 Walter Sanning’s thesis is the assertion that the debate over how many Jews were destroyed by the Nazis is pointless because the majority of the European Jews never really perished — they are still alive! Or at least were alive at the end of the war. They just migrated from the places they used to populate, and if they were really oppressed or killed, it was by no means in Greater Germany but, rather, at their eventual destinations, i.e. in Palestine and America, but primarily in the USSR, the “Red Empire” or the country “behind the Iron Curtain” as he repeatedly refers to the Soviet Union.160 You are getting the drift, aren’t you? If the author succeeds in proving that the Nazis never had as many Jews in their hands as they are faulted with killing, and that those Jews are still safe and in good health (or may be not so good, who cares?) living somewhere in Brooklyn, Haifa, or Birobidzhan, then all the conspiracy theories pushed forward by the deniers are not witless ravings but the real truth, and the deniers, whom Sanning never mentions by name, will triumph, demonstrating not only their legitimacy but also their correctness, i.e., their victory. But how does one go about proving that point? Here demography offers both Sanning and Hankins the very same hard nut to crack: there weкe 16.7 million Jews in the world before the war, and only 11 million were left after. Here it is, that “Jewish myth” saying that the difference is precisely that thing called the “Holocaust,” the myth to be debunked and dismantled! Hankins had tried to do that by invoking natural population movements and suffered a total fiasco. Sanning decided to dig a new tunnel in the same burrow — one leading to migration. Indeed, the employment of the global migration approach was indeed a new word in the Holocaust demography. For the new strategy to work and the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place, three conditions had to be fulfilled at the same time: the least possible < 239 >

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prewar number of Jews, their largest possible postwar number, and a badger burrow-like system of migrational “tunnels” that could have been used by the Jews during and immediately after the war161 to quickly wander off around the world. Serving as something of a magic wand for Sanning is Poland, which was divided up between its sworn neighbors — Germany and the USSR — under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Unfortunately, Polish prewar statistics on the natural population movements could not but sadden Sanning: instead of natural decrease he was seeking there was an obvious increase. Thus, according to the December 9, 1931 Census, there were 2,732,600 ethnic Jews living in Poland. However, the extrapolated September 1, 1939 estimate provided in the Statistical Yearbook puts that number at 3,114,000. In fact, it was even higher: 3,250,000 (according to J. Marcus162) or 3,351,000 (according to the British-American Committee for European Jewry). As we can see, instead of doing a favor to the deniers by decreasing prior to the war, Polish Jewry had actually increased quite substantially. And Sanning himself knows why it did so — because both the nationalsocialists and the Zionists were betting the the ability of their nations to multiply fast.163 According to Sanning, the reason is simple and consists in the low mortality resulting from the Jewish population’s demographic transition ahead of other ethnic groups, and the Jews, the “guest people” as Sanning puts it, manage to decrease the mortality earlier than surrounding peoples.164 Realizing that natural population movements do not hold much promise, Sanning fully switches his attention to spatial one sand ‘finds’ 1,059,000 of Jews who supposedly fled to Palestine, US, Canada, UK, Australia, and South Africa before the war.165 Thus, Sanning demonstrates a remarkable example of selective vision: over one million Jews, he writes, left Europe before the war, and another half-million already were in those European countries that never came under the German boot. He strains his eyes harder and discovers a significant (400-500,000!) Jewish emigration from Poland to the United States in the 1930s.166 Another little effort, and an important statistical source slips out of his view: according to official Polish statistics published in 1940, the total number of Jews emigrating from Poland in 1931-1937 was only 109,716 persons.167 Another “source” Sanning uses without, however, rewarding it with a proper reference, is a statement by the US Assistant Secretary of State < 240 >

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Breckenridge Long at a congressional hearing in one of the House of Representatives Commissions in 1943. Long said that the majority of the 580,000 refugees coming to the US since 1933 were Jews.168 Sanning interpreted the “majority” as meaning 70% and arrived at the number of Jewish emigration from Poland to the USA equaling 409,000 people. However, Sanning never mentions such a minor detail as the subsequent disavowal of that statement by Long himself who explained that 580,000 was the number of issued visas, not that of the actual entrants (nor does he mention the fact that the hearings covered not only Poland but the entire Eastern Europe, while the Polish US immigration quota per se was just 6,524 people — not very large indeed).169 On the other hand, the easily accessible source on Poland proper, the American Jewish Yearbook Sanning so often references, somehow escaped his attention this time around. This is a shame, since the yearly statistic reports it was publishing put the total Polish-Jewish emigration to the US in 1933-1943 at 9,300 or just hundreds of entrants annually.170 But it was not for nothing he was straining his sight peering into migration streams. From the above-cited 3,114,000 Polish Jews he subtracts all of 550,000 people who, according to Sanning, emigrated in the postCensus period, and so “leaves” Poland with just 2,644,000 Jews right before the war (their actual number being 3.2-3.3 million!). Demographic sharp practice is the only description such manipulations deserve! All that was happening in the prewar, but still peaceful, times. When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, many Polish civilians, mostly Jews,171 were uprooted and forced to flee from the Germans towards the “safe haven” in the East, the USSR. However, on September 17, the Red Army, too, invaded Poland, moving westward to meet the advancing Wehrmacht. As a result, the refugees ended up not in the hands of a friendly neighbor, but those of a second enemy and aggressor. In these changed circumstances, some of the refugees made a choice not in favor of the USSR and applied for evacuation to the German zone. This was just as well since the two aggressors proceeded to conclude, in the fall of 1939, an agreement on mutual evacuation of certain population groups.172 Sanning gives this distribution of Jewish population in the territories that Poland was split into: three fifths ended up in Germany and two fifths ended up in the USSR. However, this computation is based on 3,114,000, not on 2,644,000. Living in the German–controlled areas were 1,901,000, out of which 632,000 were in the territories administratively joined to Germany, while 1,269,000 lived within the confines of the General < 241 >

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Government. The USSR “kept” the remaining 1,213,000.173 However, ever since September 1 there was a steady stream of Jewish refugees headed east, towards the USSR, and, to a lesser extent, south to Romania. It is easy to guess that the Germans would have been only too happy to allow the Jews to flee, but the trouble was the Soviets were not very keen on acquiring hundreds of thousands of new Jews and usually turned them back. It is not as widely known, though, that the Germans tried to engage the Soviets in a more sweeping “friendly deal” to exchange people they did not want for those they wanted. The Germans were not obstructing the Jews’ movement eastward in any way. In early 1940 the Berlin and Vienna offices of the Central Department for Jewish Emigration headed, respectively, by Adolf Eichmann and, presumably, by A. Stalecker or A. Brauner, contacted the Soviet Government with a request to allow the emigration to the USSR (Jewish Autonomous Region or West Ukraine, among other places) of about 1.8 million Polish Jews plus another 350-400 thousand German Jews from the Reich itself.174 That move, it appears, was in full conformity with the then German leadership’s concept of the final solution of the Jewish question in Germany and Poland. The USSR responded with a refusal, and one based on purely formal grounds, saying that the Soviet-German agreement provided for an exchange of Germans, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Ruthenians only. The real reasons for the refusal seemed to lie elsewhere and were explained by the Stalinist regime’s pathological spy mania and the colossal scale of the proposed immigration itself. The total number of West Polish Jews who were able, one way or another, to move to the USSR, less those who, after partaking of Soviet realities, decided to go back to the German zone and did so (only to meet with their undoing!), constituted around 250,000 persons, 300,000 at the most.175 Not to be put off by that fact, Sanning uses this convenient opportunity to “write off ” an additional portion of Polish Jews as being the USSR’s responsibility. How large a portion? All of 750,000 persons! In doing so, he proceeds from sporadic estimates given by private persons while ignoring all other, far more reliable sources. Thus, the Soviet Union accepted under its jurisdiction a total of about 1.5 million Polish Jews, including the refugees.176 In addition, the territories it annexed in 1940 had their own Jewish populations: Lithuania (without the Vilna District) — 150,000, Latvia — 95,000, Estonia — 5,000, Bessarabia and North Bukovina — 325,000. < 242 >

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On November 10, 1939, Decision 1855/486 of the Council of the People’s Commissars (CPC) of the USSR established a commission chaired by L.P. Beria to oversee the registry and work employment of the refugees. It was also charged with matters of “return evacuation” (i.e. deportation back to Germany) of politically undesirable elements and people unable to work. About 25,000 refugees refused to adopt Soviet citizenship and demanded to be transported to Palestine or West European countries. Such people were immediately sent back and some were arrested. Some of the refugees did accept Soviet citizenship and even signed up for work in the deep interior of the USSR, but the majority tried to settle on the new Soviet and formerly Polish lands. Long before it became practically possible, the Commission made plans for deporting the refugees to the east of the country. Operating instructions for the NKVD setting forth the deportation procedures were submitted to the CPC for consideration on March 2, 1940 and were approved by it on April 10. People subject to such deportation were designated in advance as “special settler-refugees.” In contrast to “osadniks” and their family members,177 they were regarded not as sworn enemies of Soviet power but as “interned emigrants.” However, the implementation of those plans would have to wait until the summer because any sweeping measures could only be undertaken after June 5, 1940 — the date on which the last of the German commissions was scheduled to leave.178 The deportation of the “special settler-refugees” actually took place as of June 29, 1940; according to different estimates, it affected between 77 and 90 thousand people who were sent to special settlements in the North and East of the USSR to be primarily employed in lumber industry. At the same time, the refugee contingent was mostly comprised of petty craftsmen, merchants, doctors, etc. “The desire of tailors, cobblers, watchmakers, barbers, etc. to be employed according to their trade cannot be fully met within the confines of their settlement area. Therefore, people of these trades (their redundant part) have to be utilized in timber cutting.”179 The economic effectiveness of “utilizing tailors in timber cutting” could have been called into question from the very start. No less than 85-90% of the settlers (or around 70-80 thousand people) were Jews, and here it should be noted that the Germans’ frustrating refusal to take them back and the ugly realities of Soviet deportation have saved the lives of most of them.180 Now that many archives have been opened to the public, we can cite that figure — 70-80 thousand Jews — with a reasonable degree of certainty. < 243 >

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But in the 1980s there were no limits to all kinds of estimates, which ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 and even 1,000,000181 with several estimates of 100 to 300,000182 clustered in between. It goes without saying that out of this numerical diversity, Sanning picked out half a million and one million as the most reliable183 figures and, after averaging the two, proceeded to “wield” that absolutely fantastic number of 750,000.184 The redistribution of Jews between Germany and the USSR following the partition of Poland in 1939, as presented by Sanning, looks quite different from what it really was. He arrives at an inverse proportion: the majority of Jews, 1,776,000, or 67.5%, went to the Soviets, while the Germans had only 857,000 (32.5%), and even that number should be cut by 100,000 to account for those who fled not east, but south — to Romania. As for the total number of Jewish refugees fleeing from Poland to the USSR or the Soviet occupation zone, it was, according to Sanning, no less than 600,000 and no more than 750,000. Adding in Jews from other annexed parts of Europe — the Baltic countries and Romania’s Bessarabia and North Bukovina — Sanning pulls off his master trick: from September 1939 through mid-1940 between 2 and 2.5 million East European Jews vanished into the Red Empire sharing the fate of the 3 million Soviet Jews. Out of that 5.5 million Soviet Jews one million perished during the war; not at the hands of the Nazis, but mostly as soldiers and labor camp workers. Oh well, what a wonderful thing was that Cold War, after all — it would let you write off just about anything! However, there is one more precondition for a triumph to be fulfilled: finding as many Jews as possible after the war. No problem for Sanning, he is again at his inventive best in source selection. For instance, he mentions the Israeli Almanac 1958-1959 stating that the population of Israel in 1958 was 1.8 million of Jews, and that this population was a one-eighth of the Jewish populations worldwide. Thus, according to this amazing source, 14.4 million of Jews have been living on Earth. This kind of reasoning is just as absurd as trying to calculate the Earth’s area by using Khrushchev’s statement that 1980 would see communism prevailing on one sixth of the Earth’s dry land. Unfortunately, in Sanning’s case it is not absurdity, it is deviousness. The point is, he is just enamored with the 14.5 million computation for 1958; and he loves even more the operations with figures and fractions he came across in a report in the Der Spiegel magazine, or in a private letter from a veteran of the World Jewish Congress. Small wonder! After all, those figures lead him to 16.3 million Jews populating the planet in 1980, and he “loves” them, too!185 < 244 >

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But he does manage to hold himself in check: and very rightly so, or else it might have appeared that the world’ Jewish population all but increased during the war! Therefore, he “comes to terms” with a compromise number of 14.75 million Jews surviving the war (according to Jewish sources as cited by Sanning, it was 11.7 million, although in his earlier works he quoted 11 million). This three-million difference, according to him, is accounted for by three global factors: first, the USSR; second, the other European countries occupied by Germany; and third, the USA (with the respective weightings of 2.3, 1.3, and 0.2 million). Based on those “grounds” he claims that about a million of Jews died being the Soviet Army soldiers and the labor camp workers in Siberia, and this is the aspect about which the literature keeps silence. This is an insidious attempt to shove the blame for the Jewish victims from Hitler’s back to Stalin’s, which is a typical and disgusting element in the ideological methodology of the deniers from the Cold War camp. As if Stalin’s hands were not already bloodied enough by the genocidal killing of Polish officers which he, in turn, tried to impose on Hitler! According to Sanning, there were about 5 million Jews living in Europe (excluding the USSR and the Baltic states) just before the start of World War II, or one million less than stated by the American Jewish Yearbook, which took into account the prewar emigration from Germany, but ignored, according to Sanning, the 900,000-strong emigration from Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Nonetheless, in 1941 there were still 2,847,000 Jews living in the German-dominated areas, while the 2.2 million needed to bring the number up to 5 million were to be looked for in the USSR that had annexed parts of Poland and Romania.186 Taking into account the 1,269,000 “missing persons,” i.e. those Jews who were counted among military losses, were missing in the USSR, migrations and decreased birth rate, as well as the annexation of the Transcarpatian Ukraine in 1945, that territory could have had a postwar Jewish population of 2,712,000, while their actual number was, allegedly, 1,443,000. This figure per se is not all that different from the Jewish estimate of the Holocaust survivors in that same territory, 1,410,000. The difference is in the number of Jewish victims, or “missing persons,” in Sanning’s parlance. Writing off 956,000 as unrecorded prewar emigration and another 2,847,000 as being the responsibility of Soviet power (which was never attacked by anyone either in 1941 or later, if Sanning were to be consistent), he obtains his 1,269,000 in Jewish losses, distributing them between Western and Eastern Europe (346,000 and 923,000 respectively). < 245 >

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Overall, that is 3,321,000 less than the “Yearbook” estimate — 4,590,000 Jewish victims, excluding the USSR and the Baltic states.187 Postwar migrations give Sanning yet another much-wanted barrel to scrape. He lays a special stress on the fact that the first postwar Jewish population records do not start from 1945, but from 1946 or even 1947. That one- or two-year wide window could have easily let through crowds of welldressed Jews emerging from their war-time hiding. Take the United States, for example: its Jewish population was 4,771,000 in 1936 (according to the Federal Census Bureau), but by 1943 it reached 5,199,000 (according to Joint). The difference of 429,000 people, with no allowance for immigration, could only be accounted for by a natural increase of 14.5 ‰.188 However, the population dynamics he demonstrates does not clash with a “taboo,” it clashes with historic and demographic facts. 5 Naturally, the publication of Sanning’s book went neither unnoticed nor un-countered. Professor V. D. Rubinstein of Deakin University in Australia, who received the book from Australian Holocaust denier John Barnet, soon returned it, giving his opinion in a private letter. A perusal of Sanning’s corrections to the demographic parameters of prewar and postwar Jewry, his attempt to put the blame for hundreds of thousands of lost Jewish lives on Stalin, etc., led Rubinstein to an unequivocal conclusion: in actual fact, Sanning is simply trying to deny the Holocaust and in so doing he is at one with other neo-Nazis. While recognizing Sanning’s knowledge of the sources, he flatly refuses to accept his work with those sources as scientifically correct. Rubinstein could hardly have expected that his letter would be published as part of an exchange of opinions and would be surrounded by “responses” from Sanning himself, as well as Butz, appearing, to boot, in the main denier mouthpiece.189 But that is exactly the way it happened, and there is not a vestige of evidence that Rubinstein had ever been asked for permission. One academic journal even published a review of Sanning’s book.190 The reviewer was pleasantly surprised that the author was not denying the Holocaust as such. However, his judgment was harsh: the book contained a pile of errors and was antihistoric. Yet the reviewer refused to burden himself with the parsing of that pile of errors, leaving that to the future and the demographers to analyze. < 246 >

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The absence of such an analysis was interpreted by the deniers as Sanning’s triumph. However, with time that “future” did come. In 2000, John Zimmerman published his book Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies191 which, in large part, is devoted to an analysis of Sanning’s work. In 2007, certain aspects of the book came under a detailed and highly professional consideration in Jonathan Harrison’s blog, which is concerned with analyzing controversies related to Holocaust research.192 Both authors exposed a number of errors and falsifications in Sanning’s book,193 pointing out the “cardsharper” nature of his “scientific method” which, according to Zimmermann, represents a combination of “selective quoting and baseless assumptions.” On the other hand, another book which could have become a direct and crushing response to Sanning, a project whose very idea was probably generated as an immediate reaction to the publication of his book, contains but a single mention of that book in one of a hundred of footnotes! I am speaking of the international project The Dimensions of Genocide. The Number of Jewish Victims of National Socialism, which was conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Modern History in Munich. The project team of 18 historians from several European countries was headed by Professor Wolfgang Benz. They set up 17 regional studies devoted to the Holocaust in individual countries or groups of countries which precisely reflected the extent of knowledge on the subject at the start of the last decade of the 20th century.194 The project’s results were published in 1991 in a like-titled monograph which opens with a summarizing introduction by W. Benz.195 The project clearly showed once again how significant are the difficulties encountered in the course of such an analysis — difficulties stemming not only from the deficit and incomparability of statistical data, but also from the endless redrawing of Europe’s wartime administrative and political divisions and population mobility dramatically increased by the war. Many regional studies confirmed the impossibility of obtaining precise estimates, the result being an interval or a range between the minimum and maximum possible values. The final transition to “range-based” thinking is another important methodological product of the project, albeit a side product. Unfortunately, even the most meticulous country-by-country record of primary sources, as well as the condition of those sources, did not allow Benz to dispense with the ethnic balance-based model. The sum total of such country minimums made up the all-European minimum of 5.29 million Holocaust victims, while the maximum figure was < 247 >

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described by Benz, without actually naming it, as a quantity far exceeding 6 million.196 The denier community responded to Benz’s book with a half-lecture, half-review by Germar Rudolf 197 offering a juxtaposition of the two books — Sanning’s and Benz’s — and comparing the authors’ methodological approaches and the results obtained. Rudolf notes that Benz and his colleagues were using an indisputably superior empirical base and source statistics compared to Sanning’s. Feigning objectivity, he actually criticizes both men, but primarily and mostly — Benz. Thus, he points out three instances of “double count” occurring in the book compiled by Benz — for Germany with France, Germany with Czechoslovakia, and Italy with Greece. The Benz project’s chief mistake, according to Rudolf, was its total disregard of those countries which had not fallen under occupation, whereas Sanning did take them into account — as likely safe havens for the Jews. If Benz blames the Holocaust for all country-specific decreases of the Jewish population, meaning that all those Jews were killed, Sanning regards them only as “missing persons,” people unaccounted for. He believes, for example, that 2 millions of Soviet Jews were not the only survivors, but the only brave ones who dared call themselves Jews during the census in that antisemitic and anti-Zionist state.198 Rudolf is fully aware that the key question for the demography of the Holocaust is this: should one recognize or deny the existence of “selection” and its outcomes (that is, putting to death those who could not work)? Rudolf himself denies it on the grounds that in 1943 the Reich needed working hands, not corpses. But is there a contradiction here? What kind of worker would a 70-year-old man make? Or a 10-year-old girl? Rudolf believes that there was enough work for all and that in Auschwitz, they distributed people among dozens of concentration camp subsidiaries (but that very distribution happens to have been fairly well documented, and there is not the least bit of support for Rudolf ’s thesis). Rudolf ’s own contribution to the demographic aspects of the denialism was made in the form of a peculiar systematization of the material, giving prominence to “attack points.”. Thus, he disavowed once again the testimonies given by Wislizeni and Hettl at Nuremberg, based on the same, less than novel, arguments: all Nuremberg witnesses who testified to the Nazi crimes, he alleged, did so under duress or in collusion. In discussing the timing of the introduction of the 6 million thesis, Rudolf cites examples of its suspiciously early use, which he sees as proof of Jewish scheming and conspiracy. < 248 >

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But very early mentions of the same or similar number were made by the Nazis as well: suffice it to recall the Table contained in the Wannsee Conference proceedings or boastful reports in some Nazi newspapers. And Heydrich himself must have been an agent of World Zionism, otherwise it just doesn’t click for the deniers. At the same time, Rudolf does stop short of outright swindlery and fact garbling. For instance, he says, referencing J. Hoffmann,199 that “ . . . Ilya Ehrenburg, the chief atrocity specialist of the Soviets, had published the figure of six million in the Soviet foreign language press as early as December 1944, more than four months before the war came to an end.”200 But Ehrenburg did not publish anything of the sort in 1944, and a publishing house by that name was not created until 1946.201 At another point, he follows in Butz’202 footsteps by launching a series of quotes from the New York Times for 1942-1943: The New York Times, 12.13.1942, p. 21: “[ . . . ] Authenticated reports point to 2,000,000 Jews who have already been slain by all manner of satanic barbarism, and plans for the total extermination of all Jews upon whom the Nazis can lay their hands. The slaughter of a third of the Jewish population in Hitler‘s domain [3×2,000,000=6,000,000] and the threatened slaughter of all is a holocaust without parallel.” The New York Times, 12.20.1942, p. 23: “What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination [ . . . ]. Early in December 1942 the State Department in Washington gave some figures showing that the number of Jewish victims deported and perished since 1939 in Axis-controlled Europe now reached the appalling figure of 2,000,000 and that 5,000,000 were in danger of extermination.” The New York Times, 03.02.1943, p. 1, 4: “[ . . . Rabbi Hertz said] to secure even the freedom to live for 6,000,000 of their Jewish fellow men by readiness to rescue those who might still escape Nazi torture and butchery. [ . . . ]” The New York Times, 03.10.1943, p. 12: “[ . . . ] 2,000,000 Jews killed in Europe. [ . . . ] The four million left to kill are being killed, according to plan.” (2+4=6 million) The New York Times, 04.20.1943, p. 11: “Two million Jews have been wiped out [ . . . ] five million more are in immediate danger of execution [ . . . ].” (2+5=7 million)

Naturally, leaking reports of Jewish genocide were reaching London, Washington, and Moscow. But only a morbid mind could have taken figures < 249 >

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mentioned in such reports as regular demographic statistics. Moreover, even the figures cited show quite a wide “scattering,” leaving the thesis of the sacredly ordained number of “6,000,000” without corroboration. Of course, Rudolf is perfectly able to tell the difference between a newspaper report and a scientific study; the trouble is, he doesn’t want to, because the phantom of the World Jewish Conspiracy totally blinds his vision, so much so that he does not have any qualms about using the Russian anti-Semites staple argument about the proportion of Jews in the NKVD personnel and their part in the Soviet repressions. He keeps trying to catch the historians in a lie, and it seems to him that he does it. At one point he dangles a letter from Bad-Arolsen before their eyes: see, the International Red Cross itself, for all its efforts, could not count more than 300,000 killed in all the concentration camps, and not Jews alone at that! I find it hard to believe that Rudolf cannot grasp the difference between the Tracing Service’s internal reporting (and false reporting to boot, in this particular case) and historical sources, albeit circumstantial. True, if you do grasp and accept that difference, you will be left with nothing to bamboozle your opponents with. At another point, Rudolf chastises two noted historians for a lack of agreement between the results of their respective studies: R(udolf ): I have not done any research into primary sources myself and have to rely on the work of others. If you look at the literature available on the subject of population losses of Jews during the Second World War, you will notice that there’re only two extensive monographs dealing with this topic. L(istener): But every major book on the holocaust has victim numbers. R: Yes, but in those works the victim numbers are merely claimed, not proven. Take, for example, the figures in the book The Destruction of the European Jews by mainstream Holocaust expert Raul Hilberg and compare it with those by Lucy Dawidowicz, another mainstream expert, which she published in her book The War against the Jews. They both claim that the Holocaust resulted in between five and six million murdered Jews. Yet if you compare how both authors allocate these victims to the various sites of the claimed mass murder, it turns out that they do not agree on anything (see Table 1). Such a table could be compiled using many more mainstream Holocaust historians, and the figures would be just as wildly divergent. So how come that all these authors end up with basically the same total, when they disagree on everything else, and not a single one of them proves what they claim with incontestable sources?” < 250 >

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Table 1 Distribution of claimed Holocaust victims according to murder site Hilberg203

Dawidowicz204

1,000,000

2,000,000

Treblinka:

750,000

800,000

Belzec:

550,000

600,000

Sobibor:

200,000

250,000

Chelmno

150,000

340,000

Majdanek:

50,000

1,380,000

Camp total

2,700,000

5,370,000

Other locations

2,400,000

563,000

Holocaust Total

5,100,000

5,933,000

Location

Auschwitz:

Overjoyed, Rudolf is rubbing his hands: Gotcha! Look at your Dawidowicz’s implausible numbers for Majdanek and Auschwitz! As if he did not know that corrective, i.e., truly “revisionist” work is already in progress — in the historians’ workshops, not the deniers’! Each new source is carefully researched and very often its introduction into scientific use results in new discoveries and corrections. Another target Rudolf sets his sights on is the “Pages of Testimony” from the “Hall of Names” Yad Vashem which he does not scruple to refer to as “waste paper.”. Surely, anyone can fill out any number of such pages any which way one chooses, so what kind of source is that? What those precious “Pages” really are and what limitations are imposed on their production the reader can learn from the articles by A. Abraham and A. Shneer included in this Collection. But if Rudolf is so plagued by his doubts, let him peruse those “Pages” all he wants on the Internet (they are available there) and catch every single witness out in a lie. The executioners never issued notarized death certificates for their victims! But it is precisely the absence of such certificates that almost all denier rhetoric and demagoguery are built upon. The deniers never created their own fundamental version of the “holocaust demography” with a small “h”. Perhaps, that distinction, judging by the title “Demography of the Holocaust,” could be claimed by Jan Bernhof ’s report at the Teheran Conference.205 However, the material itself falls far short of such “expectations,” offering a shabby and unsystematic compilation of a certain part of the “sources” that have been discussed here. < 251 >

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6 “The Dimensions of Genocide,” a remarkably well-conceived project, was also an ill-fated one. It started in the 1980s and was brought to the world in 1991 — after the collapse of the USSR. It was then, in the 1990s, that a new powerful impetus was given to Holocaust research owing to the newly gained access to many archives in the former USSR and Romania, previously closed to the students of the subject. For the first time, serious researchers and solid studies of the Holocaust appeared in Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. In addition, the study and analysis of the Holocaust now involved not only professional historians but also professional demographers and ethnographers working with demographic balances (such as, for example, Sergio Della Pergola and Mark Kupovetsky). After a decade had elapsed since the conclusion of the Benz project, Dieter Pohl, another German researcher who also worked at the Institute of Modern History in Munich, undertook a similar attempt to characterize European Jewry losses from the Holocaust, timed to the inauguration of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. His research could now rely — and did rely! — on a host of new publications and a sea of new archival materials discovered over the years of archive revolutions in the former FSU countries, Poland, and Romania. While adhering to the country-by-country principle of loss computation, he also tried to resolve certain methodological problems that somewhat baffled his predecessors — provide a detailed description of the administrative structure of the countries under review, synchronize its dynamics with the data on the destruction, and, most importantly, combine the principle of characterization by region of victims’ origin with the principle of characterization by regions or even places of Jewish destruction. Besides, he was the first to realize the importance of taking into account of Jewish prisoners of war, both in the Polish and Soviet service. The estimate that Dieter Pohl arrived at in 2001 equaled 5.6 million; taking into account a 5% margin of error for the data on the former USSR and, in part, Poland, he places his estimate within a range of 5.4 to 5.8 million. Pohl’s results, obtained from the first analysis of the data in 20002001, have remained unpublished for a long time and his article in this Collection is actually seeing its first publication. He reviewed and verified the data in the article again specifically for this publication, taking into account a number of publications appearing over the 2000s. However, certain corrections made did not affect the overall result: the total number < 252 >

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of Holocaust victims in different European countries amounted to 5,588,000 million people with an estimate range of 5.4 to 5.8 million. Consolidated data on the different country-specific Holocaust victim estimates are presented in Appendix 3. It will be seen that a consensus has already been reached with regard to most West European and some of the Central European countries. For countries like Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary, there is a relative consensus, in a large measure dependent on the particular national border configuration assumed for the estimate. On the other hand, for Poland and the USSR, a true consensus is as absent as ever — both on total numbers and on victim distribution between the two countries. The latest research by Russian investigators Ilya Altman and Mark Kupovetsky make it possible to introduce certain corrections into the results of the most representative summation to date, carried out by Dieter Pohl. These corrections concern the estimates of Holocaust victims for the territory of the former Soviet Union. In this connection, another two names should be mentioned: Yizhak Arad, the former Yad Vashem Director and one of the most authoritative experts on the Holocaust as a whole, and Sergey Maksudov (Alexander Babyonyshev), a noted US demographer and statistician and an expert on the USSR’s population losses, one of whose works, appearing in 1993, was devoted to Jewish population losses from the Holocaust in the USSR. Y. Arad, in summing up his previous findings (regrettably, omitting, sometimes, to name his sources), divided Jews into “Westerners,” i.e., residents of the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940, and “Easterners,” i.e., Jews who lived in the USSR prior to September 1, 1939. As a result, Arad comes up with the following estimates of Jewish Holocaust victims in the occupied territories of the USSR: for the “Easterners” — between 946,000 and 996,000, and for the “Westerners” — between 1,561,000 and 1,828,000, with a total equaling 2,509,000 to 2,624,500 persons.206 Sergey Maksudov, who used in his computations an analysis of the sex and age structure of the USSR’s Jewish population in 1939-1959, as well as (for some unexplained reason) the territory of the former East Prussia as a kind of a modeling area for postwar Jewish migrations, made a series of conditional assumptions and arrived at an estimated loss of 970,000 among the “Easterner” Jews, i.e., those who lived in the USSR prior to September 17, 1939.207 Kupovetsky, just like Arad, was interested in all Jews who found themselves in the sphere of Soviet influence during the war. Applying < 253 >

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the ethno-demographic balance method, he came up with the following estimates of Jewish population losses: total for the USSR (within the June 22, 1941 borders) — 2,773,000, out which number 1,612,000 were “Westerners” and 1,112,00 were “Easterners.”208 However, not all of the losses were due to the Holocaust; there were also irretrievable military losses (170,000) and irretrievable civilian losses in the frontline areas (60,000), as well as excess mortality in the country interior (50,000) and excess mortality among the GULAG prisoners (15,000). Kupovetsky counts 2,438,000 as losses directly attributable to the Holocaust, or 89.3% of the total losses. Assuming the ratio of “Westerners” to “Easterners” for the Holocaust losses to be the same as for the total Jewish population losses (59% and 41% respectively), we arrive at 956,000 Holocaust victims among the “Easterners,” or just 14,000 less than Maksudov’s estimate and 10,000 more than Arad’s minimum estimate, and, finally, 44,000 less than the one million (and obviously rounded) estimate by Dieter Pohl.209 I.A. Altman’s210 approach is based on a different principle. By proceeding from the grass-root data and selecting the minimum alternative, if alternatives are available, and aggregating the data from the lowest possible level, he arrives at region-specific and republic-specific estimates of Holocaust victims in the USSR. In essence, he does for the USSR what Benz and Pohl did on a country level for all of Europe. If Kupovetsky is compelled to use official Soviet statistics on the country’s Jewry, Altman, in identifying the direct victims of the Holocaust, comes across those who, while failing to have made it to the Soviet statistics, may still have been shot by firing squads or sent to the gas chambers because they met the Germans’ race criteria according to which Jews were actually destroyed (i.e., regardless of the Halacha or religious affiliation). For Altman, the starting point for the count is June 22, 1941. Unfortunately, he does not offer his own breakdown into “Easterners” and “Westerners,” although his method does allow that. In Altman’s case, the estimate range is 2,805,000 to 2,838,000. Assuming the same ratio between the two victim categories as the one indicated by Kupovetsky and using the range’s minimum value as the calculation basis, we obtain the number of “Easterner” victims equal to 1,150,000, which exceeds D. Pohl’s estimate by 150,000. The conditionality of the assumptions we have made for this computation is quite clear, but, for want of a better methodology, we suggest that the results thus obtained should be viewed as an adjusting correction for D. Pohl data for the USSR. < 254 >

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Another such correction should be recognized in an adjusted number of Soviet Jewish POWs who died in German captivity. This Holocaust victim category, which was probably the earliest to undergo extermination, has been ignored by almost all Holocaust researchers whose materials were taken into account in Appendix 3, with the exception of D. Pohl, who offers an estimate of 50,000 to 70,000. The number of Soviet Jewish servicemen in German captivity was, according to S. Krakovsky’s estimate, about 85,000.211 Y. Arad joins him by giving practically the same number, 80,000 to 85,000.212 These numbers are based on the 1.8% share of Jews in the USSR’s population, which computation, if incorrect, errs on the side of overstatement. Overall, according to the available estimates, the number of Soviet Jewish POWs eliminated by the Nazis ranges between 50,000-70,000 (D. Pohl), 70,000 (S. Maksudov) and up to 75,000-80,000 (Y. Arad213) and 80,000 (A. Shneer). We believe that the last estimate, which corresponds to a 94% death rate of Jews in German captivity, is the correct one.214 It exceeds, if only by 15,000-25,000, D. Pohl’s estimate. Thus, if we take D. Pohl’s bottom-of-range estimate (5,558,000) and increase it by the two above-discussed corrections — 150,000 and 10,000, or a total of 160,000 — we will arrive at what we believe is today’s most wellfounded aggregate estimate of Holocaust victims — 5,748,000. Presenting that computation, after D. Pohl’s fashion, as a rounded value range, that number could be described as lying in the interval between 5.6 and 5.9 million.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE HOLOCAUST Professor Della Pergola of the Jewish Demography Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published, in 1996, an article titled Between Science and Fiction: Notes on the Demography of the Holocaust, in which, approaching the Holocaust as a demographic phenomenon, he provided an overview and a list of social and demographic problems that are already faced by contemporary Jewry or will be faced in the immediate future. Sadly, that list is far from short, containing as it does, 13 issues, and the one that we have been concerned with so far — the demographic balance and the total number of victims215 — although ranking first, is just one of the many. < 255 >

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Speaking of other issues, the scholar notes the ever-accelerating decrease of the proportion of Jews in the world’s population, the shift of the center of Jewish culture from the East to the West, the unnaturally high (even for Jews!) international mobility of Jews in the postwar period, a general and very serious decline in their health status, a sharp rise in morbidity and the death rate, the progressive increase in family disintegration forms (a large number of widows, orphans, etc.), and a substantial growth of celibacy among Jews who are normally very inclined to family life; a propensity for mixed marriages and assimilation, a fear of having children with the resultant low birth rate among Jews, a disproportion between the sexes among the surviving part of the Jewish population (the heavy preponderance of women), precipitous and accelerated aging of the surviving Jewish population, missed educational and socio-economic opportunities, conversion to other faiths to save one’s own life or that of one’s children, the decline in or loss of Jewish confessional identity caused by community disintegration. The most important and complex of these long-term effects which has fully developed and become obvious after World War II is, according to Della Pergola, “The principal interaction concerns the continuing attrition of the Jewish reproductive potential in the longer term. This, along with other sociodemographic processes that were to reach full extent and visibility only after World War II, significantly impinge on the size and viability of the Jewish population worldwide.”216 Its offshoots are supermortality or, to be exact, abnormal decimation of the oldest and youngest cohorts of the Jewish population, especially in the areas formerly known as the Pale of Settlement in Russia. The murder of millions of Yiddish-speaking Jews have been accompanied by the destruction of their specific forms of settlement (“stetl” or small towns) and essentially amounted to an eradication of an entire ethno-cultural complex of the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewry that had taken centuries to form. Another and, perhaps, even more significant and complex consequence that today’s Jewry owes to yesterday’s Holocaust is the extreme exacerbation of the problem of Jewish self-identification. Here my own view of the issue diverges from that of the Israeli demographer who formulates it as follows: Part of the problem of assessing the number of victims is related to the question “Who is a Jew?” As is well known, persecutions addressed a concept of Jewish identity based on lineage rather than on individual identification.217 Non-Jews with a definite Jewish background were the object of persecution, and among its victims. These persons were rightly < 256 >

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included in some of the victim counts. On the other hand, an effort may be attempted to relate the results of Shoah to the population that identified as Jewish before and after World War II.218

In other words, he suggests isolating and considering separately a special group of Halachic Jews among the Holocaust victims, i.e., those who had Jewish mothers. Even in the secular State of Israel, Halachic Jews enjoy a number of privileges compared to non-Halachic ones who arrived in the country under the Law of Return. George Feldman, the author of the commentary to the consolidated Table of Holocaust victims in the Almanac “The Holocaust and World War II,” goes even further in formulating his constructs. In a few sweeping brushstrokes, he excommunicates from the Jewish status people of nonJudaic confessions and non-believers (converts, atheists, secular and assimilated Jews, many of whom would not forfeit their Jewishness even by the Halachic criterion!).219 This means, if we take the author’s apparent line of thinking a step further, that the Germans just wasted their effort killing all those people, for they were illegitimate victims, victims by an “accident,” or due to the executioners’ “error of judgment” and, therefore, that is not the Holocaust! At the same time, you turn a page and you see columns of numbers reflecting individual countries’ losses and the researcher’s estimate of the sum total: 5,820,000 victims. The author makes no attempt to “dissect” that number in order to isolate “second-rate” victims; why, then, did he have to share with the reader those “did not consider” or “might not consider themselves Jews,” assumptions as sacrilegious as they are unfounded? Speaking of self-identification, it should be noted that this is a very personal and intimate matter; however, the majority of those people surely considered themselves Jews and did not base that choice on the confessional principle alone. Just one example: the great Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam, whatever the reasons for his conversion to Christianity in 1911, did not for a moment ceased to be a Jew.220 We, too, believe that it is necessary to bring some structure into the multimillion cohort of Holocaust victims.221 But the main thing is this: the Shoa is an unprecedented Jewish tragedy, a catastrophe of such dimensions and significance that certain old concepts just collapse under its weight before our very eyes and, therefore, call for a revision. In reality, the destruction of Jews by the Germans did not follow the Halacha principle, but had a massscale racial-ethnic nature that spared almost no form of Jewish identity.222 After the Holocaust, one cannot sort the Jews by “grade,” or, even worse, < 257 >

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mimic the Nazis in conducting “selection” within the six million victims in order to separate true Jews from non-Jews — this is an act of sacrilege towards all those killed, for nobody ever tried to fathom the depth of their faith before sending them to their death. Bringing the problem into a sharper focus, we would challenge the very compatibility of the Shoa as a historical phenomenon with the Halacha as a monopolized criterion of Jewish identity. The Holocaust has confronted the rabbinate with the question of revising or correcting the Halacha, but the Rabbinate does not seem to have heard the question. In considering possible alternative scenarios for the demographic development of the Jewish population — what it could be or, to be exact, could have been under normal conditions, without the Shoa, Della Pergola concludes, that in such a case “it therefore appears that without Shoah, Jewish population aging — and the quantitative erosion inherent in it — would either not occur, or would be postponed by about 30 years.”223 The world’s Jewish population would not be marking time around the 13 million figure as it does today, but would have reached double that number in 1990 — between 20 and 30 million people. Coming down from the global probabilities level to today’s realities, one would do well to consider Russia as a representative example of today’s demographic realities of the Jewish world. Once the most Jewish country in the world (5.7 million Jews in 1897), it entered the 21st century with just a 230,000-strong Jewish population, according to the last Census (2002).224 In the world hierarchy of Jewish communities, Russia ranks fifth — after Israel, USA, France, and Britain. Even joining forces with the Jewish communities of the other CIS countries it would rise just one rung higher, wedging itself in between France and Britain. Just as recently as 1989, Jews numbered more than half a million in the Russian Federation (536,800) and were one of the twenty most numerous ethnic groups of the country. By 2002, Russian Jews had dropped out of the “twenty” list with their number, to repeat, slumping to only 229,900 in 2002, in other words, it decreased almost twofold!225 That situation would not have changed materially even if the Ashkenazi Jews meant here had been counted together with other Jewish subgroups — Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, Bukhara Jews, and the Krymchaks. That would have brought their aggregate number to 233,600. Nor would it have been changed by introducing the correction suggested by the Israeli demographer Mark Tolts, who added another 20,000 to that number from among those people who failed to identify themselves with < 258 >

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any ethnic group. Even so, Jews would have ranked just 25th. The total of 253,600 thus arrived at could be recognized as corresponding to the notion of the so-called “core” Jewish population.226 However, according to M. Tolts, there will be just 130,000 such “core” Jews still living in Russia by 2020. Regarding the so-called “extended” Jewish population, which includes Jews’ non-Jewish relatives, in the 1990s it was estimated by using a 1.8 co-efficient.227 If applied to Russia, that method will give us a number approximating 456,500, which represents the maximum theoretical reserve for hypothetical Jewish immigration. Like most other European countries, Russia has an aging population. However, even against that backdrop, the age structure of the Jewish population does not look optimistic: to put it bluntly, it is just catastrophic. The median age (i.e. the age that divides the population into two equal parts, one of which is younger and the other older than that age) for Russia’s entire population and for ethnic Russians as a separate group is 37.1 and 37.6 years respectively, while for ethnic Germans it is just slightly higher (39.7), for the Jewish population it is unprecedentedly high — 57.5 years! Even the sex structure of Russian Jewry is rather unusual: men represent a majority of 51.48%. There are more men, but women are older. While the men’s median age is 55.7 years, the women’s is 61.1!228 The main factor responsible for such a catastrophic demographic situation of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry is the Holocaust. Out of the more than 3 million Jews who lived in the USSR just before World War II, around 1.1 million were killed (36%), and out of the 1.9 million Jews who lived in the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940, 1.6 million or more than 86%, were killed. This means that the aggregate losses among the Jews who lived within the borders of the USSR during the war were enormous and are estimated at 2.7 million people.229 However, the decrease of the USSR’s Jewish population did not end with the war. A negative birth rate for mono-ethnic Jewish families began to be observed starting in 1958, i.e. from the very first year ethnicityspecific current statistics were introduced in the USSR.230 Obviously, the process must have started even before that date, but there no records to that effect. That trend was accounted for not so much by emigration231 as by sociodemographic processes which cut at the root of Soviet Jewry and were closely linked both with the Holocaust and with the progressive socialization of Jews in the USSR. The fundamental reason for Jewish depopulation, as noted by M. Tolts, can be found in their specific reproduction patterns: “Total Jewish < 259 >

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fertility in the Russian Federation has not exceeded 1.6 children per woman in all the cohorts born since the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover, since 1919, the birth cohorts of Jewish women have had a very stable and low level of fertility — about 1.4 or less.”232 That indicator was approximately the same in 2002: 1,264.233 M. Tolts also pointed to the fact that the emergence of the low birth rate pattern was significantly contributed to by the high level of infertility among Jewish women, i.e., the proportion of those of them who, having passed through the child-bearing age or still at that age, have never given birth.234 In 2002, that proportion was 20.2%. The result is the progressive birth rate decline for the Jewish population: in the period from 1988-1989 through 1993-1994 the aggregate birth rate co-efficient dropped from 1.5% to 0.8%.235 Jewish population reproductive patterns in Russia are probably closely connected with the specific characteristics of Jews’ social status and level of education. Jews are almost exclusively city residents, and a significant portion of them are concentrated in the national capital; their level of education (including women) is the highest in the country. There is, for example, the well-known “emancipation boomerang,” meaning the inverse dependence between Jewish women’s level of education236 and the Jewish population’s birth rate and mortality: the women’s high level of education leads to a lower birth rate.237 Everything that has determined certain aspects of lifestyle normally have very significant effect on demographic processes. As a matter of fact, Russia’s Jewish population has made a demographic transition ahead of other ethnic groups and is now displaying the consequences of the type of demographic behavior which is now taking root in Russia as a whole. Along with the above-mentioned factors, marital assimilation, i.e. mixed marriages entered into by Jews, plays a great part in the erosion of Russia’s Jewish population. Another telling indicator is the share of children with nonJewish fathers in the total number of children born by Jewish women: 27% in 1958, 40% in 1968, 42% in 1978, 58% in 1988, and 68-70% in 1993-1997.238 In contrast to birth rate indicators, the patterns and indicators of Jewish mortality in Russia have been relatively benign for the dynamics of the Jewish population, which has long since been showing the highest male life expectancy in Russia. For 1993-1994, Tolts estimated the average life expectancy of Russia’ Jewish population at 69.6 for men and 73.2 for women.239 This means that it was not emigration with its inevitable decline in the number of women of reproductive age, but the dramatic natural population < 260 >

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movements that caused such a rapid decrease in the number of the USSR’s Jewish population in the 1970s and the 1980s. Emigration became the leading factor only in 1988 and even then the negative contribution of the low birth rate remained extremely high — over 40%, according to Tolts.240 Thus, the Soviet Union has left the international stage as one of the three centers of world Jewry. The most numerous at the turn of the 20th century, Russian Jewry has receded into the background, dropping to the level of the French or British Jewish communities towards the century’s close. Post-Soviet Jewry has come to a demographic impasse, and even if it stabilized at the present level, remaining a substantial part of global Jewish community, it would still be unable to either “make a U-turn” or “go in reverse.” *** While not the only cause of that crisis, the Holocaust was undoubtedly its main precipitating and determining factor — hence the importance of investigating the multifarious effects of the Holocaust in contemporary life, and not only Jewish life. Just how research into the Roma genocide, for instance, has fallen behind that of the Holocaust is indirectly evidenced by the total absence of papers aimed against the denial of the Roma genocide.241 Let us give the deniers’ collective passion its due, however. Their aggressive interest in and concentrated search for weak points in the argumentation advanced by the historians of the Holocaust (gas chamber chemistry, aerial photograph analysis, logistic issues, development of new archival sources, particularly Moscow-based ones) could not but mobilize those historians (even against their will) and serve as an incentive to a critical investigation and, in many instances, resolution of outstanding issues. That was happening both in the course of forced contact and confrontation (as, for example, at court trials) and in the “autonomous navigation” mode, with no contact other than through an exchange of publications or the Internet. The above applies to the demography of the Holocaust as well. The gauntlet thrown down by Hankins and Sanning was taken up and answers to their questions given, but the finality of those answers is not yet assured. It is quite likely, however, that new materials and new approaches will assist historians in making their positions even more well-argued and convincing.

< 261 >

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NOTES 1 2

3 4 5

6

7

8

9

10

11 12 13

14

Translated by M. Karp. ЦВММ. No. 21429. Demant, Ebbo (Hg.), Auschwitz — “Direkt von der Rampe weg . . .”. Kaduk, Erber, Klehr: Drei Täter geben zu Protokoll. Rowohlt, 1979. S. 34. ЦАМО. Ф. 243. Оп. 2914. Д. 272. Л. 145. This term (or, to be exact, image) belongs to Zalman Gradowski (See below). In this writing, we use the authentic name of the camp. Oswiecim is a name that relates to its postwar history and we will use it only in reference to that time period. The term Lebensentziehung appears in the technical documentation for the gas chambers and crematoria and could be translated as “deprivation of life,” “life removal,” “life withdrawal,” and even “devitalization.”. An equally impressive designation was given to the gas chambers which were called Entwesungskammer — “existence destruction chamber” (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 30. Л. 41об.). Quoted from the German translation of the book that was published in 1993: Piper Franciszek, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz aufgrund der Quellen und der Erträge der Forschung 1945 bis 1990. Oşwiecim: Verlag Staatliches Museum in Oşwiecim, 1993. 248 s. These documents were sent to the Main Archives Department of the NKVD of the USSR by the NKVD Emissary for the 4th Ukrainian Front, with a cover letter No. 6070 of 3.26.1945, and were in almost total disarray. See the relevant report entitled “The Archive of the German Concentration Camp in Auschwitz (Oswiecim). A Short Review” dated 9.4.1945 and signed by Lieutenant-General Milyushin, Director of the 3rd Section of the Organization and Inspection Division of the Main Archives Department of the NKVD of the USSR (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 30. Л. 1–45об.). It did not escape the attention of the authors of the report that all issues related to Jews had the least coverage in the surviving documents (л. 9об.), which proves that it was that kind of documents that were destroyed in the first place when the Germans were leaving the camp. For more about him, see: Полян П. “В последнее время они начали заметать следы”. Письмо из Освенцима. В России публикуется впервые // Известия., January 28, 2005. Presently, the first Russian edition of all surviving notes by Z.Gradowski is being prepared. For the magazine version, see: “Звезда” (Zvezda), St. Petersburg, 2008, Issues 7, 8, and 9. There was a total of eight sets of hand-written notes by five authors discovered near the crematoria and eventually introduced into scientific circulation in one form or another. ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. See: Appendix 1. True, manual labor was used, too — after all, it was a war out there! They even had to recall the oven designer from the army in the field, as requested by his own firm! Apart from Auschwitz and Majdanek, that small but very effective death-dispensing network included another four death camps: Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and < 262 >

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15

16

17 18 19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Kulmhof (Chelmno) which were organizationally separate and had been set up under “Operation Reinhard” in order to avenge the assassination of Heydrich. There was another concentration camp, Stuthof, sometimes included in the same group; it, too, had a gas chamber that did not run idle either. For more on this, see: Brandhuber, Jerzy Adam, “Die sowjetische Kriegsgefangene in Konzentrationslager Auschwitz,” Hefte von Auschwitz, 1961, Nr. 4. S. 5–62. It is indicative that the construction of facilities designed for the implementation “special measures” in the “POW camp” in Birkenau was the camp’s largest building project in 1942 which accounted for nearly 1/3 of its construction budget — 18.1 million out of 51.8 million reichsmarks as of 10.26.1942 (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 30. Л. 16об.–17). ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 30. Л. 38об. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 69–70. Quoted from: Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 65– 67, with a reference to: APMO. D-Aul-3a/65-66.Arbeitseinsatz — Briefe und Telegramme betr. den Arbeitseinsatz von Häftlingen. Not to be passed up is another euphemistic term one comes across in the gas chamber and crematorium technical documentation, the above-mentioned Lebensentziehung — “deprivation of life,” “life removal,” “life withdrawal,” or “devitalization.” This word means a letter illegally passed to the “outside” from prisons or similar detention institutions. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 75–77. All the numbers are greatly exaggerated compared to the real ones, but what is important here is the very fact of ongoing communication between the camp and the outside world. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 78–81. These data, with the exception of the last number, are pretty close to reality. Most probably, they originated from several prisoners who managed to escape from the camp in 1944. See also: the statement of the USSR’s People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on “The Implementation by the Hitlerite Authorities of the Plan for the Extermination of Europe’s Jewish Population” of 12.19.1942 (Внешняя политика Советского Союза в период Великой Отечественной войны. Т. 1. М.: ОГИЗ, 1946. С. 329–336). For instance, from Funk-Abwehr-Berichte — the report by the Abwehr’s Radio Communication Monitoring Service dated 6.16.1944 (as per the APMAB copy) — it is clear that London was informed of German plans to destroy another 3,000 of Czech Jews from Theresienstadt at Auschwitz — probably in addition to the elimination of the 5,000 from the family camp in Theresienstadt which had been liquidated earlier, on 3.8.1944. Aerial reconnaissance photographs were also taken May 31, June 26, August 25, September 13, and December 21, 1944. They were first analyzed by nonprofessionals in 1979. In the late 1990s, Caroll L. Lucas, a CIA analyst, examined them once again in full, noting both the presence of the crematoria with the mass burials nearby and traces of efforts to obliterate the pits. See: Zimmerman, John C., Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies. Lanham — New York — Oxford: University Press of America, 2000. < 263 >

PAVEL POLYAN 27

28

29

30

31

32

33 34

35

36 37 38

39 40 41

42 43

44

See: Доклад 4-го Управления НКВД Украины руководству НКВД // Информационный бюллетень Научно-просветительского центра “Холокост”. No. 4. 1995. [С.2] Publication by G.V. Kostyrchenko. Свердлов Ф.Д. (Сост.). Документы обвиняют. Холокост: свидетельства Красной Армии. М.: 1996. С. 09–110. With reference to: ЦАМО. Ф. 50-й армии. Оп. 9783. Д. 110. Л. 289. Петренко В. До и после Освенцима. М.: Фонд “Холокост”, 2000. С. 99. This makes L.A. Bezymensky’s erroneous conclusion all the more surprising: “In any case, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, as is evidenced by the archives of the Front and the 60th Army Headquarters, did not have, prior to the start of the WislaOder Operation, any definitive information on Oswiecim and only gained it in the course of combat action” (quoted according to Petrenko). Letter No. 1/1847 (ГАРФ. Ф. 7021. Оп. 108. Д. 38). On October 10, 1944, the Secretary of the ESC, P. Bogoyavlensky, sent a copy of this letter to Gribanov. Attached to the letter were digests of or excerpts from testimonies by several German POWs. Having read the letter, Vyshinski wrote on it his comment for the Chairman of the ESC: “Comrade Shvernik, wouldn’t it be worthwhile, based on these materials, to prepare and publish a report on this place Oswiecim?” The first general reference to Auschwitz in the Soviet press dates back to April, 1943, when the newspaper Pravda ran a short news item by the TASS listing German concentration camps. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 74–75. The German translation of that broadcast sent down from Berlin to Auschwitz literally stunned the SS-men, because publicity was the last thing they wanted. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 81–82. Let us note the methodological aspect: this is the first instance of Jewish victim computation by country of origin. For a magazine version of Gradowski’s notes, see: “Звезда” (Zvezda), St. Petersburg, 2008, Issues 7, 8, and 9. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 84–85. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 85–86. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 93, a photocopy of a Los Angeles Times article of 8.5.1945. ЦАМО. Ф. 243. Оп. 2914. Д. 272. Л. 145. Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 86–87. Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autographische Aufzeichnungen von Rudolf Höß. Eingeleitet und kommentiert von Martin Broszat. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag>Anstalt, 1958. 184 S. Hier: S. 162– 163. (Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte. Bd. 5). See more on this below. Comprised of two Polish and two Soviet experts: two Professors and engineers from Krakow (R. Dawidowski and Y. Dolinski) and Candidate of Sciences, MajorEngineer V.F. Lavrushin and Captain-Engineer A.M. Shuer. It was Sh. Dragon who helped discover the Gradowski Notes. < 264 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 45

46 47

48 49

50 51

52 53

54 55

56

57

58 59

Interestingly, the Soviet number of 4 million of Oswiecim victims was published the same day in the USA as well (with a reference to an Associated Press report of 5.7.1945). For more detail, see: Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . . ,” S. 94. Actually, there were two, not one, makeshift gas chambers on the perimeter of the Birkenau Camp (the so-called Bunker-1 and Bunker-2). In 1967, that number in the text was corrected from 4 million to 1.5 million. Subsequent Auschwitz-related trials saw that number gradually slipping down: to between 3 and 4 million at the IG Farbenindustrie Trial and 3 million at the Pohl Trial (See: Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 96). Piper, Franciszek, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz . . .,” S. 95–96. For example: Drobisch, Klaus, “Die letzte Phase des faschistischen Massenmordes 1943–1945,” Juden unterm Hakenkreuz. Berlin, 1973. S. 360; Baum, Bruno, Widerstand in Auschwitz. Berlin, 1957. S. 5; Kraus, Ota and Erich Kulka, Die Todesfabrik. Berlin, 1957. S. 172 f.; Kraus, Ota and Erich Kulka, Massenmord und Profit. Berlin, 1963; Madajczyk, Czeslaw. Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce. Warschau, 1970. Bd. II. S. 293 f.; Dunin-Wasowicz, Krzysztof. Resistance in the Concentration Camps 1938–1945. Warschau, 1982. P. 44; Pawelczynska, Anna, Values and Violence in Auschwitz. A Sociological Analysis. London, 1979. P. 25; Pilichowski, Czeslaw, Es gibt keine Verjahrung. Warschau, 1980. S. 120, 144; Klodzinski, Stanislaw. “Wklad polskiej sluzby zdrowia w ratowanie zycia iow w obozie kon centracyjnym Oswiecim,” Przeglad Lekarski, 1961. Nr. la. S. 51 ff.; Smolen, Kazimierz, Oswiecim 1940–1945. Oswiecim, 1963. S. 12; Smolen, Kazimierz, “Bestrafung der Verbrecher von Auschwitz,” Auschwitz. Faschistisches Vernichtungslager. Warschau, 1978. S. 186; Czech, Danuta. “Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Abris der Geschichte,” Auschwitz. Faschistisches Vernichtungslager. Warschau, 1978. S. 38; Piper, Franciszek, “Ausrottung,” Auschwitz. Faschistisches Vernichtungslager. Warschau, 1978. S. 134; Sehn, Jan, Konzentrationslager Oswiecim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Warschau, 1957. S. 173. Kogon, Eugen, Der SS-Staat. München, 1974. S. 157. Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution — The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945. London, Valentine, Mitchell & Co., 1953 (2nd edition — 1971). German translation: Reitlinger, G., Die Endlösung. Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939–1945. Berlin, Colloquium Verlag, 1958. S. 698. Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution. p. 500 f. Hilberg, Raul, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocaust. Berlin, 1982. S. 811; Scheffler, Wolfgang, Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich 1933–1945. Frankfurt am Main, Wien, Zürich, 1961. S. 78; Crankshaw, Edward, Die Gestapo. Berlin, 1959. S. 191 ff. Wellers, Georges, “Essai de détermination du nombre de morts au camp d’Auschwitz,” Le Mond Juif. 1983. No. 12. pp. 125–159. Gilbert, Martin, Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden. Ein Atlas. Bek bei Hamburg, 1982. S. 100. Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. New York, London, 1990. p. 117. Poliakoff, Leon, Breviare de la Haine. Paris, 1951; Dawidowicz, Lucy, The War against the Jews 1933–1945. Aylesburg, 1979. p. 191; Billig, Joseph, Les camps concentrationaire dans l’economie du Reich Hitlerien. Paris, 1973. p. 101. < 265 >

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61

62

63

64

65 66

67

68

69

70 71

72

73

74 75

76

Bauer, Yehuda, “Auschwitz,” Der Mord an den Juden im zweiten Weltkrieg. Stuttgart, 1985. S. 173. Weiss, Aharon, “Categories of Camps, their Character and Role in the Execution of Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” The Nazi Concentration Camps. Jerusalem, 1984, p. 132; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 855. Wellers, Georges, “Essai de determination du nombre de morts au camp d’Auschwitz,” pp. 125–159. However, just like with those whom he so willingly criticizes, many of his constructs also rely on expert assessments — more often than not, his own. Gerlach, Christian and Gotz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel. Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden. Stuttgart, 2001. S. 409 ff. See his article in this Collection. Meyer, Fritjof, “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkenntnisse durch neue Archivfunde,” Osteuropa. 2002. Nr. 5. S. 631–641. Van Pelt, Robert-Jan and Deborah Dwork, Auschwitz — von 1270 bis heute. Zürich, 1998; Van Pelt, Robert-Jan, The Case for Auschwitz — Evidence from the Irving Trial. Bloomington, 2002. APMAB. Höß-Prozess. Bd. 26b. S. 168. Here, incidentally, he trusts Höss; However, he does question other statements by him — those referring to the number of victims in “his” camp — as allegedly given under torture and meant to serve a certain purpose. It remains a mystery why, if Höss was just a toy in the hands of conspiring statisticians, they made him mouth numbers that were so widely different from the Soviet-Polish “sacred cow” figure of 4 million of Oswiecim victims, period! Meyer’s incompetence is already evident from his claim that no one knows and, prior to him, did not even try to find the burial place of the remains of those who had been burnt before the activation of the powerful crematoria. Relevant work orders have been preserved at ЦВММ. It is not clear, however, where Meyer took that estimate from: the Table he refers to gives the number of 147,000 for the Poles, while for the Jews (if he means Polish Jews as well) there is no by-country breakdown. Not each of the events is attached to a reference to a source; this writer, however, has been able to ascertain that these sources are not a figment of the imagination; they do exist in the Museum’s archive. Yet it is the absence of sources that Meyer complains of, invoking, while at it, notes by Sonderkommando members and even Höss himself to “catch” her out in a couple of presumed inaccuracies related to the number of people in individual train shipments (naturally those instances that err on the side of “overstatement”). Calculated from the highest known numbers in each of the categories of the detainees who were assigned personal numbers at registration. There is a reference given, but no attempt made at critically examining the source. F. Meyer does not deem it necessary to specify whether that 110,000 were included in the 225,000 people transferred from Auswchwitz to other camps. That fact can only lead to two conclusions: first, yes they were; and second, it is a double count again. Notwithstanding the considerable effort he has just expended on proving that there were at least 433,000 of them. < 266 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84 85 86

87

88 89 90

91

92

93

This runs into a glaring contradiction with Meyer’s previous arguments, i.e., the “corrections” he has just made to the possible inaccuracies found in Danuta Czech’s calculations! Pressac Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chamders. New Jork, 1989. See: Vortrag über Siedlung. Dezember 1940 (BA, NS 19/3979). Quoted from: Benz, Wolfgang (Hrsg), Dimension der Völkermords. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991. S. 2. Strangely enough, the deniers, who insist on the sacral preordainment of the “six million” number, have passed up this very curious “source” of its origination. Die Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage. Statistischer Bericht, Richard Korherr, Inspekteur für Statistik — IfZ. Nbg. Dok. No. 5193. See also: Nbg. Dok. No. 5196. Later, R. Korherr made every effort to dissociate himself from the content of that document: he claimed that he took “special treatment” to mean “relocation to the East.” For instance, there is a record of a conversation between an unidentified Hungarian Zionist and an unidentified German entrepreneur (presumably Oscar Schindler) that took place in Budapest in November, 1943. When asked how many Jews had already been killed since the start of the war, he said that an acquaintance of his, an SS officer, had told him about 4 or 4.5 million, but that number appeared to him, a businessman, somewhat of an artistic exaggeration. See the facsimile of the record in: Pohl, Dieter, “Menschenleben und Statistik: Zur Errechnung der Zahl der Opfer,” Materialien zum Denkmal fürdie ermordeten Juden Europas. Berlin, 2005. S. 74. Löbsack, Wilhem, “Juda vor dem Fall,” Danziger Vorposten. 13.5.1944. The facsimile in: Pohl, Dieter, Menschenleben und Statistik. S. 77. Nbg. Dok. PS 2738. IMT. Bd. IV. S. 393–414. Ibid. Cf.: Aschenauer, Rudolf von (Hrsg.) Ich, Adolf Eichmann. Ein historischer Zeugenberich. Leoni, 1980. S. 471 ff. Quoted from: Педантичный палач // Еврейское слово (Москва). 2002. No. 27. 10–16 июля. С. 8–9. IMT. Bd. II. S. 140. Ebenda. S. 47. For more on this, see: Krausnick, Helmut and Heins-Heinrich, Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938–1942. Stuttgart, 1981. Krausnick, Helmut and Heins-Heinrich, Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. S. 620. Круглов А. К вопросу о количестве евреев, уничтоженных эйнзатцгруппами в 1941–1943 гг. // Голокост и сучасность. Студії в Україні і світі . 2008. No. 1. С. 39–64. Lestschinky, Jacob, “Balance Sheet of Extermination,” Jewish Affairs. 1946. Vol. 1. No. 1. P. 3–19; No. 12. P. 3–22; Ibid. The Decline of European Jewry // Congress Weekly. New York, 1951. Sept. 24. See also: Lamm, Hans, “Um die Zahl der ermordeten Juden,” Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland. 1953. Mai 8. < 267 >

PAVEL POLYAN 94

95

96 97

98 99

100

101 102

103 104 105

106 107 108

109

110

See: Feldman, George, “Jewish Victims of Holocaust,” The Holocaust and World War II. Vol. 2. Ed. Peggy Saari, Aaron Maurice Saari. Detroit — New York, Gale Group, 2000. P. 403 (Appendix A). Kulischer, Eugen, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947. N.Y., 1947. P. 279. AJJB. 5707 (1946–1947). Vol. 48. Philadelphia, 1946. P. 599. Shapiro, Leon and Boris, Sapir, “Jewish Population of the World,” AJJB. 5709 (1948– 1949). Vol. 50. Philadelphia, 1949. P. 691–724. Including the Asian parts of the USSR and Turkey. See the corresponding numbers for the world at large (16.5 and 11 million) in Della Pergola’s article in this Collection. Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz Commandant from May, 1940 until November, 1943, who organized, starting in May 1944, the elimination of Hungarian Jews at the camp, stated for the record at the Trial of the Major War Criminals in Nuremberg (IMT. Bd. XI. 1946. S. 458) that 2.5 million Jews had been gassed to death at Auschwitz; in his later memoirs, he reduced that number. Cf. Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen von Rudolf Höß, eingeleitet und kommenziert von Martin Broszat. Stuttgart, 1958. S. 162 f. Poliakov, Leon, Breviaire de la Haine. Le III-e Reich et les Juifs. Paris, 1951. Frumkin, Gregory, Population Changes in Europe Since 1939. London, 1951. P. 168– 173. This data is adduced by Hankins, with no precise reference given (see below). Mentioned above are far from all of them. Reitlinger, Gerald, Die Endlösung. Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939–1945. Berlin, 1958 (the English original appeared in London in 1953 under the title The Final Solution — The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945). He always made a conscious effort not to give, under any circumstances, the slightest excuse for the anti-Semitic circles to call into question any of his computations, always opting for the lower of the two alternative numbers available. Reitlinger, Gerald, Die Endlösung. S. 558. Reitlinger, Gerald, Die Endlösung. S. 558. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of European Jews. Quadrangle Books, 1961. P. 788. It is often overlooked that this book also contains an alternative estimate (5,397,500 victims) calculated not from the victim statistics but with the help of the Holocaust survivor balance. Hilberg, Raul, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocaust. Berlin, 1982. S. 811. In later editions, these data kept being adjusted. Thus, in the 1990 edition the total number of perished remained the same, but the number of killed in the camps was corrected down from 3.0 million to 2.9, and the number of those executed by shooting increased from 1.3 to 1.4 million. See: also Appendix 3. In order to preclude double count, in country-by-country estimates Jewish refugees were counted as victims for those countries where they were shot or from where they were deported to the death camps. < 268 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 111

112

113

114

115

116 117

118

119

120 121 122 123 124

125 126

Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975 (See also the 2nd, revised edition: Ardmore: Seth Press, 1986). As a second-level assessment (i.e., one referencing a secondary source) her estimate was included in The Complete History of the Holocaust, edited by Michael Bard (Bard, Michael G. The Complete History of the Holocaust. San Diego, Greenhaven Press, California, 2001. P. 481). Bauer, Jehuda with Nili, Keren, A History of the Holocaust. New York. F. Watts. 1982. See: Feldman, George, “Jewish Victims of Holocaust,” P. 403 (Appendix A). While naming, as his sources, studies by I. Bauer, L. Dawidowicz, and R.Hilberg, Hilberg stresses that his estimate is an independent one, without, regrettably, explaining or substantiating it. Frank Hamilton Hankins (1877–1970) was a member of the faculties and a researcher with major American universities and edited major American scholarly journals. He also held Presidencies of such well-known academic organizations as the American Sociological Society and the American Population Association. His liberal-minded book The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine (1926) caused a virtual furor. The topics he specialized in as a scholar included, among others, social conditions in Hitler’s Germany. As distinct from most others, he was an example of a true revisionist who started by specializing in the revision of the history and re-interpretations of the events of World War I. JHR, 1984. No. 2–4. P. 81–82. That is clearly felt even in his choice of terms. Thus, he insists on referring to Jewish victims as “missing Jews,” on calling the attack on Russia “the outbreak of war with Russia,” and describes the Jews, who were deported By Romania to the Transdniester region and, initially, were being ruthlessly destroyed there, as “finding refuge beyond the Dniester,” etc. Sanning exhibits similar terminological tendencies (see below): he does not use the word “victims,” but refers to them as “missing persons;” scholars of Jewish descent, no matter whether French or American, are all denoted as “Jewish” or “Zionist” (with the difference between the former and the latter never explained). The absence of the question on the subject’s confession in Soviet census questionnaires combines with the detailed treatment of the ethnic identity question. Hankins, Frank H., “How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? A Preliminary Survey Of The Question,” JHR, 1983. No. 1. P. 64. The Population of Poland. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1954. P. 29. Ibid. P. 29, 187. I.e., in the USSR — ed. Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 64–65. An irrelevant point: for the Nazis, a Jew is always a Jew, regardless of national selfidentification or formal citizenship. The Population of Poland. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1954. P. 78. Ibid. P. 26, 14. < 269 >

PAVEL POLYAN 127

128

129 130 131 132

133

134

135 136 137

138 139 140 141 142

143 144 145 146 147 148

149

Jacoby, Gerhard, Racial State: The German Nationalities Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, Institute of Jewish Affairs. N.Y., 1944. P. 308, 310. Meyer, Weinryb, Duschunsky and Sylvain. The Jews in the Soviet Satellites. American Jewish Committee, Syracuse University Press, 1953. P. 239–240. Ibid. P. 184–185. Kulischer, Eugene, Europe on the Move. P. 199. Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 65–67. Hankins, too, provides that reference, but we have not checked it. Incidentally, Sanning talks of just 10,000 Hungarian Jews converting to Christianity. It should be remembered that most Jews, contrary to the existing stereotypes, were poor people, barely able to make ends meet. Adolf Eichmann, back in the times when he was engaged in arranging for a voluntary ouster of the Jews from the country, had to deal with Jewish “insolvency” amid Vienna’s wealth. Ethnic concealment, on the other hand, surely required an investment which most of the Jews could not afford to fund. In matters of Judaic practice, Hankins shows an astonishing ignorance. Faulting Judaism with a lack of universality and trying to explain the fact that confessional Jews always outnumber ethnic ones because Jewish communities always register non-Jewish family members, he reveals a lack of familiarity with the subject. Even liberal-minded communities do not allow official membership for non-Halachic Jews, while relatives who convert through Giur become full-fledged members of the community. Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 67. Ibid. P. 68. See the criticism of G. Frumkin for a negligible 2,000 divergence from M.-P. Herremans’ estimate (Herremans, Maurice-Pierre, Personnes Deplacees (Repatries, Disparus, Refugies), Brussels, 1948). Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 68. Indeed, it would probably be more correct to put it differently: “died and killed.” Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 68–69. Ibid. P. 69. Thus, if the foreword to the book that appeared in 1945 and was devoted to the Jews’ situation in the post-World War I world said, in passing, that the occupied countries and regions of Eastern Europe became a death chamber for 5 million Jews, then how not to contest that baseless phrase! Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 72. See the articles by V. Benz and D. Pohl in this book Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 72. To ascertain that, it is enough to compare any couple of back-to-back AJYB issues. For more on this, see the last paragraph of his article. According to Reitlinger, it is not only Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Chelmno, but also Maliy Trostinets near Minsk, Ponary near Vilna, 9th Fort near Kovno, Peski near Lvov, and Bikernek near Riga. See: Appendix 3. < 270 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 150

Arthur Augustus William Harry Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede (16 February 1871 — 23 March 1946) was a British politician, writer, social activist, and Parliamentarian. He wrote the book Falsehood in War-Time: Propaganda Lies of the First World War by Arthur Ponsonby MP.

151

James Bryce (1838-1922) was a British politician, diplomat, jurist, and historian, member of Parliament (the House of Lords), and British Ambassador to the United States (1907-1913). In 1915, at the request of the British Prime Minister (Herbert Asquith), he prepared the so-called Bryce Report on the atrocities committed by the German Administration on Belgium’s civilian population. The Report produced a colossal propaganda effect and influenced, to a certain extent, the US decision to enter into the war. Also, James Bryce condemned the Armenian genocide in Turkey; he was the first to speak on the subject in Parliament and later, together with Arnold J. Toynbee, prepared “The Blue Book” — a collection of documents on the subject (1916).

152

Hankins, Frank H., How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? P. 79–80.

153

Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. Mit einem Vorwort von Arthur R. Butz. Tübingen — Buenos Aires — Montevideo: GrabertVerlag, 1983.

154

Sanning, Walter N., The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry. Institute for Historical Review, 1985.

155

The pseudonym was revealed on the Internet (in the Metapedia). Since the author continues using it, we will follow suit. Let us note, however, that he also publishes things under his real name; for instance the article “The Scorched Earth. The Soviet Economic War in World War II” // Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart 29(1) (1981). S. 18–21 See also: http://www.vho.org/D/DGG/Niederreiter29_1.html.

156

Zimmerman, John C., Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies. Lanham — New York — Oxford: University Press of America, 2000. (Foreword).

157

JHR. 1983. No. 1. P. 63.

158

On the other hand, for Hitler’s Germany, he employs a rarely used, albeit historically correct, name: Großes Reich.

159

This community of goals accounts for the mutual understanding which, he believes, characterized the cooperation between the two political forces in 19331939. During the war years, the Zionists laid their hands both on the American and the Soviet establishments (the latter, it appears to Butz, had been pro-Jewish up until 1948), And immediately a new alliance, albeit an unnatural one again, sprang into existence: both countries were seeking to carry on Hitler’s policies, and the whole thing was orchestrated by whom? You guessed it — the Zionists. Those smooth operators were even able to overrun the UNRRA, an international organization that handled displaced persons affairs and was headed by New York Zionists Herbert Lehman and Fiorella La Guardia. It was they who were covering up the postwar DP migration to Palestine, a process that was illegal per se. By the same token, the USSR with its Jewish Republic absorbed countless hosts of Jews. You want proof? Here it is. For some reason, starting in 1943, the US immigration administration stopped registering immigrants’ ethnicity. True, the USSR did not stop doing that, but there, too, the desire to under-report Jewish statistics was obvious and “only too understandable.” < 271 >

PAVEL POLYAN 160 161

162

163 164 165 166

167

168 169

170

171

172

173

174

Hankins had already outlined that theme, but had failed to elaborate it. And, in certain cases, before the war as well — for instance, in Poland, where the last prewar census dated as far back as 1931. See: Marcus, Josef, Social and Political History of Jews in Poland, 1919–1939. N.Y., 1983. P. 173. Ibid. Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. S. 3. Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. S. 252–253. Sanning’s “source” was H. Graml’s study The Emigration of Jews from Germany between 1933 and 1939, which stated (erroneously) that 100,000 Polish Jews were emigrating annually between 1933 and 1937 (See: Graml H., Die Auswanderung der Juden aus Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1939, Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Hg.), Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte. Bd. 1. München: IfZ, 1958. S. 80). As noted by G. Zimmerman, the only source that Graml himself was relying upon was the study by Mark Wischnitzer Jews in the World (Mark Wischnitzer. Die Juden an der Welt, 1935), whose very year of publication speaks to its irrelevance in this matter. Wischnizer talks about the 1920s, and Graml, perhaps, did not quite understand him. See: Tartakower, Arieh, “Jewish Emigration from Poland in Post War Years,” Jewish Social Service Quarterely. No. 3. March 1940. P. 274–275. JHR (Winter 1984). No. 5. P. 370. Davie, Maurice, Refugees in America. New York, 1947. P. 28 (this is the source referenced by G. Zimmerman). G. Zimmerman obtained that number by analyzing the “Yearbooks.”. For more on this, see: Zimmerman, John C., Holocaust Denial. Chapter 1, as well as, G. Harrison’s blog. Костырченко Г.В. Тайная политика Сталина. Власть и антисемитизм. М., 2001. С. 186, 190. Although the agreement was based upon the principle of “eastern Germans in exchange for western Ukrainians and Byelorussians,” applications were accepted from all wishers who had lived on the “wrong” side of the demarcation line prior to September 1. Throughout the first part of 1940, there were three German resettlement commissions working in Brest, Vladimir Volynski, and Przemysl (and, starting on May 13, in Lvov, too); (Гурьянов А. Введение. // Индекс репрессированных. Вып. XIV. Польские переселенцы в Архангельской области. Часть 1. М., 2003. With references to: ГАРФ. Ф. Р-5446. Оп. 57. Д. 65. Л. 177; Ф. 9479. Оп. 1. Д. 57. Л. 40–50). Excluding the Polish Jews from the Vilna Region which went to Lithuania. They totaled 1, 292 persons, according to M. Altshuler. The fact that such a proposal was made by the Germans is evidenced by only one letter from the Head of the All-Union Resettlement Committee E.M. Chekmenev to Molotov, dated February 9, 1940: “The Resettlement Department under the CPC of the USSR have received two letters from the Berlin and Vienna resettlement bureaus with regard to organizing the resettlement of Jewish population from Germany to the USSR — specifically, to Birobidzhan Region and West Ukraine. In accordance with the agreement between the Government of the USSR and Germany on < 272 >

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175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182 183

184 185

186 187 188 189

population evacuation, only Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Ruthenians, and Russians are evacuated to the territory of the USSR. We do not believe that the proposals of the said resettlement bureaus can be accepted.” (Костырченко Г.В. Тайная политика Сталина. С. 189. Со ссылкой на: Российский Государственный архив социально-политической истории. Ф. 82. Оп. 2. Д. 489. Л. 1). See: Robel, Gert, Sowjetunion, “Dimension des Völkermords . . .”, München, 1991. S. 501–502. This means that the Soviets received, along with the refugees, 1.5 million Jews into their jurisdiction. The refugees were offered Soviet citizenship which was to be adopted by the end of 1939. But only a few did not decline that fateful honor (Wischitzer, Mark, To dwell in safety. The story of Jewish Migration since 1800. Philadelphia, 1948. P. 207 ff.). Subsequent deportations of former Polish Jews to the interior of the USSR affected primarily the refugees. Weinryb, Bernard D., The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800, The Jewish Publication Society, 1972. P. 348. All of them, including the refugees, were offered Soviet citizenship which was to be adopted by the end of 1939, but only a few did not decline that fateful honor. This difference in treatment was predictably reflected, among other things, in osadniks’ mortality being several times higher than the refugees’ (See: Гурьянов А.Э. Польские спецпереселенцы в СССР в 1940–1941 гг. // Гурьянов А.Э. (Сост.) Репрессии против поляков и польских граждан. Исторические сборники “Мемориала”. Вып. 1. М., 1997). Гурьянов А.Э. Польские спецпереселенцы в СССР в 1940–1941 гг. С. 120. Reference to ГАРФ. Ф. Р-Р-9479. Оп. 1. Д. 57. Л. 40–41. From the letter of M.V. Konradov to L.P. Beria, second part of August, 1940 (ГАРФ. Ф. Р-9479. Оп. 1. Д. 61. Л. 27–33). For more details, see: Полян П.М., Поболь Н.Л. Сталинские депортации. М.: Материк, 2005. Excluding those Polish Jews in the Polish Army who were residents of the Germanoccupied regions of Poland and were taken prisoner by the Red Army. Under the agreement between the USSR and Germany of 10.30.1939, they were exchanged, along with the other POWs, for the Polish POWs who hailed from the eastern parts of Poland (individual prisoners’ requests to the Soviet authorities not to transfer them to the Germans were ignored). That was reported, based on personal impressions, by one very emotional rabbi, Aron Petchinnik. Incidentally, Sanning was the only one to take the rabbi’s information “seriously.” The same kind of “methodology” can be observed throughout Sanning’s entire book, including those cases where, according to his conception, Jews must be not as few as possible, but as many as possible. Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. S. 40–41. Sanning’s practices in the choice of sources, though, are no better and no worse than other deniers’. Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. S. 204. AJYB. 1947. Vol. 49. P. 740. Sanning, Walther N., Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. S. 210–220. Rubinstein W.D., Sanning W.N., Butz A., “Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry: an Exhange,” IHR. 1984. No. 4. P. 367–373. < 273 >

PAVEL POLYAN 190

Conway, John S., “Review on: Walter Sanning. The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry.” The International History Review, VII, 3, August 1985. P. 450–451. This review drew a response from one of the IHR activists (See: Desjardins, Dan, “Critique of John S. Conway’s Review of Walter Sanning’s Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry,” The International History Review, August, 1985. Fall 1987. Volume 7 No. 3. P. 375). The “defender” accuses Conway of a) not being a demographer and b) not having any figures to the opposite effect. Whereas Sanning has scholarly things galore: the 205 pages of his book contain 24 Tables, 453 references, and 98 sources! The trouble is, they usually lack scholarly integrity.

191

Zimmerman, John C., “Holocaust Denial” (See also: http://www.mossadist.by.ru)

192

See: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2007/08/, http://tourismindicator. blogspot.com/2007/09/holocaust-kontroversen-die-verrckte.html,

193

For example, that ghetto Jews were not counted. Were they ever! Heydrich himself made sure they were, on 09.21.1939, and such statistics were kept carefully enough.

194

The Chapter on Germany was written by Ino Arndt and Heinz Boberach; on Austria, by Jonny Moser; on Luxemburg, by Ino Arndt; on France and Belgium, by Juliane Wetzel; on the Netherlands, by Gerhard Hirscbfeld; on Denmark, by Hermann Weiß; on Norway, by Oskar Alendelsohn; on Italy, by Liliana Picciotto Fargion; on Albania, by Gerhard Grimm; on Greece, by Hagen Fleischer; on Bulgaria, by Hans-Joachim Hoppe; on Yugoslavia, by Holm Sundhaussen; on Hungary, by Läszlö Varga; on Czechoslovakia, by Eva Schmidt-Hartmann); on Romania, by Krista Zach; on Poland, by Frank Golczewski; and on the Soviet Union, by Gert Robel.

195

See the translation of that article in this Collection.

196

However, a simple recount of the maximums established for each country gave us a much higher number — 6.540,000.

197

It was included in G. Rudolf ’s “Lectures on the Holocaust.”

198

Interestingly, the fundamental argument concerning the “participation” in the statistics on Jewish victims of people who never declared themselves to be statistical Jews is kind of turned inside out here.

199

Hoffmann, Joachim, Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941–1945, Capshaw, AL, Theses&Dissertations Press, 2001. P. 189, 402f.

200

Quoted from web-based publications at www.vho.org.

201

Certified by B.Y. Frezinski, an authoritative researcher of the life and work of I.G. Ehrenburg.

202

Butz, Arthur R., The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Chicago, IL: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. P. 100–104.

203

Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York: Holmes & Meyer, 1985. P. 1219 (Note by G. Rudolf ).

204

Dawidowicz, Lucy, The War Against the Jews, New York: Holt, 1975. P. 149; for individual camps, also including non-Jews. The “Holocaust Total” (P. 403) includes Jews only, so the calculated entry under “other locations” should actually be higher.” (Note by G. Rudolf )

205

Берхоф Я. Демография холокоста // ИХГБ. С. 153–167. < 274 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 206

Арад Ицхак. Катастрофа евреев на оккупированных территориях Советского Союза. Центр “Ткума”; Д.: ЧП “Лира ЛТД”; М.: Центр “Холокост”, 2007. С. 791– 798.

207

Maksudov S., “The Jewish Population Losses of the USSR from the Holocaust: A Demographic Approach,” The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. N.Y., 1993. P. 207–213.

208

See: M. Kupovetsky’s article in this Collection, Table 9.

209

This assumption, however, may not be entirely correct: intuitively, it is clear that the Westerners’ mortality from the Holocaust could not but be higher.

210

Альтман И. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР 1941–1945 годов. М., 2005.

211

Krakowski, Shmuel, “The fate of the Jewish POWs of the Soviet and Polish Armies,” The Shoa and The War. Tel Aviv: Institute for Research of the Shoa, 1992. P. 229 (See also: Еncyclopedia of Holocaust. Tel Aviv, 1990. P.1181).

212

Arad, Yizhak, “Soviet Jews in the War against Nazi Germany,” Yad Vashem Studies. Vol. XIII. Jerusalem, 1993. P. 125.

213

Арад Ицхак. Катастрофа евреев на оккупированных территориях Советского Союза. С. 798.

214

Альтман И. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР 1941–1945 гг. С. 31. The first estimate belongs to Y. Arad (Арад И. Холокост. Катастрофа европейского еврейства (1933–1945). Иерусалим: Яд Вашем, 1990. С. 30), the second one to A. Shneer (Шнеер, Арон. Плен: В 2-х т. Иерусалим, 2003. Т. 2. С. 91). Unfortunately, the methodology underlying these estimates is not explained.

215

Firstly, A. Shneer’s estimate is definitely supported by the number of ethnic Jewish POWs among the repatriates to the USSR (about 5,000). Until that point, Arad had adhered to a 55,000 number which is, in our view, greatly underestimated. Consistent with it was general mortality among Soviet Jewish POWs of “only” 65%; this is not much higher than mortality among the Soviet POWs in general which was estimated at 57% by K. Streit.

216

Incidentally, Della Pergola himself believes that the most relevant estimate lies between 5.6 and 5.9 million.

217

The Nazis were consistent: the Holocaust has spared the Karaims and the Mountain Jews — at least part of them.

218

Della Pergola, Sergio, “Between Science and Fiction: Notes on the Demography of the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Washington, D.C., United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 10, 1, Spring 1996. P. 34–51.

219

Della Pergola, Sergio, “Between Science and Fiction.”

220

Feldman, George, “Jewish Victims of Holocaust.” P. 403 (Appendix A).

221

All his relatives in Riga and, possibly, in Sauliaus, had perished, and he himself, it was rumored among the Russian emigration, had died not in a camp, as it became known later, but in the occupied Kursk — allegedly shot along with other Jews!

222

According to A.B. Sinelnikov, the Holocaust was one of the five causes at work in the decrease of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry. The other four are Stalin’s repressions against Hebrew and Yiddish culture in the USSR, Jewish emigration from the USSR, < 275 >

PAVEL POLYAN

negative birth rate, and assimilation. He writes that the Nazis made no distinction between religious and secular Jews or halachic and non-halachic, although, numerically, the former have suffered far more than the latter. He believes that it is precisely the assimilated Jews of Western Europe, with the exception of Holland, who have survived the Holocaust. This means that the brunt of it was borne by the Ashkenazi and halachic Poland and Lithuania where conversions to Christianity and mixed marriages were rare (far less common than in Western Europe and Russia). That defined, according to Sinelnikov, the unique character of the Holocaust which “made impossible the Jewish people’s continued existence under diasporal conditions” (Синельников А.Б. Причины уменьшения численности советского и постсоветского еврейства. Его демографические перспективы // Уроки Холокоста и современная Россия (Материалы международного симпозиума, проведенного в Москве 6–8 апреля 1994 года. М.: Российская библиотека Холокоста, 1995. С. 95–96). 223

Let us remember, there were only two exceptions: the Karaims, descended from the Khazars, and the Mountain Jews, who are of Iranian origin. Those were largely, though not entirely spared by the Germans.

224

Della Pergola, Sergio, “Between Science and Fiction.”

225

Of course, today’s Russian Federation cannot be compared, territorially, to the Russian Empire, but even within the borders of the comparable USSR, contemporary Jewish population would not be much larger — just 350-360,000, as estimated by Della Pergola for 1.01.2006 (Della Pergola, Sergio, “World Jewish Population 2006,” American Jewish Yearbook. Vol. 106. New York. The American Jewish Committee, 2006. P. 559–601).

226

Jews’ place in the “twenty” has now been taken by the Azeris, and this is highly symbolic as it also corresponds to the changes in the Russians’ everyday xenophobia.

227

All told, there are about 1.6 million “core” Jews in the world who are current or former residents of the FSU Republics.

228

Tolts, Mark, “The Post-Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and the World,” Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe, 2004. No. 1(52). P. 37–63.

229

The small rural Jewish population (just 5,266) is considerably younger, its median age is “only” 53.5 years.

230

Куповецкий М. Людские потери еврейского населения в послевоенных границах СССР в годы Великой Отечественной войны // Вестник Еврейского университета в Москве. 1995. No. 2(9). C. 134–155 (See: Kupovetsky M., “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR during World War II,” Jews in Eastern Europe. 1994. No. 2(24). P. 25–35). See the most advanced version of that study in the present collection.

231

Тольц М. Российские евреи: пример убывающего населения // Демоскоп. 2005. 11 января.

232

Tolts, Mark, “Jews in Russia: A Century of Demographic Dynamics,” Diaspory/ Diasporas [Moscow], 1999, No. 1, pp. 180-198.

233

Тольц М. Указ. соч.

234

In Russia, only the Chinese had a lower one (1.135), but they, as is known, have that indicator mandated “from above.” < 276 >

THE DEMOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS OF THE HOLOCAUST 235

According to the 1979 Census, the estimated average marrying age for Jewish women was 23.1, and it was even lower — 22.7 — according to the 1989 Census. The final celibacy indicator (the percentage of those who has never been married by age 45-49) equaled 8.8% in 1979 and 7.3% in 1989 (Tolts, Op. cit., Ibid.)

236

Tolts, M., “The Jewish Population of Russia, 1989–1995,” Jews in Eastern Europe. 1996. No. 3(31). P. 5–19.

237

Among Jewish women in St. Petersburg, 62.3% have higher education (as compared to 28.6% for the city population at large), and another 4.5% are university students, which means that two thirds of Jewish women there have either a full or an incomplete higher education (Миронов Б. Современная еврейская диаспора в Санкт-Петербурге // Нева. 2006. No. 9).

238

Bondarskaya, G., “Ethnic-Territorial Differences in Marital Fertility: A 1985 Survey,” Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991, eds. Lutz, W., Scherbov, S. and A. Volkov, London and N.Y.: Routledge, 1994. P. 71–87; Shkolnikov, V.M., Leon, D.A., Adamets, S., Andreev, E., Deev, A., “Educational Level and Adult Mortality in Russia: An Analysis of Routine Data 1979 to 1994,” Soc. Sci. Med. 1998. Vol. 47. No. 3. P. 357–369.

239

Tolts, M., “The Jewish Population of Russia, 1989–1995.” P. 5–19.

240

Ibid. For Jews, that indicator has remained almost unchanged since the late 1980s, while for Russia’s population as a whole, it has gone down significantly.

241

Tolts, Mark, The Post-Soviet Jewish Population in Russia and the World. P. 37–63.

< 277 >

ALFRED KOKH

Alfred Kokh

Afterword

THE TRIAL OVER THE SIX MILLION

Having read the works of the members of the long-distance discussion on the Holocaust, I was bewildered for a long time, to tell the truth. I was stunned, first of all, by the weakness of argument on both sides. They are stuck in the same statistical-demographic material and are just interpreting numbers. It’s cabbalistic. Their arguments are of this kind: if you start with this level of birthrate and mortality rate, these losses in the general war, this level of emigration, and this scale of evacuation, then the losses are suchand-such. The counter argument is that your calculations are wrong because of this and that. That is, the Jews never had such a high birthrate, while the mortality rate was higher, and the many more Jews died from bombing, starvation, and at the front than you say, and dozens of other reasons. Plus you’re counting them twice: you first counted this group of Jews as Poles and then as Soviets. Therefore, in conclusion, this number died from the Holocaust, that is, much fewer than six million. But, excuse me, how can you say that when this world class expert Mr. X, working for the UN says otherwise. His research clearly shows that the losses were such and such. It doesn’t show anything, comes the response, because the data he was working with were made up. In the late 1940s you could not get objective research or censuses,. Moreover if you move the basic data in his tables to bracket the confidence interval (which scientifically is absolutely correct, after all, they are no more than expert estimates), the results will be an order smaller than yours. < 278 >

AFTERWORD. THE TRIAL OVER THE SIX MILLION

After I read the first few articles from the proponents and opponents of the classical version of six million victims, it became clear to me that nothing can be proven or disproved on the basis of that material. That is because there is no comparative and full numeral material, and these series can be interpreted in accordance with the researcher’s prejudice through the traditional methods of demographical statistics. ** But nevertheless, some conclusions can be made. First of all, the deniers have failed completely in their attempt to pretend to a purely scientific discussion. It’s clear from their opening paragraphs that they are not as dispassionate as they pretend. How do they give themselves away? Well, for example, by a not very honest analysis of the factual material. In particular, one of the articles maintains that it was enough to convert to Christianity for the Holocaust to bypass you. That is a lie. In the majority of cases it did not help. They describe just a few cases in Hungary, were potential victims were saved this way, but it is just a drop in the ocean. Then, it’s not clear why converting should have saved Jews if the Nazis also persecuted Christian priests even of “truly Aryan” heritage. For the Nazis, any religious feeling was suspect, except for their shamanist cults in the spirit of the SS-Teutonic abracadabra of Valhalla. Yet non-Aryan heritage helped: most of the Karaites and mountain Jews survived occupation. They also claim that a great number of Jews died in Stalin’s camps. The topic of Stalin’s camps as a replacement for Auschwitz and Babi Yar is a rather subtle move. It’s true that in the days of the Iron Curtain you could blame Stalin for whatever you wanted. Western public opinion could easily believe any fairy tale about the monstrous crimes of the Bolsheviks, especially since the Bolsheviks gave them cause many times. Just take the Katyn massacre. If Stalin tried to throw the blame for his crime on Hitler, why not do the reverse? That is, add the human lives the traditional historical school attributes to the Nazi to the Communist accounts. They’re responsible for dozens of millions of corpses, why not a few more. For all my hatred of the Communists, I think this trick is doomed to failure for numerous reasons. Let me name a few. First, there is a huge number of documents and eyewitness accounts regarding Nazi savagery toward the Jews. Yes, I know that the deniers claim those are forgeries. Even if that were true, there aren’t any documents at all regarding Stalin. < 279 >

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Gotcha! They will say to me. Of course, the Jews had no reason to make up stories about Stalin right after the war, they needed him to support the creation of Israel. But It’s I who’s got you, you saviors of Aryan honor. If the Jews did not create any forgeries about Stalin’s atrocities toward the Jews, then only the real accounts should remain. But there are none. You will counter that Stalin destroyed them. But, why not extend your logic to the Nazis? If you take away the “Jewish forgeries,” there will be no evidence of Nazi atrocities at all. But why not assume that there are none because the Nazis destroyed them instead of because there were no atrocities? And then, why should Stalin have destroyed the documents? I hadn’t noticed any other signs of modesty in Stalin. He didn’t destroy the documents about the Chechens or the Kalmyks. Stalin executed many ethnic cleansings — from Estonians to Koreans. And they are all documented. Number by number: so many echelons, so many children and old women, so many died, so many sent to the camps, and so many wasted. But there isn’t a single document about the Jews. How can that be? Very simple: there was no persecution of the Jews. I agree that Stalin was an anti-Semite. There are mountains of literature of varying quality about that. I agree that Stalin was mortally offended by the Jewish leaders that in exchange for his support for the creation of Israel they did not turn their young country into an “outpost of socialism” in the Near East and made friends with America instead. I agree that Stalin planned a persecution of Jews in the USSR. He even started it — the murder of Mikhoels, the persecution of member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the Doctors’ Plot. But he did not have time to start up the monstrous mechanism of that campaign. He died, thank God. Yes, the persecution of the Jews continued after his death. The notorious “fifth paragraph” for Jews was an impassable obstacle in careers, as, however, it was for Germans, Chechens, Ingush, and many, many others. But the physical extermination of Jews for the sole reason that they were Jews did not occur. Otherwise, it would be known. The murder of 2.5 million people, and that is how many Jewish deaths are attributed to Stalin by the Holocaust revisionists, would have been impossible to hide in the Soviet system. And nobody would have hidden it. They would simply announce that Jews (all of them, without exception) were enemies of the people. And they would have shot them. To tumultuous ovations, as the transcripts of Communist Party conferences used to say. . . . < 280 >

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Those who know the Stalin era will agree with me. Stalin didn’t give a fig for world opinion. He knew the value of that opinion and how it was formed. He would receive a few outstanding cultural figures at the Kremlin, he would buy a dozen leading Western journalists, and that would be that. Just recall the denial of Holodomor, the famine in 1933 that killed millions in Ukraine, northern Caucuses and the Volga, and the apologia for the Stalin show trials of the 1930s that appeared, not selflessly, in the pages of The New York Times by Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter Duranty and at The Nation by his colleague Louis Fischer. And it doesn’t make sense for the Soviet Army to rush to the West at the end of the war to liberate the prisoners of the concentration camps just to kill them off later. Wouldn’t it have been easier to wait for the Nazis to kill them? Here’s one more consideration. If Stalin really had killed those poor people, then why didn’t he start a large-scale propaganda campaign blaming Hitler for it? Why did he do that about Katyn, but not here? Look — he had all the aces in his hands: the reports of the SS, and the Polizai, the opened graves and the concentration camps and camp archives and eyewitness accounts of survivors. But he did not do it! He did not accentuate the Jewish victims. Let’s not analyze his motives here. That is the topic of another paper. Also, not a positive treatment of Stalin. But for our present article it is important that he did not do it because he understood that those victims would not be blamed on him for sure. Moreover, even after his death, right up to perestroika, the stress on Jewish deaths was assiduously avoided in historical research and Soviet literature. Those who did not obey (for example, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in his poem Babi Yar) were punished. But I’m repeating well-known facts. Strange things happen in this issue. Well, all right, let’s assume that the “Jewish world lobby” (we will return to this fantastical construction) is capable of implementing a large-scale information war and falsify any bit of evidence it wants to. Let’s also assume that the proponents of the traditional version of the Holocaust are the front line of the “Jewish world conspiracy.” Then why, when it became clear that the USSR would not support Israel, and especially once it began supporting Yasser Arafat and Syria and Egypt in its struggle against the Jewish state, did they not take up the thesis of Stalin’s genocide of the Jews? Even in view of the insulting hushing up by Soviet propaganda of the Jewish victims of Nazism? Ah, but the deniers have yet another answer full of conspiracy for this seemingly simple question. It turns out the “Jewish world conspiracy” decided to make postwar Germany is cash cow with which to build the entire < 281 >

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infrastructure of Israel. Within the framework of that parasitic doctrine, all the guilt had to be born by the German people, so that they would be forced to expiate that “historic guilt” through massive philanthropy to create Israel’s economic base. According to this doctrine, dividing the guilt between Germany and the USSR would be a bad idea, since the USSR was a winner of the war and would never accept any philanthropic responsibility. So, rather than try a scattershot approach, it would be better to concentrate on Germany and get everything they could out of it, blaming it alone for everything. The authors of this doctrine forget only one thing: the thesis that German Nazism destroyed millions of Jews appeared not as the result of a clever “PR campaign of Jewish media oligarchs,” but from the Nuremberg Trial and other trials of Nazi criminals. All right, these trials were not ideal from the point of view of jurisprudence purists. More and more evidence is appearing that some of the testimonies at the trials were obtained under pressure, but nevertheless, I think that the prosecutor from the Soviet Union, future General Prosecutor of the USSR Rudenko, would have been extremely surprised to discover that he was merely “a tool in the hands of world Jewry.” At the time that the concept of the “historical guilt of the German people” was formed, those German people were impoverished and barefoot, the country was in ruins, and the Americans were spending billions to restore the economy of vanquished Germany. In those conditions, you would have be a diehard Germanophile and fanatical adept of faith in the creative powers of the German people and the power of the German spirit to imagine the “German economic miracle” and Germany’s economic leadership in Europe in the next few decades. I simply can’t imagine those qualities in the “unbridled Jewish defamers of the German people.” And here is one more very important point. Israel after the war did not insist on Germany giving it any financial help. It was the FRG that insisted on it. As soon as it had the capability, that is, in the early 1950s, Adenauer stubbornly talked about Germany giving such aid. And it was only in 1952 that Israel agreed to accept that aid, and the Knesset in voting on the issue had a very heated discussion and the measure passed by only one vote. So the initiative for that aid did not come from Israel. All these strange points in the position of the “Jewish falsification supporters” vanish in an instant, if you consider that the main motivating factor for them is the search for historical truth and not some long-playing strategy for extorting money from Germany. Occam’s razor makes me think that this is the simplest explanation for the absence of Jewish victims of Stalin’s genocide. < 282 >

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And I’d like to make a snide little comment here. As you know, the Western deniers of the Holocaust are supported in Russia by anti-Semites, who are also ultra-patriots and Stalinists, to boot. So, I’d like to hear their point of view on the circumstance that one of the proofs that the Holocaust never happened presented by their Western colleagues is the idea that the Jews were destroyed not by Germans but by Russians. Would their antiSemitic international be as strong when they learned this? ** In general, the deniers’ research is rather monotonous methodologically. They take an evaluative number for Jews on the eve of the war, here’s their number (also evaluative) after the war, and that gives them a difference. Various studies give various numbers, but the interval is approximately between four and six million dead. Then comes the classification of those victims. The technology is approximately as follows: a million died of general wartime causes. That’s a sneaky trick, since a person who died of these causes cannot be considered a victim of genocide, but must be considered simply a war victim, since he did not die because he was Jewish but just in combat as a soldier, or of starvation in blockaded Leningrad, or from being bombed in Warsaw. Can those people be considered victims of the Holocaust? No. . . . All right, let’s move on. The notorious Stalinist repressions. Out in Siberia somewhere, Stalin killed 2.5 million Jews in the camps. Go check that out. . . . Oh, why bother checking, it’s so clear. If we can’t find them, then it’s obvious that the Russian killed them. Nothing to think about. Next. A large number of Jews managed to emigrate to America and Palestine. What? The facts don’t bear that out? The hell with the facts. It’s all Jewish tricks. They got out with forged documents, so the immigration services did not write them down as being Jewish. So you can easily count another million there. So, how many do we get that way? Four point five million? That almost covers our number of victims. All right then, to be completely fair, we do admit that the Nazis did kill Jews. Some in the camps, some executions. By the way, they weren’t killed in the camps, they died on their own. From typhus. Naturally they had to burn the corpses to prevent epidemics. Our of humanitarian reasons. There’s another 1.5 million. That’s total of six million, Q. E. D. Of that number, maybe a half million are Holocaust victims, that is, ten times less than the Jewish falsifiers claim. When I read “research” like that, I want to scream: Wait, hold on, what are you doing! Let’s discuss each of your figures. Don’t you know that among < 283 >

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the people killed in general war causes, there are soldiers who died in prison camps. But a soldier from the Red Army in the German POW camps died with a probability of 0.2 if he was not Jewish and a probability of 1.0 if he was a Jew. Then why are you using the non-Jewish proportion in counting prisoners of war? And you also forget that the greater part of Europe’s Jewish population lived in the western areas of the USSR and Poland, and quickly found themselves in Gemran-occupied territory. Jewish men of draft age therefore could not have been mobilized into the Red Army. And certainly not into the Polish army because there wasn’t one. Thus, proportionately many fewer Jews died in combat as soldiers of the Red Army. And certainly not because they had fled to sunny Tashkent but because in just a few weeks they ended up as prisoners of the Germans. Then, being on German-occupied territory, their losses from starvation and disease were significantly higher than the rest of the population, because they were herded into ghettos and left without means of support. The Jews were starved to death. How can you call those circumstances general war causes? Are you crazy or what? How can you possibly think that living conditions were the same for a Pole in some village in the territory of the governor general or a Ukrainian in Vinnitsa (I’m not even talking about Latvians or Estonians) and for a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto or a Belarussian shtetl? Then: there was an uprising in the ghetto. The Germans suppressed it, flattening entire blocks with cannon and aviation. Not only the mutineer men died, but women and children, old people . . . Are those also general war causes? It was the Germans who forced them into the ghetto. That is why there was such a high concentration of Jews in the overcrowded areas of the ghetto. And they rebelled not from having such a good life but out of despair, knowing that they were doomed. I don’t remember any anti-German uprisings by Ukrainians to the west of Kiev. Let’s move on to the lucky Jewish immigrants. It is important to note a very important thing here: the deniers claim that Jews left Europe for the US under false documents that made them out to be non-Jews. This is an oblique way of stating that the American anti-immigration policy of the 1930s-1940s was directed exclusively against the Jews. That is not true. Despite the rather high level of anti-Semitism among Americans at the time, US policy of the 1930s-1940s was directed against immigration in general, regardless of the nationality of candidates. In the period between the end of 1941 to the end of 1945 the US allowed in only 21,000 people. Of all nationalities! Even though the quotas permitted 200,000 people, the American < 284 >

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immigration authorities did not let it happen. Moreover, the Americans official admitted the fact of their inaction on that issue during World War II. And yet, there are people who claim that the Americans were slandering themselves. That they were actually better than they said of themselves. Were does this selectivity come from? The Soviet Union, which gave sanctuary to more than two million Jews and saved most of them from a certain death, is accused without any basis of killing them. While the Americans, who admit their immorality and in fact criminal inactivity, are absolved against their will of responsibility and credited with a humanitarianism they lacked. This mutiny against common sense can have only motive: to prove at any cost that Jews were not killed in such numbers by the Nazis as generally held. If that could be proved by moving 2.5 million out of the people killed by Stalin into Jews who immigrated to America, our revisionists would happily do it. But that version just won’t work. They would have to show those new Americans. Two and half million people is no joke! That’s why they decided to blame Stalin for 2.5 million and give the Americans some 300,000. They could easily by lost in the vast expanses of the United States. A mere trifle. They could easily have been assimilated. They make up even more nonsense about the immigration to Palestine. They claim that hundreds of thousands of Jews made their way through Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey and ended up in Palestine. That allegedly there was an agreement among these countries to close an eye to this underground railroad movement in order to save these people. They don’t offer any proof of this but do say that there can’t be any proof, since it was an informal process, kept secret from the Germans, since all these transit countries were allies of Germany. But wait! If that were true, then why did these states allow themselves to be labeled helpers of Nazism for sixty years? Why didn’t they do an official investigation, find witnesses (border guards, train personnel, local residents, guides, etc.) and wash off that stain? Do you mean to tell me that some Janos Kadar or Todor Zhivkov refrained from doing it at the request of the “world Jewish conspiracy”? I’ll never believe that! Given the general level of antiSemitism then among the leadership of the so-called “socialist camp” (and what an accurate term that turned out to be!) the governments would have jumped at a chance to help the Palestinians in this marvelous propaganda move, proving that the Jews were making up the whole Holocaust! Anyone who maintains this is true simply doesn’t understand the situation. The revisionists, feeling the weakness of their argument, add a simulation of scholarship. If only we had access to the Turkish archives, probably we < 285 >

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would find everything about the Jewish refugees, since the last link of this transit and the filtration camps were in Turkey. But the Turkish archives are silent. As are Turkish historians and politicians. They say nothing about the transit or the mythical camps. They don’t support the Turkish alibi. Why not? Why all this historical masochism? An Islamist party has been in power in Turkey for almost a decade and it would hard to accuse it of Zionist tendencies. Of course, the Turks aren’t fundamentalists and Turkey is a secular country striving to join Europe. I can’t imagine that they would voluntarily, at the cost of their national reputation, serve the “Jewish falsifiers of history.” Maybe everything is much simpler? Maybe there was no transit, since no one knows anything about it? Or do you expect us to believe that all these countries conspired to trick Hitler. They organized the transit, hot food, trains. And then what? The people would not have reached Palestine in any case, because Palestine was under British mandate at the time and the British banned Jews from entering the territory. They admitted that in black and white. Besides which, they announced that policy to the world in the 1930s, that is, long before it was known that Nazis were burning Jews in their ovens. The British did not suspect then that their back doomed millions to death, and they certainly did not suspect that they were part of a “Zionist scenario about the millions of victims of the Holocaust.” However, when the world learned about the ovens and the ravines, they didn’t reverse their ban. But the British don’t like to comment on that. They don’t have a tendency to explain themselves to public opinion. They prefer forming it first and then appealing to it. . . . We understand, we’ve read about “the white man’s burden.” By the way, do you happen to know why Great Britain has extended the ban on opening their archives for that period? Or why it hasn’t agreed to the opening of the Hess archive? Odd . . . such a free country and yet . . . ** Now we reach the main theme: the killings. There were two types. Chronologically, first Jews were killed in their home towns. That is, Einsatzgruppen came (or the local polizai) and put the final solution into action. How was it done? As a rule, very simply. They gathered up the Jewish population, which had been registered and counted, dug or found a ravine, and then shot them at the edge of the ravine. The dead fell into the ravine, the bodies were sprinkled with lime, and the ravine filled in with dirt. Nothing new there. The Cheka shot “enemies of the people” in that manner, < 286 >

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too. The technology was well developed during the Civil War. Of course, there were occasional “creative breakthroughs,” for instance, they could herd people into a synagogue and toss grenades inside. The deniers say nothing about this at all. This theme is not discussed, it does not exist in their lexicon. But how can they avoid it? What about the Einsatzgruppen reports? The thousands of witnesses? The polizai reports? The unearthed ravines with tens of thousands of rotting corpses? The photographs made by the Polizai and the SS? The lists of Jews compiled in every city and town and the missing people who match those very lists? Where are they, all the residents of Polish, Belorussian, and Ukrainian towns and villages? In Palestine? In America? Right, they’re strolling down Broadway naked. They were stripped before being executed, and they escaped, leaving behind their worn clothes. Underpants, bras, old sandals, children’s shorts . . . . Where did those mountains of old clothing come from? The people existed! There were censuses, [1] photographs, they had existed physically! Are they suggesting that the people were led out of town, forced to dig a ditch, stripped . . . and then let go? There are thousands and thousands of eyewitness accounts. Everything is documented, reported, there were trials in every city of the people who helped the fascists, I saw them myself on TV as a child. And now, to claim that it hadn’t happened! That Stalin had starved them to death somewhere in Siberia. Where? In what camp? In Kazakhstan? No. Kolyma? No. Taishet, BAM, Norilsk? No. Mordovia, Vorkuta, Salekhard? No, again. None of the camp inmates had seen or heard of a Jewish inflow. Not Solzhenitsyn, not Shalamov, no one. There is no information on it at Memorial. Yakovlev’s commission had no such findings. There was a German inflow. They put away the Balts. Lots of people from the Caucasus. That’s all recorded, numbered, documented. No one argues with that. But silence about the Jews. [2] [Although, to be totally accurate, there was a documented flow of Jewish refugees from annexed lands from Poland, in the summer of 1940, no fewer than 65,000. They were forcibly exiled to Kazakhstan and, sometimes, to Western Siberia. There are accounts in the memoirs of other prisoners and there is an entire section devoted to them in the book Stalin’s Deportations.] It is impossible to organize this kind of falsification. Even in theory. Hundreds of thousands of people would have to take part. And a priori there would be people who had no sympathy or pity for Jews. What arguments could have swayed them to take part in this universal hoax? < 287 >

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Money? There isn’t enough money to buy testimony from so many people. What about the clothing? The archival documents? And the officials? All, right, let’s assume that America pressured the Germans and they libeled themselves. In exchange for American investments and so forth. But why would the Russians take part in this conspiracy? America could not pressure the Soviet Union and they weren’t afraid of the Jews. Then why? In order to avoid accusations of genocide? Then why didn’t it all come out after perestroika? That was a time when everyone tried to find the worst to be said about Stalin. Why wasn’t it done then? You must agree that is odd. They recognized the Katyn massacre but refused to do this? Even more interestingly, no one is making the accusation. Not Germany, not Israel. Only the volunteer defenders of “Aryan honor.” Once again, the principle of economy of thought leads me to think not of a conspiracy but the most simple answer. If thousands of people under oath say the same thing, and not only the defendants, but the witnesses, who are not in jeopardy, if there are documents, evidence, graves opened in front of witnesses, then that is what happened. This is the truth. Jews were killed in Nazi-occupied territories. There is one fine point here, however. The local populace took an active part in these killings, as various volunteers, polizai, “local self-defense forces” and “partisans” loyal to the occupational regime. And how they informed on the Jews! How they turned them in! Yes, of course, there were people who hid Jews despite the danger of being shot themselves. But there were many more who reported on their whereabouts. This phenomenon of informing, that enthusiasm of voluntary participation in murder has not been properly examined. Even though it is one of the most bitter lessons of the Holocaust. Judge for yourselves. Here is a German soldier, shackled by his oath and stupefied by years of propaganda, who must obey his commander’s criminal order. It’s horrible, but it is understandable. But why did you — Latvian, Ukrainian, Pole — participate in this? Why did you inform? What’s it to you? You even did the shooting. Why? It’s inexplicable . . . . It seems it was done solely out of love of art. Here I am somewhat prepared to move not to the side of the deniers but certainly not to the classic position on “the historical guilt of the German people.” The guilt for the Holocaust is on all the nationalities who lived in German-occupied territories. Without their active — and very importantly — mostly voluntary participation, there would have been many fewer Jewish dead. Several times over. < 288 >

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** And then, there are the concentration camps. Here, the deniers use two kinds of arguments. First, they try to prove that there were many fewer deaths than claimed by the traditional version. Second, they maintain that the cause of death even of the inmates was “nonviolent,” that it, they were not killed by poisoned gas, they were not given lethal injections or shot, but they simply died from virulent epidemics of typhus and for sanitary reasons their corpses had to be burned. They also claim that Zyklon B powder was an innocent antiseptic used on corpses to keep them from spreading disease while awaiting cremation. Here, there is a divergence among the revisionists: some consider it an antiseptic, others deny it was ever used and refer to some chemical tests that prove it was never present in the camp buildings. In my opinion, the determining arguments that deny the deniers are the acts of inspection of the camps compiled by Soviet troops after they occupied them. Let me explain what I mean. I agree that nothing can be taken on trust, including the testimony of prisoners of German concentration camps, who cannot be objective and calm about what happened to them. But skepticism must remain within the framework of common sense, and we cannot accept that the German were capable of spending significant funds and human resources over a long period of time on pointless activity (even from the point of view of Nazi ideology). The deniers have a contradiction in their argument. Look: starting in the summer of 1943, the German army was in retreat. It was irreversible and no sporadic counterattacks could change the general vector of the war. The superiority of the Red Army and the Allies is explained by its incomparably larger resource base than the Germans had, and together with other factors, left Germany no hope of changing the course of the war. In these conditions, it was natural for Germany to concentrate all its material and human resources on resisting the advancing enemy. Therefore, any diversion of money to other goals can be explained only by extraordinary reasons. But if we look at Auschwitz, we will see that in 1943 five ovens were built to cremate corpses, and the last one built practically in early 1945. It is absurd to imagine that the ovens were not used and just built for no reason. I dare say that they worked not only on a normal schedule but, if necessary, round the clock. I am certain that it was only the lack of capacity of the crematoriums they had, used at top productivity, that could serve as an argument for funding the construction of more. < 289 >

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And that meant that the number of people killed in the camps can be determined by the maximal productivity of the crematoriums in the camp. I don’t see any argument against this approach. Even if you exclude the bodies burned outside the crematoriums in special ravines (which is reported by many witnesses), the total productivity of all the crematoriums in the death camps allows the destruction of two million corpses. Even if not everyone cremated was Jewish, we still get an impressive number of Jewish victims. Now, as to the cause of death. Here, so as not to argue, I will draw a picture that arises if you look at it from the point of view of the deniers but still remain within reasonable logic. Thus, the German Army occupies Eastern Europe. All the Jews on the occupied territory are either killed on the post or herded into ghettos. There, they have no jobs, starve, lack medical care or elementary means of support, and are under severe psychological stress. It is obvious that in these conditions, the human organism weakens and becomes prone to infectious diseases. But that is not all. Starting in 1942, the Jews are moved from the ghettos to the concentration camps, where they are separated from their families, starved even more (the Germans need the food), and forced to labor beyond their strength. There is no hygiene, medicine (the Wermacht soldiers need them), or medical care in the camps. How many graduate degrees do you need to figure out that there could be epidemics in the camps? Not one. You don’t need a single degree to know with 100% certainty that there will be epidemics in the camps. And there were. So, let’s sum up. They didn’t use Zyklon B, that is, no chemical weapons were used. But there were bacteriological weapons. Not much better. Why waste all that polemical energy to prove only that a different means of mass destruction was used to kill people? You can’t very well insist that they just died on their own, that the German authorities had no hand in it and were simply fighting the danger of epidemics. Oh, no, deniers, you can’t write off those two million people to general war reasons. Even if they had died of typhus, they died because of the Nazis, and their murder was conscious and premeditated. And then, the deniers have a problem with the gas. Take those spacious “showers” that in the classic version were gas chambers. The deniers did not try to come up with any clever excuses but used by favorite method of economy of thought: they say if those rooms are called showers and there are shower heads in the ceilings, then why try to invent something different — they are showers. < 290 >

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That seems simple. But if you think about it, it doesn’t fit. Take the doors. Tell me why a simple shower room, and especially one built for “subhumans,” need expensive hermetic doors like the ones on safes? If it’s not a gas chamber, then what? I keep trying to find another explanation and I can’t. Can anyone explain it to me? But in a way that at least seems believable? Or the sign for “steam room” on the door on the opposite wall. You open the door, and it just leads outside. No steam room. It’s the straight road to the crematorium. Sometimes they had trucks with hydraulic lifts waiting for the corpses. How could anyone support the deniers here? They treat me like an idiot and try to make me swallow the story of “disinfectants” and “showers.” The bottom line is that the Nazis killed two million people in the camps. Why start arguing about historical truth now. It’s all very clear. I do agree in principle with the deniers that if there was a crime, it’s not up to the defendant to prove that he is not guilty, but for the prosecution to prove that he did it. That is the presumption of innocence. But when you hear their pathetic attempts to disprove the accusations, you just get sickened by their stupidity and incompetence. It’s like the mayor in Gogol’s The Inspector-General who explained that the officer’s widow “had given herself a whipping.” There’s another line in the play that is perhaps more apropos. Remember, when the director of the hospital boasts, “Our patients get cured like flies.” ** I still can’t understand why so many people are beginning to believe the deniers now. Look, I’ve taken apart their basic arguments, trying to find the least bit of something rational in them. I didn’t find anything. However, the position of the “traditionalists” is wrong. Refusing to debate and responding to all arguments with “Send the Nazi bums to prison!” is the best way of helping the denial doctrine flourish. The traditionalists lowered the quality of their arguments, resorting to unproven information. Thus, there was a lot of talk about “lampshades of human skin” and “soap out of humans.” Later, there was no serious confirmation of this information. Why use those horrifying stories when the reality was monstrous in the first place? I would also like to note that I noticed many references in the world of the adherents of the classical version to the material of the conference that took place on 20 January 1942 in Berlin at Grossen Wansee, 56-58. At this conference, the Nazis made the decision to use the “final solution” for the < 291 >

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Jewish questions. In accrance with that decision, all Jews in Germany’s zone of influence had to be annihilated. In my opinion, the traditionalists assign exaggerated significance to those materials. Those of us who have lived in the Soviet Union as less likely to believe Party and government documents. Similar documents had promised us Communism, and abundance, and the victory of world revolution on a correspondingly world scale. However, none of this happened. All these ideological promises had as much to do with reality as appealing to St. Ilya the Prophet for rain in a drought. If the “Wansee materials” are proof of the Holocaust, then the materials of the XXII Congress of the CPSU are incontrovertible proof that there is Communism in the USSR. Where is it, then? It doesn’t matter what’s written on the tablets. It doesn’t prove anything. As the old saying goes, something very sexy and enticing may be written on a fence, but if you look behind it, there’s nothing but firewood. In my opinion, the ovens of Auschwitz are much more serious proof of the Holocaust than any documents put together by party activists. I feel sorry for the efforts wasted on the study of these materials and the fruitless discussions of the deeper meaning of German verbs. The notorious debate around the word ausrotten in the Wansee materials — does it mean total annihilation or could it be interpreted to mean deportation as well — is a perfect example of this scholasticism. It is a fact that the documents of the Nazi leadership never mention openly the destruction of the Jews. The deniers claim, “There we told you, so! The Holocaust was made up by the Jews!” But those of us who now totalitarian NewSpeak understand that no such directive would ever appear in documents. Just as there was no such directive in Stalinist documents during the Holodomor. No instructions, but people were starved to death. At least five million people. They do it this way so that the leaders are spared charges of mass murder. They can always say it was just the overenthusiastic masses, excesses locally. Why waste time on scrupulous linguistic analysis of all this propaganda baloney that by definition cannot prove or disprove anything? ** As it was previously noted, demographic analysis of the number of victims of the Holocaust is complicated by the lack of comparative data. That is why the deniers frequently point out (and often correctly) that many classical works use double accounting, first counting people as Polish victims and then as Soviet ones. The reason for that is understandable: the transition of the territories of Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine from Poland to the < 292 >

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Soviet Union makes it almost inevitable. But nevertheless, it seems to me that there hasn’t been enough done to eliminate that factor. It’s hard to imagine that demographers do not have methods to correct that flaw, especially since we are talking about territories that are most densely and compactly populated by Jews. The presence of this error lowers the persuasiveness of the classic studies and gives the denier an extra excuse to cast aspersions on the entire traditional version of the Holocaust. However, the most recent works have made what I consider a successful attempt to do away with that miscalculation. The greatest difficulty of analyzing demographic data is not even that. The point is that on those territories we have an almost twenty-year gap in population censuses. Before the war, the last census was in 1939, and the first postwar census did not take place until 1959. Data with such a gap simply cannot be compared. This incomparability is worsened by yet another factor which was not fully appreciated either in the works of the deniers of the traditionalists. The point is that after the war, there was an anti-Semitic campaign in the Soviet Union, already mentioned here, and it became very difficult for Jews to have careers, get a good education, apply for leadership posts. The “fifth point” was not only the butt of jokes, it truly was a huge problem for energetic and talented people. In the face of this silent inequality, never written into any government documents, Jews simply stopped registering as Jews. They registered as Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians — anything but Jews. The scale of the forced mimicry is hard to estimate, but I think it must be significant. That means that the 1959 census in no way reflects the actual size of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union at that time. You would think this would be another weighty argument for the deniers, but in fairness, it must be said that serious scholars of the classical school rarely use the 1959 census without provisos and other expert opinions. ** Immersion in the empirical debates on demography of the Holocaust unexpectedly leads us to a profoundly methodological problem: the demography of the Holocaust is a typical fuzzy set with a priori traveling parameters, which can be worked with only within a nondeterminist paradigm. This means that the most precise and conscientious research made with the most modern mathematical methods and based on the most authentic data cannot change the inherent randomness and probability of some of the parameters. Let me list the most important four of them. < 293 >

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First is eliminating double counting of Polish and Soviet victims. In any case, even the most scrupulous research will yield an estimate that is accurate only within a certain reliable interval. The second is the estimate of the scale of postwar assimilation. Also it is impossible to estimate the number of Jews who gave another nationality in the 1959 census. Certain estimates can be made (as Kupovetsky did), but it will still only be a variable estimate, even if in a relatively narrow interval. Third is the estimate of the scale of illegal emigration from Nazioccupied territories to the US, Palestine, and other countries. This is also a variable estimate, due to the illegal nature of the migration. Fourth is the estimate of Jewish losses from the war: death in battle, starved in blockaded Leningrad, victim of bombing, and so on. Obviously, this can also only be an estimate. There are other variable parameters, but even these four are enough to demonstrate that the estimate of Holocaust victims can not be anything but probabilistic. This fact is obvious to the professional researcher and it is not cause for any exploitation. But this basically banal fact leads to a sad conclusion: no matter how scrupulously we estimate the starting variable data, no matter how we try to narrow the confidence interval, the resulting estimate will still be spread over a confidence interval over the range of population data for the calculation of the model. In practice, this mean that if our starting data varies over a range of 5 percent, the total will vacillate with greater amplitude and settle in an interval reaching up to 20 percent. Another way of putting it is that for every proposed number there should be a list of the assumptions needed to reach it. This is a purely mathematical-statistical problem and in part a philosophical problem. But any attempts to ignore it will always be perceived by opponents are methodological impropriety or weakness. With the heated passions surrounding the Holocaust, any stretches of data or political motivated assumptions (which may be perfectly understandable humanly) will diminish the significance of a study and work for the other side. Therefore, the question that people justly ask whenever the problem of the Holocaust is discussed, “Can you finally tell me an exact number of victims?” unfortunately has an answer that can satisfy no one but is the only one that is scientifically correct. “No fewer than four million and no more than six million.” How does the probability range within that interval? The top of the curve is probably around 5.5-5.7 million, but the parameters of that distribution are the subject of a separate study. < 294 >

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** In summing up, I would like to add that many facts and events remained outside the scope of our analysis. We did not recount how the Americans turned back German ships carrying Jews, even though they had already dropped anchor. We did not recount how the British promised to sink any German transport even if was carrying Jews to Madagascar. We did not recount the active participation of Jews in the partisan movement and how that reason was used by the polizai to raze Jewish villages in Belorussia. We did not write about the Gypsies, mentally ill, and homosexuals, whose lot was no better under the Nazis. But we did not set ourselves such a grand goal. Our goal was more modest — to have a long-distance discussion between the traditionalists and the deniers and to draw some conclusions from it. It is up to you, dear readers, to judge how we succeeded. How we managed to show the prejudiced arguments of the deniers. How obvious it is now that their research suffers from the deficiency with which they charge their opponents — making their results match their preconceptions. Our second goal was to mobilize all the demographic data and methods to try to give a solid estimate of the number of victims of the Holocaust. The “demographic” argument of the deniers does not stand up to scrutiny, and denying will be forced to gradually turn into reductionism. Even the deniers themselves are beginning to reject paranoid nonsense like “There was no Holocaust” or numbers of Jewish victims like “three hundred thousand” or even “a half million.” Judge for yourself. If we take the deniers’ statistics on “Jewish victims of Stalin repressions” and return them to Hitler, where they belong, and we consider the people who died in concentration camps to be who they are, that is, victims of the Nazis no matter how they were killed, and bring the exaggerated scale of migration to some semblance of reality, we will get no fewer than four million people. At present, even some of the deniers accept that figure, and the data bank at Yad Vashem is getting close to it. Consolidating and correcting slightly the works of Wolfgang Benz, Dieter Pohl, and others, Pavel Polian has come up with a number that seems to have the greatest basis — 5.75 million people, which in the interval between possible minimum and maximum becomes between 5.6 and 5.9 million. Can we come up with a more precise number? I’m afraid that as of today, we cannot. But I may be wrong, after all, research continues.

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Pavel Polyan

AFTERWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The book Denial of the Denial, or the Battle of Auschwitz was first published in Russian in the fall of 2008. Since that time the world has seen certain developments which, unfortunately, have taken a course which we spoke of, in conjectural terms and with some alarm, in the book’s first edition. Regrettably, the world has not grown less anti-Semitic. Worse still, Iran has reaffirmed its choice of nationalizing and institutionalizing anti-Semitism and taking the leading part in the international anti-Semitic choir. Iran’s latest election sparked off wide-spread unrest and bloodshed, almost repeating the “orange revolution” scenario. There were many things that defined the divisions between Ahmadinejad and his nemesis, Musawi, on campuses and in the streets, but they do not include Iran’s nuclear program nor its stance on Israel. On those two points they speak with one voice: “yes” to Iran’s “peaceful nuke” and “no” to Israel’s existence! Israel is no more than a mapping quirk that has to be gotten rid of at the first opportunity. The Gaza Strip, a.k.a. “Hamasostan”, this illegitimate fragment of the yet non-existent, but already divided, Arab Palestine, is conducting internal and even external policies which are de facto independent from Ramallah (how independent it is from Tehran is harder to say). If it is to be given the full trappings of statehood, we will have the first country in the world where the Holocaust is not even “disputed” or at least “questioned”, for appearances’ sake, but where it is flatly and undebatably denied. < 296 >

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In August of 2009 references to the Holocaust were branded a “Zionist lie” and simply thrown out of the schoolbooks for young Palestinians, and the schoolbooks themselves, diligently prepared by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, were withdrawn from schools. Hamas officials were of the opinion that the chapter on the Holocaust was just designed to perpetuate Israel’s occupation of Palestine.1 Characteristically, Hamas permitted itself to play such pranks with textbooks that had gone through all necessary expert reviews within the UN, an organization which upholds legal sanctions against Holocaust deniers. The Fact-Finding Mission led by Richard Goldstone and sent by the very same UN to investigate the circumstances of the recent armed conflict in Gaza, prepared a report (dated September 15, 2009) that described the actions of both sides during the Operation Cast Lead as criminal and inadequate. Thus Israel, which had for years refrained from retaliating the rocket bombardments of its territory, was put on the same footing with the party that had been committing those provocations. “Mutual penalty” as practiced in ice hockey!.. This means that the world has ceased to be tolerant to Israel’s right to react to its neighbors’ provocations and, at the same time, is showing increased solidarity with the provacators whose actions are becoming ever more brazen and dangerous. 2 The first edition of the Denial of the Denial, or the Battle of Auschwitz made it possible to state our positions and argumentation as well as to verify and make certain adjustments in the demographic parameters of the Shoah. The Russian debate on the book and the problems it discusses has added little to its substrate: there have been no criticisms nor any publications aimed at correcting it. As a matter of fact, the only only published response came from Stanislav Kunyayev, the Editor-in-Chief of the Nash Sovremennnik magazine and the self-appointed architect of the new Russia’s ideology whose views are based on “state and patriotic positions” (his self-appraisal). If nothing else, Kunyayev is interesting for the fact that he makes no attempt to hide or mask his anti-Semitism. He and his son co-authored a book on Russian peasant poets who had fallen victim to reprisals, in which it did not shame him to drop a phrase like this “The Revolution devours its own Jewish children.”2 In point of fact, he does not really hate Jews, he simply is jealous of their part in Russian history and Russian poetry (Mandelshtam and Slutsky). < 297 >

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However, for almost a year now he has been using his very boring and unswervingly odious magazine’s pages to write a section titled “The Priests and Victims of the Holocaust” — a personal anti-Semitic blog of sorts. And there is nothing he did not try to stuff and pack it with, salivating over his prey. But could it really be otherwise if “I never fully succeeded in forming my own view of the subject under investigation, and the book, which grew out of the initial design for a short article, came out as a rather compilatory one” (No. 1)? Part of the blame for that falls on us, because he did peruse our book from cover to cover. He speaks of the book and us, its authors, in the most denigrating terms, calling it a “piece of cheap agitation”, a “sado-masochistic moan from a bunch of zombified people”, and yet he shows something of a respect for the book. For it helped him to reintroduce, in his anti-Semitic blog, one borrowed concept — that of “Holocaust as a religion”. On the other hand, the Holocaust as a human tragedy and a historical event with catastrophic demographic consequences is of no concern to him. He does not confront us with any objections as to the methods used or victim numbers contained in the book. Accordingly, the authors of the book were categorized as the “priests” of that religion. And the primary “priestly” mission of ours was the restoration, justification, and proper maintenance of the sacral 6,000,000 victims figure. For Israel rests on it just like the Earth reposes on three sizable whales. It is beyond Stanislav Yuryevich Kunyayev to believe that we were really motivated not by complicity in some kind of a conspiracy, but a pure scholarly interest in the subject and a desire to verify the validity of the computations of the actual number of victims claimed by the tragedy of the Holocaust. And he is even less capable of trying to verify the logic behind our reasoning and conclusions. Instead, he keeps on attacking, but his bites are petty and toothless. Coming out “in defense” of Vadim Kozhinov’s demographic studies he suddenly clutches at the fact that Kozhinov did catch out L. Davidovich in a double count, and that Polyan had nothing to counter that with. Yes, that is true, but what we have there is not an attempt at a deliberate upward distortion but an honest mistake of the kind occasionally commuted even by the most conscientious of scientists. Or take the lack of access to certain archival sources (by the way, the greater part of such materials are still gathering dust in Russia’s departmental archives). That is indeed a problem, but he turns it inside out, alleging that it, too, is the result of the Jewish lobby’s shenanigans. For they just shudder < 298 >

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at the thought that their true corrupt and conspiratorial nature might be revealed. The example he cites to illustrate his thesis is not particularly wellchosen. Yes, for many long decades the gigantic archive of the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross in Bad Arolsen in North Germany has been one of the richest and most closed archives in the world. It has been safely “protected” from researchers by the prevailing interpretation of the organization’s mandate as an agency limited exclusively to the humanitarian mission of tracing missing relatives. But it was precisely historians, Holocaust historians among therm, who should be credited, first, with tirelessly protesting against such an arbitrary interpretation of a very serious matter and, second, with the ultimate success of that protest.3 Without their pressure the bureaucrats in Geneva and Berlin would have never come to terms. And what used to be a virtual “black hole” has for several years now been operating as a regular archive! Learning of the Purim custom of eating cookies that symbolize “Amman’s ears”, Kunyayyev rolls his eyes in horror in a display of shocked dismay at such sacrilegious physiological naturalism. Even the creamy cupolas, crosses, and chapels in the final sequences of Tengiz Abuladze’s Repentance strike him as products of Jewish cookery. Why then does our Orthodox friend keep silent about the eucharisty, about the sacral meaning of the communion bread and church wine, about the rites of partaking of God’s flesh and blood? By the same token, when he grabs Jesus Navin, a master of “final solutions’ which he had bright to the Jericho, Macedonian and many other “questions”, by his cruel and bodied dexter and sinister hands and tries to equate the Jewish God with the German Fuehrer, he totally forgets about the fundamental difference that exists between Revelation and History, just as much as he ignores the fact that the texts he uses in his denunciatory quotes are considered canonical in both Judaism and Christianity. As a result, he did not hesitate to sacrifice the entire Priesthood of the Old Testament just to prove one earth-moving point — that the Holocaust was not a unique phenomenon, you know — and to echo Thomas Mann in saying “In effect, there are only two nationalisms: the German and the Jewish”. He is so happy that the quote does not mention Russian nationalism that he is almost ready to believe that there is no such thing as Russian nationalism at all — just pure beatitude enveloped in heavenly fragrance. < 299 >

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However, even the fact that the appearance of “The Denial of the Denial . . . ” roused such a patriarch of anti-Semitic discourse as Stanislav Kunyayev from his hibernation did nothing to change our earlier conclusion. Despite Kunyayev titanic intellectual effort, Russian deniers’ contribution to the movement’s world-wide piggy bank of ideas is minimal, if not negligible. One does get the impression that the pupil/reader mentality is predominant here and the most to be expected from Russian deniers is a foreword to yet another translation of a “classical work” and a stream of obscenities in the blogs. If you ask me, the pinnacle of their independent effort has been reached in the snide send-up of the word “Holocaust” coined by one of them: “The Holotoast”. 3 An important new development came along from unexpected quarters — the cinema world. Tarantino’s bizarre creation, Inglourious Basterds, a fairy tale of a film, as a matter of fact, posed an unexpected question: What would have happened, if those phantasmic Jews from the film had set about fighting the German murderers in earnest and on their own, following the proverb “One must howl with the wolves”? Just imagine a pack of Bear Jews, fearless, tireless, and ferocious, hunting down German soldiers and officers and scalping them with a relish — a bunch of killers more savage, cruel, and treacherous than the most savage, cruel, and treacherous of the SS-men, playing havoc in a fictitious Third Reich. The proverbial submission to fate and the flair for hiding coupled with the readiness to die, provided one is allowed to breathe one’s last among one’s kith and kin, the beloved mishpuha — this Jewish mindset was surely built in the Himmler-Eichmann concept of the final solution. Whereas courage in the face of killers, readiness to attack and kill in response — as was done by one Jewish actress in the anteroom of an Auschwitz gas chamber and by other Jews who assaulted their murderers in Warsaw, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau — were not even considered. The alarm that motivated us during the preparation of the book’s Russian edition has by no means gone away. The book’s appearance in English gives us a chance to be heard by a different and, hopefully, more responsive audience. Translated by Sergeui Silichtchev

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NOTES 1

2

3

http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145154805&pagename=JPArticle %2FShowFull Куняев Ст., “Растерзанные тени. Избранные страницы из “дел” 20–30-х годов ВЧК–ОГПУ–НКВД, заведенных на друзей, родных, литературных соратников, а также на литературных и политических врагов Сергея Есенина” (М.: Голос, 1995. С. 428. For Nash Sovremennik’s information: the initiative of not participating in the Supervisory Board of that undeniably remarkable institution was taken solely by the USSR itself which feared an internationalization of that effort and attempts to get its own archives opened to the public.

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APPENDIX 1 Selected Bibliography on Holocaust Denial

The present bibliography lays claim to being representative, but none to being complete. The difficulty of its preparation resided in the fact that denier publications are systematically represented in only a few world libraries. Based on the Library of Congress catalogue, Yad Vashem, and a number of other fundamental libraries, as well as the Internet, this Bibliography includes studies in the history of the Holocaust per se only insofar as they specifically touch upon issues related to Holocaust denial. The Bibliography is mostly comprised of book references, while articles are included only as an exception. It consists of two Sections: Section 1 references works by deniers themselves, and Section 2 lists works by those whom the deniers prompted to write about the movement of Holocaust denial and its proponents. Entries in both Sections follow the alphabetical order, with Cyrillic references preceding those in Roman alphabet languages. P.P.

1. Works by Holocaust Deniers Books, Reviews, and Articles Граф, Юрген. Миф о Холокосте: правда о судьбе евреев во Второй мировой войне // Русский вестник. 1996. № 32–34. Граф, Юрген. Миф о Холокосте: правда о судьбе евреев во Второй мировой войне / Предисловие О. Платонова. М.: Русский вестник. 1996. 128 с. (2-е изд. — 2000). http://rpnsd.ru/news/none/holokost.html Граф, Юрген. Великая ложь XX века. Миф о геноциде евреев в период II Мировой войны / Пер. с нем. С. Воронцова. СПб.: Сенеж, 1997. < 305 >

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Граф, Юрген. Холокост: блеф и правда. М.: Яуза, 2005. Дугин Александр. Американский миф об Иране // Профиль. 2007. № 38. 15 октября. С. 32–33. Дьяков И. Третий Рейх — взгляд из Хазарии. М.: Русское слово, 1993. 96 с. Исследование Холокоста. Глобальное видение. Материалы Международной Тегеранской конференции 11–12 декабря 2006 года / Предисл. О. Платонова. М.: Алгоритм, 2007. 271 с. Кожинов В.В. Война и евреи // Кожинов В. История России. Век XX. М.: 1999. См.: http://kozhinov.voskres.ru/hist2/vevr.htm Мухин Юрий. Тайны еврейских расистов. М.: Яуза, 2004. Рудольф, Гермар. Лекции о Холокосте (пер. с англ. П. Хедрука). 2006. Ходос Э. Еврейский синдром. Харьков, 2001. App, Austin J. The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses. Takoma Park, Maryland: Boniface Press, 1974. ———. “The ‘Holocaust’ Put in Perspective.” JHR, no. 1 (1980). Aretz, Emil. Hexeneinmaleins der Lüge. Pähl: Verlag Hohe Warte—Franz von Bebenburg, 1973. “Auschwitz-Lüge.” Wahrheit und Fälschung vor Gericht // Der Spiegel. 1994, 3 Mai. S. 10 ff. und S. 13 ff. Bardèche, Maurice. Letter to Francois Mauriac. Paris, 1947. ———. Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise. Paris, 1948. Berghe, Gie van den. De uitbuiting van de Holocaust. Amsterdam: Anthos, 2001. Burg, J. G. Maidanek in alle Ewigkeit? München: Ederer, 1979. ———. Zionnazi Zensur in der BRD! München: Ederer, 1980. Butz, Arthur R. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The Case against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. Newport Beach, California: IHR, 1976. ———. Der Jahrhundertbetrug. Vlotho, 1977 (1976?). ———. Vorwort // Sanning, Walther N. Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. Tübingen—Buenos Aires—Montevideo: Grabert-Verlag, 1983. Castan, S. E. English Holocaust: Jewish or German? Porto Alegre, Brazil: Revisгo Editora, 1988. ———. A implosгo da mentira do seculo. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Revisгo Editora, 1992. ———. SOS para Alemanha. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Revisгo Editora, 1990. Ceresole, Norberto. La falsificaciуn de la realidad: la Argentina en el espacio geopolítico del terrorismo judio. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1998. Chelain, André. Le proces Barbie, ou, Le shoah-business а Lyon. Paris: Polémiques: Diffusion, OD diffusion, 1987. Christoferson, Thies. Auschwitzlüge. Mohrkirch: Kritik-Verlag, 1973. Daeninckx, Didier, and Valère Staraselski. Au nom de la loi. Paris: Bérénice; Grigny: Parolesd’aube; [Paris?]: Cétacé, 1998. < 306 >

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Daeninckx, Didier. Le goût de la vérité: réponse а Gilles Perrault. Lagrasse: Verdier, 1997. ———. Le jeune poulpe contre la vieille taupe. Paris: Bérénice; Montataire: Valmont, 1997. Diwald, Hellmut. Geschichte der Deutschen. Berlin [u.a.]: Propylaeen Verl., 1978. 760 S. Eibicht, Rolf-Josef (Hrsg.). Hellmut Diwald. Sein Vermächtnis für Deutschland, Sein Mut zur Geschichte. Tübingen, 1994. Eggers, Sven. Maulkorb-Republik Deutschland?: Hohmanns Hinrichtung und andere grosse Skandale. München: FZ-Verlag, 2004. Faurisson, Robert. Ecrits révisionnistes, 1974–1998. [Pithiviers? France]: Ed. privée hors-commerce, 1999. ———. Mémoire en défense: contre ceux qui m’accusent de falsifier l’histoire: la question des chambres а gaz. Paris: Vieille Taupe, 1980. ———. Réponse а Jean-Claude Pressac: sur le problème des chambres а gaz. Colombes, France: Diffusion, RHR, 1994. ———. Réponse а Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Suivi de, Le mythe des “chambres а gaz” entre en agonie. L’argent des contribuables contre R. Faurisson. Paris: Vieille Taupe, 1982. Felderer, Ditlieb. Anne Frank’s Diary—A Hoax. Torrance, California: IHR, 1979. Figueras, André. La fable d’Auschwitz et d’Abraham. Paris: A. Figueras, 1996. Fresco, Nadine. Fabrication d’un antisémite. Paris: Seuil, 1999. Garaudy, Roger. Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne. Paris: Samiszdat, 1996. ———. The Mythical Foundations of Israeli Policy. London: Studies Forum International, 1997. ———. The Founding Myths of the Israeli Policy. Annandale, Virginia: IPP Printers & Publishers, 1997. ———. The Founding Myths of Modern Israel. Newport Beach, California: IHR, 2000. Garnet, Eldon. Lost between the Edges. Los Angeles, California: Semiotext(e), 2007. Gauss, Ernst. Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschsichte: ein Handbuch über strittige Fragen des 20. Edited by Germar Rudolf. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Grabert, 1994. ———. Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschsichte. Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of “Truth” and “Memory.” Edited by Germar Rudolf. Capshaw, Alaska: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2000. Geschichtsbetrachtung als Wagnis: eine Dokumentation / Hrsg. von Wigbert Grabert, in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Deutsche Nachkriegsgeschichte, Tübingen, Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag, 1984. Graf, Jürgen. Der Holocaust-Schwindel: vom Werden und Vergehen des Jahrhundertbetrugs. Basel: Guideon Burg Verlag, 1993. < 307 >

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Graf, Jürgen, and Carlo Mattogno. Concentration Camp Majdanek: A Historical and Technical Study. Chicago, Illinois: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. ———. Concentration Camp Stutthof and Its Function in National Socialist Jewish Policy. Chicago, Illinois: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. Graf, Jürgen. The Giant with Feet of Clay: Raul Hilberg and His Standard Work on the “Holocaust.” Translated by Michael Humphrey. Capshaw, Alabama: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001. ———. Vom Untergang der Schweizerischen Freiheit: eine Momentaufnahme der politischen und wirtschaftlichen Situation der Schweiz zu Anfang 1997. Würenlos, Schweiz: Verlag Neuen Visionen, 1996. Groignec, Jacques. L’étoile jaune: la double ignominie. Paris: Nouvelles Editions latines, 2003. Guillaume, Pierre. Droit et histoire: mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m’accusent de diffamer une personne ou un particulier, ou un groupe de personnes en raison de leur origine ou de leur appartenance ou de leur non-apartenance, а une ethnie ou а une nation, ou а une race, ou а une religion déterminée. Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1986. Guttenplan, D. D. The Holocaust on Trial. New York: Norton, 2001. ———. The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case. 2nd ed. London: Granta, 2002. Hankins, Frank H. “How Many Jews Were Eliminated by the Nazis? A Preliminary Survey of the Question.” JHR, no. 1 (1983): 63–81. Harwood, Richard. Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last. Richmond: Historical Review Press, 1975. ———. Starben wirklich sechs Millionen? Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichteforschung. 1975 (Historische Tatsache. № 1). Härtle, Heinrich. Was “Holocaust” verschweigt: deutsche Verteidigung gegen Kollektivschuld-Lügen. Leoni am Starnberger See: Druffel-Verlag, 1979. Heddesheimer, Don. The First Holocaust: Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims During and After World War One. Chicago, Illinois: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. Hoffmann, Joachim. Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941–1945. Capshaw, Alabama: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001. Hoffman, Michael A. The Great Holocaust Trial. Torrance, California: IHR, 1985. Hoggan, David L. Der erzwungene Krieg. Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag, 1964. Igounet, Valérie. Histoire du négationnisme en France. Paris: Seuil, 2000. Informe Leuchter: Fin de una mentira: camaras de gas, holocausto judнo / [prуlogo de Miguel Serrano]. [Santiago de Chile?: s.n., 1989] Irving, David. Hitler’s War. London [u.a.], 1977. Keeling, Ralph F. Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War against the German People. Newport Beach, California: IHR. 1987. < 308 >

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Kulaszka, Barbara, ed. Did Six Million Really Die?: Report of the Evidence in the Canadian “False News” Trial of Ernst Zündel, 1988. Toronto: Samisdat, 1992. Lezioni sul revisionismo storico / [testi di Bologna . . . et al.]. [Brescia]: Fondazione Luigi Micheletti; [Milano]: Cox 18 books: Calusca city lights, 1999. Mattogno, Carlo. Auschwitz (fine di una leggenda): considerazioni storico)tecniche sul libro di Jean-Claude Pressac Les crématoires d’Auschwitz: la machinerie du meurtre de masse. Salerno: Edizioni di Ar, 1994. ———. Auschwitz: la prima gasazione. Salerno: Edizioni di Ar, 1992. ———. Auschwitz: The End of a Legend. Newport Beach, California: IHR, 1994. ———. L’irritante questione delle camere a gas, ovvero, Da Cappuccetto rosso ad . . . Auschwitz: risposta a Valentina Pisanty. Genova: Graphos, 1998. ———. Negare la storia?: olocausto: la falsa “convergenza delle prove.” Milano: Effedieffe, 2006. ———. Olocausto: dilettanti a convegno. Genova: Effepi, 2002. ———. Olocausto, dilettanti nel web. Genova: Effepi, 2005. McGaughey, Carver N. A Majority of One. Cumming, Georgia: Literati Emprise, 1995. McKinnon, Catriona. Toleration: A Critical Introduction. London, New York: Routledge, 2006. Menasse, Eva. Der Holocaust vor Gericht: der Prozess um David Irving. Berlin: Siedler, 2000. Nolte, Ernst. Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus? Das Dritte Reich im Blickwinkel des Jahres 1980 // “Historikerstreit.” Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der national-sozialistischen Judenvernichtung. München 1987. S. 13–35. ———. Die “Endlösung der Judenfrage” in der Sicht des radikalen Revisionismus, in: ders.: Streitpunkte. Heutige und künftige Kontroversen um den Nationalsozialismus. Berlin [u.a.] 1993. S. 304–319, hier S. 318 f. Oliveira, Sérgio. Sionismo x revisionismo: fantasia x realidade. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Revisгo Editora, 1993. Paris, Erna. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History. New York: Bloomsbury, 2001. Pfeifer, Karl. Nicht immer ganz bequem. Wien: Verlag Der Apfel, 1996. Piper, Michael Collins. Best Witness: The Mel Mermelstein Affair and the Triumph Of Historical Revisionism. Washington DC: Center for Historical Review, 1994. Pisanty, Valentina. L’irritante questione delle camere a gas: logica del negazionismo. Milano: Bompiani, 1998. Plantin, Jean. Bibliographie révisionniste: sur la “solution finale de la question juive” et sur le révisionnisme (jusqu’а 2002) = Bibliografia revisionistica: sulla “soluzione finale della questione ebraica” e sul revisionismo (fino al 2002). Genova: Graphos, 2003. Plantin, Jean et al. Le déshonneur de trois magistrats Lyonnais. St.-Genis-Laval: Editions Akribeia, 2000. < 309 >

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Porter, Carlos W. Made in Russia: the Holocaust. Uckfield, Sussex, England: Historical Review Press, 1988. Rassinier, Paul. Le Passage de la Ligne. 1948. ———. Le Mensonge d’Ulisse. Paris: Edition La Libraire francaise, 1955. ———. Ulisse trahi les siens. Paris: Edition La Libraire francaise, 1959. ———. La véritable procès Eichmann. Paris: Edition Les Sept Couleurs, 1962. ———. Zum Fall Eichmann. Was ist Wahrheit? Oder die unbelerbaren Sieger. Leoni, 1962. ———. La drame des Juifs européens. Paris: Edition Les Sept Couleurs, 1964. ———. Les responsables des la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Paris: Edition Nouvelles Edition, 1967. ———. Debunking the Genocide Myth: A Study of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Alleged Extermination of European Jewry. Torrance, California: Noontide Press, 1978. ———. The Real Eichmann Trial or the Incorrigible Victors. Silver Springs, Maryland: Historical Review Press, 1979. Roeder M. Die Auschwitz-Lüge. Heft № 2. Möhkirsch: Kritikverlag, 1973. Roques, Henri. The “Confessions” of Kurt Gerstein. Translated by Ronald Percival. Costa Mesa, California: IHR, 1989. Rudolf, Germar [Ernst Gauss, pseud.]. Vorlesungen über Zeitgeschichte: strittige Fragen im Kreuzverhör. Tübingen, Grabert, 1993. ———. The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the “Gas Chambers” of Auschwitz. Chicago: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. ———. Lectures on the Holocaust. 2005. Sanning, Walther N. Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. Mit einem Vorwort von Arthur R. Butz. Tübingen—Buenos Aires—Montevideo: GrabertVerlag, 1983. ———. The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry. Costa Mesa, California: IHR, 1983. Schlegel F. Wir warden niemals schweigen. Heusenstamm, 1971. Schmidt, Hans. Jailed in “Democratic” Germany: The Ordeal of an American Writer. Milton, Florida: Guderian Books, 1997. Schreiber, Jürgen. Nicht Auschwitz, aber Stalingrad und Dresden: was haben wir getan, was wussten wir? Bonn: Verlag Soldat im Volk, 1994. Smith, Bradley R. Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist. Los Angeles, California: Prima Facie, 1988. Stäglich, Wilhelm. Der Auschwitz-Mythos: Legende oder Wirklichkeit? Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme. Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag, 1979. ———. The Auschwitz Myth: A Judge Looks at the Evidence. Translated by Thomas Francis. Torrance, California: IHR, 1986. Telford, Taylor. Die Nürnberger Prozesse. Hintergründe, Analysen und Erkenntnisse aus heutiger Sicht. München 1995, S. 294 ff. Theodoru, Radu. A fost sau nu Holocaust? Bucuresti: Lucman, 2003. < 310 >

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Thion, Serge. Une allumette sur la banquise: écrits de combat, 1980–1992. [France]: S. Thion, 1993. ———. Vérité historique ou vérité politique?: Le dossier de l’affaire Faurisson: la question des chambres а gaz. Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1980. Toeben F. Where Truth Is Not Defence, I Want to Break Free. Washington: TBR Books, 2003. Uhle-Wettler, Reinhard (Hrsg.). Wagnis Wahrheit: Historiker in Handschellen?: Festschrift für David Irving. Kiel: Arndt, 1998. Utley, Freda. The High Cost of Vengeance. Chicago, 1949. Verbeeck, Georgi (Red). De verdwenen gaskamers: de ontkenning van de Holocaust. Leuven, Amersfoort: Acco, 1997. Weber, Charles E. The “Holocaust”: 120 Questions and Answers. Torrance, California: IHR, 1983. Weber, Marc. “Pages from the Auschwitz Death Registry Volumes.” JHR, no. 3 (1992): 265–298. Weimann, Gabriel, and Conradd Winn. Hate on Trial: The Zundel Affair, the Media, Public Opinion in Canada. Oakville, Ontario; New York: Mosaic Press, 1986. Woodhead, Leslie. Holocaust on Trial. Boston, Massachusetts: WGBH Educational Foundation, 2000. Woods, John S. Was There a “Holocaust?”: You Be the “Judge.” Hayden, Idaho: Christian Law Journal, 1991.

Periodicals Дуэль (Москва). Ежемесячник. The Barnes Review. Washington DC, TBR Co., 1994– Journal of Historical Review, 1979–2002 (starting from 2002 on the Internet) Historische Tatsache—a series of brochures edited by Udo Walendi and others. Published in 2000–2001. The Revisionist: Journal for Critical Historical Inquiry. Chicago, Illinois: Castle Hill Publishers, 2003– Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung / Hg. G. Rudolph. Hastings, 1997–

Internet Sites Journal of Historical Review. www.ihr.org. The Adelaide Institute. www.adelaideinstitute.org. Zundelsite. www.zundelsite.org. Home Page of Germar Rudolf. http://germarrudolf.com/. Mukhin, Y., ed. The Duel Newspaper. http://www.duel.ru. The Slavic Union. http://ns-rus.cc/infowar/revisio. The Holocaust Revision (administered by the Slavic Union). www.revisio.msk.ru. The Holocaust Myth. http://holokost.chat.ru/. The Little Fuhrer: Fascism for Kids. www.kleine-fuhrer.lenin.ru. < 311 >

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2. Works on Holocaust Denial and Deniers Books, Reviews, and Articles Альтман И.А. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР, 1941–1945 гг. М.: Фонд “Ковчег,” 2002. 543 с. (Сер.: Анатомия Холокоста). Альтман И., Чарный С. Отрицание Холокоста в России. Обзор Фонда “Холокост” и Московского Бюро по правам человека // Народ мой. 2006. № 3. 14 февр. See also: http://www.jew.spb.ru/ami/A367/A367-051.html Альтман М.М. Отрицание Холокоста. История и современные тенденции. М.: Фонд “Холокост,” Журналистское издательское агентство “ЖАГ-ВМ,” 2001.88 с. (Сер.:Российская библиотека Холокоста). [Unsigned]. “Ревизионисты и “расологи” в России.” Московское бюро по правам человека. 2005, 5 мая. See: http://shoa.com.ua/php/content/view/312/9/ Горелик, Вадим. Как товарищи Махмуд Аббас и Евгений Примаков Холокост отрицали. See: http://shoa.com.ua/php/content/view/74/9/ Кох А. Процесс о 6 000 000 (заметки дилентанта при взгляде на дискуссию). Медведь. 2008. № 4. С. 63–75. Мильштейн И. Умножающий скорбь. Холокост против свободы подлого слова // Европа-Экспресс (Берлин). 2007. № 6 (466). 5–11 февраля. С. 14. Найман, Александр. Отрицатели Холокоста в Украине // Еврейский обозреватель (Киев). 2006. 24 января. Reprinted by: http://shoa.com.ua/php/content/ view/155/9/ Носик, Антон. Отрицание Холокоста: неисполнимый закон // Мнения. 28.1.2007. See: http://mnenia.zahav.ru/ArticlePage.aspx?articleID=1649 Abramowicz, Manuel. Extreme-droite et antisemitisme en Belgique: de 1945 а nos jours. Bruxelles: EVO, 1993. Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit: NS-Verbrechen und “revisionistische” Geschichtsschreibung / Hrsg. von Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Bundesministerium fur Unterricht und Kunst; Vorwort, Simon Wiesenthal; Beiträge. Ayass, Wolfgang. Mit Argumenten gegen die Holocaust-Leugnung: die Leugnung der nationalsozialistischen Massenmorde als Herausforderung für Wissenschaft und politische Bildung / Wolfgang Ayass, Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar; [Redaktion, Renate Knigge-Tesche]. Wiesbaden, Hessische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1996. Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte et al. Redaktionelle Bearbeitung, Elisabeth Morawek, Sigrid Steininger. Wien, Das Dokumentationsarchiv, 1992. ———. Wahrheit und Auschwitz-Lüge. Zur Bekämpfung der “revisionistiascher” Propaganda. Wien, 1995. < 312 >

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Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte. Die österreichische Rechtslage und der “Revisionismus” // Bailer-Galanda, Benz [u.a.], 1995. S. 16–32. ———. “Revisionismus”—pseudowissenschaftliche Propaganda des Rechtsextremismus // Bailer-Galanda, Benz [u.a.], 1995. S. 218–236. Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte; Benz, Wolfgang; Neugebauer, Wolfgang (Hrsg.). Die Auschwitz-Leugner. “Revisionistische” Geschichtslüge und historische Wahrheit. Berlin 1996. Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte. “Revisionismus” als zentrales Element der internationalen Vernetzung des Rechtsextremismus // Das Netz des Hasses. Rassistische, rechtsextreme und neonazistische Propaganda im Internet. Wien: Stiftung Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichisches Widerstandes. 1997. Bailer, Josef. Die “Revisionisten” und die Chemie // Bailer-Galanda (Hrsg.), Auschwitz-Leugner. S. 130–152. Bastian, Till. Auschwitz und die “Auschwitz-Lüge”: Massenmord and Geschichtsfälschung. München: Beck, 1994. Bédarida, François. Comment est-il possible que le révisionnisme existe?—Reim, Noria, 1993. Ben-Moshe, Danny. Holocaust Denial in Australia. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2005. Benz, Wolfgang (Hrsg.). Dimension des Völkermords // Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des National-Sozialismus. München, Oldenbourg, 1991. S. 1–23. Braham, Randolph L. Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts. New York: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate School of the City University of New York, 1998. Bridonneau, Pierre. Oui, il faut parler des négationnistes: Roques, Faurisson, Garaudy et les autres. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1997. Caplan, Marc. Holocaust Denial: A Pocket Guide. New York, New York: AntiDefamation League, 1997. Cohn, Werner. Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Avukah Press, 1995. Conway, John S. “Review of Walter Sanning’s The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry.” The International History Review 7, no. 3 (August 1985): 450–451. Croes, Marnix. “The Holocaust in the Netherlands and the Rate of Jewish Survival.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 3 (Winter 2006): 474–499. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. What is the Use of Jewish History? New York: Schocken Books, 1992. Deleersnijder, Henri. Les prédateurs de la mémoire: la Shoah au péril des négationnistes. Bruxelles: Editions Labor: Editions Espace de libertés, 2001. < 313 >

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Distel, Barbara. Leugnung und Diffamierung. Zum Konzentrationslager Dachau, in: Bailer-Galanda [u.a.] (Hrsg.), Auschwitz-Leugner. S. 153–163. Evans, Richard J. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. New York, New York: Basic Books, 2001. Finkielkraut, Alain. L’avenir d’une négation: réflexion sur la question du génocide. Paris: Seuil, 1982. ———. The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide. Translated by Mary Byrd Kelly. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Germinario, Francesco. Estranei alla democrazia: negazionismo e antisemitismo nella destra radicale italiana. Pisa: BFS, 2001. Gottfried, Ted. Deniers of the Holocaust: Who They Are, What They Do, Why They Do It. Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books, 2001. Graml, Hermann. Auschwitz-Lüge und Leuchter-Bericht // Heiner Lichtenstein, Ottoj (Hrsg.); Täter—Opfer—Folgen. Der Holocaust in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Bonn, 19?? S. Griffioen, Pim, and Ron Zeller. “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 3 (Winter 2006): 437–473. Grumke, Thomas; Wagner, Bernd (Hrsg.). Handbuch Rechtsradikalismus. Personen, Organisationen, Netzwerke vom Neonazismus bis in die Mitte unserer Gesellschaft. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2002. Guillaume, Pierre. Droit et histoire: mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m’accusent de diffamer une personne ou un particulier, ou un groupe de personnes en raison de leur origine ou de leur appartenance ou de leur non-apartenance, а une ethnie ou а une nation, ou а une race, ou а une religion déterminée. Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1986. Gutman, Israel. Denying the Holocaust. Jerusalem: Shazar Library, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of AntiSemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1985. Imbleau, Martin. La négation du génocide nazi: liberté d’expression ou crime raciste?: le négationnisme de la Shoah en droit international et comparé. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003. Jäckel, Eberhard. David Irving’s Hitler: A Faulty History Dissected. Translation and comments by H. David Kirk. Port Angeles, Washington: Ben-Simon Publications, 1993. Jackson, Nigel. The Case for David Irving. Cranbrook, Western Australia: Veritas, 1994. Jones, Mitchell. The Leuchter Report: A Dissection. Cedar Park, Texas: 21st Century Logic, 1992. Kahn, Robert A. Holocaust Denial and the Law: A Comparative Study. New York [u.a.]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. < 314 >

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Kaufman, Debra et al., eds. From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust Denial Trials: Challenging the Media, the Law, and the Academy. London; Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007. Kaye, Ephraim. The Desecraters of Memory: Holocaust Denial, a Marginal Phenomenon or a Real Danger?: Methodology for Confrontation. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1997. Kertzer, David I. Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West. Teaneck, New Jersey: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2005. Knoller, Rivkah. Denial of the Holocaust: A Bibliography of Literature Denying or Distorting the Holocaust, and of Literature about This Phenomenon. Ramat Gan, Israel: Abraham and Edita Spiegel Chair in Holocaust Research, Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University, 1989. ———. Denial of the Holocaust: A Bibliography of Literature Denying or Distorting the Holocaust, and of Literature about This Phenomenon. 2nd revised ed. Ramat Gan, Israel: Abraham and Edita Spiegel Chair in Holocaust Research, Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University, 1992. Kulka, Erich. The Holocaust Is Being Denied!: The Answer of Auschwitz Survivors. Translated by Lilli Kopecky. Tel-Aviv: Committee of Auschwitz Camps Survivors in Israel, 1977. Kuttner, Paul. The Holocaust: Hoax or History? New York: Dawnwood Press, 1996. Leukert, Matthias. Die strafrechtliche Erfassung des Auschwitzleugnens / InauguralDissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Jüristischen Fakultät der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. Stuttgart: Wiesinger Media.de, 2005. Lipstadt Deborah E. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust 1933–1945. New York [u.a.]: Free Pr. [u.a.], 1986. ———. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York [u.a.]: Free Press [u.a.], 1993. ———. Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust. Zürich: Rio Verlag und Medienagentur, 1994. ———. History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. New York: Ecco, 2005. ———. History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. New York [u.a.]: Harper Perennial, 2006. Maricourt, Thierry. Les nouvelles passerelles de l’extrême droite: idées et mouvements passerelles entre la gauche et l’extrême droite. Levallois-Perret, France: Manya, 1993. Mayer, Elke. Verfälschte Vergangenheit: zur Entstehung der Holocaust-Leugnung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland unter besonderer Berьcksichtigung rechtsextremer Publizistik von 1945 bis 1970. Frankfurt am Main; New York: P. Lang, 2003. McCuen, Marnie J., ed. The Genocide Reader: The Politics of Ethnicity and Extermination. Hudson, Wisconsin: GEM Publications, 2000. Mecklenburg, Jens (Hrsg.). Handbuch deutscher Rechtsextremismus. Berlin, 1996. < 315 >

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Michel, Natacha (Dir.). Paroles а la bouche du présent: le négationnisme—histoire ou politique? Marseille: Al Dante, 1997. Négationnistes: les chiffonniers de l’histoire. Villeurbanne: Golias; Paris: Syllepse, 1997. Nordbruch, Goetz. The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries: Reactions to Roger Garaudy’s the Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2001. Peri, Anat. Jörg Haider’s Anti-Semitism. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2001. Perry, Marvin, and Frederick M. Schweitzer. Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Palgrave, 2002. ———. Anti-Semitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Persitz, Helene, and Georges Wellers. “L’affaire Mermelstein et les revisionnistes de l’histoire.” Le Monde Juif 122 (April–June 1986): 80–92. Prazan, Michaël, and Adrien Minard. Roger Garaudy: itinéraire d’une négation. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2007. Rainer, Stephan. “Vorlesung der rechten Relativsätze.” Süddeutsche Zeitung. 1996. 8 Mai. S. 3. Reiter, Raimond. 30 Jahre “Justiz und NS-Verbrechen.” Die Aktualität einer Urteilssammlung. Frankfurt a. M., 1998. Rembiszewski, Sarah. The Final Lie: Holocaust Denial in Germany: A Second Generation Denier as a Test Case. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1996. Rotondi, Francesco. Luna di miele ad Auschwitz: riflessioni sul negazionismo della Shoah / con una nota di Luigi Parente. Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2005. Rousso, Henry. Le dossier Lyon III: le rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme а l’université Jean-Moulin. Paris: Fayard, 2004. Sagal, Peter. Denial: A Drama in Two Acts. Woodstock, Illinois: Dramatic Pub., 1999. ———. Denial. Sound Recording. Venice, California: LA Theatre Works, 1999. Schoefer, Christine. The Politics of Commemoration: The Concentration Camp Memorial Sites in the Former GDR. Berkeley, California: Center for German and European Studies, University of California, 1993. Schulman, Helen. The Revisionist: A Novel. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998. Seidel, Gill. The Holocaust Denial: Anti-Semitism, Racism, and the New Right. Leeds, 1986. Shafir, Michael. Between Denial and “Comparative Trivialization”: Holocaust Negationism in Post-Communist East Central Europe. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 2002. < 316 >

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Shapiro, Shelly, ed. Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the Leuchter Report. New York, New York: Beate-Klarsfeld-Foundation [u.a.], 1990. Shermer, Michael, and Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Simonelli, Frederick J. American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Spitz, Vivien. Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Boulder, Colorado: Sentient Publications, 2005. Stauber, Roni. From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial: David Irving as a Case Study. Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 2000. Steinberg, Maxime. Les yeux du témoin et le regard du borgne: l’histoire face au révision) nisme. Paris: Cerf, 1990. Stern, Kenneth S. Holocaust Denial. New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1994. Suzman, Arthur. The Holocaust: The Falsehoods and the Facts. Johannesburg: South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 1980. Suzman, Arthur, and Denis Diamond. Six Million Did Die: The Truth Shall Prevail. 2nd ed. Johannesburg: South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 1978. ———. “Der Mord an sechs Millionen Juden. Die Wahrheit ist unteilbar.” Aus der Politik und der Geschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung “Das Parlament” (Berlin). 1978. № B 30/78. 29 Juli. S. 4–21. Tiedemann, Markus. “In Auschwitz wurde niemand vergast”: 60 rechtsradikale Lügen und wie man sie widerlegt. Mülheim an der Ruhr: Verlag an der Ruhr, 1996. Troncoso, Sergio. The Nature of Truth. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2003. Vanermen, Stijn. De ontkenning van de jodenuitroeiing: het negationisme en de invloed ervan op extreemrechts in België. Brussel: VUB Press, 1996. Van Pelt, R. J. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. ———. The Science of Holocaust Research and the Art of Holocaust Denial. Waterloo: Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, 1999. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. 1930–2006. Les assassins de la mémoire: “Un Eichmann de papier” etautres essais sur le révisionnisme. Paris: La Découverte, 1987. ———. Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, and Limor Yagil. Holocaust Denial in France: Analysis of a Unique Phenomenon. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Faculty of the Humanities: The Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 1995. Wandres, Thomas. Die Strafbarkeit des Auschwitzleugens. Berlin, 2000. Wellers, Georges. “A propos d’une these de doctorat ‘explosive’ sur le ‘Rapport Gerstein.’” Le Monde Juif 121 (January–March 1986): 1–18. < 317 >

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Wetzel, Juliane. “Antisemitismus im Internet—die Vernetzung der rechtsextremen Szene”. BPJS Aktuell. Jahrestagung der Bundesprüfstelle für jügendgefährdende Schriften “Von “Antisemitismus” bis “Xenofobia.” Rechtsextreme Medien in Deutschland.” Amtliches Mitteilunsblatt. Sonderausgabe, 1999. Vorträge. S. 16–25. Wippermann, Wolfgang. Umstrittene Vergangenheit: Fakten und Kontroversen zum Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1998. Zarusky, Jürgen. “Leugnung des Holocaust: die antisemitische Strategie nach Auschwitz.” BPJS Aktuell. Jahrestagung der Bundesprüfstelle für jügendgefährdende Schriften “Von “Antisemitismus” bis ”Xenofobia.” Rechtsextreme Medien in Deutschland.” Amtliches Mitteilunsblatt. Sonderausgabe, 1999. Vorträge. S. 5–15. Zimmerman, John C. Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies, and Ideologies. New York: Oxford University Press of America, 2000.

Internet Sites Holocaust-Referenz. Argumente gegen Auschwitzleugner http://www.h-ref.de/ Administrator: Jürgen Langowski [email protected]. The Shoah. Information and Political Portal. http://shoa.com.ua. IDAFAR—Informationsdienst für Antifaschismus und Antirassismus (Information Service in Support of Anti-Fascism and Anti-Racism. http://www.idafar.info. Simon Wiesenthal Center. http://www.wiesenthal.com. The Nizkor Project. http://www.nizkor.org. http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2007/08/ http://tourismindicator.blogspot.com Jonathan Harrison’s blog. 2007/09/holocaust-kontroversen-die-verrckte.html.

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APPENDIX 2 The First Soviet Estimates of the Victims of the Auschwitz Death Camp

(1) (no later than October 9, 1944) Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR VYSHINSKY With regard to the German concentration camp at Oswiecim and the mass destruction of detainees there, we have found and interrogated prisoners of war who know about the existence of that camp. According to their testimonies, the concentration camp at Oswiecim was organized by the Germans in 1940 in buildings that used to house army barracks. The camp is located 1.5 km south of Oswiecim (south of Katowice). Initially, the Germans concentrated Jews at the camp. In 1941-43, there were large numbers of Russians, Poles, French, and Dutch brought to the camp. The camp could accommodate up to 40,000 persons, and the Germans systematically replaced the exterminated inmates with new prisoners who were brought there by special trains. The testimonies given by the prisoners of war about the mass destruction of inmates by the Germans, the use of torture, beatings, etc. characterizes the Oswiecim camp in the same way as “Majdanek.” Up until 1943, the Germans were incinerating the corpses in 2 specially equipped ovens. In 1943, they already had 8 ovens, which means that the extermination of people in the camp took on a mass character. Based on accounts by their friends and relatives, the prisoners of war characterize the camp regime as similar to the one that had existed at “Majdanek.” < 319 >

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According to the POWs, the Germans have destroyed several hundred thousand inmates in this camp. Testimonies by their own hand have been obtained from all the POWs questioned; copies thereof and the Oswiecim camp layout are attached. Further questioning of the POWs to identify eyewitnesses to the Germans’ atrocities at the Oswiecim camp will continue. Deputy People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, State Security Commissar 2nd Grade

Kruglov

ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 36. Letter No. 1/1847 (ГАРФ. Ф. 7021. Оп. 108. Д. 38). Attached to the letter were digests of or excerpts from testimonies by several German POWs. Having read the letter, Vyshinski wrote on it his comment for the Chairman of the ESC: “Comrade Shvernik, wouldn’t it be worthwhile, based on these materials, to prepare and publish a report on this place Oswiecim?” On October 10, 1944, the Executive Secretary of the ESC P. Bogoyavlensky sent a copy of this letter to Comd. Gribanov at the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

(2) (March 4, 1945) ACT This 4th Day of March, 1945 The Commission, composed of: Chairman, Captain-Quartermaster H.D. Genshkovich; and members: Captain of the Military Justice Service D.A. Popov, citizens Eugenius Nasal, P.N. Radchenko, and Professor of Medicine Henryk Limuzen have conducted an inspection of the buildings, facilities, and other structures located on the territory of the former Oswiecim concentration camp. During the inspection and examination of the buildings, the Commission has established the following: I. In the attic area of a 2,301 sq. m. building located in the south-west part of the camp there was found a storage of used men’s under- and outerwear. The clothes are dumped on the floor, ready to be sorted out, because there is a set of special shelves for apparel sorting running the length of the attic area. A large part of the outerwear has standard manufacture labels sewn onto it, in the shape of a six-pronged star with the word “Jude” inscribed within. Men’s suit coats bear tailor trademarks from various countries (France, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, Romania, etc.). < 320 >

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The Commission has established that the attic area contains 219,429 items of men’s clothing (suit coats, trousers, vests, jackets, overcoats, raincoats, shirts, undershirts, underpants, etc.). II. At 150-200 meters south of the said storage there was found a huge pit holding various used metal and enamel utensils (saucepans, mugs, plates, cups, pots, jugs, pans, teapots, etc.), 52,061 items altogether, which equals 9 rail carloads. The said utensils have factory trademarks of different European countries. III. In the northwest part of the camp there were found two warehouses (a stone and a wooden ones) in which the following was discovered: a) Stone warehouse, 468 m2. The warehouse is filled with used women’s outerand underwear in bulk. The warehouse is equipped with special shelves for apparel sorting; on some of the shelves there were found sorted women’s clothes in packages. The said Warehouse contains, by the Commission’s count, 836,225 items of women’s clothing (dresses, skirts, pajamas, jumpers, pull-overs, stockings, brassieres, tights, panties, shirts, blouses, etc.). b) Wooden warehouse, 180 m2. There was found, lying loose on the floor, various used children’s outer- and underclothes, as well as used women’s footwear. The children’s clothes found number 115,063 items (baby’s loose jackets, shirts, stockings, mittens, dresses, shorts, jackets, jumpers, overcoats, socks, pajamas, etc.). Children’s apparel sizes range from infant to children aged 10-11 years. Women’s footwear found (shoes, boots, demi boots) total 5,525 pairs. Both warehouses (the stone and the wooden ones) are situated 25-30 meters from the gas chambers where people were put to death. In one of the rooms at the said warehouses which had served as an office room, a logbook was found with records of rail car loads of clothes shipped out. Logbook entries indicate: date of shipment, rail car numbers and types, apparel item names, shipment destination and consignees. For each incoming rail car there is a stamp of the Auschwitz railway station in the logbook, certifying the acceptance of the car for loading. The logbook was begun on December 12, 1944 (apparently continued from previous books), and entries stop on January 18, 1945. During that period, i.e., 37 days, the book shows the shipment of 116 railcars with assorted clothes and footwear. IV. In the south part of the camp, in the attic of one of the buildings, there was found a storage of men’s used outerwear (suit coats, trousers, overcoats) lying loose on the floor. The attic area is 189 m2. Items of men’s clothing found in the said attic area number 27,401. < 321 >

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V. In the east part of the camp there are three two-storey stone buildings specially equipped to serve as storage and sorting areas. During the inspection of the said buildings the following were found: 1. Sewing machines, different models and makes 2. Bed and table linens (pillow cases, towels, bed sheets, table cloths, etc.) 3. Metal and enamel kitchen utensils 4. Faience utensils 5. Shoes, clothes, and hair brushes 6. Shaving brushes 7. Table knives, forks, and spoons 8. Safety razors 9. Tooth brushes 10. Hair combs, assorted 11. Shaving stones (disinfecting) 12. Pocket and hand mirrors 13. Scissors of different sizes 14. Meat grinders 15. Vacuum flasks 16. Powder boxes 17. Spectacles, assorted 18. Mattresses, soft 19. Carpets, rugs, bed covers 20. Quilts, cotton and wool blankets 21. Tallits (for prayer) 22. Suitcases, assorted 23. Men’s shoes, without soles 24. Laundry soap (by different manufacturers)

376 68,054 or 3 rail car loads 17,787 2 49,865 rail car loads 7,837 14,693 4,353 9,892 2,739 1,165 421 2,368 23 180 116 12,910 592 13,964 9,205 5,508 3,162 38,000 pairs 25 tons

All of the above-listed things and household items appear to have been used, and many of the things (utensils, suitcase, soap bars, etc.) have trademarks from different European countries (France, Belgium, Holland, Hungary, etc.). Many suitcases have hotel stickers from different European cities and countries. The warehousing areas of all the buildings are equipped with special shelves for sorting and temporary storage, each shelve featuring signs, labels, and letterings to indicate the kind of items they are intended for. The warehouses have notice boards attached to the walls with chalk-written information on the quantities and types of items accepted for sorting and storage. The entries are current as of January 17, 1945. < 322 >

APPENDIX 2

The warehouses have sewing and shoemaking workshops designed to repair and renovate clothing and footwear for subsequent shipment to Germany. We also found special rooms for the storage of dirty clothes delivered to the warehouses for sorting from the gas chambers, crematoria, and places of the mass destruction of people. VI. The inspection of buildings and warehousing areas has identified the following used clothing and household items: 246,820 836,225 115,063 5,525 pairs 38,000 89,848 or 12 rail car loads 2 rail car loads 9,205 9,892 2,739 49,865 9,892 7,837 1,165 4,358 14,693 28 492 2,739 2,368 592 116 180 5,508 3,162 12,910 376 25 tons

1. Men’s underwear and outerwear 2. Women’s underwear and outer wear 3. Children’s underwear and outer wear 4. Women’s shoes, assorted 5. Men’s shoes, without soles 6. Metal and enamel kitchen utensils 7. Faience utensils, assorted 8. Bed and table linens 9. Carpets, rugs, bed covers 10. Blankets, assorted 11. Brushes, assorted 12. Tooth brushes 13. Shaving brushes 14. Shaving stones 15. Safety razors 16. Table knives, forks, and spoons 17. Meat grinders 18. Mirrors, assorted 19. Hair combs, assorted 20. Scissors, assorted 21. Mattresses 22. Powder boxes 23. Vacuum flasks 24. Tallits (for prayer) 25. Suitcases 26. Spectacles, assorted 27. Sewing machines 28. Laundry soap

Judging by the arrangement of the special sorting shelves, the stickers, labels, and inscriptions on the shelves, the existence of the rooms for dirty clothing < 323 >

APPENDICIES

storage, tailor’s trademarks on the suits, manufacturer trademarks on the utensils and suitcases, hotel stickers on the suitcases, the keeping of a logbook to record goods shipments, as well as taking into account the fact that women’s and children’s clothes were put in bulk in the warehouses located in close proximity to the gas chambers, The Commission has established that: 1. All clothing and household items found had belonged to former prisoners brought over from various countries of Europe and exterminated at the Oswiecim concentration camp. 2. All clothing and household items looted from the exterminated people were sorted, repaired, renovated, and shipped to Germany Chairman of the Commission Captain of the Quartermaster Service: Commission Members: Captain of the Military Justice Service:

Professor of Medicine:

(Genshkovich)

(Popov) (Nasal) (Radchenko) (Limuzen)

Strzelecki A. “Der Raub des Besitzes der Opfer des KL Auschwitz.” Hefte von Auschwitz. № 21. Oswiecim, 2000. S. 95–99. With a reference to: APMAB. IZ-1/3. Собрание документов Советской Комиссии. Л. 22–28. The original is in an unidentified Moscow archive.

(3) (March 8, 1945) ACT This 8th Day of March, 1945. We, the undersigned: Chief Forensic Expert of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Lt. Colonel of the Medical Service, Assistant Professor F.F. Gryzhin; Forensic Expert of the 60th Army, Major of the Medical Service M.G. Chursanov; Expert-Criminalist of the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Red Army, Lieutenant of the Administrative Service N.I. Gerasimov, acting at the request of the Military Prosecutor of the Military Prosecution Office of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Major of the Justice Service L.N. Pokhomov, have conducted an inspection of a hair warehouse located at the Oswiecim camp tannery. The inspection has identified 293 bags of hair weighing < 324 >

APPENDIX 2

an average of 20 kg each and 12 bags weighing an average of 88 kg. Twelve smaller bags were opened up, and the hair was put out on the floor in a thin layer where it was subjected to a detailed examination; it turned out that the hair inside the bags was compressed into separate flattened bundles, packed in layers, each bundle weighing 0.5 to 1.5 kg. Bundles were untangled for examination and were found to contain bunches of hair of different colors. If assessed by that property, the hair taken out of the 12 bags exhibited such colors as brown, light-brown, grey, red, and black, with a clear preponderance of light brown. When the bunches were sorted out by color, it turned out that most of them had lengths of 20-30-50 cm. Some of them looked like tangled bunches, others, like braided plaits or wigs. Upon closer examination of individual hair bunches, some of them were found to contain women’s combs, hair-pins, and hair-slides, and, at the plaits’ outer ends, tied ribbons or bands. Apart from the above-listed items, in the bunches and in between them there were found small wooden shavings, lumps and slivers of plaster, pieces of meshed sackcloth, candy wrappers, safety razors and safety razor wrappers, slim fir branches, and small dirt lumps. For the most part, the hair looks clean, without any specific deposits. A detailed examination of the hair ends, especially in the bunches, shows that the central ends are even (cut off ), and the other untangled bunches clearly display the same kind of cut-off hair ends. Short hair was not found. The hair bundles were separated into individual compact hair bunches, which appeared to belong to the same person, and then weighed. There were about three such bunches weighed. Their weights were on the order of 40-45-50 grams, only some of them weighed up to 100 grams. The investigative authorities have made an exact count and weight measurement of the bags which have shown that the warehouse contains 293 bags weighing an average of 20 kg each and 12 bags weighing 88 kg each, which puts the overall weight of the bags at over 7,000 kg. The smaller bags are made of thick paper, and the big ones are made of ordinary sackcloth (of the mattress type). Each bag is marked “KL Au” (which stands for “concentration camp Auschwitz”). CONCLUSION Based on the properties of the hair foun,: their length, color, thickness, appearance, the character of the bunches, braided plaits with lady’s combs, hairslides, hairpins, bands and ribbons, it should be concluded that the said hair is human and almost exclusively female. Considering that the female hair contained items of lady’s usage — hairpins, hair-slides, combs, and bands and ribbons in the plaits — it should be assumed that the hair was cut off from dead bodies, i.e., it may have been at the crematorium, namely, after the killing by gas and before the burning — something that has also been confirmed by the witnesses: former prisoners TRAUBERG, MANDELBAUM, and DRAGON who had worked in the sonderkommando. < 325 >

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Based on the approximate average weight of the hair removed from one head being 50 grams, it could be conventionally assumed that the quantity of hair weighing 7,000 kg could have been removed from 140,000 women. Chief forensic expert of the 1st ukrainian front, Lt. Colonel of the medical service, assistant professor

(Gryzhin)

Strzelecki A. “Der Raub des Besitzes der Opfer des KL Auschwitz.” Hefte von Auschwitz. № 21. Oswiecim, 2000. S. 95–99. With a reference to: APMAB. IZ-1/3. Собрание документов Советской Комиссии. Л. 31–34. The original is in an unidentified Moscow archive.

(4) People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR Classified Copy No. 1 Main Political Department of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army April 21, 1945 No. 229746 City of Moscow, 19 Frunze St. Chairman of the extraordinary state commission For the discovery and investigationof the atrocities Of the german-fascist invaders and their accomplices Comrade N.M. Shvernik Attached herewith please find the materials of the chemical reconnaissance of the Headquarters of the 4th Ukrainian Front conducted on the territory of the concentration camps at Oswiecim, as well as the Technical Examination Act of the State Commission for the Discovery and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German-Fascist Invaders which have been received by the MainPDWPRA. Attachment: 25 sheets, for the above addressee only. Deputy chief of the main political department Of the red army

(Shikin)

Typed in 2 copies 20.IV.45 ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 36. Л. 5. Original Copy. Typed above the text of the letter: The Extraordinary State Commission. Special Division. Incoming No. ш-172с. April 4, 1945. Number of Sheets: 26. Instructions appended: “For Comrade Nikitin. Signed: [illegible]. 24. IV.”

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(5) People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR Classified Copy No. 1 Technical-Chemical Department of the 4th Ukrainian Front March 16, 1945 No. 0488 COMMANDER OF THE TROOPS OF THE 4TH UKRAINIAN FRONT As a result of chemical reconnaissance conducted on the territory of the Oswiecim concentration camp on 12.2.45, there was discovered a number of devices for a thorough testing of gas masks, oxygen breathing devices, and other means of chemical protection. The nature of the devices points to the fact that in Oswiecim there was a wellequipped permanent chemical laboratory which was testing CP devices for the service personnel engaged in the destruction of prisoners by poisoning agents. To conduct a thorough reconnaissance of the camps area, I detailed MajorEngineer LAVRUSHIN, officer of the Front’s Laboratory who had been included in the State Commission for the Discovery and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German-Fascist Invaders as a technical expert. As the result of a 25-day mission, the following data have been obtained: Since 1941 and up to the arrival of the Red Army, German units at Oswiecim had been carrying out mass destruction of the prisoners with the help of a poisoning agent — hydrocyanic acid, a component of the “Zyklon” preparation (kieselgur impregnated with hydrocyanic acid) — in specially constructed gas chambers. At a minimum estimate, over the entire period the Germans had destroyed, by that method alone, about 4 million people. At the REISKO division, there existed a laboratory headed by three German officers, specialists in the fields of chemistry and medicine (Captain Bruno Weber, Sr. Lieutenant Delmont, and Lieutenant Hans Münch). The laboratory personnel numbered 51 persons and was comprised of scientists and technicians from among the prisoners (mostly chemists and medics). It was noted that among the laboratory’s various activities, experiments on people were in wide practice (artificial fertilization, sterilization, artificially induced labors, cancer grafting, etc.). ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 36. Л. 5. Original copy. Typed above the text: “Office of the Chief of Staff of the Front. Incoming No. 249c. March 3, 1945.” Instructions appended: “Ch.[ief ] of the Polit.[ical] Department. Circulate the document to the leadership of the Polit.[tical] Dep. [artment] of the Front. Document to be returned in a couple of days. 18.3.45. Signed: [illegible].” < 327 >

APPENDICIES

(6) Appendix No. 1 CALCULATIONS TO DETERMINE THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE EXTERMINATED BY THE GERMANS IN THE OSWIECIM CAMP Based on the investigation materials, it can be established that the Germans, in trying to thoroughly cover the traces of their crimes and atrocities in the Oswiecim concentration camp, have destroyed all the documents and evidence which could be used to estimate, more or less accurately, the number of people who perished in the camp at the hands of the Hitlerite executioners. Thus, the Germans have destroyed the records of prisoner train arrivals at the camp, records of inmate registry at the camp, data on the quantity of female hair, spectacles, clothing, etc, shipped out of the camp, as well as other data which could have helped, through the application of statistical computation methods, to shed light on the actual number of people who have perished here. That notwithstanding, we believe it is possible to make a calculation to determine the order of a number characterizing the scale of the mass extermination of the camp prisoners by the Germans. For the purposes of the calculation, we have identified the most characteristic periods: Period 1: End of 1941 — March, 1943. Duration: 14 months Period 2: March, 1943 — May 1944. Duration: 13 months. Period 3: May, 1944 — October, 1944. Duration: 6 months. During the first period, crematorium no. 1 and gas chambers nos. 1 and 2 with the pyres near them were in operation; during the second period, crematoria nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5; during the third period, crematoria nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5, gas chamber no. 2 and the pyres near it. Let us start with the third period, during which prisoner trains started arriving at the camp very frequently. During that period, the Germans were no longer satisfied with the high-capacity crematoria 2, 3, 4, and 5. They resorted again to the use of gas chamber 2 and the pyres. Thus, it is obvious that the crematoria were operating at full capacity during that time. Assuming for that entire period an uneven character of crematoria operation and their underloading equal to 10 percent, we obtain a load factor = 0.9. The monthly throughput of crematoria No. 2, 3, 4. and 5 is 270,000, for six months — 270,000 x 6 = 1,620,000, applying the load factor, 1,450,000. We do not possess precise data for determining the crematoria load ratio during the second period; however, one can proceed from the assumption that the < 328 >

APPENDIX 2

Germans would not have built such high-capacity facilities if they had not envisaged their more or less full utilization; therefore, the crematoria, in any event, were being operated at no less than 50 percent capacity. Assuming the 0.5 load factor for that period, we arrive at: 0,5 × 270 000 × 13 = 1,750,000 Assuming the same 0.5 load factor for the first period as well, gives us: 0.5 × 9000 × 14 = 63,000 This means that the Germans had destroyed, using the crematoria, a total of 3,263,000 people over the entire time of operation. Assuming the load factor for gas chamber No. 2 of only 50 percent and limiting its throughput to only 3,000 persons a day, we have: 0.5 × 90 000 × 6 = 270,000 Assuming that during the first period the load factor for that gas chamber was even lower than in the third period, on the order of 25 per.[cent], and extending the same load factor to gas chamber No. 1, we obtain: 0.25 × 305,0001 × 14 = 525,000 Thus, using individual gas chambers and the pyres, the Germans had destroyed, over the entire time, no less than 270,000 + 525,000 = 795,000 persons, which, combined with the numbers calculated earlier, gives us: 3,263,000 + 795 000 = 4,000,000 (rounded) as the number of people who, at the most conservative estimate, had been destroyed in the Oswiecim concentration camp over the entire period of its existence. Professor, doctor-engineer Professor, doctor-engineer Candidate of chemiccal sciences, major-engineer Captain-Engineer

(Dawidowski) (Dolinski) (Lavrushin) (Shuer)

ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 36. Л. 6–8. Original copy. Appended instructions: “PD. For Colonel-General Comd. Mekhlis. Signed: [illegible].” < 329 >

APPENDICIES

(7) ACT February 14 — March 8, 1945, OSWIECIM The Expert Technical Commission composed of Professor, Doctor-Engineer DAWIDOWSKI, Roman, of Krakow; Professor, Doctor-Engineer DOLINSKI, Jaroslaw, of Krakow; Candidate of Chemical Sciences, Major-Engineer LAVRUSHIN, Vladimir Fedorovich; and Captain-Engineer SHUER, Abram Moiseyevich, following a thorough examination of the blueprints and documentation discovered in the concentration camp of Oswiecim; a detailed investigation of the remains of the demolished crematoria and gas chambers; and based on the criminal investigation materials, especially, witness testimonies by camp inmates who used to work at the gas chambers and crematoria, has established: The Germans organized at the concentration camp of Oswiecim a huge factory for the mass destruction of people by killing them with the poison agent “ZYKLON” and incinerating the bodies in the crematoria or in pyres. There were trains from all German-occupied countries — France, Belgium, Holland, Yugoslavia, Poland, Greece, etc. — arriving at OSWIECIM and bringing people who were intended for destruction. Only an insignificant number of the most fit were left at the camp to be temporarily used as a work force at military plants and as subjects of various medical experiments and were subsequently destroyed as well. Throughout the existence of the OSWIECIM camp from 1940 to January 1945, it had been operating super powerful crematoria with a total of 62 separate retorts. Operating in conjunction with the crematoria and separately, there were specially equipped and perfected gas chambers used to kill people with poison gas on a gigantic scale. Along with this sophisticated human destruction technology, bodies were burnt, also in huge quantities, in special pyres. Here, at the OSWIECIM concentration camp, the German obscurantists were developing and elaborating techniques for the mass extermination of people. Built in 1941, the first six-retort crematorium soon proved insufficient to satisfy the appetites of the Hitlerite executioners, leading to the design and construction, with an unheard-of speed, of another four crematoria at the camp division at BIRKENAU. I. CANNIBALISTIC TECHNOLOGY — GAS CHAMBERS AND CREMATORIA a) Crematorium No. 1 At the start of 1941, a crematorium entered into operation at the OSWIECIM division which came to be known as Crematorium No.1. The crematorium had two 2-retort ovens fired by four coke-burning generators. In late 1941 (September, October), a third 2-retort oven of a type identical to the first two was built in the < 330 >

APPENDIX 2

same building. Each retort could handle 3-5 bodies at a time. which took one and a half hours to incinerate, with a total daily throughput of 300-350. This crematorium had an attached gas chamber equipped with two gastight doors at the opposite sides of the chamber and four tightly closed hatches in the ceiling. These hatches were used to introduce the “ZYKLON” agent to kill people in the chamber. Crematorium No.1 had continued in operation until March 1943, for a total of two years. b) The Construction of New Crematoria After making an inspection visit to the OSWIECIM camp in the summer of 1942, SS Reichsfuhrer HIMMLER ordered a gigantic expansion and a technical upgrade of the existing human poisoning and extermination facilities (Letter of August 8, 1942, No. 11450/V/GA/). The construction of high-capacity crematoria was commissioned to the Topf und Söhne company in ERFURT. They immediately started the construction of the four crematoria, designated by numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 on the camp layout (blueprint 2216). BERLIN was urging a faster pace of crematorium construction, with all works to be completed in early 1943 (the letter from OSWIECIM to the Topf und Söhne company of December 22, 1942, No. 20420/42/R/L), the letter of February 12, 1943, and the letter of January 29, 1943. c) Crematoria No. 2 and No. 3 Crematoria 2 and 3 are identical (construction designs No. 932 and No. 933 of 28.1.1942) and were built symmetrically on both sides of the road. In the fall of 1943, an access railway track was laid, running next to the crematoria and solely designed for direct prisoner train unloading into the crematorium area. Coke and other materials were delivered by auto transport. Each of the 10 ovens of the two crematoria had 3 retorts and two semi-generator furnaces. Each retort could load 3-5 bodies, which took 20 to 30 minutes to incinerate. The two crematoria’s 30 retorts were capable of handling 6,000 bodies a day at full capacity. To enhance their operation, the ovens were equipped, in addition to natural draft, with smoke exhausters with a capacity of 10,000 cubic meters of off-gas per hour. However, these smoke exhausters had not worked for long because oven operation in such an enhanced mode could result in their early breakdown. Consequently, the smoke exhausters were dismantled and the ovens continued to operate on natural draft only. Behind the smoke stack of each crematorium there was another oven designated on one blueprint “For trash incineration” (Blueprint No. 963 of January 19, 1942) and “For clothes incineration” on another (Blueprint No. 932 of January 28, 1942). According to witnesses, these ovens were used for burning no-value things that had belonged to the poisoned people. Crematorium No. 2 was in operation from March 1943 to October 1944., i.e., 1 year and seven months. Crematorium No. 3 was in operation from April 1943 to October 1944, i.e., 1 year and 6 months. < 331 >

APPENDICIES

Both Crematoria 2 and 3 had underground premises, which are shown on the layouts as “Corpse Cellars,” which in reality were designed for poison-gassing people. People arriving on the trains were forced into the underground changing rooms, shown on Blueprints No. 932 and No. 933 (Corpse Cellar 2). The changing room was 50 m long and 7.9 m wide (floor space 395 m2) and 2.3 m high (room volume 910 m3). The second underground room, designated “Corpse Cellar 1,” is 30 m long and 7 m wide (floor space 210 m2) and 2.4 m high (room volume 504 m3). The roof of that room had four hatches 45 by 45 cm, spaced in staggered rows, with a short pipe projecting 30 cm up above each hatch and hermetically closed with a layer of felt and a massive concrete lid. Inside the room there were hollow fake columns stretching from the hatches to the floor, made of perforated iron sheet. There were also fake shower heads hanging from the ceiling. According to the investigation findings, these rooms, i.e., “Corpse Cellar 1,” were used in both crematoria as gas chambers for poisoning people with gases. The gas chamber was equipped with forced-draft and exhaust ventilation. The exhaust ventilator was powered by a 3.5 HP motor and had a capacity of 8,000 m3 per hour. The forced-draft ventilator had a 7.5 HP motor and a capacity of 16,000 m3 per hour. In a tight spacing arrangement, assuming 10 persons per sq. m, such a chamber could take in 2,000-2,100 persons at a time. d) Crematoria No. 4 and No. 5 Crematoria 4 and 5 had one 8-retort oven each (16 retorts in all). These crematoria were built in the BIRKENAU subdivision, at a distance of 750 meters from the above-described crematoria No. 2 and No. 3. Each retort could load 3–5 bodies which took 30 to 40 minutes to incinerate. The two crematoria’s 16 retorts were capable of burning 3,000 bodies a day at full capacity. Crematorium No. 4 had been in operation from late March, 1943 to August 1944, i.e., one year and five months. Crematorium No. 5 had worked from May 1943 to January 1945, i.e. one year and 8 months, including 1 year and 6 months as a gassing facility as well, because, according to the investigation findings, the Germans had stopped operating the gas chambers at the BIRKENAU subdivision as of October 1944 and started implementing measures to dismantle both the gas chambers and the crematoria. Crematoria No. 4 and 5 had an annex building measuring 20 m × 12 m, with a total floor space of 240 m2. Inside, the building was partitioned into three separate rooms, each of which served as a gas chamber. The gas chamber’s outer walls had meshed hatches for the introduction of the “ZYKLON” agent, which were closed with hermetical covers. “ZYKLON” was dumped into the chamber through these hatches. Each gas chamber had two hermetically closing doors. The gas chambers were separated by a corridor from the changing room, equal in area to the gas chambers combined. Characteristically, < 332 >

APPENDIX 2

official German correspondence referred to the gas chambers as “special purpose baths” (Letter No. 12115/42/R/G of August 21, 1948). II. BODIES BURNING IN PYRES a) Gas chamber No. 1 with the pyres Soon after the launch of the gas chamber at the first crematorium in the fall 1941, another two gas chambers were set up in the forest, at a certain distance from the BIRKENAU camp. The first gas chamber measured 10 × 8 m, with a total floor space of 80 m2, and had two doors for entry and exit. On the outer side of the entrance door there was a sign in German that read, “For disinsection,” and on the inner side of the exit door, “For bathing.” Near the doors and the side wall there were hatches for the introduction of the “ZYKLON” agent. There were also two wooden barracks of the standard type designed for undressing. Such a chamber, given the forceful methods of crowd compacting that were practiced by the Germans, could take in 800-1000 people at a time. Considering that, according to the investigation materials, undressing, poisoning people, and body unloading from the chambers took the Germans 5-7 hours, it can be assumed that three such operations could be carried out daily. This means that, operating at full capacity, gas chamber No. 1 could be used by the Germans to poison no less than 2,500 people daily. There were five trolleys using a narrow-gauge track to transport the corpses to the four ditches, 25-30 m long, 4-6 m wide, and 2 m deep, where they were laid in layers interspaced with layers of firewood and then burned. This gas chamber and the pyre near it had been in operation for about one and a half years and were liquidated by the Germans in March and April, 1943. b) Gas chamber No. 2 with the pyres The second gas chamber measured 9 by 11 m with a floor space of 100 sq. m. It followed the general design of gas chamber No.1. At full capacity, the Germans were poisoning 3,000 people in this gas chamber, assuming the same calculation inputs as were used for the first gas chamber. Four trolleys and a narrow-gauge track were used to transport the corpses to the pyres, which numbered from 4 to six at different times. The operation of the second gas chamber with the pyres was suspended in April, 1943 and then was resumed in May, 1944 and continued until October, 1944. Thus, this gas chamber and the pyres had been in use for a total of one year and ten months. c) The pyres near crematorium No. 5 From May to October 1944, the ovens of crematorium No. 5 were shut down and the bodies of poisoned people were burned in the three pyres located in the crematorium area. < 333 >

APPENDICIES

d) The separate gas chamber In the OSWIECIM subdivision, near the main central heating boiler house, there was also found a gas chamber. On the hermetic doors of the chamber there was a sign in German: “Poison Gas.” At the entrance to the room, another sign: “Dangerous for Life.” The windowless chamber measuring 16 × 8.7 × 3 m had three ceiling fans with tightly-closing covers and felt gaskets. Along the walls. there were three heating ovens fired from the outside of the building. This chamber was used for clothing disinfection as well as for killing people, as was the case in August, 1944 when 200 men were gassed who worked in the crematorium servicing team which were periodically eliminated to get rid of witnesses to the Germans’ heinous crimes. III. THE PROCESS OF THE MASS POISONING OF PEOPLE BY THE GERMANS IN THE OSWIECIM CAMP After examining the remains of the demolished crematoria and pyre excavations, and based on the investigation findings, technical experts have identified the methods and techniques used by the Germans to kill people with poisoning agents, particularly, the “ZYKLON.” As is common at industrial sites, the Germans had laid access railroads directly to the crematoria locations. Trains carrying people intended for annihilation used these tracks to pull up to the unloading ramp near the crematorium. Each train was transporting 2,000-3,000 people. In certain periods, there were up to five and more such trains arriving daily. Here on the ramp, the first selection of those most fit for work was made to send them on to the camp, while the others were sent to the crematoria under the pretext of taking them to the baths and disinfection. The selection was carried out by German doctors. Those allocated for the camp went on to the baths near the crematorium where additional selection was made among the now naked people. At this stage, more people were selected for destruction. However, it was all too common for all people on a train to be sent to the crematoria. Almost the entire trainload of several thousand people were herded into the changing room with the sign “Baths and Disinfector” at the entrance. From the changing room naked people were forced into the gas chamber. The SS men compacted the crowd in the gas chamber using clubs and guard dogs. Once the chamber filled up, the gastight doors were shut closed, and the “ZYKLON” agent was dumped in through the special hatches. An SS man in a gas-mask opened the “ZYKLON” cans with a special opener, poured it into the gas chamber and sealed up the hatch. People died in the first 3 to 8 minutes, but, for full guarantee, exposure was extended to 20 minutes, after which the gas chamber was aired and the corpses, which remained standing inside, unloaded. The unloaded corpses were stripped of gold teeth, rings, earrings, and watches, and women’s hair was shorn. Then the bodies were burned in the crematoria or < 334 >

APPENDIX 2

in the pyres. The ashes were initially buried in the ground, but later on, when the Germans started trying to cover up the evidence of their crimes, they began transporting the ashes out of the camp and dumping them into the Vistula and Sola rivers. From the investigation findings and the material evidence discovered in the OSWIECIM camp, namely a chemical analyzer to determine the presence of hydrocyanic acid in the air, two door keys with the tag inscribed “ZYKLON,” boxes with “ZYKLON” cans, and empty cans that used to contain it, it follows that the Germans were using “ZYKLON” for the mass destruction of people in gas chambers. In this connection, it is appropriate do describe some of the agent’s characteristics and its effects on human beings. In “ZYKLON” production for disinfection purposes, irritants are added to it to prevent accidental poisoning of people. Indications to that effect can be found in technical literature; for instance, Professor Gerhardt’s book, The Fundamentals of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Munich, 1944, p. 311. The “ZYKLON” found in the camp and its containers did not have those additives, a fact which is confirmed by the can labels: “Caution! Contains No Warning Agent!” Cans of different sizes have been found with hydrocyanic acid content indications of 500, 1000, and 1,500 g. The “ZYKLON” agent represents small pieces of kieselguhr (or some other porous material) inserted with hydrocyanic acid. Hydrocyanic acid is a volatile liquid with a boiling point of 27°C. It is lethal for humans in concentrations of 0.2-0.3 g per m3. Its effect is of a general poisoning nature and manifests itself instantly. For example, a “ZYKLON” container with a hydrocyanic acid content of 500 g would be sufficient to impart the agent’s lethal concentration to 1,700 cubic meters of air. IV. DATA ON THE WORK FORCE ENGAGED IN SERVICING THE CREMATORIA, GAS CHAMBERS, AND PYRES The Germans organized a special team of camp inmates for servicing the crematoria, gas chambers, and pyres, called the “Sonderkommando.” Over the camp’s history, the numbers of people employed in this team varied between 200 and 1,000 men. For instance, from March-April 1943 it had a total of 400 members. They were assigned to the crematoria as follows: Crematoria No. 2 and 3 Crematoria No. 4 and 5 Free and odd-job workers

240 120 40

In February 1944, 180 workers remained. In May, 1944 the number was increased to 1,000 because they started to burn bodies at the pyre near Crematorium No. 5, and the separate gas chamber No. 2 was restored and put into operation, as < 335 >

APPENDICIES

well as the pyres near it. These 1,000 “Sonderkommando” members were assigned to work as follows: Crematorium No. 2 Crematorium No. 3 Crematorium No. 4 Crematorium No. 5 Separate gas chamber No. 2 with pyres

120 (60 per shift) 120 60 300 300

Crematoria No. 2 and 3 each employed two12-hour work shifts. Each shift normally comprised 60 workers; for heavier workloads the number was increased. By type of work, they were distributed as follows: 1. Removing things left in the change rooms, loading them onto trucks, and cleaning the premises

15

2. Unloading corpses from the chamber and carrying them to the so-called elevator

15

3. Loading corpses onto the elevator

2

4. Barbers (cutting head hair from female corpses)

4

5. Dentists (extracting gold teeth from the corpses)

2

6. Generator servicing

2

7. Body elevator servicing

2

8. Unloading corpses from the elevator

2

9. Carrying corpses to the ovens (retorts) 10. Loading corpses into ovens (two groups of 5) 11. Assistant overseer

2 10 4

Crematoria Nos. 4 and 5 were serviced by 30-men shifts at normal work loads. Each of the 4 crematoria also employed 3 goldsmiths to melt down the removed gold teeth. V. CREMATORIUM, GAS CHAMBER, AND PYRE THROUGHPUTS The throughput of OSWIECIM’s crematoria, gas chambers, and pyres was constantly increasing and its dynamics can be characterized as follows: a) Up until March, 1943, Crematorium No. 1 was in operation with a daily capacity of 300 bodies and a monthly throughput of 300×30 = 9,000. During the same period, gas chambers Nos. 1 and 2 with the attached pyres were active as well, with a total throughput of no less than 5,000 persons daily, or 5,000×30 = 150,000 monthly. < 336 >

APPENDIX 2

b) From March 1943 to May 1, 1944 crematoria No. 2, 3, 4, and 5 were in operation with a daily throughput of 9,000 bodies or 270,000 bodies per month. c) In addition to the above four crematoria, gas chamber No. 2 with the attached pyres was active from May to October, 1944, increasing the total throughput to 12,000 daily or 360,000 monthly. VI. THE GERMANS HAVE DESTROYED MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE IN OSWIECIM As they painstakingly covered their criminal tracks, the Germans took every possible measure to conceal any evidence that might show the world the number of innocent people they have destroyed in Oswiecim. However, the powerful annihilation technology they have built in OSWIECIM exposes the executioners’ crime of poisoning and burning millions of people. Through the use of the crematoria alone over the period of their existence, the Germans could have destroyed: Designation

Months in Operation

Throughput (bodies per month)

Throughput Over Entire Period in Operation

Crematorium No. 1

24

9000

216,000

Crematorium No. 2

19

90,000

171,000

Crematorium No. 3

18

90,000

161,800

Crematorium No. 4

17

45,000

765,000

Crematorium No. 5

18

45,000

81,000

Taking into account the wide-scale use of the body-burning pyres by the Germans, the combined throughput of the OSWIECIM human annihilation machine at the disposal of the Hitlerite executioners will be expressed in a much higher number. The Hitlerite criminals were constantly perfecting and streamlining their cannibalistic technology and speedily building ever new crematoria, and they have managed to use all that technology to a large extent. Based on the investigation findings, it can be established that over the period of the Oswiecim camp’s existence the Germans destroyed no less than 4 million people, and it is quite likely that the actual number of people who have died at the hands of the German executioners amounts to even more staggering dimensions. CONCLUSIONS 1. The German-Fascist obscurantists, possessed of the idea of genocidal extermination, built a gigantic factory for the mass destruction of people in the Oswiecim concentration camp. < 337 >

APPENDICIES

2. Over the period of the camp’s existence — from 1940 to January, 1945 — there were five crematoria in operation with a total of 52 retorts and a monthly throughput of about 270,000 bodies. 3. Each crematorium had its own gas chamber where innocent people were poisoned by the “ZYKLON” poison gas. The gas chamber capacity significantly exceeded the ovens’ throughput, ensuring the crematoria’s peak load during operation. 4. Apart from that, there were also two separate gas chambers near which the Germans were burning bodies in colossal pyres. Both those gas chambers had a throughput of no less 150,000 people per month. 5. By the most conservative estimate, the German-Fascist cannibals in the Oswiecim concentration camp poisoned in the gas chambers and burnt in the crematoria and in the pyres no less than 4 million people. Professor, Doctor-Engineer Professor, Doctor-Engineer Candidate Of Chemical Sciences, Major-Engineer Captain-Engineer

(Dawidowski) (Dolinski) (Lavrushin) (Shuer)

Certified to be true and correct: Major of the Guards Recto, Assistant Chief of the Chemical Reconnaissance Department of the 4th Ukrainian Front. ГАРФ. Ф. Р-7021. Оп. 108. Д. 36. Л. 19–28. Certified copy.

(8) An Excerpt from the ESC report “On the Monstrous Crimes of the German Government in Oswiecim” May 8, 1945. (...) The Hitlerite Bandits Have Killed over 4 Million People in Oswiecim Seeking to cover up the evidence of their monstrous crimes in Oswiecim, the retreating Germans were painstakingly destroying all documents that could have shown the world the exact number of people who had been annihilated in the Oswiecim camp. But the powerful human destruction technology built by the Germans in the camp, testimonies by the Oswiecim prisoners liberated by the Red Army, accounts by 200 witnesses questioned, certain documents found, and other material evidence provide sufficient proof that the German executioners destroyed, < 338 >

APPENDIX 2

poisoned, and burned millions of people. Through the use of the five crematoria alone (52 retorts) over the period of their existence, the Germans could have destroyed: Designation

Months in Operation

Body-Burning Throughput (per month)

Throughput Over Entire Period in Operation

Crematorium No. 1

24

9000

216,000

Crematorium No. 2

19

90,000

1,710,000

Crematorium No. 3

18

90,000

1,620,800

Crematorium No. 4

17

45,000

765,000

Crematorium No. 5

18

45,000

810,000

279,000

5,121,000

TOTAL:

Taking into account the wide-scale use of the body-burning pyres by the Germans, the combined throughput of the OSWIECIM human annihilation technology must be significantly increased. However, by applying corrective co-efficients to account for the crematoria’s underloading and occasional idle periods, the Commission of technical experts has established that over the period of existence of the Oswiecim camp the German executioners have exterminated no less than 4 million of citizens of the USSR, Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Holland, Belgium, and other countries. (...) Cit. from: О чудовищных преступлениях германского правительства в Освенциме. Сообщение Чрезвычайной Государственной Комиссии по установлению и расследованию злодеяний немецко-фашистских захватчиков и их сообщников // Красная Звезда. 8.5.1945. (“On the Monstrous Crimes of the German Government in Oswiecim.” A report by the Extraordinary State Commission for the Discovery and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German-Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices. The Red Star, 08.05.1945). See the same published under separate cover: Сообщение Чрезвычайной Государственной Комиссии по установлению и расследованию злодеяний немецко-фашистских захватчиков и их сообщников. О чудовищных преступлениях германского правительства в Освенциме. М.: ОГИЗ, 1945. 34 с.

NOTES 1

An obvious mathematical mistake or misprint. It should be 9,375. — Ed.

< 339 >

APPENDIX 3 Europe’s Dead and Killed Jews by Countries and Categories: Different Estimates

А — Anglo-American Committee (April, 1946). According to: Retlinger, 1958. S. 573. B — Frumkin, Gregory. Population Changes in Europe Since 1939. London, 1951. pp. 168–173. C — Reitlinger G. Die Endlösung. Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas 1939–1945. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1958. S. 573 (minimum and maximum estimates). D — Hilberg, Raul. Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. Die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocausts. Berlin, Olle a. Wolter, 1982. S. 810. E — Hilberg,Raul. Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. Die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocausts. Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verkag, 1999. S. 1300. F — Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975 (See also the 2nd revised edition: Ardmore, Seth Press, 1986). G — Bauer, Jehuda with Keren, Nili. A History of the Holocaust. New York, F. Watts, 1982. H — Gilbert, Martin. Die Endlösung. Die Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Juden. Ein Atlas. Reinbeck beim Hamburg, 1982. S. 244 (Quoted from: Piper, 1993. S. 177). < 340 >

APPENDIX 3

I — Gutman, Israel; Rozett, Robert, Guttmann, Israel (Ed.). Enzyclopedia of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem, 1990. pp. 1799–1802. K — Walther N. Sanning. Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. Mit einem Vorwort von Arthur R. Butz. Tübingen — Buenos Aires — Montevideo, Grabert-Verlag, 1983. L — Арад, Ицхак. Катастрофа евреев на оккупированных территориях Советского Союза. Центр “Ткума”; Д.: ЧП “Лира ЛТД”; М.: Центр “Холокост”, 2007. 816 с. (Arad, Yitzhak, The Catastrophe of Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union). M — Benz, Wolfgang. Dimension des Völkermords. München, Oldenbourg, 1991. N — Pohl, Dieter (See this Collection). O — Альтман И. Жертвы ненависти. Холокост в СССР 1941–1945 гг. М., 2005. (Altman, I. The Victims of Hate. The Holocaust in the USSR in 19411945). P — Kupovetsky, M. (See this Collection). Q — Polyan, P. (See this Collection).

< 341 >

B

E

F

< 342 >

130

Lithuania

D

70

Latvia

Danzig

2

Estonia

Baltic States

Moldavia6

E

1

130

70

F

228

245

Byelorussia

1

700^

900

700^

Ukraine5

C

700- 7001100^ 750^

B

D

G

H

I

G

145

69

1

1153

H

12121317

I

M

N

145

1

1000^

140143

L

N

2700 3000^

M

25092100 2624

946996 15611628

L

69

K

674

K

70-72

2

10001100

23502900- 29003000^ 3000 3000 3000 2600^ 3100 3000

C

107

A

1050

3271 3200^

A

RSFSR4

USSR3

USSR: annexed terr. USSR (w/o Baltic States)

USSR2

USSR1

Poland

Countries and Contingents*

O

215220

75-77

1

130

810

1430

28052838 144170

O

P

1482

956

2438

P

Q

2656

1150

3000^

Q

APPENDICIES

< 343 >

100

B

120

140

A

Netherlands

France

Transc.Ukraine

104

C

60-65

104

70

250

300

D

75

100

E

75

1001

260

120^

180

1

E

75

80

210

450

F

F

90

105

G

75

102

253

165

270

G

H

77

100

146149

134141

550569

H

I

77

100

68-71

146149

78

134141

550569

I

159

71

K

K

15

74

233243

160180

200

D

Slovakia

140

200

240

C

38

255

195

180

B

Czechoslavakia9

Czechoslovakia

Germany and Austria Germany with Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia

Germany

Romania8

Hungary7

Hungary

Memel region

Danzig

A

L

L

M

76

102

143

165

550

M

N

75

102

253

165

270

N

O

O

P

P

Q

75

102

253

165

270

Q

APPENDIX 3

< 344 >

64

64

57

20

3

1

2

Yougoslavia

Greece

Belgium

Italy10

Luxemburg

Norway

Denmark

TOTAL

Soviet POWs

Finland

Bulgaria

10

0

1

0

27

60

50

80

B

A

B

5722 4371

53

Austria

Albania

A

Countries and Contingents*

C

48945601

0

1

3

8-10

25-28

57-60

55-58

58-60

C

D

5172

0

1

1

105

25

60

60

50

D

E

5113

0

1

1

9

24

60

60

501

E

F

5994

0

14

0

1

1

8

40

54

26

F

G

5821

80

0

0

1

1

7

25

59

65

65

G

H

57086237

0

1

2

8

29

60-67

56-63

50

H

I

55965860

0

1

2

8

29

60-67

56-63

50

I

K

1269

8

53

56

K

L

L

M

52906540

11

0

1

1

7

28

59

60-65

65

M

N

Q

5748 (56005900)

0

0

1

1

7

25

59

65

65

Q

5588 (54005800) P

P

80

O

O

50-70

0

0

1

1

7

25

59

65

65

N

APPENDICIES

APPENDIX 3

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

The USSR in its postwar borders. The USSR in its borders as of 17.09.1939. The USSR in its borders as of 22.06.1941. With the Crimea, but w/o the Kaliningrad Region. Taking into account those deported from Moldavia and excluding the Crimea and the Transcarpatian Region Excluding those deported to the Ukraine With Transilvania. With Bessarabia and North Bukovina With the Transcarpatian Ukraine. With the Island of Rhodes and Albania.

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