The significance of the Holocaust, or the alleged mass murder of six million Jews by Nazis during World War Two, lies not so much in its effect upon Nazis or Jews, but in its use to suppress any discussion or argument on the topic of race since the end of the Second World War. For this reason alone, an overview of the basic facts surrounding the Holocaust is of critical importance.
NAZIS ESTIMATE 4.5 MILLION JEWS UNDER THEIR CONTROL
The Nazis themselves said that they only had 4.5 million Jews under their direct control
(see the analysis of the Wannsee Minutes) and they would have, in 1941 at least, when that estimate was made, had no particular reason to lie.
This figure is of particular interest when it is considered that as of 1988, some 4.3 million claims for compensation had been filed against the West German government by Holocaust survivors, according to the Federal German government.
Despite this, estimates by non-Nazi sources of the numbers of victims of Nazi concentration camps has varied wildly from six million to 11 million, depending upon which source one cares to consult.
THE ORIGIN OF THE SIX MILLION FIGURE
The figure of six million was arrived at on the basis of two sources: first on the evidence of a former SS officer, Wilhelm Hottl, who before the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials stated that Adolf Eichmann, head of the Jewish Division of the Gestapo, had told him that 4 million Jews had died in concentration camps and 2 million had died “elsewhere”. (Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Germany, Vol. XXI, Doc, 2738-PS, p. 85).
The other source for this is a statement taken from the former commandant of the Auschwitz camp, Rudolf Hoess, who in a written statement declared that four million Jews had been killed at Auschwitz alone. Hoess was hanged at Auschwitz by the Soviets immediately after making this statement.
This figure quoted by Hoess is however universally acknowledged as being too high, especially as Hoess was relieved of his command of Auschwitz in 1943, long before the camp was closed down, and as such would not have been able to tell with any certainty how many Jews passed through its gates by August 1944.
JEWISH SCHOLARS DENY SOAP, LAMPSHADES HORROR STORIES
At the end of the war it was claimed that the Dachau and Bergen-Belsen camps in Germany (from where the horrific pictures of scores of dead bodies emanated) had operating gas chambers; and that in camps in Poland, Jews had been killed in “steam chambers” or had been skinned to make lamp shades, gloves and their body fat made into soap.
All of these horror stories have in the subsequent years been refuted by all serious scholars, including the leading Jewish scholar on the issue, Raul Hilberg (who in 1998 was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, and author of the world famous book “
The Destruction of the European Jews“).
JEWISH ESTIMATE SEES NUMBER OF HOLOCAUST DEAD DROP TO 2.8 MILLION
According to Hilberg, as quoted in an article written by himself in the 1998 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia under the heading Holocaust, the six camps, their means of killing and their total number of victims was as follows:
“Chelmno had gas vans, and its death toll was 150,000; Belzec had carbon monoxide gas chambers in which 600,000 Jews were killed; Sobibor’s gas chambers accounted for 250,000 dead; Treblinka’s for 700,000 to 800,000; At Majdanek, some 50,000 were gassed or shot; and in Auschwitz, the Jewish dead totaled more than 1 million.”
