The Holocaust Historiography Project

Conclusion: Six Million Exterminated Jews — Fact or Fiction

Logic demands that this demographic study end with general statistics which include the following four items for each of the European nations which I have surveyed:

  1. The number of Jews who were living there just before Beck's accession to power in Poland (1932) and Hitler's accession to power in Germany (1933);
  2. The number of Jews among them who, to escape persecution, emigrated between 1932 and 1945;
  3. The number of Jews who remained in Europe and who were still alive there in 1945;
  4. The number of Jews who cannot be accounted for and who, hence, are presumed to be dead.

In order to give the exact truth of this dark story, these statistics should be accompanied by others giving the structure of the world Jewish population at the end of 1962. And, in four sections also, for each of the nations of the other continents:

  1. The numberer of Jews living there before the rise to power in Poland of Beck, and in Germany of Hitler;
  2. The natural increase in the Jewish population from 1932 to 1962;
  3. The census of the Jewish population at the end of 1962;
  4. The number of Jewish immigrants calculated from the difference between the total figures of items 2 and 3. (There is no doubt that this difference comes near the 4,419,908 figure that is mentioned in the preceding section.)

This was my intention at the beginning. Now, this double labor turns out to be impossible; the second statistics cannot be determined unless and until the leadership of international Zionism agrees to undertake a census of the world Jewish population, and we have seen that Zionist leaders are not about to accept this idea. As for the first statistics, there is a long series of other difficulties that still present obstacles in spite of all the specific data that the preceding study has produced.

The most insurmountable of these difficulties, and which sums them all up, is the following: if we now know that a minimum of 4,419,908 Jews succeeded in leaving Europe between 1931 and 1945, we are much less well informed on their nationalities. For countries like Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and one or two others — the Baltic countries for example, even Greece — there is no problem; they were not on the route of the Jewish migration; the Germans found only national Jews in those countries and everything is clear. But it is not the same in the other countries — Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Rumania — which were countries into which to escape, or to go through, before they became occupied by German troops. There, the Jews were arrested and deported pell-mell, and it is impossible for us to determine accurately the nationalities of those who managed not to get arrested as well as those who were. Hungary is the archetype of this difficulty: there, we did succeed in determining that out of the 800,000 Jews who were living there on March 19, 1944, 543,000 had not been deported; that about 200,000 had been deported; that 57,000 had very probably been massacred in police operations; and that 343,000 had managed to emigrate. But, in each of these categories, it was impossible to determine who was Hungarian, who was Yugoslavian, who was Czechoslovakian, and who was Polish. The same questions hold for Rumania, where we found 147,650 massacred, and 652,350 survivors, 227,350 of whom emigrated. The same questions are found again for Holland, for Belgium, for Luxemburg and for France. In France, we found that only 81,000 Jews of one nationality or the other could have been arrested and deported; we know also that there were no Belgians among them, that the number of French was necessarily between 6,000 and 11,999, and that the number of the Luxemburgers was between 0 and 2,000, the others being Dutch. But these are, all the same, figures which are insufficiently exact to be called statistics. In Poland, we know that 729,040 Jews were arrested, either on their national land or on the emigration route toward the west; but of the 289,300 who tried to emigrate by the Danubian route, how many were arrested in Hungary and how many in Rumania? So many questions for which there are no answers and which can equally be applied to the Czechoslovakians who fled to Hungary and the Yugoslavians who fled to Italy.

In the final analysis, rather than to circulate statistics based on nationalities, every datum of which might have been open to question, and to add to the confusion created by the historians and the statisticians who voice the line of international Zionism, I have preferred to draw up these statistics on the only plane where we are sure of ourselves, that is in Europe. Here, no serious debate is possible: we have affirmed that a minimum of 4,419,908 European Jews managed to emigrate early enough to escape arrest and deportation to concentration camps, and we can add them to those that the historians and statisticians who support the Zionist "genocide" fiction, found living in Europe in 1945.

Here then, on information from the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, are our statistics on the European scale in four sections, with the integration, for 1931, of the 300,000 German Jews and the 180,000 Austrian Jews who are admitted to have left Europe to flee from Hitler together with the million Jews who were in the part of the Russia that was never occupied by the German troops.

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Description 1931 1945 Official Losses Emigrants Traced Actual Losses1
Statist. totals from p. 302 8,297,500 2,288,100 6,009,400 — -- — --
Known German Emigrants 300,000 300,000 — -- — -- — --
Austrian Emigrants Ackowledged 180,000 180,000 — -- — -- — --
Russian Jews saved by Soviet 1,000,000 1,000,000 — -- — -- — --
Actual totals from WCJD 9,777,500 3,768,100 6,009,400 — -- — --
Ac. totals as arrived at in this study 9,777,500 3,768,100 4,419,908 1,589,492

Here again are the same statistics, but this time based on the information of Mr. Raul Hilberg who did not divide Russia into the two zones, but who, too, acknowledged that there were 300,000 German and 180,000 Austrian Jewish emigrants.

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Description 1931 1945 Official Losses Emigrants Traced Actual Losses
Totals from p. 302 9,190,000 3,782,500 5,407,000 — -- — --
Austrian Emigrants aknowledged 180,000 180,000 — -- — -- — --
Totals of Mr. Hilberg for 1945 9,670,000 4,262,500 5,407,500 — -- — --
totals as arrived at in this study 9,670,000 4,262,500 — -- 4,419,908 987,592

On the basis of the preceding analysis, this is where we stand now: First, out of the study of the statistics of the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation and from its own data, we find 1,589,492 European Jews dead or missing as a consequence of Nazi persecutions in concentration camps or in some other way. Second, out of the study of Mr. Raul Hilberg's data we find only 987,592 dead or missing Jews.

Twice I took up this problem: first in Ulysse trahi par les siens, published in France in 1960, and, second, in an article for the German review Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (Tubingen, 12, February 1963). Each time that I reviewed the problems, I did it in terms of the data from Jewish sources that had been published at the time. But, the first time, neither the judgment of the Jerusalem Tribunal, nor, more significantly, the study of The Jewish Communities of the World of February 1963 had been brought out. And, in terms of what was already known, my conviction had been that the number of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, in concentration camps or otherwise, should be placed at about 1,000,000, more or less. The second time, I had in my hands the Judgment of the Jerusalem Tribunal, and I had followed day by day the hearings of the Trial, but I still was not acquainted with the study of the Jewish Communities of he World, then not yet published. As a conclusion to my writing for the Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (pp.61, 62) I had claimed that if the number were greater than 1,000,000 it could not by any means exceed 1,655,300 victims. Today, with all the documents at hand which were lacking then, it can be said that, based on data prior to that of the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, the number of victims is 1,589,492. On the other hand, the figure is 987,592, based on Mr. Raul Hilberg's data. To achieve greater exactness, we must wait for the new Zionist leaders like Salo Baron, Leon Poliakov, and Michel Borwicz, among others, to give new avowals, or for another trial like the Jerusalem one, to bring us new light on the question. As well as we know these Zionist circles, neither one nor the other of these hypothesis is excluded, but, rather, both are more likely than not to occur. In those circles, indeed, neither talkers without conscience, seeking cheap publicity, nor, alas, judges looking for vengeance, are lacking. I shall bet a good deal on two other things: the latent and continuous dissensions which exist between Mr. Ben Gurion and Mr. Nahum Goldmann, and the fracas between Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung.

For a long time now Mr. Nahum Goldmann has been showing signs of fatigue and impatience with the policies of Mr. Ben Gurion with regard to Germany. For example, he had stated publicly that he was not enthusiastic about the arrest of Eichmann and the trial which followed. Through various indiscretions we learn that he does not place much value on all the trials in Germany, aimed at former members of one or another of the Nazi organizations of Hitler's time. In Israel itself, there is a very serious divergence between his group and that of Mr. Ben Gurion, each time the latter finds a German minister stupid enough to accept an invitation sent him with the sole object of having him publicly insulted in Israel by his partisans, and thus of making an issue that attracts the attention of the whole world to the debt which Germany, because she rallied to Hitler in 1933, assumed with regard to Israel. Everything takes place as if, not daring publicly to take a position in opposition to Mr. Ben Gurion with regard to his policy toward Germany, Mr. Nahum Goldmann were trying behind the scenes, to silence him on his main theme. And, the fact that, with regard to the Jews who were exterminated, the statistics which we have from the American partisans of the Zionist line are generally more moderate than those which come from the European branch (as is illustrated by the figures of Mr. Raul Hilberg compared with those of the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) could very well reflect the dissentions between the two men. This would then explain the divergencies and contradictions revealed in the Jewish sources in their statistics.

As for the quarrel between Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung, it could be of consequence in that, along with that of the United States, the Jewish population of Russia is one of the greatest enigmas weighing on the problem. The Institute of Jewish Affairs of London and the Jewish Communities of the World both told us clearly in 1962 that there were 2.3 million Jews in Russia. But Mr. Raul Hilberg revealed to us that there were 2,600,000 in 1946, and that estimate, which can be considered to be confirmed by the journalist, David Bergelson (in Die Einheit, December 5, 1942), can also be considered closer to the truth. In that case, it is not 2.3 million Jews that were in Russia in 1962, but 3,016,000, adjusted for a natural increase at the rate of sixteen per cent. If we take Professor Salo Baron at his word, that figure would be even greater: 3,120,000. But, let us not be tempted. However, we could justify the use of a larger figure, all the less, because in reality there are surely many more than 3,016,000, since the Jewish journalist, David Bergelson, also told us, let us not forget, that eighty per cent of the Baltic Jews, the Poles, and the Rumanians, who found themselves behind the Russian lines as they fled before the German troops in 1941-1942, were saved and sent on their way toward Central Asia by the Soviet authorities. At the end of 1942, Bergelson estimated that there were about 5.2 million Jews on Soviet territory, 3 million of them Russian, and in that he agrees with the statistics of April 17, 1943, of Mr. Richard Korherr, which have already been referred to. Question: what happened to those 2.2 million non-Russian Jews? Answer: some of them managed to escape and reach either the American continent or Israel; the rest of them did not. How many were in each group? We cannot tell. But, we can be sure that as long as Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung were getting along together it surely was not easy for Jews who had been transported to Central Asia during the war, to make it to the American continent via China; those who have been able to manage the trip in the postwar period must have managed it clandestinely. The subsequent quarrel between these two grand men of Bolshevism could result in Mao Tse-tung aiding the Jews to leave Soviet territory, just as the China of Chiang Kai-shek aided them before World War II, and for the same reasons. In that case, it could happen that one day a very significant number of Jews might turn up suddenly in all of the countries of the American continent, and perhaps also in Israel. And, unless it is kept hidden in the dark, a new light will be shed on the statistics of world Jewry. Neither is this hypothesis excluded. And, if the United States should adopt a rational policy toward Russia, the truth would come out very fast.

But to return to the problem as it exists in the data that we actually have: we know that the number of European Jews who died as victims of Nazi persecutions is either 1,589,492 persons, established on the basis of data from the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation compared with the Exhibits of the Tribunal at Jerusalem and the study, The Jewish Communities of the World, which came out in February 1963, or is 987,952 persons, based on the data of Mr. Raul Hilberg compared in the same manner. It still remains to be discovered how the 4,419,908 Jews, who were living in 1945, were divided among the other countries of the world, and who, not being listed as living in the European statistics of Jewish sources, are necessarily thought to have left Europe between 1931 and 1945. That is the problem for the second statistical analysis, which, in my opinion, should present by country the structure of the world Jewish population in 1962. And, as is pointed out in a preceding paragraph, these statistics are impossible to establish at the present time.

We already know one thing which was revealed to us in the study of the Israeli Jewish population, and that is that it includes 1,048,368 European Jews who immigrated to Israel between 1931 and 1962. It remains to be seen how the remaining 3,371,540 European Jews are distributed around the rest of the world.

It is in this latter matter that the Jewish sources are the most secretive. Rarely do we find, for example, in the study of the Jewish Communities of the World and in the World Almanac of 1963, non-European countries where the admitted Jewish population is greater than it would have been by natural increase based upon the statistics of Mr. Arthur Ruppin for the period of 1926-1928. There are some places where even the natural rate of increase has not been reached; that is the case with the United States, where, if we can believe the aforementioned publications, the population has not risen more than from 4,461,184 in 1936 to 5,500,000 in 1962. However, we have seen that at the natural rate of increase of one per cent there cannot be fewer than 5,550,489 Jews in the United States, and that, at the natural rate of increase, which Mr. Salo Baron gives, there should be 6,170,837. The few countries on continents other than Europe, where the Zionists concede that there is a Jewish population greater than what it would have been by natural increase, based on the Ruppin statistics, are the following: Argentina, Canada, Brazil, and South Africa. For these four countries, these are the statistics that can be drawn up:

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Country 1926 population Natural increase 36% 1962 Populat. Natural 1962 Populat. conceded Immigration2
Argentina 240,000 86,400 326,000 450,000 123,600
Canada 170,000 61,200 231200 254,000 22,800
Brazil 40,000 14,400 54,400 140,000 85,600
South Africa 60,000 21,600 87,600 110,000 28,400
TOTAL 510,000 183,600 693,600 954,0003 260,400

By making an allowance for the natural increase, we get close to 200,000 immigrants of European origin for these four countries, assuming that the figures published in the aforementioned authorities for 1962 are exact, and it would be astonishing if they were. If they are, we still have 3,171,540 European Jews to locate. To do that we would have to be able to draw up figures for all of the countries of the world in the same manner as we did for Argentina, Canada, Brazil, and South Africa. But we cannot, since the latter are the only ones given by the Zionists which concede any immigration.

Still, something must be done, since, if they are not in Europe and not in Israel, these 3,171,540 Jews who were certainly living in 1945 must be somewhere else — together with the additional number that they have accumulated at the natural rate of population expansion. Where? In order to say that with any real certainty we shall have to wait once again for new revelations that the publicity-seeking Zionist movement will not fail one day inadvertently to produce. Until then we can only conjecture, and that is not my method. I shall, therefore, limit myself to stating my basic principles which have defined the direction that my research has taken, and which I continue to pursue.

  1. It is not probable, but it is possible — that in August 1945, the date when Mr. Poliakov told us (Le Troisieme Reich et les Juifs, p. 196) that the European Jewish communities had begun to make an inventory of their losses for Justice Jackson and had come up with only 3,768,100 survivors according to the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, or 4,262,500 according to Mr. Raul Hilberg — that they gave figures considerably understated for reasons of propaganda. I say it is possible, for two reasons: there was such a chaos of displaced persons in Europe at that time that any serious census was out of the question; and the method used in the Jewish communities, which everywhere counted only Jews of the nationality of the country, might have distorted the results.
  2. Even if the result of this Jewish census of 1945 was not out of line (which is not admitted), it is certain that, if all the Jews who had left Europe between 1931 and 1945 had not returned by 1945, many of them came back later, at least to Western Europe, since we can assume that those who returned to the other side of the Iron Curtain were the exceptions. France, in this case, is typical: 300,000 Jews in 1939 and between 450,000 and 500,000 at the end of 1962, with about 130,000 Algerian Jews and about 20,000 Moroccan and Tunisian Jews who came seeking refuge, after the granting of independence to those three countries. 300,000 to 350,000 French Jewish nationals is a normal figure in relation to the entire French population in 1962. But the statistics of the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation continue to claim 180,000 in 1945 plus the natural increase rate of 16 per cent, or 208,000 (216,000 if we use the natural increase rate of Mr. Salo Baron). It is very probable that if one went to the trouble, one could make similar statements for Belgium (where, in addition, 20,000 to 25,000 Jews returned from the Congo), Holland, Austria, and perhaps even Germany. However, all of the Jews who returned to Europe after the month of August 1945, whose number we cannot know exactly as long as the Zionists refuse to give it to us, since official census-taking will "bring down the wrath of God," surely must amount to several hundreds of thousands and must belong with those 3,171,540 which no Jewish source allocates to any place.
  3. The problem of the Polish, Baltic and Rumanian Jews, who in the years 1941-1942 were evacuated to Central Asia and who, if one can believe the Jewish journalist, David Bergelson, should have numbered between 2 and 2.2 million in 1942, since there were 3 million Jews in Russian in 1939, and at the end of 1942, there were about 5.2 million. How many of these Jews are still living in "Central Asia" (read, Siberia) with their offspring? How many have succeeded in escaping in the past 16 years? Where have they gone? Everything points to the fact that those who managed to escape secretly from the U.S.S.R. reached the American continent, which was for them the easiest to get to. Concerning that supposition, a hypothesis, for what it is worth, and which I do not offer as a certainty, runs through my mind: in 16 years, it is possible that half of them, at a cost of immeasurable difficulties, managed to leave Central Asia for the American continent. If that is so, and since the Zionist demographers have not located them in Canada, Brazil, or in any other country in the Western Hemisphere, they must be in the United States. Thus, the following statistics could be drawn up for Russia and the United States:

A. Russia

  1. Jews found still living by Mr. Raul Hilberg in 1945: 2,600,000
  2. Jews still living in Central Asia, according to Mr. David Bergelson: 2,200,000
  3. Total Jewish population in Russia in 1945: 4,800,000
  4. Jews who succeeded in leaving Central Asia for the united States: 1,100,000
  5. Jews who were left in Russia; 3,700,000
  6. Jewish natural increase of 16% since 1947: 592,000
  7. Total Jewish population in Russia in 1962: 4,292,000

B. United States

  1. Jewish population for 1926 (official figure): 4,081,242
  2. Jewish natural increase of 36% since 1926: 1,469,247
  3. Total Jewish population in 1962: 5,550,489
  4. Jewish immigrants from Central Asia since 1946: 1,100,000
  5. Their natural increase of 16% since 1946: 176,000
  6. Total Jewish population from Asia together with progeny: 1,276,000
  7. Total Jewish population in the United States in 1962: 6,826,489

But, this total of 6,826,489 includes only immigration from Central Asia, and, therefore, it excludes all of those who, like Mme. Hannah Arendt and Mr. Robert W. Kempner, came to the United States by some other route from Europe. We can surely say that they number more than two, but, how many we do not know, or, at least, not yet. All that can be said is that they are there and that surely the Jewish population of the United States is greater than 6,826,489 persons. It can also be stated that the claim of the National Observer (July 2, 1962) that there were 12,000,000 Jews in the United States in 1962 may be an exaggeration toward the other extreme, but, I would not be astonished if one day soon a Zionist leader inadvertently reveals that there were about 8 million Jews in the United States. The estimate of 12,000,000 in the United States has been repeated several times with an attempt at numerical documentation by the Economic Council Letter published in New York City.

I repeat that the preceding analysis is only conjectural and is not a fact; it is, however, the hypothesis that is necessary to every work as a basis from which to conduct further research; it is the hypothesis which orients mine. To my, mind, it is plausible and it expresses, all the better, my profound conviction which, until now, has not led me to any impasse or error and which has made it possible for me to state some ten years ago the conclusions that were to be drawn later from the Jerusalem Trial and the study of the Jewish Communities of the World.

The actual Jewish population of the world in 1962 is very close to being the following, at least in the order of magnitude of the figures. By using statistics for each country of the world dated for 1926, or 1927, or 1928, as the case was, Mr. Arthur Ruppin estimated that world Jewry had reached a total of 15,800,000 persons as of that date. We have seen that the World Almanac of 1951 estimated the world Jewish population at 16,643,120 for 1939. The natural rate of increase having considerably dropped between 1926 and 1939 (Poliakov dixit, cf p. 295), but when it is compared with that of Mr. Arthur Ruppin, this estimate is allowable. Here, then is the Jewish population of the world in 1962, calculated on the corrected data of the World Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.

  1. World Jewish population in 1939: 16,643,120
  2. Jewish victims of Nazism: 1,589,492
  3. World Jewish population living in 1945(l): 15,053,628
  4. Jewish natural increase of 16% since 1946: 2,408,580
  5. Total Jewish population on 1962(2): 17,552,208

And here is the same as calculated on the corrected data of Mr. Raul Hilberg:

  1. World Jewish population in 1939: 16,643,120
  2. Jewish victims of Nazism: 987,592
  3. World Jewish population living in 1946: 15,655,528
  4. Jewish increase of 16% since 1946: 2,504,884
  5. Total Jewish population in 1962: 18,160,412

And, here we are at the end of this study. It remains for me only to make an apology to the reader: this study has clearly been very long, and difficult to follow, like all that is technical by nature. But a demographic study can only be of such a technical nature. What the reader must recognize is that, until now, the proponents of the Zionist line — whose "official" contentions on the horrors of the war I have been following — have never been faced with arguments other than those from journalists, which have been often vague and specious, factors that have been the main reason for their lack of success. The only way to shatter their arguments was to set up against them the arguments of a specialist. And, that is what I have tried to do.


  1. "Between 15 and 18 million in 1947," as Hanson W. Baldwin has said (cf p. 294 above).
  2. It must not be forgotten that this total comes out of the study of Jewish sources, that is, those which have been published under the sanction of the Zionist movement or by the Rabbinate, after investigation of the synagogues. But, if it is true, as claimed by Arthur Koestler (A l'ombre du Dinosaure), that not more than two-thirds of the world's Jews are registered in the synagogues, then there is room to wonder if this figure should not be augmented in the same proportion.