I intend to write some posts also in English. Here is a nice conspiracy topic, the Holocaust. EU is currently putting people to jail for denying the Holocaust, so this question must be very relevant and there must be something worth going to jail, such like the scientific truth. No, I will not deny the Holocaust. I will not deny anything, I simply point out that starting from commonly accepted numbers and doing some basic addition and subtraction leads to a result which does not agree with the commonly held truth.
How many Jews could have died Auschwitz?
(Checked and revised version: January 2020)
In 1939 Poland was divided into German and Soviet parts, I will call them West-Poland and East-Poland. The present eastern border of Poland is rather close to the eastern border of West-Poland. Auschwitz is in West-Poland. A large fraction of the Jews of Western and Central European countries were sent to West-Poland. Very few were sent directly to East-Poland or further east. Thus, calculating how many Jews could have been in West-Poland and subtracting survivors and those who died in other places we get an upper bound for the Jewish death toll in Auschwitz.
My argument is very simple:
1) There were 1.84 million Jews in West Poland after some Jews had escaped to East Poland when Germany attacked in 1939. Nazis transported 1.16-1.2 million Jews to West Poland. There were some small transfers from West Poland to East and from East (Ukraina, White Russia, Baltic countries) to West Poland: they increased the Jewish population of West Poland by 60,000. Thus, there there could have been about 3.1 million Jews in West-Poland.
2) Estimated 1.48 million Jews were transported to the three Operation Reinhardt camps (Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec) and 0.15 million were taken to Chełmno.
3) After the war there were 0.41 million Jews on German concentration camps in various countries. They were Jews from the West or West-Poland. I give two calculations for this number.
4) Thus, from 3.1 million we subtract 1.48+0.15+0.41=2 million. 1.1 million is left. It must include those who died in Auschwitz, Majdanek, work camps and ghettos in Poland, concentration camps in Germany and elsewhere outside Poland, Jews who died in the German attack of 1939 or in POW camps or in Warsaw ghetto uprising, and Jews who managed to hide in West-Poland.
5) I calculated estimates for these numbers. Some were easy to obtain, like that 88,000 Jews managed to hide in West-Poland and that in Theresienstadt died 33,000 Jews, some I had to estimate as Jews and non-Jews were not separated in the data. I used Wikipedia and pages of individual concentration camps. The result was: Majdanek (official estimate 59,000), work camps and ghettos in Poland (at least 165,000), concentration camps in Germany+Austria (about 160,000) and elsewhere outside Poland (at least 33,000 in Theresienstadt), Jews who died in the German attack of 1939 or POW camps (about 50,000), Jews who managed to hide in West-Poland (88,000), and the Jews who died in Warsaw ghetto uprising (7000). The sum of these figures is
59,000+165,000+160,000+33,000+50,000+88,000+7,000=562,000.
6) This means that the upper bound to Jewish deaths in Auschwitz is about 1.1-0.562=540,000. This is an upper bound, not the best estimate, but it clearly shows that the official death toll in Auschwitz, 1-1.5 million and mostly Jews, must be wrong.
There is a lower bound to the deaths in Auschwitz from the Death Books of Auschwitz. As these records are not complete, it is common to assume that the death toll of registered prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz is about 120,000 and half of them were Jews. Thus, the lower bound can be taken as 60,000. In another post I give a better estimate showing that the Jewish death toll in Auschwitz is indeed likely to be 60,000.
The difference 480,000 between 60,000 and 540,000 seems to be mostly created by Hungarian Jews. They were transported to Auschwitz when Operation Reinhardt camps were no longer operating. Thus, these Jews could not have been taken to Operation Reinhardt camps. Some 400,000 Hungarian Jews were transported and their fate is not known.
I have tried to include and correctly estimate all major components of the Jewish death toll in the West and West-Poland. The East is more difficult to estimate because population estimates from the Soviet Union and Romania are very uncertain.
The missing 240,000 Hungarian Jews may have been killed and burned, as is the official narrative, but this would have been the first mass killing in Auschwitz, which does not agree with the official story. Adolf Eichmann gave an interview, which lead to his capture by Mossad and death in Israel. In this interview Eichmann claimed that Nazis only transported 360,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and that they left 200,000 to an open camp close to Auschwitz to wait for Soviets when Germans withdrew and many also escaped. In this post I will not go to this question, the focus here is only to prove the upper bound.
Are my figures reliable?
I have occasionally got the following reply from people, who do not accept my calculations. They say that the numbers I use are garbage. The numbers I use are the best numbers there are and you will find that the accepted Holocaust researchers use the same numbers.
- How do we know there were about 3 million Jews in West-Poland:
The population of different ethnic and religious groups in different parts of Poland in 1931 is known from the Polish census of 1931 and we can estimate that in 1939, after some Jews escaped to the area occupied by the Soviets, there were about 1.84 million Jews in West-Poland and about 1.41 million Jews in the East-Poland. The estimate depends on the assumed population growth and can have an error of about 0.1 million, probably not more than 0.2 million. The number of Jews who were transported by Nazis from Western and Central Europe and could have been taken to West-Poland is known, it is around 1.126 million. It could be 1.2 million, but not much more. There were some direct transports from West-Poland to east (East-Poland, Baltic, Belarusian) and from east to West-Poland. I calculated the difference of these transports and 60,000 more were transported to West-Poland than were taken by these direct transports from West-Poland to east. This gives the 3 million:
1.84+1.126+0.06=3.026 million. In this calculation precision is not tens of thousands, thus the figure is 3 million. It could be 3.1 million, but not more. I will explain how I calculated these component figures.
1.1 The estimate that in 1939 there were 1.84 million Jews in West-Poland:
The figure of 1.84 million Jews in West-Poland in 1939 cannot be much in error. The Jewish population in Poland in 1939 was 3.25 million according to AJY 1948–49. Estimates range between 3.2 and 3.3 million. In 1931 21.8 million Poles lived in the area captured by Germany in 1939 and 13.2 million lived in the area taken by Soviets. By mother’s tongue there were 8.5% Jews in Poland in 1931 and in areas captured by Soviet Union in 1939 there were 8.4% Jews by mother’s tongue. By religion there were 8.89% Jews in Poland in 1931. Calculating from these we conclude that by religion in the Soviet occupied area were 8.79% Jews in 1931, i.e., 1.16 million. Thus, in West-Poland in 1931 lived 1.954 million Jews. In 1939 the numbers had risen to 1.21 million and 2.039 million. But when Germany attacked in 1939 336.000 Polish people escaped to East-Poland. Of them 198.000 were Jews. These refuges were taken to Siberia and only a small number of them survived. So, there were 2.039–0.198=1.841 million Jews in West-Poland. This number is a fine estimate.
1.2 The estimate that about 1.2 million were transported by Nazis from Western and Central Europe outside Poland:
My estimate is precisely 1.126 million transported by Nazis from Western and Central Europe outside Poland and who could end up to West-Poland. This estimate may have some error, but the error is small, certainly not on the range to explain 0.7 million gap in Auschwitz death toll. The American Jewish Year Book 1938-39 gives the following Jewish populations: Belgium (60,000), Bulgaria (48,565), Czechoslovakia (356,830), Danzig (10,448), Denmark (5,690), France (240,000), Germany (691,163), Greece (72,791), Hungary (444,567), Italy (57,425), Yugoslavia (68,405), Netherlands (156,817), Norway (1,359) and Luxemburg (2400). Austria is merged into Germany in these figures. These figures sum to 2.216 million. The figure for Germany after annexing Austria is given as 691,163, but it decreased much before 1941. Emigration of Jews form Germany and Austria was an intentional policy of Hitler and strongly encouraged by the Third Reich before 1941. I will use the figure 300,000 for Germany and Austria from the 1939 estimate of the American Jewish Year Book for 1948-49 given on Table 6 on the page 697. Thus, the estimate for Jews in these countries was 1.83 million in 1941. From these countries Jews were transported to camps and eventually to West-Poland. How many Jews from West were not taken to Poland (=West-Poland). I found the following information:
Country Quota Transported to Poland Left in place
Belgium 60,000 less than half 30,000
Bulgaria 48,565 none 48,565
Czechoslovakia 356,830 divided (Germany, Hungary, Slovakia)
Slovakia 90,000 90,000 –
Danzig 10,448 10,448 –
Denmark 5,690 none to Poland, 500 elsewhere 5,690
France 240,000 about a third 160,000
Germany 691,163->333,892 about 320,000 14,000
Greece 72,791 about 70,000 –
Hungary 444,565->592,000 over 400,000 192,000
Italy 57,425 8000 49,425
Yugoslavia 68,405 none, 58,000 killed in place 10,000
Netherlands 156,817 about three fourths 39,000
Norway 1,359 800 (900 to Sweden) 900
(Notice that Hungary gained some area during the war.)
From this we can get a rough estimate of transports to Poland:
Country Transported to Poland
Belgium 30,000
Slovakia 90,000
Danzig 10,448
France 80,000
Germany 320,000
Greece 70,000
Hungary 400,000
Italy 8000
Netherlands 117,200
Norway 800
sum= 1,126,000
As there were 1.83 million in the West excluding Poland and 1.126 million were transported and some 60,000 killed in Yugoslavia, then 0.653 million survived in Western Europe under German rule excluding Poland. However, the estimate is rather imprecise because of the expressions “less than half” etc. Summing the figures in the American Jewish Year Book for 1948-49, Table 1 on page 693 gives the figure for European Jews as 831,500 in the areas occupied by Germans outside the Soviet Union, Romania and Poland. Many Jews returned home from DP camps or abroad after the war or escaped from East. This can be around 831,500-653,000=178,500 people. The figure 1.126 million is not precise, but not much wrong either. If this would be the source of the error of 0.7 million, then all of the Jews had been taken by Nazis, which is not true. The sum how many were left according to the table is 0.55 million. The error could be only some 0.1 million.
There is a study that confirms my estimates. Wikipedia refers (or referred in its Holocaust page) to a study of Dawidowicz (1975). Summing his numbers from wiki gives 1,153,942 dead for the mentioned countries. The figure includes those shot in Yugoslavia. When they are subtracted (60.000), the figure is 1,127,942, not essentially different from 1.126 million in my calculation. Dawidowicz also estimates the Jewish population of West-Poland as 1.857 million versus my estimate 1.84 million. Thus, both numbers 1.84 million and 1.126 million are quite good estimates. Yad Vashem gives the figure 1.2 million, but it may include some who died in the country of origin.
1.3 Estimate that 60,000 were transported from east to West-Poland:
There were transports to Bełżec of 87.000 Jews from East from the following Cilician ghettos and camps: Lwów ghetto (about 45.000), Stanisławów ghetto (about 10.000), Tarnopol ghetto (about 10.000), Kołomyjasta camp (18.000) and Czortkowista camp (4.000), to Treblinkaan from Bialystok ghetto 10.600, from Białystok ghetto also 8.600 to Majdanekin and Theresiastadtin ghetto, to Sobibór 13.000 from Minsk, Lida and Vilno. In total from East to West were transported 119.000 Jews.
From West to East were transported small amounts. Two transports to Minsk: end of 1941 8.000 and May 1942 26.000. There were transports to Riga October 1941 – April 1942 25.000. From these we get West to East transports 59.000. Netto-total is 119.000–59.000=60.000. This number is also well motivated. It could be a bit different, but everybody agrees that the number is small and has almost no effect.
- The death tolls in the death camps as Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec together as 1.48 million and Chełmno 0.15 million:
From the Wikipedia you find the following estimates: Treblinka (700,000-900,000), Sobibór (200,000-350,000), Bełżec (430,000- 600,000). The range of these numbers is 1.33-1.85 million. The Hölfe telegram and the Korherr report give the figure 1,274,166 as sent to these camps 31 December 1942. Therefore the lower bound of 1.33 million is too low. There is a better estimate for Treblinka, 781,000, by the Polish examining magistrate. This rises the lower bound to 1.41 million. I do not think taking the lower bound is fully realistic, thus I selected in my calculations 1.48 million Jews sent to Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec as the best guess. In the calculation of the Auschwitz death toll I use 1.48 million. It is at most 0.07 million too high and probably not at all too high. From the Łódź ghetto to Chełmno were sent 75,000 Jews during 1940-42 were sent and over 25,000 during 1943-45. These give the lower bound 0.1 million. Adding transports to Chełmno from other ghettos and camps in Poland the sum rises to 0.18 million, but there is some uncertainty in certain figures. I consider 0.15 million as a well-justified best guess of the death toll (or people sent there) of Chełmno. For the death toll estimate Auschwitz 1.-1.5 million mostly Jews I refer to the tablet in Birkenau.
- Other deaths and survivors
These numbers I calculated from various sources.
3.1 88,000 Jews managed to hide in West-Poland: this is from American Jewish Yearbook. These Jews were in West-Poland in 1946 and were not a part of the 410,000 concentration camp survivors.
3.2 33,000 Jews died in Theresienstadt: from the camp pages and Wikipedia
3.3 At least 59,000 Jews died in Majdanek: this is the official 2005 estimate by Thomas Kranz.
3.4 At least 7,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto uprising: Wikipedia gives the death toll as 13,000. I found 7,000 from another page and as it is smaller, I always selected the smallest figure so that the Auschwitz death toll can be as high as possible.
3.4 Minimum 165,000 Jews died in ghettos and work camps in Poland:
Dead in ghettos and work camps in Poland, excluding Majdanek: Warsaw ghetto (76.000) before the uprising, Łódź ghetto (43.800), Tarnow (10.000), Stanisławów (about 10.000), Kielce (6.000), Stryj (4.000-12.000), Tomazów Mazowiecki (4.000), Sieniawa (3.000), Pietrków Trybunalski (3.000), Zagórów (2.000-2.500), Minsk Mazowicki (1.300), Nowy Zmigrow (1.300) and Góra Kalvaria (300). Total 165.000-173.000 Jews. Let us select the lower bound 0.165 million.
3.5 About 160,000 Jews died in concentration camps in Germany:
In German camps died some 560.000 inmates, but not all were Jews. This figure I calculated as Bergen-Belsen 0.05 million, Buchenwaldt 0.056, Ravensbruk 0.05, Mauthausen about 0.12 (this is the low estimate, mostly non-Jews), Flossenberg 0.03, Dachau 0.032, Gross-Rosen 0.04, Stutthof 0.064, Sachenhausen 0.03, Neuengammen 0.043, Natzweiler 0.022, Mittelbau 0.02. These all sum to 0.557 million. How many were Jews? It is difficult to say. One third maybe, that would be 190,000. We can sum some camps: Bergen-Belsen mainly Jews, so 50,000, Ravenbruck 10,000, Buchenwald 11,000, Stutthof 28,000, Sachenhausen 1,500, Gross-Rosen 20,000. These make 130,000. As a compromise, I chose 160,000. Here we have some source of error, but it cannot explain the 0.5 million gap.
3.6 About 50,000 Jews died in the German attack of 1939:
I estimate that the German attack 1939 and following terror caused about 50.000 Jewish dead. In the 1939 German attack died 66.000 Polish soldiers and 150.000–200.000 civilians. In the German terror were killed 61.000 civilians. In German POW camps died 120.000 Polish soldiers. In Soviet POW camps died 130.000 Polish soldiers (as the West Poland was larger, half of these probably were from West Poland). Of Poland’s population 8.89% were Jews by religion. There was a general conscript service, also for Jews. Unlike what happened in 1920, in 1939 Jews were not interned to camps because of doubts of their loyalty. Estimating from these numbers, some 40,000-50.000 Jews died in 1939 attack, terror or POW camps, most from West-Poland, since civilian losses from the German attack were in West Poland. Jews, who were taken as POWs, were in POW camps and not taken to civilian concentration camps. At least this was the case in Northern Finland: Germans kept Jewish POWs in POW camps as a separate group. They were not shipped to the Continent to concentration camps. The figure could be a bit smaller, like 35,000, but not so much as to make a difference.
3.7 About 410,000 Jews of the West and West Poland were taken to concentration camps and survived:
I give two arguments for this number in A) and B) and in C) discuss a counterargument:
A) From AJY vol 50 (1948/49) statistics Table 13, p. 708, we get 90,566 Jews on DP camps in Germany, Austria and Italy at the end of 1945. From Table 14, p. 709, we get 230,000-235,000 displaced Jews in other countries (removing Romania). From Tables 6 (p. 697) we conclude that 350,000 (West) Polish Jews survived (East Polish Jews were Soviet Jews after the war). That is, 3.25-2.9=0.35 million. Of them 88,000 were in Poland in 1945 (Table 1, p. 693) and 180,000 were in the area of (West) Poland occupied by the Soviet Union (Table 14). There must have been 350,000-88,000-180,000 additional Polish Jewish survivors, who were in camps. The total sum of survivors is thus 90,500+235,000+82,000=407,500. This is rounded to 410,000.
B) Another way to calculate this number is as follows. From AJY 1939-40 in the countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia, Holland, Luxembourg ja Norway) were 1.83 million Jews. From AJY 1948-49 there were 0.83 million Jews in these countries after the war. Thus, 1 million is missing. From these countries Nazis transported 1.126-1.2 million Jews. Thus, a bit under 0.2 Jews sent to camps from these countries survived the war. Other alternative ways to explain this 0.2 million are not likely: the birth rate of Jews in occupied Europe in the war time must have been very small and no large numbers of Jews, who immigrated before 1939 came back to occupied Europe before 1948. In total 0.3 million Jews from Poland survived the war and came to the West. These are Jews from West Poland as Jews of East Poland were Ukrainian Jews after the war and not let out of the Soviet Union. (This comment will be clarified in a later post. I think the 1.2 million Jews of East Poland were for Soviets Ukrainian or White Russian Jews as Poland got them in 1922 and lost them in 1939.) According to AJY 1948-49, 0.08 million Jews of (West) Poland managed to hide from Nazis. Thus, 0.22 million Jews of West Poland survived the camps. Together under 0.2+about 0.22 is just about 0.41 million.
C) Notice that summing the camp inmates liberated by the US and the UK gives about 190.000. Of them maybe a third were Jews. The Soviet Union liberated maybe 60.000 camp inmates. In total, the sum of liberated camp inmates from large camps is about 250,000 and maybe 1/3 (=83,000) of them were Jews, but this is only the large camps and inmates who stayed in the camps. The total sum of Jews, who were taken to camps from the West and West Poland and survived alive is larger, about 410,000. There were some 1200 camps and subcamps and all survivors are not in the figure of 250,000 liberated. Many probably escaped in some way in death marches or were left behind.
Conclusions:
The sum of survivors and dead should equal the number of Jews who were in Nazi hands in West or hiding in West-Poland. At least, not more can die and survive than there originally were. We do not need to look in the East where data is not so precise. It is enough to look at Western and Central Europe, where the data is quite good. So, look at the numbers and find some place where there could be 0.5 million deaths in Auschwitz. There is no such place. Therefore the official account of the 1-1.5 million Jewish death toll in Auschwitz is mathematically false. Notice also that this is just an upper bound for Auschwitz, just to show that the official story is wrong. It is not the best estimate.
I will add here the best estimate. It can be shown that the number of Jews missing is 4.5 million. This is verified by the Jewish World Almanac and can be shown also directly. If we take the official story, then in the Soviet Union and Baltic countries (the SU of 1941) were 4.2 million Jews (2.8+1.41 from East Poland), so 2.2 million died in the SU. In Romania and Yugoslavia died about 0.2 million. There is left 4.5-2.2-0.2=2.1 million. In the official story 1.48 million sent to Operation Reinhardt camps are killed. There is left 2.1-1.48=0.62 million to die in the West and West Poland. We calculated that without Auschwitz 0.624 million died: 50,000 in the war, 59,000 in Majdanek, 150,000 Chelmno, 165,000 in camps and ghettos in Poland, 33,000 Theresienstadt, 160,000 Germany and Austria, 7,000 ghetto uprising. So, there were no deaths in Auschwitz. OK, this just shows that the official story is false. Period.
As a final comment I would like to draw attention to Chełmno. The majority of Jews sent to Chełmno were children. Did Germans gas them in gas wagons, or were they later sent e.g. to Kibbutzes? This issue I cannot investigate in this post, but the Jewish person connected with sending the children from the Łódź ghetto to Chełmno was associated with Kibbutzes.
Important note:
I will add here a note for legal purposes. I do not deny any numbers that the law considers self-evident and proven beyond questioning. Thus, if the law says that 1-1.5 million mostly Jews died in Auschwitz, then it is so, even though simple addition and subtraction shows that this is impossible. It can be so because there may have been a miracle: more Jews died than there were. A miracle is not especially strange in a deeply Christian country where a large proportion of the population believes in the resurrection of the death. Shortly before the end of the times the death will be resurrected and one sign of the end of the times is the rebirth of Israel, thus God may very well have awoken 500,000 Jews from the death to have them gassed, turned to soap and burned in a miraculous way where all remains and all strong evidence of this mass killing disappeared. If so, then the total death toll of the Jews can be exactly 6 million, even though calculations show – as I will demonstrate in later posts – that only 4.5 million Jews disappeared assuming that Jewish population figures are correct. Yet, as a researcher and mathematician, I must calculate in the usual way where 2+2=4 and not according to some other logic.