How many Jews were in the Soviet Union in 1939 and in 1946?
(Checked and revised version, January 2020)
Germany attacked to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. According to this story practically all Jews, who stayed in the area that Germany conquered, were either shot or gassed by German Einsatzgruppen, or if some survived, they were starved to death by the hunger program. Jews, who stayed, were treated as partisans by Germans. In this way Germans are said to have killed 1-1.5 million Jews.
Furthermore, according to the official story Germans killed practically all Jews who were sent to the three Operation Reinhardt camps. The official story is that Germans did not transport Jews to the Soviet Union, they killed them on the way there. A small number of Jews were sent directly e.g. to Minsk, but these transports were so small that they can be ignored in the total death toll.
Additionally, no large group of Hungarian Jews, who were sent to Auschwitz, ended up to the Soviet Union. They were killed in Auschwitz by Germans.
- The official story is provably incorrect
The problem with this official story is that it is mathematically impossible.
In the official story there were 4.2 million Jews in the Soviet Union when Germany attacked in 1941. This is because in 1939 there were 1.41 million Jews in East Poland (see [1], 198,000 of them had escaped from West Poland when Germany attacked in 1939 and were taken to Siberia where most of them died), and in the Soviet Union and Baltic countries there were 2.8 million Jews. According to the official story 2 million Jews survived, so 2.2 million died. According to the official story all 1.48 million sent to the three Operation Reinhardt camps died and in Auschwitz died at least 1 million Jews. Together these deaths give 4.68 million. Additionally, as shown in [1], there died c. 0.624 million Jews in occupied Western countries or West Poland, and 0.177 million in Romania and 0.058 million in Yugoslavia. Adding all gives the Jewish death toll of 5.539 million. However, the death toll from the Jewish numbers is 4.5 million, as is shown in [2] and as is given in the Jewish World Almanac. Thus, the official story must be false.
- How many Jews were in the Soviet Union in 1939?
According to the American Jewish Yearbook (AJY) for 1938-39, after the Soviet Union (SU) had conquered the Baltic states and before taking Eastern Poland there were 2.82 million Jews in Soviet occupied Europe. In 1939 the Soviet Union occupied Eastern part of Poland and got 1.41 million new Jews, this figure includes 198,000 Jews who escaped Germans to the Eastern side. Adding these figures gives the 1939 Jewish population of the Soviet Union as 2.82+1.41=4.23 million.
Now, when we already saw that the official story is false, we are in a better position to evaluate these AJY numbers. AJY does mention that these numbers are very uncertain.
Walter N. Sanning stated that about 100,000 Jews were every year leaving Eastern Europe in a decade before the war. This claim seems to be correct. Sanning argues that these Jews came from Eastern Poland, but I think they came further from the east, from the SU (as it was in 1937), mainly from Ukraine. Sanning motivates his hypothesis by the rapid growth of American Jewish population in the years before the Second World War.
I made a calculation in [3] where I tried to verify Sanning’s claim. It does indeed seem that there was an additional 1 million immigration of Jews to the USA, but it was over a longer time, from 1920 to 1939.
This proposal can be supported by a simple calculation of what the Jewish population of the Soviet Union should have been. Just before Germany attacked in 1939 the total area of Poland and the Soviet Union includes the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, the area of Russia where Jews were living. Russian Empire Census of 1897 gives the number of Jews as 5,215,805 and the number of Yiddish speakers as 5,063,156 for 1897. From this we can conclude that in 1889 there were very close to 5 million Jews in Russia, almost all of them Ashkenazi Jews, who originally lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth up to 1795.
Ashkenazi Jews had a high population growth: the population doubled ever 50 years. This population growth is natural for a population, which does not use birth control and is not limited by food, and is living before modern medicine. The natural number of children per woman is about 6. About half of them live to have own children. Thus, the population grows from 2 to 3 in a woman generation. A woman generation is 28-29 years. This gives the growth rate 1.39% and the doubling time of 50 years. We can verify this conclusion from what is known of the population size of Ashkenazi Jews.
Consequently, in 50 years from 1889 to 1939 the population grew from 5 million to 10 million. Many of these people moved to the USA and the USA Jewish population in 1939 was about 4.8 million. Thus, the Jewish population of Poland and the Soviet Union in 1939 should have been c. 5.2 million. There were 3.25 million Jews in Poland, thus there were c. 1.95 million Jews in the Soviet Union, not 2.82 million as AJY states.
The problem seems to be in the Ukrainian Jewish population. Ukrainian censuses of 1926 and 1939 give the Jewish population as 1.5 million. This seems very high as Poland had in 1922 taken most of the old area of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Ukraine and White Russia (and got some 1.1 million Jews as a result). The area that remained in Ukraine hardly had 1.5 million Jews. Furthermore, the censuses of 1926 and 1939 are strongly doubtful as they do not show any signs of Holodomor in Ukraine and we know that the censuses of Stalin’s time were manipulated. As there is a good reason to believe that to the USA emigrated 1 million more Jews than the US emigration statistics claims, and the Jewish population of the Soviet Union seems 1 million too high by a simple calculation with 50 year doubling time, I consider it nearly certain that the Jewish population of the Soviet Union in 1939 before the German attack was 3.23 million, not 4.23 million.
Notice that the additional 1 million Jews in the USA figure is calculated by assuming the 50 year doubling time. It is highly unlikely that the Jewish population in the USA could grow faster than the original Jewish population in Russia: the growth rate is the maximum that a woman can produce and the child diseases must have been the same in both parts of the same population, i.e., Jews carried the diseases to the USA and had the same habits.
Changing the figure from 4.23 million to 3.23 million has an effect on death ratios on Soviet evacuation camps and the death ratios can be used to estimate how many Jews survived Operation Reinhardt camps. It is estimated that 60-80% of the Jews in the East were evacuated or escaped deeper to the Soviet Union (SU) before the German attack of 1941. Such a large number of evacuated people in the time of German attack most probably had to be put on an evacuation camp. These camps had infectious diseases in the same way as concentration and POW camps. Additionally, Soviets most probably took soldiers from the camps and some of them died. Also these camps had high death rates.
Let us calculate the death ratios in the SU assuming the official Holocaust history is correct, and then select a similar death ratio for the number 3.23 million. If there were 4.23 million and 80% were evacuated, there stayed 846,000 and 3.384 million were evacuated. In the official story Germans killed those who stayed. 2 million survived, so 1.384 million died. That is 41%. If 60% were evacuated, there stayed 1.692 million and 2.538 million were evacuated. 2 million survived, 538,000 died, that is 21%. Based on these a reasonable range for an evacuation camp death ratio is about 25-35%. It is about the same as for a concentration or POW camp in the eastern front.
Now, assume there were 3.23 million Jews and the death ratio of an evacuation camp was about 30%. If 80% were evacuated, 646,000 stayed and 2.584 million were evacuated. Of them survived 70%, that is 1.8 million. There were 2 million survivors according to the official story, so 0.2 million survivors had to come from the Operation Reinhardt camps. The main problem for the official story in this case is that Einsatzgruppen could kill only 646,000, not 1-1.5 million.
If 60% were evacuated, 1.292 million stayed and 1.938 million were evacuated. Of them survived 70%, that is 1.36 million. Now Einsatzgruppen can kill 1-1.5 million, but there is another problem. In this case 640,000 survivors had to come from the Operation Reinhardt camps and stay in the Soviet Union. As 383,000 from Operation Reinhardt camps appeared in DP camps, in this case over 1 million of 1.48 million sent to Operation Reinhardt camps survive. This is against the official story.
It should be noticed that there are also the missing Hungarian Jews (about 200,000-300,000), but they cannot be the 383,000 who came to DP camps after 1946, as Hungarian Jews disappeared somewhere and those 383,000 did not disappear.
We can compare the proposed death ratio 30% in evacuation camps to the death rate of Western Jews in Nazi camps. I calculated 0.684 million deaths in West Poland or Western and Central Europe. There were 3=3.1-0.088 million Jews in the West and West Poland, almost all in Nazi hands (the 0.088 million were West Polish Jews, who managed to hide). The death rate is 23%, but as 1.48 million were sent to the three Operation Reinhardt camps, we should maybe calculate 0.684/(3-1.48), which gives 45%. Both figures seem like reasonable figures for Second World War concentration camps, especially considering the break down of Nazi camp food service at the end of the war. It is quite natural to expect a 30% death ratio in Soviet evacuation camps.
This was just to show that even if we accept that there were only 2 million Jews in the Soviet Union in 1948, just accepting that there were one million fewer Jews in the Soviet Union in 1939 than what the official story tells, completely ruins the story.
- How many Jews were in the Soviet Union in 1946?
From the American Jewish Yearbook for 1948-49 we see that there were 2 million Jews in the Soviet Union in 1948. There could have been more Jews in the Soviet Union in 1946 than in 1948 as there came Jews from the East to DP-camps, but let us assume that after the war there were 2 million in the Soviet occupied Europe and the Jews, who came to DP-camps were another set of people. It is said that in the beginning of 1950ies the Jewish population of the Soviet Union was a bit over 2 million. In 1959 there were 2.2 million Jews, after that time the Jewish population declined with a constant rate.
As the official story is false, we should be a bit critical. The Soviet census of 1959 found 2,268,000 million who announced that they are of Jewish nationality, but it is expected that a large number of Jews chose to write some other nationality. The “Core” Jewish population in 1970 is given as 2.15 million. However, there is some indication that there could have been 2,9 million survivors in the Soviet Union. This is not at all so unlikely: Soviets estimated that there were 1-3 million Jews in the Soviet Union in 1948. They did not know more precisely. Only later Holocaust researchers decided that there were 2 million Jews, without any proof whatsoever.
I give a very simple argument for the 2.9 million in 1946. The “core” population in 1970 was about 1 generation after 1946. Mt-DNA data from American Jews of Polish and Russian origin show that Russian Jews were 50% admixed: the percentage of Mt-DNA K was 37.5% in Polish Jews, 16.7% in Russian Jews and about 3% in Polish and Russian non-Jews, the percentage of Mt-DNA H was 14.6% in Polish Jews, 27.3% in Russian Jews and about 44% in Polish and Russian non-Jews. Considering the time when Jews moved to the USA and that earlier Jews did not mix with non-Jews, it follows that in a generation Jews in the Soviet Union had about 50% intermarriages with non-Jews. We can use the doubling time 50 years still for early years after 1945. Thus, in one generation the Jewish population of size A in the Soviet Union in 1946 grew to about 1.5A in 1970, but half of this population had intermarried and were not in the “core” Jewish population. Thus, A*1.5*0.5=2.15 million. So A=(4/3)*2.15=2.9 million. This is of course a very rough way to estimate.
If 1 million is reduced from the death toll of 4.5 million by AJY numbers, we get 3.5 million as the Jewish death toll. It seems very likely that there were about 1 million more Jews in 1948 in the Soviet Union, so my best guess for the Jewish death toll ios 2.5 million. It means that the Holocaust as the death of millions of Jews did occur, but it was not an effort to exterminate them. It was a transfer operation. The direct German share of this 2.5 million is 1.5 million. (Some 850,000 died in Soviet evacuation camps, some 177,00 in Romanian camps and transports), though the idea of moving Jews to the East was the reason for all deaths (and a main reason why there was the war). Germans moved 4.5 million Jews with the expected losses of 1.5 million, that is, 1/3. It is what you get from moving through a concentration camp system where inmates stay and work for a long time. Naturally, Jews could have been moved in some other way (like sent directly by train), but the problem may have been that there was nowhere to send them. They had to be kept in camps as they did not like to move to the East (or Palestine) voluntarily.
We can see what are the possibilities for death tolls for Jews. In [1] it is calculated that c. 0.684 million Jews died in the West or West Poland (assigning Auschwitz to 60,000). In Romania died 0.177 million and in Yugoslavia 58,000. These numbers cannot be easily changed: the bottom line is 0.9 million dead. Additionally the Soviet estimate that there remained 2 million Jews from 4.2 million and Einsatzgruppen killed 1-1.5 million implies that in Soviet camps died 0.7 (=2.2-1.5) to 1.2 (=2.2-1) million. Assigning the deaths in Soviet camps to 0.85 million, the minimum death toll is 1.75 million if nobody of the 1.48 million sent to the tree Operation Reinhardt camps died and nobody left to the area occupied by Germans (over 0.6 million) died. Those assumptions are not realistic: if 0.7 million died in West and West Poland, then certainly some of over 2 million died. We can assume that about 2/3=0.7 million died. Thus, the total death toll must be close to 1.75+0.7=2.45 million.
Thus, the total death toll cannot be 1 million or 2 million. It most probably is 2.5 million and this implies that there were about 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union of 1948.
There is a question what happened to 3.25 million Jews of Poland. Only 0.3 million were seen in Poland and another 0.3 million is believed to have been in the Soviet Union. The 0.3 million seen in the West must have been Jews of West Poland because according to the official story Germans killed Jews left to East Poland and Jews that were evacuated by Soviets from East Poland could not come to Poland after the war or to DP camps in the West. West Polish Jews (1.84 million) were taken twice to camps: in Poland, where 1/3 died, and in the East, where again 1/3 died. This means that (4/9)*1.84=0.8 million survived. thus, there remained 0.2 million Jews of West Poland in the Soviet Union and they did not feel that they ever had an identity as a Polish Jew. Indeed, Poland was created after the WWI and most Jews did not like Poles. East Poland had 1.2 million Jews, who never felt like Polish Jews, as Poland got the area in 1922. Additionally 0.2 million West Polish Jews were taken to Siberia where most died. There is no great mystery of the missing 3.2 million Polish Jews if you think of this calculation. There is also no mystery of the missing Hungarian Jews. In what sense were they Hungarian? If an American Jew moves to France he becomes a French Jew, not an American Jew living in France. If a Pole moves from the USA to France he becomes French Pole, not American Pole in France. Each person has only two groups: the ethnic group (for Jews it is Jews) and the resident country. There cannot be Polish Jews or Hungarian Jews in the Soviet Union. When most Hungarian Jews were taken to the Soviet Union, they become Soviet Jews.
References:
The references are to my blog posts in the category Holocaust controversy:
[1] How many Jews died in Auschwitz?
[2] Were 1.48 million Jews killed in Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec?
[3] How many Jews immigrated to the USA between 1924 and 1939?