# holocaust question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 11, 2006, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972 "2006-02-11T05:53:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![remisser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b3f665/32.png) [@remisser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remisser)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/1 "2006-02-11T05:53:31Z")
I was in a chatroom where someone was spouting off that the figure of “six million jews” dying in the holocaust was an absurd figure, and that the amount of jews in europe was higher after the supposed holocaust (according to the world almanac he says.) He stated he believed at most one million jews died. He also said that there “wouldn’t be enough fuel” to run the concentration camps if a figure of six million is to be believed. Does anyone have any good sites to refute this guy? I’m terrible at finding good sites with stats. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/2 "2006-02-11T06:12:33Z")
I am definitely not an expert, but not every single person who died in the camps was burned or gassed, either one. Or shot, for that matter. I think many of those six million died from exposure, disease, starvation, and the like. The information on [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust) seems to be enough to support the numbers. But again, I’m no expert. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/3 "2006-02-11T06:25:12Z")
Perhaps some time spent at the [Museum of Tolerance](http://www.museumoftolerance.com) might be of use. There is a wealth of resources at this site. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/4 "2006-02-11T06:32:48Z")
I can try, but I am not an expert, I just can’t sleep and am up to doing some hunting on the Net for you 🙂 [Definition of Jews by Nazis](http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/definition.shtml) [Stats of those killed](http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/numbers.shtml) [Holocaust Timeline](http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html) [Holocaust Survivors timeline](http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/cgi-bin/data.show.pl?di=record&da=texts&ke=6) [Nuremberg Tribunal Docs](http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm) [Facing History and Denial](http://www.facinghistory.org/facing/fhao2.nsf/all/Genocide+and+Denial/) I hope this helps ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/5 "2006-02-11T07:03:33Z")
Also, this specific paper may help : [Body Disposal at Auschwitz : The End of Holocaust-Denial](http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body-disposal/) and this : [Pictorial Evidence](http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/) Roughly half of those killed were in the extermination camps. A good bit of the rest were killed by the _Einsatzgruppen_ which used mass graves. They also tended to kill locally rather than at any centralized location, so the bodies are spread around. Indeed those mostly predated the extermination camps; the Holocaust follows a path from mere brutality to concerted effort to kill as efficiently as possible. Those who deny based on fuel estimates or gas volume, etc. usually take a value for a single body and try to extrapolate from there (to get some number that seems too high to account for). Some will even perversely decide based on that the _entire thing_ must be made up. I would hope that a revisionist who simply believes the numbers to be less than what’s said to at least admit that this became a campaign of genocide, and there would have been no stopping until they really did kill all of those they wished to. Taking single values ignores the aspect of scale involved. With respect to the crematoria, burning a single body takes some time to finish off, but when you can throw in new bodies constantly, it keeps the fire burning hotter. It does become faster — not to mention easier — to burn 1000 bodies at once than indivdually. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/6 "2006-02-11T15:37:00Z")
And may I just say, urgh. Those pictures remind me of the soldiers’ pictures and the newsvideos we saw when I was in high school (er, many decades after the fact). I’d watched action movies and horror films and all the rest, but seeing those pictures, knowing that these weren’t props or camera tricks… I think it was seeing the heaps that did it, the heaps of hair shaved off heads, of belongings, that nearly gave me a panic attack. I say nearly because I held back the impulse to scream and sob and run out of the room. But I took the time to look around and even the kids I knew who “weren’t never ‘fraid of nothin’” and took apathy to a personal extreme were shaken. Oh, I knew about the crimes there. Knowing is one thing. Seeing is something else. ---
**Author:** ![newcrasher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b3f665/32.png) [@newcrasher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcrasher)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/7 "2006-02-11T15:51:35Z")
> [@remisser](#): > > He stated he believed at most one million jews died. Only a million dead jews? Well that changes things! ---
**Author:** ![BMax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bmax/32/4267_2.png) [@BMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMax)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/8 "2006-02-11T16:18:47Z")
Sorry for not providing a cite, but I’m on pain medication right now. The six million figure came from Himmler himself. German efficiency and attention to detail led the SS to keep careful records of how many people they killed in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/9 "2006-02-11T18:40:46Z")
> [@newcrasher](#): > > Only a million dead jews? Well that changes things! Yeah, six million would be unforgivable! ---
**Author:** ![Gringo\_Miami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f17d59/32.png) [@Gringo\_Miami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gringo_Miami)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2006, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/10 "2006-02-11T18:46:28Z")
For around $15… if he really wants to learn, he can actually read a serious history [The War against the Jews](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055334532X/sr=8-1/qid=1139683506/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3172795-1300929?%5Fencoding=UTF8) ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/11 "2006-02-12T06:20:24Z")
[This page](http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/General/VictimsEngl.html) gives a brief overview of some of the difficulties involved in arriving at an exact count of Jews killed in the Holocaust, but concludes that the best estimate is “just over 5,750,000”. A list at the bottom of the page gives a breakdown by country and arrives at a total of 5,693,851 – presumably, the remaining 60,000 or so hailed from other nations. (The alphabetical order is a bit off, suggesting the table was translated from another language – most likely French, in which Germany is known as _Allemagne_, while Czechoslovakia is (was) _Tchécoslovaquie_, and the Soviet Union translates to _l’Union Soviétique_.) The article does acknowledge that “some historians and or revisionists” believe that when politically-motivated Soviet exaggeration is taken into account, it’s possible to conclude that the actual number of Jewish victims may have been closer to 2.5 million. However, the implications of this claim can be countered by pointing out that the total number of victims becomes at least 12,000,000 when Russian prisoners of war, homosexuals, and other victims are taken into account. ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/12 "2006-02-12T07:25:41Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > and this : [Pictorial Evidence](http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/) Goddamn, but those pictures are hard to look at. I feel ill. If anyone can look at evidence like this and continue to deny the Holocaust, they are beyond hope. ---
**Author:** ![newcrasher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b3f665/32.png) [@newcrasher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcrasher)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/13 "2006-02-12T14:48:12Z")
In the past two years my 82 year old grandfather has suffered a stroke, had a kidney removed due to cancer, has suffered congestive heart failure, had pneumonia and a bladder infection. His hips hurt so bad that some days he does not even attempt to get out of bed. He was a young combat medic with the 45th Infantry of the 5th Army. He was one of the first into Dachau. It still keeps him awake at night. He still cries. I would be fearful for anyone who tells him it never happened. That is all the proof I need… ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2006, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-question/343972/14 "2006-02-12T16:11:53Z")
Never again. **Never**.