http://www1.ushmm.org/research/library/ ... question02
How many Jews were killed during the Holocaust?
The estimated number of Jewish fatalities during the Holocaust is usually given as between 5.1 and 6 million victims. However, despite the availability of numerous scholarly works and archival sources on the subject, Holocaust-related figures might never be definitively known. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the available Holocaust statistics include a wide margin of error because:
* Not all victims of the Holocaust were registered.
* Countless records that did exist were destroyed by the Nazis, or lost, burned, or damaged in military actions.
* Records often contain fragmentary information, failing to include, for example, the victim's ethnic, national, or religious affiliation.
In addition, one should critically examine any statistics presented because:
* Different scholars have used different base dates for computing their figures, a situation that results in statistical differences due to the changing national borders of the Holocaust period.
* Figures for victims of a given country usually include not only citizens but also resident aliens and stateless refugees.
* Scholars have sometimes wrongly equated data about the arrests of various victims with fatalities, particularly in the case of non-Jewish victims.
What follows are two different estimates of Jewish deaths by country and the sources from which those statistics are drawn. Please note that these are just a sampling of the published Holocaust-related statistics. Additional sources for estimates of Jewish deaths are provided following these two examples:
Country Number
Poland up to 3,000,000
USSR over 700,000
Romania 270,000
Czechoslovakia 260,000
Hungary over 180,000
Germany 130,000
Lithuania up to 130,000
Netherlands over 100,000
France 75,000
Latvia 70,000
Yugoslavia 60,000
Greece 60,000
Austria over 50,000
Belgium 24,000
Italy (including Rhodes) 9,000
Estonia over 1,000
Norway under 1,000
Luxembourg under 1,000
Danzig under 1,000
Total 5,100,000
Source: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), Vol. 3, p. 1321.
Country Minimum Loss Maximum Loss
Austria 50,000 50,000
Belgium 28,900 28,900
Bohemia and Moravia 78,150 78,150
Bulgaria 0 0
Denmark 60 60
Estonia 1,500 2,000
Finland 7 7
France 77,320 77,320
Germany 134,500 141,500
Greece 60,000 67,000
Hungary 550,000 569,000
Italy 7,680 7,680
Latvia 70,000 71,500
Lithuania 140,000 143,000
Luxembourg 1,950 1,950
Netherlands 100,000 100,000
Norway 762 762
Poland 2,900,000 3,000,000
Romania 271,000 287,000
Slovakia 68,000 71,000
Soviet Union 1,000,000 1,100,000
Yugoslavia 56,200 63,300
Source: Yehuda Bauer, and Robert Rozett, "Estimated Jewish Losses in the Holocaust," in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p.1799. See this source for a full explanation of these statistics.
For additional Holocaust statistics, see:
* Benz, Wolfgang, editor. Dimension des Volkermords: Die Zahl der judischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991.
* Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
* Lestchinsky, Jacob. Crisis, Catastrophe, and Survival: A Jewish Balance Sheet, 1941-1948. New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress, 1948.
* Levin, Nora. The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. New York: Schocken, 1973
* Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution, the Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1987
Jules, fwiw Finklestein thinks Raul Hillberg is the definitive scholar on the Holocaust. (this gleaned from reading and from his lecture)
