How many deaths at Auschwitz?

Editor's Remark

When it comes to arguing about the correct number of victims of the concentration camp Auschwitz, many people often rely on usually unreliable newspaper articles written by journalists who hardly have any competence in the matter they are writing about. For this reason, Prof. Dr. Faurisson has compiled a list of figures on December 12, 1995, which does not depend on any newspaper articles, but on publications and public statements of individuals who are generally considered to have some kind of authority in this field, be it as historians or as witnesses.[5] This list has been updated by adding the most recent figure published in May 2002. However, this list which relies on 'expert' statements does not help to reduce the confusion either, and this does not shed a good light onto the experts' competence.

The Editor

Introductory Remarks

Among the historians who maintain the thesis according to which Auschwitz would have been an extermination camp, the main studies bearing on the number of the deaths in that camp are those of the Frenchman Georges Wellers published in 1983[6] and 1990,[7] and those of the Pole Franciszek Piper published in 1991,[8] 1992,[9] and 1994,[10] respectively.

Of these five studies, the most interesting are, for G. Wellers, that of 1983[6] and, for F. Piper, that of 1992.[9] The two authors proceed to the reminder – painful for them – of the “errors” committed in the past as to the number of the Auschwitz deaths. Regarding this, I recommend reading G. Wellers, op. cit. (note 6), 1983, pp. 138-139 and F. Piper, op. cit. (note 9), 1992, pp. 5-16. Nothing shows better than those pages to what extent, on nevertheless so grave a topic as this, the number of the deaths, the worst fancies were indulged in.

To my knowledge, the latter appraisal (510,000) is the lowest that those who believe in the physical extermination of the Jews ever provided. It is said sometimes that in 1946/1947, the Polish judicial authorities admitted the figure of 300,000 deaths.[36] That is an error. Those authorities estimated the total of the dead at 300,000 persons registered on their arrival, but, to that figure, they added the figure of 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 unregistered persons.[37]

During more than forty years, the Soviet, Polish and Federal Republic of Germany authorities showed themselves very discreet on the existence of death registers (Sterbebücher) which had been kept during the war by the Auschwitz camp authorities. Under the pressure of the revisionists, at the two Zündel trials (Toronto, 1985 and 1988) in particular, those authorities at long last made revelations on those registers. They assert having retrieved registers but for the period from July 27, 1941 to December 31, 1943. Since the camp was opened May 20, 1940 and as the Germans evacuated it January 18, 1945, that period represents a little more than half the duration of the camp's existence under their authority. The registers retrieved are, it appears, in the number of 46 and would include 69,000 names (and not 74,000 as was said by certain journalists).[38]

The supporters of the official version of the 'Holocaust' have experienced some discomfort facing the necessity, imposed by the revisionists, to revise downwards, in such proportions, the number of the Auschwitz deaths. How can it be explained that at the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), such a deception had been taken straight off “judicial notice” of, thanks to Section 21 of that Tribunal's Charter? How can it be explained that, during official ceremonies, so many of this world's Greats, including Pope John Paul II, were asked to come and bow in front of such an invention of quacks? How can it be explained that in 1990, France equipped itself with an anti-revisionist law section forbidding any disputing of the “crimes against humanity” such as described and evaluated by the Nuremberg tribunal? And then, how can the figure of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 Jews dead during the whole war be protected from any revision, if it was necessary to revise to that extent the figure of the deaths of Auschwitz?

Today, some Jews explain that the Poles, and they alone, would have invented the Auschwitz 4,000,000 lie. Actuated by anti-Semitism and nationalistic pride simultaneously, the Poles would have added to nearly 1,500,000 Jewish deaths about 2,500,000 Polish or other deaths![39]

This explanation is but a contrivance. The truth is that, as early as by the war's end, not only the Communistic Jews, but also the judicial authorities of Poland had been repeating that the majority of the Auschwitz deaths was Jewish. At Cracow, in 1946-1947, about the case of Rudolf Höß, the investigating magistrate as well as the prosecution had concluded that, besides a few hundred thousand “recorded” deaths, there had been at Auschwitz either 4,000,000 or at least 2,500,000 deaths, “most of them Jewish”.[37]

Various numbers of victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp as claimed by official authorities and historians:
Second column from the right: the lowest estimate so far by Fritjof Meyer. Right-most column: maximum figure according to revisionist opinion (ca. 150,000). You have the free choice! At most one of these figures can be correct, but all the rest may potentially incite to hatred, and uttering them can lead to criminal prosecution in many European countries. But most importantly, it is considered highly offensive, if not outright illegal in those countries to make such compilations in the first place![40]

Besides, it should be noticed from the above list of various estimates that Jews themselves often gave numbers about their co-religionists' deaths at Auschwitz which are higher than 1,500,000. They have therefore no right to blame their own exaggerations on non-Jews.

During the winter of 1963-1964, a specific monument was built in memory of the “millions of Jews, martyrs and fighters” exterminated in that camp; the inscription was in Polish, in Yiddish and in Hebrew.[41] Let us add finally that, for the historians of the 'Holocaust,' most of the Auschwitz Jews would have been killed by means of an insecticide: Zyklon B.

For Arthur R. Butz and for other revisionists, the total number of the Auschwitz deaths must have risen to some 150,000, of whom about 100,000 Jews.[42] Most of the Jews were not killed but died, above all because of the typhus epidemics. The revisionists point out that, if the Germans had had at their disposal greater quantities of the Zyklon B insecticide precisely in order to fight those epidemics, fewer people would have died in Auschwitz not only among the Jews, the Poles, the Russians and other detainees, but also among the German physicians, guards, and other officials.

Summary and Conclusion

According to the view of the official historians (i.e., those who are protected by laws of the French Republic and other European nations and by the power of the media), the Auschwitz death toll varies between 9,000,000 (the number given in Nuit et Brouillard (Nicht and Fog), a movie which was compulsory teaching material for higher education in France since 1955) and 510,000 (this is the number estimated by a “leading editor” of Germany's largest news magazine Der Spiegel in the periodical Osteuropa in May 2002). According to these historians, those individuals have allegedly fallen victim to a policy of physical extermination. Revisionist authors, however, maintain that the number of victims is around 150,000, mainly caused by various epidemics, in particular typhus. Under the influence of revisionist authors, the court historians have started to make corrections of such a drastic nature that it is incomprehensible how France or any other European nation can dictate this number by law. The two official inscriptions on the memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which followed each other – the first until 1990, the second since 1995 – are of great instructive value, though certainly without intention: They remind us that there should not be an officially decreed truth, neither in history nor elsewhere.

Nota Bene

This study constitutes but a sketch of the answers given or imposed to the question: “How many deaths at Auschwitz?” It would be easy to provide thousands of other references. The work's difficulty consists, however, in that, according to the case, the evaluations can bear on very ill-assorted categories: in one case, the number of the “killed”, of the “gassed”, of the “Jews” is evaluated and, in some other case, “deaths”, “victims” are talked about and the “Jews” are not distinguished from the “non-Jews”. Sometimes too, the evaluations are only about a limited period. As far as I am concerned, I avoided any numerical extrapolation from a figure given for a short period of the Auschwitz camp's life.

Notes