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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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from the number of Jews in different European countries before the war and immediately following it. He came to the conclusion that there was a loss in lives of 5,978,000 (31), a figure which coincides with that advanced by Hoettl and Wisliceny according to the confidences of Eichmann. This study was published in 1946. The indirect method employed by Lestchinsky has been used again by many other authors, the majority of whom have reached the same result of about six million victims. Only the Englishman Gerald Reitlinger (43), who imposes upon himself systematically and deliberately the adoption in each hypothesis of the lowest figures, gives an estimate which even so varies between a minimum of 4,194,200 and a maximum of 4.581,200. All of the authors, without exception, who utilize this indirect method underscore the multiple objective difficulties that it presents. One must take into consideration the uncertainties as to the number of the Jewish population in many countries, the multiple border changes between States which took place especially in Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945, and the important movements of human masses before the advances of the armies and the perils of all kinds due to events of the war. It is therefore always a question of approximations.

In 1951, Leon Poliakov (34, p.10) employed another procedure of direct estimation: the adding up of the number of victims of the principal extermination camps (Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Auschwitz) as well as those of the "Einsatzgruppen." He thus reached a total of 5,300,000 without "taking into account innumerable deaths by famine, by sickness, etc., in the vast ghettos of Poland, in numerous work camps scattered across all of Europe." The idea of this procedure of direct calculation is right: nevertheless, the number of victims of the camps and of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) are known only approximatively [sic], so that uncertainties are not always avoided. In addition, as the author underscored, a no doubt considerable number of deaths outside of the camps and the operations of the Einsatzgruppen escape it completely.

What is nonetheless striking is the fact that whatever the method employed, the figure obtained is always about six million; and on the basis of a calculation deliberately limited to the lowest data, such as that of G. Reitlinger, ones arrives even so at more than four million.

2. Rassinier's figures and his methods

Rassinier, conscious of the crushing weight which similar massacres cast on the reputation of the Third Reich, its chiefs, its elite SS, sought by all possible means to demonstrate that the six million victims were but a scandalous invention of omnipotent world Judaism.

He consacrated [sic] more than two hundred pages to this demonstration in his works. He came back to it constantly and poured out quantities of astute arguments, cleverly constructed mistakes and false, unfounded affirmations to reach the following conclusion: there were not six million
    
   

 
The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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