3
POPULATION AND
EMIGRATION
Statistics relating to Jewish
populations are not everywhere known in precise detail,
approximations for various countries differing widely, and it is
also unknown exactly how many Jews were deported and interned at any
one time between the years 1939-1945. In general, however, what
reliable statistics there are, especially those relating to
emigration, are sufficient to show that not a fraction of six
million Jews could have been exterminated. In the first place, this
claim cannot remotely be upheld on examination of the European
Jewish population figures. According to Chambers Encyclopaedia the
total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe was 6,500,000. Quite
clearly, this would mean that almost the entire number were
exterminated. But the Baseler Nachrichten, a neutral Swiss
publication employing available Jewish statistical data, establishes
that between 1933 and 1945, 1,500,000 Jews emigrated to Britain,
Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Australia, China, India, Palestine and the
United Sutes. This is confirmed by the Jewish journalist Bruno Blau,
who cites the same figure in the New York Jewish paper Aufbau,
August 13th, 1948. Of these emigrants, approximately 400,000 came
from Germany before September 1939. This is acknowledged by the
World Jewish Congress in its publication Unity in Dispersion (p.
377), which states that: "The majority of the German Jews succeeded
in leaving Germany before the war broke out." In addition to the
German Jews, 220,000 of the total 280,000 Austrian Jews had
emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the
Institute for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the emigration
of 260,000 Jews from former Czechoslovakia. In all, only 360,000
Jews remained in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia after September
1939. From Poland, an estimated 500,000 had emigrated prior to the
outbreak of war. These figures mean that the number of Jewish
emigrants from other European countries (France, the Netherlands,
Italy, the countries of eastern Europe etc.) was approximately
120,000. This exodus of Jews before and during hostilities,
therefore, reduces the number of Jews in Europe to approximately
5,000,000. In addition to these emigrants, we must also include the
number of Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were
later evacuated beyond reach of the German invaders. It will be
shown below that the majority of these, about 1,250,000, were
migrants from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger admits that
300,000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory between
1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants to the
Soviet Union to about 1,550,000. In Colliers magazine, June 9th,
1945, Freiling Foster, writing of the Jews in Russia, explained that
"2,200,000 have migrated to the Soviet Union since 1939 to escape
from the Nazis," but our lower estimate is probably more accurate.
Jewish migration to the Soviet Union, therefore, reduces the number
of Jews within the sphere of German occupation to around 3-1/2
million, approximately 3,450,000. From these should be deducted
those Jews living in neutral European countries who escaped the
consequences of the war. According to the 1942 World Almanac (p.
594). the number of Jews living in Gibraltar, Britain, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland and Turkey was
413,128.
3 MILLION JEWS IN
EUROPE
A figure, consequently, of
around 3 million Jews in German- occupied Europe is as accurate as
the available emigration statistics will allow. Approximately the
same number, however, can be deduced in another way if we examine
statistics for the Jewish populations remaining in countries
occupied by the Reich. More than half of those Jews who migrated to
the Soviet Union after 1939 came from Poland. It is frequently
claimed that the war with Poland added some 3 million Jews to the
German sphere of influence and that almost the whole of this Polish
Jewish population was "exterminated". This is a major factual error.
The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of Jews
at 2,732,600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, p. 36). Reitlinger states
that at least 1,170,000 of these were in the Russian zone occupied
in the autumn of 1939, about a million of whom were evacuated to the
Urals and south Siberia after the German invasion of June 1941
(ibid. p. 50). As described above, an estimated 500,000 Jews had
emigrated from Poland prior to the war. Moreover, the journalist
Raymond Arthur Davis, who spent the war in the Soviet Union,
observed that approximately 250,000 had already fled from
German-occupied Poland to Russia between 1939 and 1941 and were to
be encountered in every Soviet province (Odyssey through Hell, N.Y.,
1946). Subtracting these figures from the population of 2,732,600,
therefore, and allowing for the normal population increase, no more
than 1,100,000 Polish Jews could have been under German rule at the
end of 1939. (Gutachen des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, Munich,
1956, p.80). To this number we may add the 360,000 Jews remaining in
Germany, Austria and former Czechoslovakia (Bohemia-Moravia and
Slovakia) after the extensive emigration from those countries prior
to the war described above. Of the 320,000 French Jews, the Public
Prosecutor representing that part of the indictment relating to
France at the Nuremberg Trials, stated that 120,000 Jews were
deported, though. Reitlinger estimates only about 50,000. Thus the
total number of Jews under Nazi rule remains below two million.
Deportations from the Scandinavian countries were few, and from
Bulgaria none at all. When the Jewish populations of Holland
(140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy (50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000),
Hungary (380,000) and Roumania (725,000) are included, the figure
does not much exceed 3 million. This excess is due to the fact that
the latter figures are pre-war estimates unaffected by emigration,
which from these countries accounted for about 120,000 (see above).
This cross-checking, therefore, confirms the estimate of
approximately 3 million European Jews under German
occupation.
RUSSIAN JEWS
EVACUATED
The precise figures concerning
Russian Jews are unknown, and have therefore been the subject of
extreme exaggeration. The Jewish statistician Jacob Leszczynski
states that in 1939 there were 2,100,000 Jews living in future
German-occupied Russia, i.e. western Russia. In addition, some
260,000 lived in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
According to Louis Levine, President of the American Jewish Council
for Russian Relief, who made a post-war tour of the Soviet Union and
submitted a report on the status of Jews there, the majority of
these numbers were evacuated east after the German armies launched
their invasion. In Chicago, on October 30th, 1946, he declared that:
"At the outset of the war, Jews were amongst the first evacuated
from the western regions threatened by the Hitlerite invaders, and
shipped to safety east of the Urals. Two million Jews were thus
saved." This high number is confirmed by the Jewish journalist David
Bergelson, who wrote in the Moscow Yiddish paper Ainikeit, December
5th, 1942, that "Thanks to the evacuation, the majority (80%) of the
Jews in the Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania and Latvia before the
arrival of the Germans were rescued." Reitlinger agrees with the
Jewish authority Joseph Schechtmann, who admits that huge numbers
were evacuated, though he estimates a slightly higher number of
Russian and Baltic Jews left under German occupation, between
650,000 and 850,000 (Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 499). In
respect of these Soviet Jews remaining in German territory, it will
be proved later that in the war in Russia no more than one hundred
thousand persons were killed by the German Action Groups as
partisans and Bolshevik commissars, not all of whom were Jews. By
contrast, the partisans themselves claimed to have murdered five
times that number of German troops.
'SIX MILLION' UNTRUE
ACCORDING TO NEUTRAL SWISS
It is clear, therefore, that
the Germans could not possibly have gained control over or
exterminated anything like six million Jews. Excluding the Soviet
Union, the number of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe after emigration
was scarcely more than 3 million, by no means all of whom were
interned. To approach the extermination of even half of six mfilion
would have meant the liquidation of every Jew living in Europe. And
yet it is known that large numbers of Jews were alive in Europe
after 1945. Philip Friedmann in Their Brother's Keepers (N.Y., 1957,
p. 13), states that "at least a million Jews survived in the very
crucible of the Nazi hell," while the official figure of the Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee is 1,559,600. Thus, even if one accepts
the latter estimate, the number of possible wartime Jewish deaths
could not have exceeded a limit of one and a half million. Precisely
this conclusion was reached by the reputable journal Baseler
Nachrichten of neutral Switzerland. In an article entitled "Wie hoch
ist die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer?" ("How high is the number of
Jewish victims?", June 13th, 1946), it explained that purely on the
basis of the population and emigration figures described above, a
maximum of only one and a half million Jews could be numbered as
casualties. Later on, however, it will be demonstrated conclusively
that the number was actually far less, for the Baseler Nachrichten
accepted the Joint Distribution Committee's figure of 1,559,600
survivors after the war, but we shall show that the number of claims
for compensation by Jewish survivors is more than double that
figure. This information was not available to the Swiss in
1946.
IMPOSSIBLE BIRTH
RATE
Indisputable evidence is also
provided by the post-war world Jewish population statistics. The
World Almanac of 1938 gives the number of Jews in the world as
16,588,259. But after the war, the New York Times, February 22nd,
1948 placed the number of Jews in the world at a minimum of
15,600,000 and a maximum of 18,700,000. Quite obviously, these
figures make it impossible for the number of Jewish war-time
casualties to be measured in anything but thousands. 15-1/2 million
in 1938 minus the alleged six million leaves nine million; the New
York Times figures would mean, therefore, that the world's Jews
produced seven million births, almost doubling their numbers, in the
space of ten years. This is patently ridiculous. It would appear,
therefore, that the great majority of the missing "six million" were
in fact emigrants - emigrants to European countries, to the Soviet
Union and the United States before, during and after the war. And
emigrants also, in vast nunibers to Palestine during and especially
at the end of the war. After 1945, boat-loads of these Jewish
survivors entered Palestine illegally from Europe, causing
considerable embarrassment to the British Government of the time;
indeed, so great were the numbers that the H.M. Stationery Office
publication No. 190 (November 5th, 1946) described them as "almost
amounting to a second Exodus." It was these emigrants to all parts
of the world who had swollen the world Jewish population to between
15 and 18 millions by 1948, and probably the greatest part of them
were emigrants to the United States who entered in violation of the
quota laws. On August 16th, 1963 David Ben Gurion, President of
Israel, stated that although the official Jewish population of
America was said to be 5,600,000, "the total number would not be
estimated too high at 9,000,000" (Deutsche Wochenzeitung, November
23rd, 1963). The reason for this high figure is underlined by Albert
Maisal in his article "Our Newest Americans" (Readers Digest,
January, 1957), for he reveals that "Soon after World War II, by
Presidential decree, 90 per cent of all quota visas for central and
eastern Europe were issued to the uprooted." Reprinted on this page
is just one extract from hundreds that regularly appear in the
obituary columns of Aufbau, the Jewish American weekly published in
New York (June 16th, 1972). It shows how Jewish emigrants to the
United States subsequently changed their names; their former names
when in Europe appear in brackets. For example, as below: Arthur
Kingsley (formerly Dr. Königsberger of Frankfurt). Could it be that
some or all of these people whose names are 'deceased' were included
in the missing six million of
Europe? |