Compiling the estimates on numbers exterminated
When the extermination camps failed to achieve their objective, the
total extermination of European Jewry, by the end of 1942, Heinrich
Himmler commissioned a statistical report in order to determine what
'progress' had been made.
In January of 1943, Dr. Richard Korherr, a noted statistician who was
outside SS circles, working with Adolf Eichmann and camp commanders,
began compiling reports and figures to present to Himmler. As
Breitman relates:
Korherr's job was complicated by the fact that, even in a report
designed for Himmler, he was not supposed to spell out the facts
in black and white. It was easier to state how many Jews were
still alive than what had happened to the others. To be sure,
Korherr could state that through various means the Jewish
population in the Reich and the Government General had
diminished by 3.1 million between 1933 and 1942. In spite of
his generous use of the term "evacuation," however, which
Himmler seconded, to mislead those who would read the document
in later years, Himmler had to correct
Korherr's wording in one
place.
Where
Korherr had written of the "special treatment" of
the Jews, Himmler had insisted on either the "transportation of
the Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian East" or the
"sifting of the Jews through the camps." These were among the
officially approved terms to camouflage the realities of the
Final Solution.
(
Korherr's reports in NA RG 238, NO-5193 and
5194, Himmler's correction of wording in Brandt to Korherr, 20
April 1943. NA RG 238, NO-5196. Raul Hillberg, The Destruction
of the European Jews {Chicago, 1961}, 2nd expanded ed., 3 vols.
{New York, 1985},I, 322-23, reviews the whole range of Nazi
terms that veiled the realities.) (Breitman, 242)
Note that Himmler was successful in his attempts to camouflage
reality to the degree that present-day
Holocaust denial insists that
Jews were simply "relocated to the East," and not exterminated.
Eichmann's interrogation regarding the total number of victims
supports Fleming's figure of about five million killed (See
eichmann eichmann.005), while figures compiled by
Yehuda Bauer, of
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, are somewhat higher. Bauer's figures are in
the right-most column:
| Territory | Fleming | Bauer |
German Reich
(boundaries of 1938) | 130,000 | 125,000 |
| Austria | 58,000 | 65,000 |
| Belgium | 26,000 | |
| Belgium & Luxembourg | | 24,700 |
| Bulgaria | 7,000 | |
Czechoslovakia
(boundaries of 1938) | 245,000 | 277,000 |
| France | 64,000 | 83,000 |
| Greece | 58,000 | 65,000 |
| Hungary & Carpatho-Ukraine | 300,000 | 402,000* |
| Italy | 8,000 | 7,500* |
| Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia | 200,000 | |
| Luxembourg | 3,000 | |
| Netherlands | 101,800 | 106,000 |
| Norway | 677 | 760 |
Poland
(boundaries of 1939) | 2,700,000 | |
| Polish-Soviet area | | 4,565,000 |
Romania
(boundaries prior to 1940) | 220,000 | 40,000 |
USSR
(boundaries prior to 1939) | 800,000 | |
| Yugoslavia | 54,000 | 60,000* |
| ----------------- | ----------------- |
| 4,975,477 | 5,820,960 |
| | * May be underestimated |
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