Jews - WWII - Population and Emigration
B.H. Cramer
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?
RJ11
B.H. Cramer <ben_a...@beltingyids.com> wrote:
> 3 MILLION JEWS IN EUROPE
No. Learn to add. 3 million in Poland, 800,000 in Hungary,
more than a million in Nazi-occupied USSR, and many more in
all the nations run over by the Nazis.
RJ.
