Question to all (and I’m not a denier):
How does anyone really know “how many” were killed?
Did someone actually count to 6 million, or is was this an “estimate”?
I have no doubt “many” were killed, I just wonder if the number wasn’t subject to the same kind of manipulation as the AGW temperature data.
Moreover we know who was missing, and we have seen (and counted) the bodies in the mass graves, and read the ledgers and shipping orders of the cattle cars filled with those the Nazi's wanted dead.
While some records were no doubt lost during the war (things blowing up and burning down and all) there is no doubt among rational human beings that the Nazi's killed several million Jews in the camps designed and built as factories of death.
But if the third Reich killed only three million (a figure unsupported by the evidence by the way), do you suppose that this makes them only HALF as reprehensible, only HALF as evil, or just less competent in their perfidy?
Because the German National Socialists, efficient and industrious little buggers one and all, KEPT RECORDS. Those freaks were proud of what they were doing ... at least, as long as they thought they would win.
And they killed 11.5 million people in the death camps.
“How does anyone really know “how many” were killed? Did someone actually count to 6 million, or is was this an “estimate”?”
The 6 million number is an estimate but it is not pulled out of thin air. It is largely based on the following: missing Jews from post war census figures as compared to 1930s figures; Nazi records compiled in the camps, ghettos, railway deportation figures and so on. In recent years there have been some surprises: The number of Jews estimated to have been murdered in Auschwitz has been cut in half at least. This was done by the official and internationally recognized body of scholars established to study Auschwitz by the way. At the same time a French priest has done herculian work in discovering, mapping and excavating little or unknown mass graves in the Ukraine where Jews were murdered and largely forgotten for the past 60 years. Thus, we have every reason to believe the overall number of Jews killed are correct, but that the number of deaths in the camps may have been less than previously thought. More Jews may have been killed in mass shootings in the Ukraine, Russia and Beylorussia than previously thought.
Jean-Claude Pressac, who was a recognized authority on the Holocaust and no denier by any stretch of the imagination almost seemed to set the number lower each time he came out with a book or major article about it. I think his final total - before he died in 2003 - was something like 600,000 to 750,000 dead at Auschwitz. That’s a lot different than the 1.5 to 3 million number that many people claimed in the late 1940s. I think we’re going to see more revision downward for the camp totals and more revision upward for the murdered in the forrests totals.