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?
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