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? |