Undeserved reply to CJ on population statistics

[ConfusedJew]

That is exactly right.

Maybe we need to teach these guys how to steel man instead of straw man. It helps clarify one's own position which is basically why I spend time on here.

Steelmanning is the practice of applying the rhetorical principle of charity through addressing the strongest form of the other person's argument, even if it is not the one they explicitly presented. Creating the strongest form of the opponent's argument may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted or developing the strongest points which counter one's own position. Developing counters to steel man arguments may produce a stronger argument for one's own position.

It is even part of CODOH's guidelines although clearly not practiced - Observe the principle of charity. "In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.

In contrast, the straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

Instead of Confused Jew (I am no longer confused), I would like to change my name to Straw Jew

[Keen]

Instead of Confused Jew (I am no longer confused), I would like to change my name to Straw Jew

You may not be "confused" but you sure are retarded.

I have a better name for you than straw jew.

I think cowardly lying jew is more appropriate.

[Wetzelrad]

Maybe we need to teach these guys how to steel man instead of straw man.

How absurd. Here is a real example of a strawman: it's Nessie arguing against something different than what he quoted.
https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=15395#p15395

Archie's response to you was direct. YOUR argument was that census numbers have nothing to do with victim claims, but Archie pointed out that Holocaust historians disagree. YOUR argument was that census numbers would be off by much less than a million, but Archie pointed out that they were off by at least a million. YOUR argument was that Jewish fertility was exceptionally high, but Archie pointed to data where that was either not the case or unlikely to be the case.

Archie has given you a direct rebuttal, and in return you offer nothing but quibbling. Your top arguments were:

• "It's honestly not clear what point you are trying to make"
• "The burden is on you"
• "Will you provide a link to that appendix?"
• "I don't know about AJC estimates"

Posts like these do not warrant a response because they are self refuting. Anyone who reads what you wrote could only be convinced of your own stubborn ignorance.

Archie also twice gave you a list of sources (Link.) that you have totally disregarded, even as you try to demand still more data.

[ConfusedJew]

Based on the limited context of that Hillberg quote, you definitely cannot say that it proves what he said and it most definitely doesn't.

It was also a very old quote and deprecated after Hillberg got access to more archival data and updated his estimates.

But please stay on track. Try to steel man the argument and look for the most rigorous, rather than the least rigorous, estimate to save us all some time here.

The best argument that you have made, which is a very bar, is that some random war time number was thrown out at 6 million and it stuck and was adopted by every other serious historian that estimated Holocaust counts just anchored to it without questioning it.

That's not how serious historians work. Serious ones are very methodical in how they measure and estimate things. Hillberg questioned that estimate, at least initially, and he still came up with 5.1m which was later revised upwards.

That last post badly straw mans my arguments so try again.

[ConfusedJew]

Soon after the war, Allied governments, Jewish relief organizations, and early investigators were trying to make sense of the devastation. They often cited “6 million” Jewish dead, partly because of rough demographic estimates (pre-war Jewish population minus survivors, emigration, etc.).

Hilberg said that these calculations were “quick and inaccurate” at the time, not because they were grossly wrong, but because they lacked the depth of documentation later available. By the time Hilberg wrote The Destruction of the European Jews (first in 1961, revised in 1985 and 2003), he had access to far more Nazi records, population studies, and postwar demographic work. His own best estimate was about 5.1 million Jewish victims.

Now clearly Hilberg didn't "anchor" to the 6 million count and you allegedly cite him as a credible source if you are using him to make a point. What is wrong with his methodology, which was very conservative by design?

[Archie]

It is your job to do that, to prove that 6 million was used as the death toll in 1944, to such an extent, that it is suspicious, and indicative of a planned conspiracy.

You are making an affirmative (and highly revisionist) claim that other numbers were equally if not more prominent than the six million. It's on you to demonstrate that thesis. You can't because it's not true. You have supplied one supposed counterexample which wasn't actually a counterexample at all. I have collected some actual counterexamples (e.g., people saying 5M in 1945) that are much better than anything you have ever shared, but I have yet to see anything that changes the overall picture appreciably which is already obvious to anyone with a brain.

IOW, you either cannot be bothered, or you do not want to do any work, which may result in you having to backtrack and accept you are wrong. You prefer to maintain your unevidenced belief.

I don't see the value in that exercise, and I'm not going to embark on such a huge and thankless project to appease someone like you who would not accept the results anyway. If I were to examine millions of pages of potential sources and carefully tabulate every relevant instance and were to show that six million was more common, you would just say it didn't matter and that the Jews must have somehow guesstimated it correctly, i.e., the exact same BS excuse you are already using.

People of sane mind who are able to think about this topic dispassionately are able to see the problem with the six million number really easily. People like you and CJ who can't or won't or pretend not to see the problem would not be convinced by ANY analysis no matter how thorough, and you only request such things in order to waste people's time.

You failed to read my point that by 1944, there was already a lot of information about Nazi mass killings, for someone to do research and conclude a 6 million death toll. I also showed you a survey that asked people to guess, and there were some who guessed 6 million.

If anything that survey undermines the point you are trying to make. To the extent it shows anything, it shows people generally discounted the atrocity claims and did not believe the huge body counts that were being thrown around. (Lipstadt wrote a whole book called Beyond Belief where she complains about this sort of thing.) This was a common sentiment among the public after WWI. It is nonsense to say that on the one hand that there was uncertainty over whether there was a mass extermination happening at all but on the other hand that it was possible to estimate the death tolls with statistical precision. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR.

What the 4 million figure proves, is that 6 million had not been settled on as the actual death toll. Instead, based on information that had come from Europe about the mass killings, some had calculated that the death toll had reached 6 million by 1944. It did not go higher, because by the end of 1944, the mass killings had stopped. So, it is not at all odd that in 1945, the death toll remained at 6 million. The people who had calculated 6 million, evidence proves, were at least within the now accepted death toll range.

Your little 4M headline suggest merely that in November 1944 the WJC in NY was not yet claiming that 6M had died. So what? They were slightly behind the curve and it took them a few more months to catch up. Big deal.

Nessie, can you please explain your theory for how the six million figure became established?

[Archie]

Please go back to the population statistics discussion. You are accusing me of being disruptive which is BS.

I left a lengthy response for Archie and I am waiting for that.

To avoid wasting time, many historians have made many efforts to estimate the casualty counts. Can we agree not to waste time by focusing on the earliest, least rigorous, and least reliable methods?

To save time, it is best if we find the best methods first and then drill down on that.

I was waiting for you. I responded to your first point, and I don't think I got a response from you. I thought it would be wiser to focus on this one very basic point rather than try to resolve all the points at once.

It's honestly not clear what point you are trying to make here. You ignored the point that many independent sources roughly confirm the same thing.

I think my post is quite clear. You argued:

1) That there was a "consensus" and agreement on the prewar figure of 16.6M.
2) That the variation in estimates was small, "far less" than a million.

I showed you that this is false. And I "ignored" your point about "independent sources alll confirming the same thing" because it is false.

In your reply, you simply said that the contradictory figures don't count, for undisclosed, arbitrary reasons (the real reason = they disprove your argument).

There was no "consensus" on the prewar figures BEFORE THE WAR. It was only AFTER the war that they "harmonized" the figures to be "consistent."

[Archie]

Some comments from Poliakov in 1956 who was a contemporary of Reitlinger and Hilberg. He was a bit miffed at Reitlinger for denying the sacred six million.

“Finally, it should be noted that a British researcher, Gerald Reitlinger, in his work The Final Solution (London, 1953), questions the total of 6 million. He asserts that many of the figures were deliberately inflated for psychological reasons—both by the Nazis, who were motivated by an urge to boast of their crimes, and by the Jews, who were influenced by the pessimism typical of victims. He therefore strongly questions some of the figures given by the Nazis. By systematically re-examining the figures given for each country, adopting the lowest figure in each case by way of hypothesis, he arrives at a total between a minimum of 4,200,000 and a maximum of 4,600,000. His heaviest corrections are in the figures for Eastern Poland and the Soviet Union proper. In the case of these two regions, estimates are complicated by population movements during and after the war, and by the total absence of reliable statistical data on the present Jewish population there.

“In our opinion, one who devotes time and effort to making such corrections solely on the basis of psychological considerations must be motivated by similar considerations himself. In Reitlinger’s case this could be explained by the typical British penchant for understatement. No doubt there always will be some uncertainty about the exact total of victims claimed by the racist madness. However, the estimated data available are sufficiently abundant and reliable for us to be able accept, as the most probable number, the ‘classic’ total of 6 million.”

https://codoh.com/library/document/a-ch ... rt-3-1956/

He contradicts himself here by admitting that there's a lack of reliable data and then turning around at the end and simply declaring without explanation that the numbers are reliable. In effect, he says, well, we don't really have exact numbers, but let's just go with the "classic" 6 million number. And that's what was done.

Butz pretty much got it right way back in 1976.

Thus, I believe that we can take late 1942/early 1943 propaganda as the origin of the six million figure. The complete independence of that figure of any real facts whatever is reflected in Reitlinger’s elaborate apologies for his belief that he can claim only 4.2 to 4.6 million Jews, almost all East European, who perished in Europe during World War II, one third of them dying from “overwork, disease, hunger and neglect.” However, Reitlinger’s figures are also mostly independent of any real facts, but that matter will be discussed in Chapter 7.

It is not at all remarkable that after the war somebody could be found to declare at Nuremberg that the propaganda figure was correct. Höttl, indeed, was a completely appropriate choice, because he was one of those stereotype “operators,” with which the world of intelligence work is plagued.

What he's talking about in late 1942/early 1943 is that you see multiple examples of Zionist activists saying things like "2 million dead, four million (sometimes five million) in peril." In 1942, they had the assumption of 6-7 million Jews in peril. Then you start seeing the 2M dead, 4M remaining sort of stuff. And then toward the end of the war they started saying all 6M had been killed.

[Nessie]

It is your job to do that, to prove that 6 million was used as the death toll in 1944, to such an extent, that it is suspicious, and indicative of a planned conspiracy.

You are making an affirmative (and highly revisionist) claim that other numbers were equally if not more prominent than the six million. It's on you to demonstrate that thesis. You can't because it's not true. You have supplied one supposed counterexample which wasn't actually a counterexample at all. I have collected some actual counterexamples (e.g., people saying 5M in 1945) that are much better than anything you have ever shared, but I have yet to see anything that changes the overall picture appreciably which is already obvious to anyone with a brain.

I am still waiting for you to prove that in 1944, more sources used 6 million than any other, and I mean sources, so articles that just repeat the same source, such as a journalist writes a piece that is published in different newspapers, that is one source.

IOW, you either cannot be bothered, or you do not want to do any work, which may result in you having to backtrack and accept you are wrong. You prefer to maintain your unevidenced belief.

I don't see the value in that exercise, and I'm not going to embark on such a huge and thankless project to appease someone like you who would not accept the results anyway. If I were to examine millions of pages of potential sources and carefully tabulate every relevant instance and were to show that six million was more common, you would just say it didn't matter and that the Jews must have somehow guesstimated it correctly, i.e., the exact same BS excuse you are already using.

No, I would say that the researching done was accurate, as we now know that the vast majority of the killings had taken place by the autumn of 1944, so any report of 6 million around then, is an accurate one.

People of sane mind who are able to think about this topic dispassionately are able to see the problem with the six million number really easily. People like you and CJ who can't or won't or pretend not to see the problem would not be convinced by ANY analysis no matter how thorough, and you only request such things in order to waste people's time.

Your hypothesis is that references to 6 million were common before the end of the war and that is evidence the 6 million death toll was already planned, as part of the planning for the Holocaust hoax. That thinking appeals only to conspiracists, who do not need evidence to support their beliefs. Hence your reluctance to do any research.

You failed to read my point that by 1944, there was already a lot of information about Nazi mass killings, for someone to do research and conclude a 6 million death toll. I also showed you a survey that asked people to guess, and there were some who guessed 6 million.

If anything that survey undermines the point you are trying to make. To the extent it shows anything, it shows people generally discounted the atrocity claims and did not believe the huge body counts that were being thrown around. (Lipstadt wrote a whole book called Beyond Belief where she complains about this sort of thing.) This was a common sentiment among the public after WWI. It is nonsense to say that on the one hand that there was uncertainty over whether there was a mass extermination happening at all but on the other hand that it was possible to estimate the death tolls with statistical precision. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR.

That survey is evidence that there was no organised plan, and if there was, it was not going to plan. It also shows that in the middle of the war, there was no statistical precision, as numerous figures were being touted. It is hardly surprising that amongst the many guestimates, a few were in the accurate range.

What the 4 million figure proves, is that 6 million had not been settled on as the actual death toll. Instead, based on information that had come from Europe about the mass killings, some had calculated that the death toll had reached 6 million by 1944. It did not go higher, because by the end of 1944, the mass killings had stopped. So, it is not at all odd that in 1945, the death toll remained at 6 million. The people who had calculated 6 million, evidence proves, were at least within the now accepted death toll range.

Your little 4M headline suggest merely that in November 1944 the WJC in NY was not yet claiming that 6M had died. So what? They were slightly behind the curve and it took them a few more months to catch up. Big deal.

So, the WJC in NY were not part of the planning for the 6 million toll, in November 1944. So much for an organised conspiracy. That the WJC used a different toll, from what you say, was planned, looks like there was no planned conspiracy to fake 6 million. It looks more like there were different people collating and researching the figures and coming up with different tolls.

Nessie, can you please explain your theory for how the six million figure became established?

I showed you a chronology of some of the newspaper articles about mass killings, and how they rose from hundreds of thousands to 6 million by the end of 1944. That means enough information was coming out of Nazi occupied Europe, for those researching and collating the death tolls, to track pretty accurately from 1941 to 1944, by which time the 6 million had already been killed. Should it not be part of your conspiracy that there were also pretty accurate death tolls from 1941 onwards? Or is that not just journalists doing some good research work? Then, when Hoettl used 6 million in 1945, that further reinforced the work done in 1944, as being the most likely, accurate death toll.

It is not like, from 1941 to 1944, there were no reports of mass murder, or death tolls and then suddenly, boom, in 1944, 6 million appeared. The murders and death tolls were tracked and collated throughout the war.

[Nessie]

...

What he's talking about in late 1942/early 1943 is that you see multiple examples of Zionist activists saying things like "2 million dead, four million (sometimes five million) in peril." In 1942, they had the assumption of 6-7 million Jews in peril. Then you start seeing the 2M dead, 4M remaining sort of stuff. And then toward the end of the war they started saying all 6M had been killed.

Meaning, there was some accurate tracking going on, throughout the war, as well as some inaccurate assumptions. When there were 10 million Jews in Europe, that limits the number of millions the tracking was rounded to, to ten.

When the genocide took place in Rwanda, it was known how many Tutsis lived in the country, so predictions could be made as to how many were at risk, and as news came in of mass killings, what the rising death toll was. According to you, if how many were at risk, at all matched the final death toll, that is evidence to prove it was a planned conspiracy and a hoax.

[ConfusedJew]

Prior to WW2, two heartlands dominated prewar Jewry.
Eastern Europe (especially Poland + USSR): ~6.3m Jews (≈ 40% of world Jewry).
United States: ~4.8m Jews (≈ 30%).

Together, those two centers made up ~70% of the world’s Jews.
The Holocaust wiped out most of the European core, shifting the “center of gravity” to the U.S. and later Israel.

Western and Southern Europe had 1.5m - 2m Jews with 500k in Germany, 300k in France, and 330k in the UK.
The Middle East and North Africa had 900k.
The Americas (excluding US) had 500k.
Africa and Asia had a tiny number about 150k combined.

Variations among serious demographers, meaning that they used rigorous methodologies, are small and in the range of ±200,000–300,000 worldwide (about 1–2%).

At the national level, e.g. in the USSR or Middle East, the error margin could be 5–10%. At the global level, the margin of error is smaller (maybe 1–2%) because the differences cancel out. If one country might be a little higher, another might lower.

After the war, the largest decreases happened in Central and Eastern Europe in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the western USSR. Together, these regions lost over 5 million Jews — the core of European Jewry.

Why do you think this 5 million count decreased and where do you think they went?

After the war, we do see an increase in the number of Jews in a few countries but the total count is very small. The biggest increases were in Palestine (+200k), U.S. (+200k), Latin America (esp. Argentina, +60k), and South Africa (+20k).

Everywhere else, especially Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish populations plummeted.

How do you explain the number of Jews plummeting while it only slightly increased in a few countries? Did these missing Jews go to Antarctica or maybe the Democratic Republic of the Congo? If so, why don't we see them on Ancestry.com results?

[ConfusedJew]

To make this easy for you guys since you don't seem to understand data that well:

Why did population counts plummet in Eastern Europe if they only slightly increased in countries like Israel, US, Argentina etc.

You can nit pick all these different things in different categories but they can't come anywhere close to offsetting the declines.

This is an IQ test basically.

[Callafangers]

Why did population counts plummet in Eastern Europe if they only slightly increased in countries like Israel, US, Argentina etc.

That's a very short list, ConfusedJew. Were you not aware that:

• Jews flooded into at least 60 different countries postwar (per USC Shoah Foundation VHA interviews)
• Jews were fearful of prevailing 'antisemitism' postwar, often not identifying as Jews
• Related to the last point above, Jews also very frequently changed their names/identities entirely

How exactly do you suppose the increase you're expecting could or would be accurately counted, even remotely, under these conditions? Were Jews emigrating into Chile, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, South Africa, the USA or the Carribean in 1/5/10 years post-war necessarily documented as "Jews", rather than 'Polish' or 'Russian' (if documented at all)?

The truth is, you're making an assumption that X number or proportion of surviving Jews should have been documented in some way, at some scale. This is a huge assumption you're basing on virtually nothing. The facts of the matter show that post-WW2 was marked by chaos, global-reshaping initiatives (and motives), fear of 'antisemitism' and changing identities, and other elements of a perfect storm as to why we should expect 'missing' Jews all over.

What remains missing is your evidence that they were 'Holocausted'. That's the real issue, here.

There's your IQ test.

[Nessie]

....

• Jews flooded into at least 60 different countries postwar (per USC Shoah Foundation VHA interviews)
• Jews were fearful of prevailing 'antisemitism' postwar, often not identifying as Jews
• Related to the last point above, Jews also very frequently changed their names/identities entirely

How exactly do you suppose the increase you're expecting could or would be accurately counted, even remotely, under these conditions? Were Jews emigrating into Chile, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, South Africa, the USA or the Carribean in 1/5/10 years post-war necessarily documented as "Jews", rather than 'Polish' or 'Russian' (if documented at all)?

...

What to do then is get evidence of how many Jews and then Poles, Latvians, Hungarians etc immigrated to those countries postwar. You should pay attention to evidence from displaced persons agencies, as Jews who now just identify as Hungarian, had been displaced. You would also need to be careful you do not double count, as some will identify as Jewish and the country they come from.

The key for you so-called revisionist to unlock and revise the Holocaust, is finding lots of Jews at the end of the war, millions of them.

What remains missing is your evidence that they were 'Holocausted'. That's the real issue, here.

That is not revision, that is you claiming that because there is a supposed lack of evidence of mass murder, therefore that proves millions were still alive at the end of the war, but you lack evidence to prove your claim. The result is a non-history, not a revised history.

[ConfusedJew]

That's a very short list, ConfusedJew. Were you not aware that:

• Jews flooded into at least 60 different countries postwar (per USC Shoah Foundation VHA interviews)
• Jews were fearful of prevailing 'antisemitism' postwar, often not identifying as Jews
• Related to the last point above, Jews also very frequently changed their names/identities entirely

The vast majority of Jewish survivors went to a small number of countries and while it is true, that some Jews changed their names and identities, you'd have to believe that millions did to account for the decline in the census which is an absolutely wild assumption.

If there was no Holocaust, there really would be minimal reason for Jews to change their name so that explanation is very weak.

How exactly do you suppose the increase you're expecting could or would be accurately counted, even remotely, under these conditions? Were Jews emigrating into Chile, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, South Africa, the USA or the Carribean in 1/5/10 years post-war necessarily documented as "Jews", rather than 'Polish' or 'Russian' (if documented at all)?

Historians reviewed displaced persons camp logs, files from Jewish aid organizations like HIAS and the Joint Distribution Committee, and local Jewish community registries in the receiving countries. By comparing those with official immigration data and later community population counts, you can reconstruct reasonably accurate figures even if the individuals were not labeled as Jewish in government documents.

The truth is, you're making an assumption that X number or proportion of surviving Jews should have been documented in some way, at some scale. This is a huge assumption you're basing on virtually nothing. The facts of the matter show that post-WW2 was marked by chaos, global-reshaping initiatives (and motives), fear of 'antisemitism' and changing identities, and other elements of a perfect storm as to why we should expect 'missing' Jews all over.

Yes I am making an assumption that way less than 6 million Jews went "undocumented". You are making the assumption that about 6 million Jews went "undocumented".

We are all going to be making assumptions about something when we don't have 100% complete and perfect information. I think your assumption is fully ridiculous.

What remains missing is your evidence that they were 'Holocausted'. That's the real issue, here.

There's your IQ test.

In reality, you are assuming that about 6 million Jews (2/3 of the number that lived in Europe before the war) changed their identities after the war. I think that's a completely ridiculous assumption but if you think that's true you can try to explain to me how that happened and we can debate it out.