Encyclopedia Britannica - Auschwitz 4 million

[HansHill]

https://archive.org/details/encyclopaed ... =auschwitz

From a different thread, I want to document this link to 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica which promotes the inflated 4 million at Auschwitz death toll. It is not easy to find full sets online, and I am lucky to have a similar set in hardcopy which also promotes 4 million.

I encourage everyone to archive material like this, both digitally and if possible given your personal circumstances, in written hardcopy format. We are only ever one step away from a digital memory hole, and resources like this are of vital importance for preservation.

[pilgrimofdark]

"Auschwitz 4 million in Western sources" might be a good research thread on its own.

GREATEST MASS MURDERS

At the S.S. camp at Auschwitz, Silesia, where 4,000,000 people were exterminated in 1943-1944, the greatest number killed in a day was 24,000.

The Guinness Book of Records, 1955, p. 71
Link

edit: it should be pointed out that this is the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records, and was an instant bestseller. So more people had a book that said "Auschwitz 4,000,000" than had a book by a historian saying anything different. Not to mention the huge popularity of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

And from a book published by Random House, New York:

In one death factory alone, Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 people were exterminated in the gas chambers.

The New Germany and the Old Nazis, 1961, p. 91.
Link

[HansHill]

I never thought of checking Guinness Records, great idea - added to the archives

Alternative link: https://annas-archive.org/md5/1a19c05e4 ... fcf0fab603

[Eye of Zyclone]

Clearly not just a Soviet propaganda thing, and not either a massacre of 3 million fictive Soviet victims & 1 million real Jewish victims, as Holohoaxers now claim for damage control purposes...

[Wetzelrad]

I would add Eugen Kogon who helped establish this narrative already in 1946 by claiming up to 4.5 million at Auschwitz. This was a "reasonable estimate" arrived at by "counting the dead in Auschwitz".



And Lucy Dawidowicz who claimed 2 million mostly Jews at Auschwitz (not to mention 1.38 million at Majdanek).



Nizkor once published a list of such claims as an attempt to debunk Holocaust deniers. This list has some apparent errors or exclusions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191001184 ... -2-01.html

The Holocaust Encyclopedia also lists more claimed figures in a table here.
https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/instr ... hwitz/379/

Neither list is comprehensive, but the same picture arises. If we accept ~1 million as the real number, then almost every source overestimated the number of deaths at Auschwitz until after Francizek Piper's official revision in 1990. The common claim that no Western scholar accepted the 4 million figure is patently false. And Raul Hilberg's claims, now treated as authoritative, were evidently not taken seriously by all these authors at the time.

[Eye of Zyclone]

If we accept ~1 million as the real number, then almost every source overestimated the number of deaths at Auschwitz until after Francizek Piper's official revision in 1990.

... and Rudolf Höss' so prized testimony about the death of 3 million inmates under his own administration of Auschwitz becomes useless junk, just another coerced false confession.

[Archie]

Leon Poliakov took Hoess's numbers totally at face value and reasoned that a good 2M were Jews.

https://x.com/CODOHforum76/status/1997724787368698309

At the 1972 trial in Vienna of Dejaco and Ertl, the figure that was thrown around was 3 million.

[Archie]

...
Neither list is comprehensive, but the same picture arises. If we accept ~1 million as the real number, then almost every source overestimated the number of deaths at Auschwitz until after Francizek Piper's official revision in 1990. The common claim that no Western scholar accepted the 4 million figure is patently false. And Raul Hilberg's claims, now treated as authoritative, were evidently not taken seriously by all these authors at the time.

There is a quite interesting 1990 JTA article that shows that even at that late date there was some resistance to lowering of the figures.

https://www.jta.org/archive/new-list-of ... er-figures

Hilberg estimates that the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz is probably closer to 1 million, rather than the 4 million commonly cited 2.5 million Jewish victims and 1.5 million others.

This estimate is in concurrence with that of Yehuda Bauer, the director of the division of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem. In a Sept. 27 article in the Jerusalem Post, Bauer estimated the Jewish death toll at Auschwitz to be 1.35 million.

Note that they acknowledge that the 4 million was "commonly cited," and that Hilberg is on the very low end. It says Bauer was claiming 1.35 million, which is still a bit high.

Rudolf Vrba objected strongly to Hilberg's numbers. He said something similar the Zundel trial.

“Hilberg’s estimate of 1 million killed is a gross error bordering on ignorance,” says Vrba. “According to my observations, there were 1,765,000 victims which I counted.”

Vrba estimates the total number killed in Auschwitz at roughly 2.5 million, bringing the total Holocaust death toll closer to 7.5 million.

“Yehuda Bauer simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but with his impressive title, he thinks he can throw around the figures without doing any research. Hilberg and Bauer just don’t know enough about the history of Auschwitz or the Einsatzgruppen,” Vrba says.

Vrba claims that he personally counted the 1,765,000 victims.

Another point here is that from a Jewish perspective, there is no reason to insist on 4 million at Auschwitz. Indeed, lower numbers might even be preferred since the excess would imply a large number of Gentile "exterminations" which isn't really part of the Jewish version of the story. The main reason Hilberg came up with lower numbers is that he was focused on Jews and he knew 2+ million Jews could not have been sent to Auschwitz.

[Booze]

https://archive.org/details/encyclopaed ... =auschwitz

From a different thread, I want to document this link to 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica which promotes the inflated 4 million at Auschwitz death toll. It is not easy to find full sets online, and I am lucky to have a similar set in hardcopy which also promotes 4 million.

I encourage everyone to archive material like this, both digitally and if possible given your personal circumstances, in written hardcopy format. We are only ever one step away from a digital memory hole, and resources like this are of vital importance for preservation.

Also, Encyclopedia Britannic 1972 is claiming 2 million victims at Mauthausen

[Eye of Zyclone]

As a side note, Encyclopaedia Britannica still hadn't picked a name for that Jewish myth 3 decades after the Zionists coined that name.

[Eye of Zyclone]

https://archive.org/details/encyclopaed ... =auschwitz

From a different thread, I want to document this link to 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica which promotes the inflated 4 million at Auschwitz death toll. It is not easy to find full sets online, and I am lucky to have a similar set in hardcopy which also promotes 4 million.

I encourage everyone to archive material like this, both digitally and if possible given your personal circumstances, in written hardcopy format. We are only ever one step away from a digital memory hole, and resources like this are of vital importance for preservation.

Also, Encyclopedia Britannic 1972 is claiming 2 million victims at Mauthausen

A very great achievement for a camp in which no more than 190,000 inmates (in total, not simultaneously) were ever held, isn't it?



"2,000,000 people, mostly Jews"