Archie wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 2:10 am
Rabbi
Michael Dov Weissmandl (the man behind the Vrba-Wetzler report),
May 1944
“
Till now six times a million Jews have Europe and Russia have been destroyed.” (Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader, pg. 327)
“And you, our brothers in all free countries; and you, governments of all free lands, where are you? What are you doing to hinder the carnage that is now going on?
Already 6,000,000 Jews have been massacred and this number is increasing by ten thousands every day.” (WRB Archives, material sent with Vrba-Wetzler material)
Now. Bombsaway. This guy is on record multiple times in May 1944 saying that six million Jews HAD died.
Past tense. With earlier examples that say X million Jews in peril or whatever you can maybe wriggle out of it by saying it's generic and not that relevant. But do you honestly not see the problem here? Do you really not see why it's a problem for them to be using the number in the middle of the war?
And this is not an isolated example.
Joel Brand was also using the number in
June 1944. Below is from his interview with Moshe Shertok.
“Similarly, the Nazis believed that by offering to release the remaining 2,000,000 Jews, they might get away with
the killing of 6,000,000.”
“Please believe me: they
have killed six million Jews; there are only two million left alive.”
Ilya Ehrenberg, 22 Dec 1944 (Soviet War News)
“In regions they seized, the Germans killed all the Jews, from the old folk to infants in arms. Ask any German prisoner why his fellow countrymen annihilated six million innocent people, and he will reply quite simply: ‘Why, they were Jews.’”
So that is at least three different very notable people saying in 1944 that six million Jews had already died. And fairly recently there was a discovery of an example from January 1944 of a rabbi saying in a newspaper article that six million
had died. That is the earliest past tense example that I am aware of.
In January 1945, Jacob Lestchinsky published an estimate that six million Jews had died. This might be the earliest that had any
purported statistical basis. Need I again state the obvious and say that this is too early for any reliable statistics to have been calculated?
“6,000,000 Jews Dead: Jacob Lestchinsky Estimates Reduction in Europe Since ‘39,” NYT, 8 Jan 1945, pg. 17
Jacob Robinson, June 1945, meeting with Justice Jackson
How great were those losses? inquired Jackson, seeking a figure to use at the coming trial. 'Six million,' responded Dr Robinson, and indicated that the figure included Jews in all Nazi-occupied lands 'from the Channel to Stalingrad.'
Jackson noted that day:
I was particularly interested in knowing the source and reliability of his estimate as I know no authentic data on it. (David Irving, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, pg. 62)
Sydney Gruson, reports from Zionists in London, Aug/Sep 1945. These example are also pre-Nuremberg and they show that the number was well-established in British circles as well.
About 1,500,000 Jews are left in Europe outside the Soviet Union. Six million have perished at the hands of the Nazis. Palestine is the only hope for the ones who are left, the Zionists declare, and they must be given the chance to go without delay. "It cannot be expected, Dr. Weizmann said, "that a people should look with equanimity on the agony of their brothers who survived so fearful a holocaust. (NYT, 4 Aug 1945)
Loss of six million Jews during the war has made extremists of all Zionists in the sense that they do not believe that there can be any more delay in establishing a Jewish homeland, and that their demands are considerate in proportion to Jewry's sacrifices in the war and its contribution to the United Nations' war effort. (NYT, 2 Sep 1945)
The only honest argument that can be made here is that these people were guesstimating and coincidentally got the "correct" answer.
