Callafangers wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 12:26 am
ConfusedJew wrote: ↑Sun May 04, 2025 12:14 am
For the sake of staying on track, I'll refocus this to the demographic collapse because I can't possibly figure out a way how you guys could reasonably explain that away.
If you're talking about the impression of Jews 'disappearing', then you are talking about post-war and wartime
diffusion and
dispersion. Jewish movement was extraordinary throughout this period, with Jews sifting through thousands of camps across Europe and then typically leaving Europe into any of some 60+ different countries around the world, typically with no means whatsoever to contact 'lost' relatives whom they mutually assumed had been 'gassed'.
If this is not what you're referring to, do elaborate.
Yes, this is what I'm talking about but diffusion and dispersion can't account for the reported drop in population of 2/3 of the European Jewish population (6 million).
Here's what I see are the problems with the dispersion and diffusion hypothesis.
Six million Jews from Europe disappeared from 1939 to 1945. There's no documentation of millions arriving in new countries between 1941–45. It doesn't explain the massive depopulation of entire Jewish communities (e.g., Warsaw, Vilna, Salonika). Allied search efforts after the war were unable to find any trace of most deportees. If people had survived the war, they would be counted in censuses or community rosters around the world. There was no major demographic rebound of Jews. The historical documentation confirms deportation to killing centers, not resettlement or migration.
Dispersion is not supported by population records, migration data, or survivor research. The claim requires millions to disappear silently, with no arrival records, no new communities, and no family contact, which is implausible and contradicted by primary evidence.
Take Poland for example. Three million Jews disappeared from Poland and there were no records of millions of Jews fleeing Poland and entering other countries during 1941–45. No postwar Polish-speaking Jewish enclaves appearing elsewhere that could absorb even a fraction of 3 million people. Relief organizations like the Red Cross, HIAS, and the Jewish Agency had global reach and never recovered these missing people. Postwar census records in North America, Latin America, Palestine/Israel, and the USSR do not show a mysterious influx that could account for the missing millions. Of the 3.3 million Polish Jews documented at the beginning of the war, only 250,000 were found after the war.
Many of my ancestors came from Poland and a few of them emigrated to the US before the war started but many stayed behind and were killed.