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As requested, here is the source for the reduced numbers of deaths in Auschwitz: “Auschwitz: The Final Count” by Vivian Bird (anthology). Again, if 6,000,000 Jews died in concentration camps and the 4,000,000 deaths from Auschwitz are included in that number, then the final number of deaths during the Holocaust cannot remain at 6,000,000! The same is true for the revised number of deaths in Buchenwald from 300.000 to 30,000. Source for Buchenwald revised numbers will be provided in my next post.

Barnes Book Review of Vivian Bird's anthology: Auschwitz: The Final Count

"On April 18, 1945, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, The New York Times reported that 4 million people died at Auschwitz. This “fact” was reported over and over again during the next half-century, without being questioned.

However, on January 26, 1995, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, both The Washington Post and The New York Times itself reported that the Polish authorities had determined that, at most, 1.5 million people (of all races and religions)-not “4 million”-died at Auschwitz of all causes, including natural causes.

Yet this was not the first time this drastically reduced figure appeared in the major media. Almost five years previously, on July 17, 1990, The Washington Times reprinted a brief article from The London Daily Telegraph. That article stated: Poland has cut its estimate of the number of people killed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz death camp from 4 million to just over 1 million . . . The new study could rekindle the controversy over the scale of Hitler’s “final solution” . . .

Franciszek Piper, director of the historical committee of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, said yesterday that, according to recent research, at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, of whom about 223,000 survived. The 1.1 million victims included 960,000 Jews, between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, nearly all of the 23,000 Gypsies sent to the camp and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.

Shmuel Krakowsky, head of research at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, said the new Polish figures were correct: “The 4 million figure was let slip by Capt. Rudolf Hoess, the death camp’s Nazi commander. Some have bought it, but it was exaggerated.” . . . [P]laques commemorating the deaths of 4 million victims were removed from the Auschwitz museum earlier this month.

This detail of history was intriguing, since, after all, history books had said for a generation that of the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust, 4 million died at Auschwitz alone. Thus, if the new facts were correct, the actual overall number of Jewish Holocaust victims had to be considerably less than the much-talked-about figure of 6 million. Put simply: subtract the former 4 million Jews dead at Auschwitz from the popular 6 million, and that leaves 2 million Jews dead. Simple math-and a controversial conclusion indeed.

The book features a fascinating introduction by Bird exploring the little-known but thoroughly documented phenomenon in which the numbers of the official Auschwitz “death toll” have plummeted from a “high” of 9,000,000 dead to a rock bottom of 73,137 (of whom 38,031 were Jews). And readers will note that of the 26 widely varying figures cited by Bird, all come from a variety of “responsible” and mainstream sources."

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