The research on the number of victims of the camp

The transcript of the podcast

Dr. Piotr Sietkiewicz, Head of the Musuem Research Center talks about the history of the research on the number of Auschwitz victims.

Today the historical research says that during the existence of Auschwitz approximately 1.3 million people were deported to the camp and the number of victims is estimated to 1.1 million, the majority of the victims were Jewish people but right after the war the public learned about completely different numbers. The numbers given then circulated around four million victims, so what is the reasons for the difference between the state of research today and the situation right after the war, right after the liberation of Auschwitz?

It was not clear at the beginning, how many people perished in Auschwitz. Testimonies of prisoners who survived the war, were liberated in Western part of Germany, that was before the end of the war, we can find information about millions of victims and interestingly, not only these testimonies but also in accounts by SS guards who were found by Allie investigation officers in the POW camps in the Western part of the country. So, they also testified about three, four, even more, million people who were murdered in Auschwitz. Most probably, these numbers circulated somehow in the camp during the war. That’s quite obvious, that people wished to know how many prisoners were murdered. But that was in Poland, in Auschwitz, after the liberation when initially the Soviet and later also Polish authorities began to look for a credible number of victims of Auschwitz. First of all, the members of the Soviet Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of Nazi crimes, appeared at the site of the former camp most immediately after the liberation. They began to ask the survivors all those people who may have certain knowledge about for example the crematoria, and the operation of the gas chambers. How many could have died in the camp? And their estimates were similar which were millions of victims. The people of this commission came to the conclusion that simply the prisoners themselves did not know the accurate numbers. So, they decided to adapt a more scientific approach. Mainly, they wished to estimate the total number of victims of Auschwitz on the basis of the efficiency of crematoria in Auschwitz and Birkenau, so they stated that because the second crematorium was operational for a certain time, and could burn approximately a certain number of bodies, therefore, the total number of victims of Auschwitz camp should be about 5.2 million of people. However, they also added that because there were some breaks in the operation of the crematoria and sometimes the transports with newly arriving Jews to the camp did not reach Auschwitz, so, therefore, most probably the number of four million victims is to be the most credible. This opinion, this report was published by the Soviet newspaper in May 1945 and of course it was also published in the Polish media and consequently in all over Europe and the United States and it became the number that they repeated many times in the period after the war in the late forties and the fifties.

Also, this number of approximately four million victims is also at the beginning somehow supported by the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, who also testified in Nuremberg about the activity of Auschwitz.

He testified initially that almost four million people died in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, when he was waiting for his trial in Poland and when he was asked about it by Polish prosecutors, he changed his opinion about it, saying that, well the number of four million victims I heard from Adolf Eichmann, however, I believe that on the basis of my own estimation and the numbers regarding the major deportation actions to Auschwitz, that four million, this is number is highly overinflated. Then he gave the detailed numbers of the Jews who were brought to Auschwitz from France, from Belgium, from Hungary and if we sum up these numbers it gives in the result about one million, more than one million of victims. However, first this number was not considered by Polish X 6:01 and public opinion credible and all the same was the similar estimation done by the member of the Jewish Historical Commission in Bonn who stated that four million of victims in Auschwitz, supposedly given by Höss in his interrogations in Western Germany, is not credible, that assuming how many Jews live for example in Poland before the war and how many of them perished in the ghettos, were murdered in the extermination camps like Treblinka. So, this number, the people murdered in Auschwitz cannot be so high and as it was estimated by the historians from this commission it would be more or less on the level of 1.5, 1.3 million of victims. However, of course this was not repeated by official media and for many years, particularly on the other side of the iron curtain the iconic number of four million people murdered in Auschwitz could be found in the newspapers, in the textbooks and so on.

Before we move to other methods of research that help to get to the most probable number of victims of Auschwitz on the basis of documents, let’s take a look at the method that the Soviet commission adapted, just to calculate the number of victims based on the efficiency of the crematoria. It also does not seem to be correct.

Basically, I do not think that such methods could give us reliable results. First of all, the Soviets calculated that for example crematorium number two or three could theoretically burn approximately 3000 people. These assumptions were made on the basis of the testimonies by survivors. However, in the sixties, the Soviets showed a document that was taken by members of the Soviet commission from Auschwitz to Moscow and that was a report of the Zentrale Bauleitung, the construction office of the Auschwitz concentration camp after completing the construction of all crematoria in Birkenau. In this report the SS architects and engineers estimated that theoretical efficiency of those crematoria, for example number two or three would be 1440 bodies a day. In practical terms nobody knows how many bodies could be burned in this crematorium, maybe even more, assuming that many of the victims were children. Nevertheless, the author of these estimations seems to forget about the simple fact, that many bodies, as we estimate today that might have been about 40 percent, were burned not in the crematoria but burning pits, particularly in 1942 and also a large number in the summer of 1944, with the beginning of the so-called Hungarian action or Hössaktion. So, this method cannot be considered as credible.

You mentioned one other method used by the Central Jewish Historical Commission that analysed simply the demographic of people who lived in Poland before the war and later the result of the war and then in 1960s we can see the new research published in the West, based on a different method which seems to be much more accurate.

The historians and the prosecutors in these early years after the war had no material or the sources to make that more credible or more accurate estimations. And only gradually that became possible with opening of the archives in different countries, with particularly, with information about the number of people who were deported to Auschwitz, from such countries, for example like France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Bohemia or Slovakia. More or less, I believe that at the beginning of sixties it was possible to, on the basis of these documents make a credible estimation and that had been done by Raul Hilberg who in 1960 published a book about the Holocaust in which he gave the number of victims of Auschwitz at a level of about one million of Jews who perished here. And that became the basis of other estimations. More and more documents became viable and finally at the end of eighties and beginning of nineties two historians made credible estimations, particularly about those transports of Jews who were brought to Auschwitz from the Western part of Europe. That was Mr Georges Wellers from France and particularly the Polish scholar Franciszek Piper former head of the Research Department at the Museum who estimated that assuming all these data from archives and Western Europe particularly, but also assuming that we know more or less what happened to those Jews who lived in Poland before the war. So, when he summed up all this data, he found out that number of 1.1 million victims of Auschwitz as most probable.

Franciszek Piper was the head of the Research Centre of the Auschwitz Memorial, we need to remember that before 1990 because of the political situation the museum actually could not publish the research on the number of victims; the four million was protected by the censorship of the communist regime. Finally, in 1990 he was able to publish the research. When we look at his work, what can we say about the method that he used and the challenges that he had when trying to establish, get to the estimations of the numbers of victims of Auschwitz?

That was even possible to a certain extend to talk about the numbers of the deportees but only in the certain limits of space and time. For example, the words published in museum in sixties, seventies, you can find information about the deportation actions of Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz from certain countries. And in these articles, numbers are more or less, can be considered proper. The only problem was to give the total number of victims of Auschwitz in the media and to change this number in popular consciousness in Poland. People practically did the same as all the scholars from Western Europe, in some cases however he was more careful about the details and his estimations regarding the number of Polish Jews, seems to be much more accurate than the others. It had never been a problem in the most recent years with the estimating the number of Jews who were brought to Auschwitz from France for example, because we know how many transports with Jews were sent to Auschwitz because those transportation lists survived, with the names of these peoples with numbers, the dates. So, we have this clear. On the other hand, we also know what happened with other Jews who lived in France before the war. So, some of them were killed somehow, some of them managed to survive the war, some of them were brought to other German concentration and extermination camps. So, we know for sure with a curiousity and satisfactionary for a historian, how many Jews could be sent to Auschwitz and how many of them perished in the camp. And there is this similar situation with Jews who lived in Holland, we know what happened to the others. Those who managed to survive the country, who escaped from Holland to France and so on. So, these numbers are fully credible and accepted by practically all scholars all around the world. In case of Greece, we have a large collection of railway tickets that were issued by the German railways and assuming how many of these tickets were issued for the transport of Jews from Greece, we know how many Jews were brought to Auschwitz from this country. And aspect of Jews from Hungary, again, we know how many of them were brought here for example on the basis of the reports of the German embassy from Budapest and reports by the head of Hungarian gendarmes and there are many other sources that differed in certain respects, nevertheless, numbers are more or less accurate and quite similar. So, the only problem is estimating the number of Polish Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, that was caused by the fact, that such a list of the deportees did not survive. However, there are many other methods of calculating these numbers. For example, we do not know how many Jews from the ghettos in Zagłębie basin were brought to Auschwitz in particular transports in the summer of 1942. Nevertheless, we know the total number of those Jews who simply disappear somehow from the statistics in the ghettos. So, therefore, we are able to say that between mid-May and August of this year around 30,000 Jews from these ghettos perished in Auschwitz.

One challenge is to research the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and try to find the number of those who were murdered in gas chambers because we know much more about how many of them were registered in the camp as we have the numbers issued by the camp administration. But it seems to be another challenge to talk about the victims of Auschwitz as a concentration camp in terms of: Who was murdered in Auschwitz, who perished in Auschwitz? But many of the people who became prisoners of Auschwitz were later transported to other camps and research on their fate is another challenge.

The most difficult for historians was always the estimated numbers of deportees to the camp. It was much easier to say how many perished immediately after the arrival in the gas chambers because these people were those who were not registered in the camp, we know how many were registered because practically all prisoners of Auschwitz camp who became the regular prisoners of Auschwitz were being registered by the camp administration. We know the total number of slightly over 400,000 numbers issued by the SS in the camp, so, that was the number of those deportees who became prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camps and avoided to be selected at the ramp. There are many methods to estimate the number of prisoners who were registered and who were killed in Auschwitz. First of all, we get a certain number of death certificates issued by the camp administration of registers from the morgue in the camp. Many documents that constitute a certain base for such calculations. Then we know, more or less, how many people were released from the camp, a small number in the beginning of the existence of Auschwitz. Then how many of them escaped from Auschwitz, how many were liberated at the site when the Russian forces entered and which is more important, how many Auschwitz prisoners were transferred to other camps in Germany. Those who were registered and not transferred, escaped or liberated, this is the number of victims; those prisoners were the killed from the amount of the registered ones.

You said that we probably should not put too much blame on the very early either Soviet commission or researchers because they did not have access to documents, they really imagined that the numbers that they give are credible, although of course we can find inaccuracies in their research method. But today there are groups of people who know exactly what is the state of research and what is the number backed by documents and analysis by historians all around the world and, yet, they claim that the number of victims is either too small or too big.

Sometimes that resulted from certain political believes, the prejudice, antisemitism in some cases. There are people who believe that the Holocaust did not exist at all, that the Jews who were brought to Auschwitz, whose names can be found on the transportation lists, did not really die in Auschwitz and when we ask them: “So what happened with those Jews?”, so they answer that: “Well, they possible were taken away from Auschwitz and they survived the war somewhere in the Soviet territories under in Soviet Russia. They emigrated to Israel, and they changed their names. They are not scientific arguments at all, and it is very difficult to discuss with deniers of the Holocaust of course. And on the other hand they are the people who believe for example that the total number of Poles who perished, who were murdered during the Second World War must be higher. They compare the results of the pre-war census of 1939 when it was estimated that the total population of Poland was thirty-five million citizens with the census of 1946, so the difference is about eleven million, so what happened to these people? They answer that, well, they probably had to be here somehow, most probably in Auschwitz, so, that in fact the number of victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp must be higher. They also propose some new methods for estimating the number of victims, for example, they are going back to the estimations done by the Soviet commissions and the so-called Question of Efficiency of Crematoria. Then they also believe that it is possible to estimate the number of victims on the basis of certain calculations of findings that, as they believe, should be done in Birkenau in the forests near the camp. They thought that the human ashes that could be found there could be measured somehow, in terms of how many cubic metres of ashes are still in Birkenau. Then assuming that the average weight of the ashes of one person is so-and-so, so on the basis of this it is possible to calculate how many people were murdered. However, we know that it cannot be the base for such calculations, apart from the moral point of view – But in practical terms it is impossible because we know that, as a rule, the ashes for the crematoria were being transported on the bank of the Sola River and pushed down from the tracks immediately into the water. So, the ashes physically did not survive, and it is not possible to find places which constitute a base for such calculations and excavations.

We have the numbers. Some 1.3 million people deported, some 1.1 million murdered. Approximately 85% of deportees were Jews, approximately 90% of victims were Jews. But still, we use the word some, approximately. Is there still a research challenge when we talk about the numbers and are we still able to conduct research that will help us to narrow it to some margin and get to the more and more precise numbers?

Perhaps yes, it is still possible that there is somewhere in a certain archive in the world a document, or certain collection of documents, that might be helpful with our perhaps digitalisation works done in the archive in the former centre of the Red Cross in Arolsen which helps somehow in precising these numbers, however, I do not think that these changes could be substantial to a certain extent that we would be able to change dramatically this number of victims of Auschwitz. Some people say that the Soviets probably have more documents which might be important in this sort of estimations. However, the problem is that nobody till today was able to locate such documents. We do not know even if such documents ever existed. Well, we are ready to accept these minor changes and it is simply obvious that in the course of time it was possible to verify certain numbers, estimations about certain transports for example, we know that some more people were brought to Auschwitz from Hungary, survived the selection in Auschwitz. However, there were some other cases with transports which had not been taken into account by the historians before and we know now that there were more Jews who were deported to Auschwitz in general in certain actions. In case of Polish prisoners for example, I do not think that we have to change these numbers because they are much more precise. Practically, all Polish prisoners who were brought to Auschwitz were registered and became the regular prisoners of Auschwitz concentration camp.