81 Compiling Estimates of the Numbers Exterminated (Holocaust: Reinhard)
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This article is from the Holocaust FAQ, by Ken McVay kmcvay@nizkor.org with numerous contributions by others.
81 Compiling Estimates of the Numbers Exterminated (Holocaust: Reinhard)
"The exact number of Jews who were deported to the Operation Reinhard
death camps is difficult to determine because of the prevailing
conditions at the time and the method employed by the Nazi
extermination machine in expelling the victims to Belzec, Sobibor and
Treblinka. The number of Jews who lived in the towns and townships
of Poland before the war is known from the population census carried
out there in 1931. Some demographic changes took place during the
years 1931-1939, but these did not basically alter the number of Jews
living there on the eve of the German occupation.
Substantial demographic changes did occur during the war, during the
years 1939-1945, until the onset of the deportations to the death
camps. In these years, tens of thousands of Jews escaped from one
place to seek refuge in another. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were
expelled and resettled, sent to labor camps, or concentrated in larger
ghettos. Thousands of Jews were murdered in shooting Aktionen in the
vicinity of their homes -- before, during, and after the deportations
to the death camps. Thus, on the eve of the expulsions, there were
many small localities in which Jews no longer lived and other
localities in which the number of Jews was much higher than before
the war.
The deportation method, as carried out by the German authorities in
the General Government, was 'en masse', without lists of names or
even exact numbers. Usually ghettos were totally liquidated, and
only the killing capacity of the camps and the volume of the trains
dictated the number of people who were deported. In places where
some Jews were temporarily left behind, the Germans counted the few
who remained, while all the others were pushed into the trains.
Documents of the German railway authorities, which were found after
the war, provided some data on the number of trains and freight cars.
If we take into account that each fully packed freight car carried
100-150 people, we can arrive at an approximate indication of the
number of Jews in each transport.
Another source of information was the census of the ghetto
inhabitants carried out by the Judenrats in some of these places. A
census of this type was usually taken by order of the German
authorities for purposes of forced-labor requests or in preparation
for the deportations. Sometimes the Judenrats also took a census for
their own purposes ... food rationing or housing problems.
Documents containing these data and sometimes even the number of Jews
who were deported, as collected by the Judenrat, were found after the
war. Sometimes they were mentioned in diaries written by ghetto
inmates and left behind.
Numerous memoirs written by survivors, as well as the memorial books
(Yizkor books, text from two are available from our server (see
pub/holocaust/poland/wlodawa and ~/ostrow), contain important data
about the deportations, including dates and the number of deported.
Testimonies by survivors, statements by local people who witnessed
the deportations, and evidence given by members of the German
administration at the war crimes trials serve as significant sources
of information.
Together, all these documents and sources enable us to arrive at an
estimation that comes very close to the actual figures and dates of
the deportations to the Operation Reinhard death camps." (Arad,
381-382)
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