Philosophical Vegan Forum

Regardless of whether 2, 3 or 6 million jews were killed it was an awful atrocity. However, after reading a bit about how the world settled on the six million figure I have my doubts of its accuracy. During the last 70 years, it seems that any intellectual who has dared to challenge the accuracy of this number has automatically been branded as racist or antisemitic.

edit, grammar.

I've never heard the 6 million figure. I thought the consensus was 2 million. Am I wrong? Can't look it up right now.

Regardless, doubting whether it where 2 or 6 million is not denial; you fully acknowledge it happened and it was horrible. 2 million is not a small number.

miniboes wrote:I've never heard the 6 million figure. I thought the consensus was 2 million. Am I wrong?

Six million is the figure given in school text books around the world.

It's difficult to count, since we're dealing with death and displacement.
We're also dealing with Nazi records: can we trust them? The six million number comes from an SS officer.
Could any of the death camps have over-reported numbers to make themselves look more efficient? Or reported non-Jewish deaths as Jewish? It's not impossible. I'm inclined to trust the number because it's coming from an official source, and we don't have anything better. There's no point in being skeptical just for the sake of being skeptical.

Since 1945, the most commonly cited figure for the total number of Jews killed has been six million. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, writes that there is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed,[321] but has been able to find documentation of more than three million names of Jewish victims killed,[322] which it displays at its visitors center. The figure most commonly used is the six million attributed to Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official.[323]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Jewish

Anything under three million, given that there's documentation including names, seems implausible.
Since there's less than an order of magnitude of difference between 3 and 6 million, it's not an unusual range.

This is also complicated by what we count as a death from the holocaust. Do we count the 800,000 or more who died from starvation and disease from being crammed into ghettos? Or only those killed in the death camps?
You can define the deaths in such a way to get a very wide range of answers.

Either way it's horrible, so the question is mostly academic. Remember that there were also some five million others killed, including gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled. And then the deaths from famine caused by the war itself. The total death toll is probably well over 20 million.

I'm going to stick with 6 million, because it's the best answer we have from an official source, and many other estimates are in the same general range.

Sorry to revive to old thread, but I've just noticed it.

I've seen some people take this as Holocaust denial. I saw on the internet once, some guy said something "Hey, maybe the death count in the Holocaust was a bit over-exaggerated?", a comment which was heavily criticized. People called the bloke a Holocaust denying Victim Blamer (Which I heard is just a dumb buzzword). Why? He just said "Hey, maybe the numbers are slightly off?", he didn't say that it didn't happen. I have no opinion on the numbers, but the guy isn't denying it! He's just saying something may be out of line. The people who accused him of being a Holocaust denier are either using a false dichotomy or a guilt by association fallacy (not sure which, but it could be both).

Just saying, those people do exist.

It's a problem when people can't have sensible discussions about issues like these without being accused of an extreme. It becomes very polarizing, and if they are mistaken is makes it impossible for them to be corrected since they aren't allowed to discuss it with others.

The race realism thing is a similar issue.