[Vermillion]

Originally Posted by Nantoz

Actualy about 10-12 million died in the death camps. including - but not limitied to - about 6 million jews. I find it somewhat strange that the massive amounts of romani, serbs, russians, slavs, communists, homosexuals and whatnot that were killed or worked to death so often are left out.

This is turning into a massive aside, and I freely admit my contribution to that trend, but some facts need to be corrected here.

Firstly, common mistake so no harm/ no foul: Probably about 3-4 million people died in the death camps, the single largest death toll being betwen 1.8 and 2.5 million at auschwitz birkenau. There were only 6 death camps, while there were about 180 concentration camps located throughout Germany and occupied Europe, mostly Poland. When people refer to the holocaust, they tend to means deaths from murder/ work or privation from all sources, but the 6 death camps at best accounted for a third of all holocaust dead.

At various concentration camps, people were worked to death, and deaths increased s the end of the war drew closer, but they paled in comparaison to the 6 death camps whose primary purpose was not labour, but simple extrmination. Dachau, which is often, and erroniously referred to as a death camp, was in fact a concentration camp and only (can you say 'only' in a case like this?) about 31,000 people died there. The concentration camps add a million or more deaths to the totals of the 6 death camps.

The rest of the deaths were the result of a combination of elements, the main three being the Einsatzgruppen, mobile death vans and arbitrary killings by Whermacht and SS troops as a matter of course.

The Einsatzgruppen are of course the worst, mobile killing squads that came in after the troops and exterminated millions by shooting. At Babi-Yar alone outside Kiev 100,000 jews, Soviet POWs and Gypsies were killed. The Einsatzgruppen are responsible for between 2-3 million deaths themselves. Then we can add a million Soveit POWs deliberatly killd by starvation in 1941 anbd early 1942, before the German labour shortage forced them to be kept alive for slave labour, and then about another million arbitrary killings by SS and Wehrmacht troops in the course of the war, generally following the infamous 'Commisar order' and 'military justice decree' of 1941 which allowed atrocities to take place in the regular army without punishment.

Total victims of the Holocaust, about 10-11 million, of which 5.5-6 million were jews, and 2.5-3 million were Soviet POWs. The remainder, about 1.5 million, were political prisoners, enemies of the state (including communists) and anti-socials, mentally and physically handicapped (about 130,000 killed before the war by Euthenasia squads), and homosexuals and gypsies. It is worth adding that not that many homosexuals were killed, not because they were not avidly persecuted (they were) but because it is much easier to hide your sexuality. The Roma and Sinti Gypsies were also heavily targeted, but their small starting numbers mean probably about 200,000 slain at most.

Notably, Serbian and Bosnian dead are genarally not counted in the total, because they were not victims of the German holocaust, instead being victims of the equally evil if poorly organised croatian Ustasa.


Oh, and as an answer to the whole (hopefully joking) depopulation comment, its not that wrong. During WWII about 2.5% of humanity was killed, including deaths from all sources.