| One of the problems that historians had between liberation and the fall of communism (i.e. 145 and 1989/90) was access to the Soviet archives, which was crucial as most of the killings occurred in the East. During that period, it was indeed the case that population discrepancies, along with information provided by the Soviets, and the few documents available in the West, were used to compile the stastics.
Another factor was the actual quality of research carried out. The interest in the Holocaust (other than in the general perception of the crimes of the Nazis) did not emerge until the 1980s as a serious academic discipline. Part of this was political and part of this was the sheer enormity of the subject. Most survivors did not want to talk about their experiences, and only started opening up once they reached old age. As attacks on people like Waldheim and Primo Levi show, a lot of people were resistant to hearing about the "past".
The Auschwitz plaque is an example of how further study "corrects" perceived knowledge. However, what the site that you cite, Owen, doesn't state is that the plaque is for the main camp, and it is only over the last couple of decades that intensive research has allowed us to understand how many subsidary camps were linked to it, but were run semi-independently. Gilbert's "Atlas of the Holocaust" shows this. |