[PeterG]

Originally Posted by Owen D

We are told that 6 million Jews died in the camps.

There seems to me to be some confusion here. I have never heard any historian of repute claim that 6 million Jews died in the death camps. The six million figure includes those gassed in the extermination camps, it is not the number who died there.

Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biographer and author of The Holocaust - The Jewish Tragedy, is an excellent authority on this. He says

The onslaught upon Jewish life in Europe continued without respite for nearly four years. At its most intense moments, during the autumn of 1941, and again during the summer and autumn of 1942, many thousands of Jews were killed every day. By the time Nazi Germany had been defeated, as many as six million of Europe's eight million Jews had been slaughtered: if the killing had run its course, the horrific figure would have been even higher

The death camps, such as Auschwitz and Belzec, horrific and productive of mass-murder though they were, were only part of the Holocaust. The ghettos and the many punitive camps (Straflager) also contributed to the ghastly toll, as did the mobile Einsatzgruppen.

For example, there were Einsatzgruppen killing sites at Tallinn in Estonia; Riga and Liepaja in Latvia; Rokiskis, Kaunas, and Vilnius in Lithuania; and eleven main ones in occupied USSR, from Minsk to Vinnitsa. The Einsatzgruppen were police units and they kept meticulous records. Here is a typical Jäger report for a single location in a single week:

Date:12.9.41 Location: Vilnius shot: 993 Jews, 1,670 Jewesses, 771 Jewish children. Total: 3,334.
Date:17.9.41 Location: Vilnius shot: 337 Jews, 687 Jewesses, 247 Jewish children; and 4 Communists. Total: 1,271.

The death camps simply put these murders on a more efficient and industrial scale.

Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz, in his autobiography professed to be uncertain of the number killed in the Auschwitz gas chambers, but gave a reliable estimate:

During previous interrogations I have put the number of Jews who arrived at Auschwitz for extermination at two and a half million. This figure was supplied to me by Eichmann who gave it to my superior officer, Gruppenführer Glücks, when he was ordered to make a report to the Richsführer SS shortly before Berlin was surrounded. (Page 193)

Note, this figure refers exclusively to Auschwitz.