The 'Final Solution'
Image: a Star of David badge produced for use in France or Belgium; the artifact is cut from a bold of yellow fabric onto which the star was printed. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Historians will never know exactly how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust; good-faith estimates have varied widely according to the method employed to establish them and with the information available to historians. Two main methods are available: direct estimates, based on the adding up of victim counts from each of the killing sites; and the indirect method of statistical comparison, in which census data from before the Holocaust are compared with the numbers of survivers still living in 1945. Neither method is unproblematic: the one is plagued by incomplete or misleading documentation; the other by the fact that not every census-taking country operated with the same social and religious definitions. Still, most scholars working with reasonably complete and reliable data have arrived at estimates ranging between 5.29 million, at a minimum, and slightly more than 6 million.
The following chart reproduces
Raul Hilberg's estimates of the mortality at each of the principle killing
centers, and is augmented by the somewhat higher estimates of Ino Arndt,
Wolfgang Scheffler, and Henry Friedlander.
| Camp | Origin of Victims | Period of Killing | Number Killed (Low) | Number Killed (High) |
| Chelmno | Wartheland district (Poland; annexed to Germany)
Germany, via Lodz ghetto |
December 1941-March 1943;
June-July 1944 |
150,000 | 152,000 |
| Belzec | Galicia
Krakow district (Poland) |
March-December 1942 | 550,000 | 600,000 |
| Sobibor | Lublin district (Poland)
Netherlands Slovakia Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia France Minsk |
April-June 1942;
October 1942-October 1943 |
200,000 | 250,000 |
| Treblinka | Warsaw district (Poland)
Radom district (Poland) Bialystok district (Poland, annexed to Germany) Lublin district (Poland) Macedonia-Thrace Germany Theresienstadt |
July 1942-October 1943 | 750,000 | 900,000 |
| Lublin-Majdanek | Warsaw district (Poland)
Lublin district (Poland) |
September 1942-September 1943;
November 1943 |
50,000 | 60,000-80,000 |
| Auschwitz-Birkenau | Hungary
Bialystok district (Poland, annexed to Germany) Wartheland district (Poland; annexed to Germany) Upper Silesia (Germany) East Prussia (Germany) France Netherlands Greece Theresienstadt Slovakia Belgium Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Italy Croatia Norway |
February 1942-November 1944 | 1,000,000 | 1,100,000 |
The following graph, derived from data compiled by Raul Hilberg, indicates where the genocide against the European Jews was carried out:
Source: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985); Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimensionen des Völkermordes: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1991).