OT Zeev,
I follow your numbers better than Charters', but are you taking into account emigration? Many jews made it out, to the US, Britain, etc. Of course they would not show up on any post-war census in the ravaged countries. I'm not sure you can just subtract before and after censuses and get a reliable Nazi murder number. Also, the jewish and non-jewish population endured other (non-genocide) sources of mortality, such as diseases, collateral damage from bombing, starvation, etc. and I think your estimate needs to adjust for those also.
One million, five million, eight million, it's all still genocide, but if estimates are to be used they need to be good ones, or the denial community just gets more fodder for their odious mill.
I'm glad you also gave the personal accounts. There's nothing more convincing than talking to an eyewitness to genocide. Some years ago, my wife's grandmother told me of her childhood during the Armenian genocide. Her father, mother, and three siblings were "eliminated" by the Turks when she was nine. They came door to door for the Armenians in the night. She ran, alone and crying, down a road to another village, and miraculously was taken in by a Turkish family and hidden until after WWI, and ultimately was able to emigrate to the States.
Nowadays, many a Turk will tell you that nothing happened then at all, nothing at all. Let them tell her that.
John |
