Exaggerated Death Tolls

Right after the war, wild numbers of inmates killed at various German wartime camps circulated in the media and among historians, often initiated by unsubstantiated or fraudulent claims, made by witnesses or official “expert reports.” The following table lists several of the better-known German camps. The second column gives the number of victims claimed immediately after the war by certain sources, the third column an approximation of the numbers claimed by the orthodoxy today, and the fourth column the post-war-exaggeration multiple.

This is followed by a column giving the death toll, that results from extant documents for the camps, where such documents are available (Auschwitz, Majdanek, Maut­hausen, Sachsenhausen, Dachau), or the maximum possible death toll considering forensic findings for camps, for which we have no documentation at all (Belzec, Chełmno, Sobibór, Treblinka). These findings give only rough upper limits of what was physically possible, but do not yield actual death-toll figures. The last column gives the exaggeration factor between the initial orthodox death-toll figure on the one hand, and the documented or maximum possible figure on the other hand.

Death-Toll Figures of Selected German Wartime Camps

	Orthodox Death Toll		Factor	Actual or Max. Toll	Factor
Camp	Initial	Today
Auschwitz	4 to 8 million	1 million	4 to 8	135,500	30-60
Bełżec	3 million	600,000	5	<100,000*	>30
Chełmno	1.3 million	150,000	9	<1,000‡	1,300
Dachau	238,000	41,000	6	27,800	9
Majdanek	2 million	78,000	26	42,200	47
Mauthausen	1 million	100,000	10	86,200	12
Sachsenhausen	840,000+	30,000	28	20,600	41
Sobibór	2 million	200,000	10	80,000+†	±25
Treblinka	3 million	800,000	4	<143,000*	>21
* based on disturbed soil volume found; † enough disturbed soil volume was found to accommodate the claimed 80,000 buried victims, but more are said to have been killed later without being buried; however, tracelessly burning those bodies would have been nearly impossible with the means and the time at the camp’s disposal; the latter is also true for Belzec and Treblinka; ‡ based on number of trees felled in the camp’s vicinity. If taking this as a measure, the numbers for Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka would be quite similar to Chełmno’s numbers.

The numbers for Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka are based on disturbed soil volume found, with the assumption, that this volume was once densely packed with corpses. However, this is only one forensic constraint that can be applied. Another constraint – the amount of firewood available to burn the corpses, as claimed by the orthodox narrative – results in much lower values for the maximum possible numbers. However, we currently have reliable data to calculate this only for the Chełmno Camp.

This is the reason why Chełmno comes out on top as the winner in this contest, with an exaggeration factor of 1,300 – between what the orthodoxy claimed at war’s end, and what forensic evidence allows, based on trees felled in the camp’s vicinity. If we took this firewood constraint into account for the other camps, the numbers for Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka would be quite similar to the numbers for the Chełmno Camp.

Currently, skeptical Holocaust scholars give only rough estimates as to the probable death tolls in those camps. For instance, they estimate about 10,000 fatalities for Sobibór, which is a factor of 200 lower than the initial orthodox estimate for that camp. For Belzec, Mattogno (2004a, page 91) argues, based on the actual evidence, for a death toll of “several thousands,” or at most, “some tens of thousands” – thus, perhaps 40,000 or 50,000. Regarding Treblinka, Thomas Kues has informally suggested a range of 20,000 to 30,000.

For Majdanek, Graf and Mattogno (2012, page 265) document a toll of nearly 28,000 Jews, among the camp’s total death toll of some 42,200 inmates. And for Auschwitz, we have a documented total death toll of about 135,500.

When considering these exaggeration factors, we must keep in mind that ‘honest’ errors, which do occur in historiography all the time, are generally random, in the sense that a numerical error could equally be too high or too low. However, with the Holocaust, it seems that there are no ‘honest errors’; in fact, all initially reported death tolls, for all the camps, have proven to be significantly too high. This strongly suggests, that the initial estimates were deliberately and systematically distorted, likely for political or ideological reasons.

We find a similar pattern when looking at the claimed mass executions by the Einsatzgruppen behind the German-Soviet front. A comparison of the execution numbers recorded in the Einsatzgruppen’s Event Reports with the death toll claimed by witnesses or Soviet investigative commission reveals that witnesses and commissions consistently inflated the numbers, often grotesquely beyond the probable death toll. (See the section “Forensic Findings” in the entry on the Einsatzgruppen.)

(For details, see the entries for each of the camps listed; for an overview of the various camps, see Dalton 2020.; for death-toll claims of other claimed crime locations and events, see their respective entry.)