by Matt Giwer, © 2007 [June]

In the year 2000 Israel said there were one million holocaust survivors still alive and many are in financial need. That number is corroborated close enough[3] by other Jewish sources. Survivor implies something escapes by the skin of one's teeth and it certainly is terrible that so many are in financial need. Cue the extortion music. [urls to official claims of this number]

As we know the average life expectancy giving a number of people alive in a year is the same as giving the percentage alive in that year to a first order approximation. In giving a number Israel also gave the percent.

The problem is the average life span in 2000 for Europeans was about 75 years.[1] The year 2000 was 55 years after the end of it.[2] So if all ages from newborn to the elderly were among the survivors then 55/75th have died since 1945 and the number alive in 2000 equals 20/75th of the number in 1945, a bit less than 1/3 of them.

Elementary algebra[4] says if there were one million alive in the year 2000 then there were 3.75 million holocaust survivors alive in 1945. That is a huge number.

But wait! There's more! [Cue Popiel slice and dice logo]

If the Nazis killed those unable to work it gets worse. Lets assume 13 years old is old enough to work. So in 1945 the youngest survivor was 13. That means it is as though there were one million survivors in the year 2012. As that is 67 years after it ended then 67/75ths have died and one million represents 8/75ths of the survivors in 1945. That means there were roughly 9.375 million holocaust survivors in 1945.

Pick any unable-to-work age you want down to newborn and still we are left with 3.5 million in 1945 as the minimum number of holocaust survivors. But if we have newborns surviving then we have a good fraction of women taking care of the children and thus not working. That weighs against the trademarked Pure Nazi Evil. Not working everyone to death stains the trademark of Pure Nazi Evil.

We must conclude the official number asserted for purposes of claiming compensation is either a lie for the purpose of extortion or there was no extermination in the holy holocaust. And if the former is a lie, lying in one leads to a reasonable assumption of lying in all and it is up to the liar to show he is not lying this time.

OTOH we can look at the 1945 Red Cross numbers for all concentration camp survivors as 120,000. That means there should be 33,000 survivors today assuming no extermination of those unable to work. Assuming extermination of those unable to work as under 13 we have roughly 10,000 survivors. If we expand camp survivors to those who survived by hiding either their identity or physically perhaps the number can be doubled or even tripled before one cannot keep a straight face saying it.

Norman Finkelstein quotes his mother as asking, If all of these people are survivors, who did Hitler kill?

I can add to her consternation. Every conceivable modification to the data short of a fountain of youth for holocaust survivors, short of increasing their life expectancy, increases the number of survivors in 1945. Even a million survivors in 1945 (no one died in 55 years) begs the question of what does holocaust mean.

In a larger context we can look at the distribution of Jews in Europe during WWII and at its maximum expansion only 3 to 4 million Jews lived under Nazi rule. Taking the official number of one million without extermination of those unable to work we have every Jew who was at any time under Nazi rule claiming to be a holocaust survivor. So again, who did Hitler kill? [url to jewish 1938 population figures produced by Jews not knowing the later mythology was coming]


1] Life expectancy in 1945 was on the order of 67 years overall for Europe but included unsanitary eastern Europe of about 10 years shorter where most of this holocaust is supposed to have happened. However this changes nothing as those who had the poor lifestyle as young adults in eastern Europe would be dead before 2000 even if they had a 75 year life expectancy in 1945. This 75 year life expectancy applies mainly to the youngest in 1945. On average it applies to those 20 and younger in 1945.

[2] The first approximation rule of demographics is there an equal number in all age groups. To make it easy, say the population is 75 million. That would mean 1 million aged 0-1, 1 million age 1-2 and so forth up to 1 million aged 74-75. Of course no population is a first order approximation. But all the interesting aspects of demographics are departures from this ideal. For purposes of this discussion the only interest is the Z-shaped curve around the average life expectancy. These days the Z-curve has a large number living much longer than the average but in fact there is an equally large number dying before the average age. If it were otherwise the average life expectancy would increase so the same considerations are always true. They are kept true by moving the baseline. It is also true that 75 is not good for all European countries but it is close enough for this exercise.

[3] In this case "close enough" means there is no official source of the number rather there is a ballpark range of numbers that different groups adopt as the true number.

[4]

20
-- X population-in-1945 = 1,000,000
75

75
population-in-1945 = 1,000,000 X --
20