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By Jonas E. Alexis & Thomas Dalton
Alexis: I knew that the six-million figure was being circulated long before World War II even started. Â I knew that it was being perpetuated during World War I, but you trace it back to the late 1800s. You argue that the New York Times was propounding these falsifications way back in 1889. You add:
âTwo years later, in 1891, we read about the sorry state of âRussiaâs population of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 Jews,â and of âthe fat that about six million persecuted and miserable wretchesâ still cling to their religion, against all odds.ââ[1]
Walk us through the historical record and tell us how this figure has been used as a weapon in the psychological war.
Dalton: The 6-million figure, as the number of Jewish Holocaust deaths, is the lynchpin of the entire story. Without millions of innocent deaths, the Holocaust becomes much less evil, and perhaps even just a side-note to WW2. Most importantly, if the number ultimately is shown to be untenable, the whole story collapses. Our âexpertsâ would be shown to be either liars or incompetents. And we would realize that the wool had been pulled over our eyes for decades. So we need to understand something about its origins and justification.
Our basic question, then, is this: Where did the 6 million come from in the first place? That is, when did it first appear? One would naturally presume it to be impossible to calculate the death toll in the midst of a raging world war. Even in the immediate aftermath, we would know little for certain. Surely we would not take, for example, the Nazisâ word for it; they would be inclined to either minimize the death toll or, if coerced, exaggerate it. The many camp survivors would clearly not be of much help; as prisoners, they would have been in no position to know such things as overall death tolls.
Therefore, one would expect a dependable answer to come only from a detailed investigation of all the death sites, including forensic data, mass grave exhumations, autopsies, and so on. This would then be compared with surviving Nazi documentation, photographs, and other evidence. A proper postwar investigation would clearly take months, if not years. Only then could we be confident of an estimate of 6 million.
Oddly, this is not what has been done. Far from it. In fact, nearly the opposite of the above has occurred. The victorious Americans relied heavily on biased Jewish and Soviet sources, and on captured and abused Nazis. They conducted no forensic investigations, no autopsies, and no unearthing of mass graves. The Americans relied strictly on hearsay evidence to establish the all-important Jewish death toll.
All this would be bad enough, but the story gets many strangers still. As you say, the number circulated for years, even decades prior to WW2. This is a fascinating and highly revealing situation.
The first mention of 6 million suffering Jews comes way back in 1889. In a short article, the New York Times asks âHow many Jews are there?â The low estimate of âthe ubiquitous raceâ is 6,000,000. âWith the exception of half a million,â it adds, âthey are all in a state of political bondage.â Then in 1891, as you point out, we read about âsix million persecuted and miserable wretchesâ in Russia.
Such stories were useful to the newly-emerging Jewish Zionist movement, which wanted to promote tales of Jewish suffering in order to encourage migration to Palestine (there not yet a nation of Israel).
Referring to the Jews of Russia, Zionist Stephen Wise said this in 1900: âThere are 6,000,000 living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favor of Zionismâ (Jun 11; p. 7). In 1901, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported on the âhopeless conditionâ of the âsix million Jews in Russiaâ (Dec 22; p. 13). In 1905, Zionists began to fret that âRussia, with its 6,000,000 Jews,â wasnât promoting emigration (Jan 29; p. 2).
Periodic and often minor anti-Jewish actions were always portrayed in the most dramatic terms; the NYT despaired over âour 6,000,000 cringing brothers in Russiaâ (Mar 23; p. 7). In 1906 we read of âstartling reports of the condition and future of Russiaâs 6,000,000 Jewsâ; it is a âhorrifying pictureâ of ârenewed massacresâ and âsystematic and murderous exterminationâ (Mar 25; p. SM6).
In 1910, we find âRussian Jews in sad plight,â and we are saddened over âthe systematic, relentless, quiet grinding down of a people of more than 6,000,000 soulsâ (Apr 11; p. 18). In 1911 the NYT reported that âthe 6,000,000 Jews of Russia are singled out for systematic oppression and for persecution by due process of lawâ (Oct 31; p. 5). Itâs amazing to think that, even by 1910, there was a clear emphasis on â6 millionâ and âsystematic exterminationâ with respect to the Jews.
Then World War I began. We read of the plight of âmore than 6,000,000 Jews who live within the war zoneâ (2 Dec 1914). The next month carried more reports of âmore than 6,000,000 are in the very heart of the war zoneâ; they are consequently âsubjected to every manner of suffering and sorrow,â and all Americans are called upon to help (Jan 14; p. 3).
In 1916, we read that âthe world is silentâ despite the fact that ânearly six million Jews are ruined, in the greatest moral and material miseryâ (Feb 28; p. 8). A year later, Rabbi Samuel Schulman exclaims that âsix million Jews are living in lands where they are oppressed, exploited, crushed, and robbed of every inalienable human rightâ (Jan 22; p. 6). In May of 1917, we hear that âsix million Jewsâhalf the Jews of the worldâare calling to you for helpâ (May 21; p. 1).
By September, the situation was being described in the strongest possible terms; women and infant Jews must be saved, we are told, âif the Jewish race is to survive the terrible holocaust of the world warâ (Sep 24; p. 20). No one today realizes that a Jewish âholocaustâ is said to have occurred in both world wars.
After WW1, the famous number then shifted to a new region. In September 1919, we find that it is now the Ukrainian and Polish Jews who are subject to misery; â6,000,000 are in perilâ (Sep 8; p. 6). We are further horrified to read that âthe population of 6,000,000 souls in Ukrania and in PolandâŠare going to be completely exterminated.â Once again, 6 million Jews were under threat of extermination.
The trend continued for years, too numerous for me to elaborate on here. References include the following:
- âunbelievable poverty, starvation, and disease [for] about 6,000,000 souls, or half the Jewish population of the earthâ (12 Nov 1919).
- âtyphus menaced 6,000,000 Jews of Europeâ (12 Apr 1920).
- âhunger, cold rags, desolation, disease, deathâsix million human beings without food, shelter, clothingâ (2 May 1920).
- âRussiaâs 6,000,000 Jews are facing extermination by massacreâ (20 Jul 1921).
- âover 6,000,000â Russian Jews âneglectedâ (16 Sep 1924).
This brings us to the Nazi era, where the â6 millionâ appears once againâand long before WW2. The first reference comes just two months after Hitler assumed power in January 1933. The NYT reports on a âHitler protestâ vote by some local New York government officials. Rabbi Stephen Wise issued an appeal: âWe in America have taken the lead in a battle for the preservation of German Jewry,â adding that his group âis now active in relief and reconstruction work in Eastern Europe where 6,000,000 Jews are involvedâ (Mar 29; p. 9).
Three years later, we read in the London Times of â6,000,000 unwanted unfortunateâ Jews, and of âthese 6,000,000 people without a futureâ (26 Nov 1936; p. 15). On that same day, the NYT reported on a speech by British Zionist Chaim Weizmann, who âdwelt first on the tragedy of at least 6,000,000 âsuperfluousâ Jews in Poland, Germany, Austria.â In February 1937, we hear that âfive to six million Jews in Europe are facing expulsion or direst povertyâ (Feb 26; p. 12).
In 1938, the NYT ran an article headlined âPersecuted Jews Seen on Increaseâ (Jan 9; p. 12). â6,000,000 victims noted,â they saidâreferring to a combined total in Germany, Poland, and Romania. The very next month we hear about âa depressing picture of 6,000,000 Jews in Central Europe, deprived of protection or economic opportunities, slowly dying of starvation, all hope goneâŠâ (Feb 23; p. 23).
By May, it was the ârising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe today which has deprived more than 6,000,000 Jews and non-Aryans of a birthrightâ (May 2; p. 18). Later that year, the London Times printed an account of the âtreatment of German Jewsâ; âthe problem now involved some 6,000,000 Jews,â they wrote (Nov 22; p. 11). Bear in mind: the start of World War II was still nearly a year away.
Into early 1939, the London Times continued to report on Weizmannâs view that âthe fate of 6,000,000 people was in the balanceâ (Feb 14; p. 9). War began in September of that year, and anti-Nazi propaganda accelerated. In mid-1940, the NYT quoted Nahum Goldmann: âSix million Jews are doomed to destruction if the victory of the Nazis should be finalâ (Jun 25; p. 4).
This was still at least one full year before Hitler allegedly decided to begin his program of Jewish mass murderâaccording to our experts. Â How could Goldmann have known what was to come?
In January 1942, we read that Heinrich Himmler âhas uprooted approximately 6,000,000 human beingsâ and shipped them into occupied Poland, âwhere they necessarily starve and freeze to death and die of diseaseâ (Jan 18; p. SM10). By mid-1942, it was âa vast slaughterhouse for Jewsâ in Europe; one million were reported dead, and the remainder of the â6,000,000 to 7,000,000â at risk (Jun 30; p. 7).
By December the Jewish death toll was reported as 2 million, representing one third of the 6,000,000 âin Hitlerâs domain.â It was, said the NYT, âa holocaust without parallelâ (Dec 13; p. 21).
The sad tale continued throughout the war years:
- Hitler intends âthe extermination of some 6,000,000 [Jewish] persons in the territories over which [his] rule has been extendedâ (London Times, 25 Jan 1943).
- âSave doomed Jews,â says Rabbi Hertz; the world âhas done very little to secure even the freedom to live for 6,000,000 of their Jewish fellow menâ (Mar 2; p. 1).
- Two million are dead, âand the four million left to kill are being killed, according to planâ (Mar 10; p. 12).
- âFive and a half million Jews in Europe are reported to have been put to deathâ (10 May 1944; p. 5)âstill one full year before the end of the European conflict.
- And again later: âDr. A. Leon KubowitzkiâŠreported that 5,500,000 Jews had been killed in Nazi-controlled countriesâ (Nov 27; p. 14).
Then the first definitive claimâin January of 1945, four months before the end of the war: â6,000,000 Jews Deadâ (Jan 8; p. 17). Jacob Lestchinsky claimed that the prewar population of 9.5 million had been reduced to 3.5 million. No mention of how he came to this figure, amidst the chaos of an ongoing war. In April, the NYT headlined a story: â5,000,000 Reported Slain at Oswiecim [Auschwitz]ââan incredible miscalculation, even assuming the correctness of the present-day figure of 1 million.
In May we read something of an official declaration from Lord Wright of the UN War Crimes commission: âIt has, however, been calculated that in all about six million Jews were deliberately slaughtered in [gas chambers] and other waysâ (May 13; p. SM4). Calculated by whom? On what basis? And using what hard evidence? He does not say.
This is the short version of the story. From there, the number shows up in the Nuremberg trials, becomes âdocumentedâ, and thus accepted as fact ever since.
Itâs clear why no one wants to talk about this. If people realized that the 6 million had been in circulation for some 50 years prior to WW2, they might begin to question its accuracyâas they should. The obvious conclusion is that the number had a purely symbolic character, representing something like âall the Jewsâ or âlots of Jewsâ. It was never intended as a factual figure.
Given this, we can likely conclude that the actual death toll was much less. And there is plenty of other evidence to suggest that this is exactly the case.
Alexis: You have provided enough evidence against the six-million figure here, and he who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has the mind to think and use reason, let him think and use reason.
The fact is that we have been inundated with comfortable lies for far too long, and it is high time that people of reason and people who are of the truth stand for that which is intellectually rigorous and morally satisfying. If we continue to allow the people who have rejected metaphysical Logos to rewrite history, then lies, hoaxes, and complete fabrications will be passed on to the next generation as brute facts. As Friedrich Nietzsche himself conceded, when metaphysical Logos plays no part in one’s historical and philosophical enterprise, then lies can become the truth and vice versa.
There is indeed an industry out there that will do virtually anything to produce deliberate lies, colossal hoaxes, and crafty deceptions in order to perpetuate a pernicious ideology. If you do not think so, then consider this.
When Ruth Shalit graduated from Princeton University Phi Beta Kappa in 1992, one could compare that event to the time when Archimedes discovered the beauty of mathematics. Alicia Shepard of the American Journalism Review declared,
âPractically overnight she became a starâa TNR [The New Republic] associate editor writing cover stories for the political weekly as well as for the New York Times Sunday magazine, with a $45,000-a-year contract to do pieces for GQ.â[2]
Many of the articles she wrote, however, were complete fabrications and she was later labeled as the âjournalistic Unabomber.â[3] In Shalitâs own words,
âI started as an intern but knew this was my fantasy scenario, getting asked to stay. As an intern, I threw my heart into it. I was bloodless. I just pounded the pavement and cranked out stories.â[4]

Shalit was not the only journalist from the New Republic who was caught fabricating stories. Stephen Glass, who earned a law degree from Georgetown University and who attended the University of Pennsylvania before that, was declared by Vanity Fair as
âthe most sought-after young reporter in the nationâs capital, producing knockout articles for magazines ranging from The New Republic to Rolling Stone.â[5]
Yet there was one problem: âTrouble was, he made things upâsources, quotes, whole storiesâin a breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern journalism.â[6]
When the whole media found out about Glassâs obvious fabrications, he was confronted by his manager, Charles Lane. And Glass was on the defensive line, asking Lane to protect his reputation:
âYou know, Chuck, I just feel really attacked. And youâre my editor and you should be backing me up.â[7]
Buzz Bissinger of Vanity Fair declared,
âThis, after all, was Stephen Glass, the compelling wunderkind who had seeped inside the skins of editors not only at the New Republic but also at Harperâs, George, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Mother Jones.
“This was the Stephen Glass who had so many different writing contracts that his income this year might well have reached $150,000 (including his $45,000 New Republic salary). This was the Stephen Glass whose stories had attracted the attention not just of Random Houseâhis agent was trying to score a book dealâbut of several screenwritersâŠ
âThe New Republic, after an investigation involving a substantial portion of its editorial staff, would ultimately acknowledge fabrications in 27 of the 41 bylined pieces that Glass had written for the magazine in the two-and-a-half-year period between December 1995 and May 1998.
“In Manhattan, John F. Kennedy Jr., editor of George, would write a personal letter to Vernon Jordan apologizing for Glassâs conjuring up two sources who had made juicy and emphatic remarks about the sexual proclivities of the presidential adviser and his boss.â[8]
How far was Glass able to go? Almost all the way:
âGlass created fake letterheads, memos, faxes, and phone numbers; he presented fake handwritten notes, fake typed notes from imaginary events written with intentional misspellings, fake diagrams of who sat where at meetings that never transpired, fake voice mails from fake sources. He even inserted fake mistakes into his fake stories so fact checkers would catch them and feel as if they were doing their jobs.â[9]
In 2003, Glass finally did an interview with 60 Minutes in which he declared,
âMy life was one very long process of lying and lying again, to figure out how to cover those other lies.â How, then, did Glass build this lying process, particularly over the years with no suspicion? Simple:
âI would tell a story, and there would be fact A, which maybe was true. And then there would be fact B, which was sort of partially true and partially fabricated. And there would be fact C which was more fabricated and almost not true. And there would be fact D, which was a complete whopper. And totally not true. And so people would be with me on these stories through fact A and through fact B. And so they would believe me to C. And then at D they were still believing me through the story.â[10]
Glass, who had been a fact-checker before, knew how to get by and deceive even his own publishers:
âI knew how the system worked. And I made it so that my stories could get through. I invented fake notes. I later would invent a series of voice mailboxes and business cards. I invented newsletters. I invented a website. For every lie I told in the magazine, there was a series of lies behind that lie that I toldâin order to get it to be published.â[11]
Charles Lane, after discovering that Glass had concocted nearly every single story, wrote, âIf it was sunny outside and Steve and I were both standing outside in the sun and Steve came to me and said, âItâs a sunny day,â I would immediately go check with two other people to make sure it was a sunny day.â[12]
Holocaust lies, fabrications, and deceptions work almost in the same way. Their proponents always start with a little bit of truth, such as Jews suffered and died in Nazi Germany and in concentration camps, but they always change the rules as the Holocaust game goes on.
A person has to be clinically insane to deny the fact that Jews, as well as other ethnic groups, suffered and died under Nazi Germany. But should that be proof enough to universally declare that six-million Jews died during the war? Shouldnât people of reason ask for serious backup? And should people be called anti-Semites for asking the Holocaust establishment to provide solid evidence?
Citations
- [1] Thomas Dalton, Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides (Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2015), kindle edition.
- [2] Alicia C. Shepard, âToo Much Too Soon?â, American Journalism Review, Dec. 1995.
- [3] Ibid.
- [4] Ibid.
- [5] Buzz Bissinger, âShattered Glass,â Vanity Fair, September 1998.
- [6] Ibid.
- [7] Ibid.
- [8] Ibid.
- [9] Ibid.
- [10] Rebecca Leung, âStephen Glass: I Lied for Esteem,â CBS News, August 17, 2003.
- [11] Ibid.
- [12] Ibid.

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
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